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Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

rich
rich
@rich@richtong.org
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  • Mechnical Keyboards for the Mac 2020

    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…

  • Configuring a Logitech BRIO on a Mac with Camera Settings

    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…

  • Using Zoom instead of Google Meet with Google Workspace (fka GSuite)

    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…

  • Apple Id Disabled for Security Reasons

    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…

  • How incredibly hard it is to record network television if you have cut the cord

    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.…

  • 1Password Master Password confusion

    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…

  • Frustrations when monitors don’t autodetect ASUS PB278

    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…

  • Sony WH-1000MX3 Equalization Settings

    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.…

  • How to Sign Up as a Starlink Beta Tester

    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,…

  • Reward cards and free delivery plus other pandemic perks decoder ring

    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…

  • Google for Non-profits and how to activate it make sure you downgrade first.

    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…

  • Beware! Comcast just added Datacaps back to the Gigabit Ethernet plan without notification and a $25/month exploding offer

    Geez, can you like a company less than Comcast, I’m not sure how. Basically, they told me that the 1Gbps plan and that this included the $30/month unlimited data cap plan so that was a pretty good deal. However, while this worked for a month and then they removed the cap and didn’t tell anyone,…

  • Getting to 5G the low cost way, T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, Google Fi nand Verizon

    Well, if you have spanking new phones and want to try 5G, what can you expect and what’s the lowest cost way to do it. First of all, you should expect too much of 5G in its normal incarnation is not going to be much faster than 4G. This is what is called low band…

  • Move to MacOS Big Sur and AVast and Google Chrome runaway apps and using Ecosia

    Well, I’ve always been lucky in my moves between different versions of MacOS and this one has been really smooth. Just two issues that you should note: I’ve been using Avast Antivirus, it’s been pretty reliably, but in the last month they’ve increased their annoy ware as they try to monetize their free versions. More…

  • Using a modern 4K LG C9 with an 10-year old Denon AVR-2310Ci

    Yes, I know that I always want the freshest equipment, but what if you have a Nice new LG C9 from last year and don’t want to spend $$$s for a new Audio/Video Receiver on it. Is there a way to use an older Denon that is 10 years old and still get decent sounds…

  • Creating a Washington State LLC

    Well someone asked how to do this and I’ve done this so many times it’s a little silly. So while you can pay someone to do it or buy a package, it is actually pretty easy to do for yourself with some guides on the Internet like nolo.com, but here are the rough steps: Pick…

  • Creating a Market Test with Instapage, Facebook, Google, Namecheap, Canva, Unsplash

    There must be hundred different tutorial on this topic and the above is a mouthful but with a bucketful of applications for a less than $500 setup you can create rapid prototypes of user demand. TL;dr Instapage is a terrific web creation site with great templates for landing pages and even whole commerce systems. It…

  • Developing with Windows

    Well, the last four years, I’ve mainly been using Ubuntu and then MacOS for software development. In that time, the convergence of the two has been great. Now with tools like Homebrew, you can pretty much get the same scripts to run on Ubuntu (or most any version of Linux like Debian) that supports Bash…

  • Infrastructure as Code on the way to EOC

    Well, the Everything as Code movement is a good idea. Right now, I do way much twiddling of everything from WordPress to AWS Lightsail to registering domains and it is a muddle. Five years ago, this was really hard. I ended up writing a whole series of bash scripts just to get a bunch of…

  • IoT continues exponentially

    It is incredible how much the world has progressed in price/performance over the last four years. The Raspberry Pi B we first used had two cores, 256MB of memory and a bus limited to 100Mbps and used SD cards. Now for $75 you can get a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of main memory, built…

  • Hue Zigbee light too far away from hub, use Wifi or hope for Thread

    Well this is a frustrating problem. If you are trying to use Hue, then you will find that it needs to have a light bulb pretty close to it. That is because it using mesh networking over 2.4GHz with Zigbee. The solutions are pretty uninspiring. Basically, you need to put another bulb between the hub…

  • Switching from WordPress to Hugo and JAMstacks

    More election distraction… Well, I’ve been, for over 15 years WordPress and it’s probably time to leave the family. A Brief history of tongfamily.com Originally, tongfamily.com started in 1996 with FrontPage Extensions. Then in 2003, I finally had some time and switched to Ben and Mina Tratt and their Movable Type in 2003 blogging platform…

  • Beware: There Are 3 Versions of Each iPhone 11 and 12 | PCMag

    For iPhone 12s and 11s, they come in three different models each, designed for different countries. It’s important to get the right one for you. There are too many bands in the world so they will all roam but coverage will be different. Basically, the US model has a CDMA modem for rural AT&T and…

  • OMG Heart swells with pride, Grace choreographs a Tod’s Shoes commercial

    Well, what a cool thing, even in pandemic/election times, Grace choreographs and performs in a commercial that is tribute to New York City for Tod’s Shoes. Got to love that! It’s part of their stories collection and is called “In Our Shoes” Creative Directed and Presented by Grown Goods Co Produced by Calixo Films and…

  • Nerd Heaven, iPhone Pro Max 12 and HomePods are available

    Well, (more distraction from the elections), but if you are up now, you are a true nerd. The Apple Store opened about 5:05AM and as usual, the iOS store opened first. The web version even at 5:20AM is just starting up, so some tips, if you want to be first in line, have your iPad…

  • Switching to Apple One make sure to turn off iCloud Storage

    I didn’t realize this but when trying Apple One, it turns off the Apple Music plan for $15, but it does not turn off iCloud Storage for $10. Instead you end up paying for both and getting 4TB instead of 2TB of storage. It’s not hard to shutoff but kind of annoying. You go to…

  • Quick crib notes and checklist for creating a new entity or company

    OK I spend so much time making new companies or non-profits these days, it’s useful just to have a quick checklist for things to do: Pick a credit card that you will use for this that is easy to separate from your personal expenses, this will make taxes much easier! Use Namecheap to get a…

  • Little Kitchen stocking stuffers from gloves to mandolins

    (Ok, post election but still stressed, so more posts of random junk.) But if you want to round out your kitchen, Cooks Illustrated (subscription required) has some great recommendations: Mercer’s Culinary MercerGuard Cut Glove. So this is a thin glove that keeps you from cutting yourself accidentally. Great for mandolines in particular but also for…

  • GitHub-fu from master to main and handling upstream quickly

    Now that GitHub has made the transition from master (good-bye slavery!), all existing repos need to change otherwise you will never remember if you should git checkout master or main. Fortunately the steps are pretty easy: Rename your local branch from master to main with git branch -m master main where I think -m means…

  • Picking the right Ethernet cables aka getting to cat 6a and cat8

    The short story is that the world is moving from unshielded to unshielded twisted pair also known as cat 8. This is more difficult to layout etc and expensive but with bandwidth up to 40gbps it’s really got way more upside to it. So great for new home builds. It costs $15 for two six…