Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Well both our ASUS PB278s seems a bit flaky. No matter what I try I can’t get one of them to reliable turn on. It sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I tried the HDMI connection and the DisplayPort and rebooting the Mac. When I change it for a Benq 32 it works fine. Both of…

OK here are the crazy list of things that my three “Just in from Windows” friends, Mark, John and Dave are having. Hopefully both are loving that M1 MacBooks (yes, I’m jealous, trying to hold out for the next generation coming this year, but I don’t know!). So here are notes from the many phone…

Argh two Google problems today. The first is really annoying, I downloaded an extension that would force Dark Mode on Chrome, but when I uninstalled it, the backgrounds were still DARK. Argh! I tried changing the Dark mode on the Mac and also changing the default Theme. It turns out that plug in actually turns…

Well, this is a truly nerdy post, but I just read that with Superhuman worth hundreds of millions, everyone is back to building the Superhuman of X keyboard shortcuts as the way to get common applications faster. I completely agree with that and those of us who have used vi forever sure know that is…

OK, suppose that you are too paranoid to get on an airplane and instead decide that any trip within 1,200 km of your home city are fair game for a road trip. What do you need to make the trip as safely as possible. Here are some notes 🙂 Safety Stuff: Of Snow tires and…

This has been bothering me for literally a year. I can’t seem to get rid of these relentless emails from Microsoft Teams. If I want to see random water cooler chatter I would ask for it. Finally, the latest email from them tells you exactly how to shut it off… Update your email preferences in…

Well, I have NordVPN with it’s Cybersec ad blocking and also run Safari with UBlock and while it seems to block some ads, a bunch more seem to appear. So to welcome in 2021, let’s see how to figure out how effective these are. I normally use open source blockers like UBlock origin or KaBlock!…

These two things are tiny, but they are very helpful. If you have some photos that you don’t want to transmit everywhere, but still want to keep them around, you can hide them. The interface is really hidden (no pun intended, but here is what you need to do) iOS Devices you Share to Hide…

Well, I’ve tried a number of other hosted Jupyter environments from Google AI Platform Notebook to Saturn and I keep coming back to Google Colab for one reason mainly: We don’t have things that are that complex (yet!), so simplicity is key and Colab is just so simple to use with everything you need already…

OK, a quick report on my life with dongles and other attachments for MacBooks. Suffice to say these dongles definitely have a spotty record for me. Most of the time they seem to work fine if you leave them plugged in, but it’s detection that seems like the problem (and the occasional burnout, see below).…

Well, I seem to have bought just a boatload of different keyboards, microphones and mice in 2020. The first world problem of staying at home for the last seven (?!!) months have led me to become the foremost expert on various junk like this. so here’s a flash review of what seems to work and…

Well, it’s probably a testament to Apple hardware design that I regularly end up with machines that are perfectly functional but no longer get updates. A good example is the Mac Mini 2011. It is nearly 10 years old yet still runs just fine for basic tasks like typing this blog entry, but it is…

Well, turns out that I had never actually written down how I made a Podcast in the first place and of course I completely forgot how I did it, so here are notes that I’ve recovered: GarageBand. I mainly used this because it is free with the Mac. Lots of people end up using Audacity,…

Since getting our Tesla’s it’s been massive road trip city. Previous with gasoline cars a drive of 10 hours would leave me complete exhausted. Pre-Tesla Records The first really long trip sans parents I ever took was from NJ to Hilton Head Island. That was an epic 757 miles with two people splitting the driving.…

I have always though of Namecheap as an inexpensive registrar with an amazing search function for finding domain names. Their beast mode let’s you browse literally hundreds of top level domains and they automatically generate names for you by adding prefixes like “try” or by deleting suffixes. But there are quite a few other things…

Well we’ve got everyone in our extended family air filters. We ended up getting a HEPA filter made by BlueAir called the Blue Pure 211+ for $300 at Amazon. I can’t actually tell if it works, but it is quiet. The other company that has gotten buzz has been Molekule. They have an additional filter…

I don’t know if this will work for other displays but I’ve never been able to get an LG to scan properly. This has worked without adjustment for most Samsung television that I’ve used. While some folks on Reddit say to turn Pixel Shift off, this is called Screen Shift and lives in Settings >…

Well it’s been nearly a year since I’ve done a podcast, but Paul asked me for a link so I thought I would start again for 2021. If you want to see the test casts I’ve been doing, they are up on Apple Podcasts. For some reason when I did an automatic distribution on Anchor.fm,…

Well, I finally tried a way more expensive docking station. It is the $220 CalDigit TS3 Plus at Amazon and is way more than the typical $30 USB C Dongle and $30 powered USB hub, but it was getting so frustrating having intermittent connections. The CalDigit TS3 Plus is really pro grade stuff and comes…

Well a nice Christmas present during this Pandemic season is a nice mechanical keyboard. Here are some of the things to think about when you are buying a keyboard that I put in order of importance to me 🙂 Arrows keys yet compact. These are normally the 78-key or 68-key designs, but while the number…

OK, with the Mac things are super automatic, so I normally just plug a webcam in and it works. I’ve been using the Logitech C920 forever and it just about perfect. But with all this pandemic time, I finally got a Logitech BRIO which is a 4K camera. There are some cool things that it…

Ok, this is such a pain, Google force added Google Meet as the default conferencing add-on to every new meeting invite. This is terrible for two reasons. The first is that, at least for us, Google Meet just doesn’t work very well, it uses lots of CPU and is very laggy. The second is that…

This is the first time I’ve ever seen this message Disabled for Security Reasons. It appeared on our Apple TV last night. It was strange because all our other Apple devices were working fine. The thing said to go to “https://iforgot.apple.com” which is a pretty scary URL. The last thing I wanted to do was…

Argh, I can’t believe this has gotten so hard. We just want to record a video segment on the local news. Here are the steps: If you have a DVR from Comcast or someone, this is pretty simple. Just hit record. But what if you have cut the cord and are using over the air.…

OK, when I first started using 1Password, it was pretty straightforward, there was a third party store like Dropbox or Google Drive and then you encrypted a file with your master password. However, they’ve since introduced the concept of their own storage which is great. Now you can have multiple account and multiple vaults within…

I have two of these PB278 monitors and they are definitely old at probably 5-10 years, but the more annoying thing is that the oldest doesn’t seem to autodetect inputs very well. You actually have to reboot the Mac in order for the display to get recognized. I sure remember those bad old days when…

Well, now that the house is really getting dialed, in here are some final notes, there will be a blizzard, but got to start somewhere. The Sony WH-1000MX series are designed be to very base heavy. When you have great earphones like the Etymotic ER-4a or the Sennheiser HD-650, this can be kind of annoying.…

Holy Toledo, we may be saved from the Comcast monopoly by Starlink. $99/month for 100Mbps is ironically not a bad deal compared with $100 for 300Mbps assuming it is uncapped. Will be very nice on top of the Cybertruck when combined with a Unifi Wifi 6 AP. Starlink may not be available for everyone yet,…

Well with the pandemic, there really expensive rewards cards have had to figure out how to keep adding value. Here’s what they’ve come up with. The net is that you can get free delivery and lots of points just by ordering food. I don’t know if they are worth $450-500 but they are trying. Amex…

Ok here is a confusing one for you, we got the G Suite for Non Profits after paying $$$s to run Google for months not realizing they had this terrific program. So we got most of the way there, but we didn’t realize how complex it would be to do the billing. A General review…