Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

I’ve actually been using 1Password for five years now and some of my machines used the older synchronization system with Dropbox. One of the bugs I’ve encountered is that even if you disable these synchronizers, the password on the Mac version of 1Password stays stuck on the old password in those shared storage systems. Even…

It just seems like I’m more and more sensitive to the position of my hands on a keyboard. I can’t actually type in bed or lying down anymore. So I’ve learned to sit up. But I’ve also gotten a bunch of new keyboards and I haven’t had a wrist rest or pad on them. In…

We were recently watching a dance concert that was broadcast on the web and, man, is it complicated to try to get that to project on an Apple TV to see on the big screen. The big problem here is that there are two kinds of sharing that an Apple TV knows how to handle.…

Well, these are really powerful, but incredibly hard to understand. It’s taken me five years to get a sense of how to really use these is to first understand at an architectural level what is really happening inside Git, then it makes sense how this whole thing works. It’s taken me five years to really…

Ok, the ideal thing is that if you are writing some up intellectual property (IP) documents for say patents or papers, you need a good base to do this. Right now, I’m trying to set up a workflow that is efficient and easy for a patent attorney for instance to understand. So here is the…

OK, I thought I had beat this one, but now it looks like there are more issues, but in tuning our Unifi network I was working on two issues: Apple devices sometimes will not connect. If you turn on all the goodies with Wifi, then iOS clients will suddenly report that they can’t connect to…

Ok with those preliminaries out of the way how do you get a GPU instance up and running and have it work easily. There are a few steps. The main issue are when you are thinking about this that there are 3.5 different ways to do things these days and it’s super confusing what the…

Well in the world of Infrastructure as Code, the idea is that you try not to use the graphical interface and instead use the command line. Put it in scripts and other tools. So here are the basics for doing this with Google Cloud Platform. The nice thing is that command completion works really well,…

It does seem that GCP is somewhat simpler than AWS (but not as simple as Digital Ocean) for sure. We just got some GCP Credits through their startup program and it is a little confusing how to get it and use it, so some notes: A startup can sign up for their startup program. They…

This is one of the more annoying problems. With iOS you can set dark mode for the browser, but not for Mac. Instead, there are two utilities that cost money to do this. Dark Eyes for instance only works for five sites. The only solution seems to be to pay or sometime certain sites can…

Ok, I spent way too much time like hours on this bug. But I’ve gotten to the point where I can fork a repo and create a new website just by adding to new files with Unsplash. But I hit a really confusing problem that drove me crazy. The problem is that netlify.toml. We are…

Well, there are so many ways to use server less functions and AWS Lambdas are the biggest way. If you are deploying these, there are also literally a dozen ways to do that. The simplest thing to do is to upload the Lambda and then use the AWS console to test it, but it doesn’t…

Ok, this has to be so confusing, but there are times when you are in a bash script and you want some variables to be substituted and some that are not. The easy case if when you want double quote inside a double quote, this is used when you are going to feed that string…

Well, it’s been a long time, but git has got to be amongst the most mysterious of all software tools. I’ve spent the last five years going through tutorials and most of them are obsolete. The git command is undergoing really significant improvement and lots of the confusing things are because the base tutorials get…

Ok, more stuff for developers, this is about getting Typescript to run with Vim. While many people are using VSCode, I guess the muscle memory and speed of Vi (vee-eye not vaay) are just too much an attraction, so here is as how to get the environment working right. Installing typescript This is pretty simple…

Ok, some of my favorites, Ti Pang is awesome, basically braise any kind of pork in soy sauce and sugar. What can go wrong! I guess the technical term is braised Chinese Braise Pork Shank, but I also knew it as Ti Pang 蹄膀  or affectionately Sweet Hoof 糖蹄. The recipe is pretty simple, you…

Ok, three incredibly annoying things finally tracked down early this morning: Unifi Intrusion Protection blocks Github SSH connections The net of it is that Intrusion Prevention has been great (at least I haven’t seen many ill effects except this one). It makes Github basically unusable. I’ve been having horrible problems with running GitHub commands. If…

Ok, today was a day of little things, of update hell and trying to keep a Smart home up and going plus some tips: Unifi. Make sure that you turn *off* automatic firmware updates. While you will be getting bug fixes, the code is pretty unstable right now. Basically, I took an update silently and…

OK, I have not really had to use Office on the desktop in a *very* long time. Most of my editing is just with Google Workspace these days, but thanks to the Microsoft Alumni Network, we do get a $99 subscription per year as part of being that group. So here are the quick instructions…

Ok, you can now see all my podcasts on a dedicated Podcast page thanks to the miracle workers at Blubrry with the PowerPress Plugin. This gives you a dedicated view that is either standard HTML5 or their own flavor. There are a sea of other Podcast plugins at Optin Monster but I just picked the…

More fun for posts as for February 28 and back to January 5 2021 at Anchor.fm, Spotify or Apple. Git madness and pull request splitting https://richtong.org/2021/02/28/github-madness-what-happens-if-you-do-not-protect-main/ Olive oil shopping from wishlist https://smile.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/genericItemsPage/3PBCKT8DWZ7HR?type=wishlist&_encoding=UTF8&tag=rich20-20 Zoom hacks for multiple windows. Mars 2020 Perseverance videos and things. Richt starts a substack newsletter at https://richt.substack.com What to do when your computer get hacked. Cool keyboard oriented apps like Superhuman, fzf and rg plus Vimari Tips…

Sigh, here is what happens when an idiot like me doesn’t pay enough attention and you don’t protect your main branch and how to get out of it. The problem: The free version of git does not allow protection of the main branch. That means any one can do a git switch main && git…

Ok this has always required a git checkout and then copy some files somewhere and then go back, but with July 2019 Git 2.3, you can now use –source in git restore to get a single file back. The place where this really comes in handy is that if you do a git pull request…

Well, we have the generic olive oil for most cooking uses, but one of the joys of the pandemic are that you can sample things from around the world, particularly if you are like us and are eating at home a lot (ok all the time). So here is a review of olive oils we…

OK, I’ve spent so much time on this application, here are some tips for bigger meetings and how to handle them on Zoom. On a Mac, turn on dual monitor in the Zoom/Preferences, this doesn’t do what you think and is more general. What it does is give you two windows, so you can actually…

Well, if you are smart, you are using Adblockers and anti-tracking technology. I find that even with Safari, and the Mac stuff, you still need more technology. I use Ghostery on Safari and uBlock Origin (and yes I’ve temporarily forgotten which one of the variants() I’m using on Chrome and Firefox. And also NordVPN which…

Wow during this Pandemic, Climate Change, Fake News, Inequity, it is hard to remember some of the good things in life. While it might be a huge long-term, not very clear use of money, it does inspire to think about the achievements that show the hope for the future. ICMYI, quite a lot of amazing…

OK, the paid news letter is not dead, welcome to https://richt.substack.com where you can create paid newsletters. I just turned it all on. And I’ve got to create a Clubhouse time to, so I can talk with myself.

Well this is a really common hack, Garret. But without the right protections it’s super easy to go to Google, search for something and end up on a scam website. Then you will get a pop up and it says “You’ve been hacked call this number.” Then they will take/steal your credit card number. Have…