Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Well, it doesn’t look like we are getting to the gym anytime soon and the thought of running or biking around when this virus is everywhere doesn’t seem smart. So it looks like it’s finally time to set up a decent home gym that has the minimum of stuff that I need: We have some…

I’ve been chatting with Tim and Brian quite a bit about how PCs are changing from productivity machines to (particularly for gamers) works of art that should be displayed. Just looking at our latest Threadripper miniTower build shows how easy it is to get the right hardware: NZXT H510. It is easy to get a…

Well there is always a good excuse to drink and it seems like there’s never been a better time. If you are in a bunker, you might as well make the best of it. So in no particular order are some liquor recommendations. Using Drizly is the easy way to access a high-quality liquor store…

We are literally swimming in a sea of confused data about the Corona Virus data sites. Net, net, the growth in death rates is key. Eventually, hopefully, deaths will start to shrink. See UMN for a collection of links or just use Google. Here are the three sites, you should monitor every day if you…

Well we are in the middle of an upgrade cycle now, so if you want a MacBook, here’s what to do: First, look at the Mac Rumors site to see what the current. As of March 2020, they seem to show that a MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro 16″ are the best. Or look…

When you are building a presentation, how should you lay things out and what are the right ratios. The main thing to realize is that if your slide is 16:9, then it makes some sense to have rectangles that are longer than they are tall. The Golden Ratio. This is buried deep in the mathematical…

Normally I would say tips. But my levels of strictness are commandments > rules > tips > tricks. So this is pretty high (Defcon 2). So on what should you do with your company in these circumstances, there are two great resources: Dan Rosen. He’s an old friend and an experienced angel investor. He has…

Since I’ve been building PC, I’ve completely forgot that you can get infant mortality problems where things die early. We just had a $550 motherboard literally die after one week of use. ASUS is awesome because they have online chat to get through this, but here are some things to know: When you are buying…

Well, this week I’ve been a Zoom with 20 people for a happy hour, countless Zoom 1:1s, then two Zoom Webinars and then a Zoom college reunion gathering for nearly 200 people. What a learning curve it is, but here are some notes on how to use it: You pretty much are going to have…

Well since I’ve got more time at home and am maintaining no less than half a dozen websites, it’s time to jot down what is working and what is not. here are some notes, but the things to decide are: Do you want to use an out of the box theme? These are actually pretty…

Ok got a Zoom call coming up and want to make sure to have maximum bandwidth. This machine kept on falling back to using 2.4Ghz, 802.11n with 72Mbps maximum. The way to fix is pretty arcane. you have dive into `Device Manager` and twiddle with the advanced parameters for the Qualcomm adapter: 1. Set preferred…

Well now that so many of us are at home, figuring out how to keep your video and other calls running well is more important than ever. Since yesterday, our network speeds have been horrible. Before the crisis we were getting 190Mbps upstream and 5Mbps downstream. But starting yesterday that had dropped to 30Mbps/1Mbps and…

Well hopefully everyone is ok, but there are millions who aren’t. Here are some notes about what you can do to help others. Not a comprehensive list, but some good resources: OpenTable Gifts has a limited number of restaurants that take their gift cards. For now, they are eliminating all fees to the restaurants, so…

Well, hopefully everyone is safe and sound during this epidemic. Now that we are self isolating, what are some things to do (besides watch the news, help those in need and stay safe yourself). Beyond Slack, Teams, Zoom and Messaging Ok there are the usual suspects (and I don’t count Facebook or Twitter by the…

OK, with self-quarantine the new meme, here are some notes about how to minimize contact: In Singapore, when you go out, you leave your shoes at the door, change out and wash your “outside” clothes and switch to indoor clothes. I already posted about ordering stuff (TL;dr, Costco, Instacart, Amazon Prime Now, then Amazon Prime,…

Well the smartest person I know (ok I’m biased one of the three smartest people amongst the Alex, Calvin and Grace crowd). But Calvin did a great job summarizing on his new blog (he’s imprisoned in his own self-quarantine). But he has some great summaries of how to be really productive and the comments are…

I haven’t used Windows much these last few years. Most development has been on the Mac and Linux. But getting back to it because of gaming and I had completely forgotten how delicate Windows can be. We have a Dell Alienware Aurora R8 computer and it tries to work like a sealed box. I got…

Well in the old days, there was a thing called SLI which basically had two video cards and they each took a line of a display, so you could get them to really cooperate. Today, nVidia has taken the idea farther and generalized it. Now they have something called NVLink which looks like a really…

Auto blog has good advice. We had never leased before and were completely noobs. Lessons are The lease Company has a contractor who inspects your car. Meet them in person preferably at home. So u can see the report. If u have damage it can costs thousands. Yes the tires can’t be bald, the windows…

It’s a little confusing, but Amazon has no less than three different places to buy things. From someone who used to work there, here’s how you should think about where to go. But in life where there is a huge delivery shortage. Make sure that you just have them drop it off at your door.…

Kodi (formerly XBMC, formerly Xbox Media Connect) has been an awesome tool for us to have a nice front end so that handles all the DVDs and other things we have digitally in the house. Since nVidia Shield is really an Android device, this is really an Android application. It basically indexes a network server…

ARgh, yet another fall out of the Corona Virus that they don’t talk about much, but if you are buying from Amazon, getting things from China doesn’t seem to be a problem. But that’s not true for all shippers. I ordered something directly from corsair.com and this came directly from China. It is now on…

OK, when you have terabytes of data at home, you definitely will. have losses. I’ve had a bad RAID array that corrupted a bunch of JPEGs and it is super sad. So what’s the solution to this: If you are using BTRFS, then you can turn on bit scrubbing. This basically in the background ensures…

OK, lots of opinions will vary about the ultimate effects and so forth, but here’s a collection of various people’s opinions about the extent of it. Some are pretty technical, but for a nerd like me understand the mathematics of epidemiology is pretty interesting, so without comment. These are not scientific papers, but analysis of…

I never really understood where iMovie Theater was coming from. Once you make an iMovie, then it went into a separate video sharing system called Theater. Well, that has all gone away now and you are now supposed to put the movies into iCloud Photos. And yes, I know that is not entirely logical to…