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MacOS Catalina 10.15 New Disk Layout
If you try to figure out how much Disk space you have with a tool Space Gremlin, you could be in for a big surprise because the disk layout has changed. If you have say a 1TB Mac disk, it will show that you have 2TB and there is a new volume called “Macintosh HD…
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Using custom font on a Mac
I just wrote about how you use the custom fonts on your iPhone or iPad, but for the Mac, things are a little simpler: First figure out what font you want with What Font Is? or similar utility. Then see if that font is available in Homebrew Fonts because that makes it much easier to…
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Gsuite templates
OK this is a bit mysterious, but if you have some standard templates that you like to use, then Google has two completely different ways of doing this: If you have a personal account, then you create a dummy document with your styles and layouts loaded into it. Then when when you create a document,…
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Use Google Chrome to determine fonts on a website
Well, this is pretty confusing mainly because the Chrome developer tools keep changing, but for November 2019, here is how to do it: Download Chrome Enable Developer tools Start them with View/Developer/Developer Tools Now a window opens on the left, you want to click on the upper left icon there called Select Item to Inspect…
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Limitations of Google Slides for IOS and Web version
Well, it is good to push products and one area that I’ve been confused about is what are the limitations for Google Slides for the iPhone and on the Web. It is remarkably good at collaboration and “good enough” layout, but if you want to really get work done on an iPad only can you?…
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Best Monitors for a PC Fall 2019 Review
Well, Mark (and everyone else who is going to get a Mac Pro, or an AMD Ryzen Threadripper) needs to get a great monitor to go with it, so what to get if you want the actual best display. First of all there are threee big uses for this kind of monster computer: General computer…
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Identifont and WhatFontIs to find free fonts to similar to proprietary ones
OK, in trying to work with a presentation that is using a ton of proprietary fonts. Here are some tools: Figure out what font it is with TypeSquirrel or WhatFontIs or FontSpring from just an image. Or use the Chrome WhatFontIs extension to determine what font you see on a website. Figure out what a…
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Using fonts on an Google Slides and iPadOS and iOS with Keynote
Normally I use Google Slides for most presentations. You can add any Google Font to it with more fonts. And if there are fonts which are not there then you can use the Extensis add-on for other fonts. I also recently got a Keynote presentation. This is a downloadable thing. But when you load it,…
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Argh. Google and MacOS authentication woes
Just spent an hour on a really frustrating problem with Google. What they did makes sense but the error messages are really hard to fathom TL:dr If you have MacOS Catalina and are trying to setup a gmail account on it. It doesn’t work the way you thjnk. Authentication now happens from Safari to get…
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AirPod Pros
Hat tip to link.medium.com/xGVmJPWus1 Yes they cost a ridiculous $250 for a set of tiny earphones but I can’t wait to try them. The noise cancelling seems like a great feature. The current AirPods are super convenient. I just love how that convenient they are. The pairing just seems to work. So convenient they are…
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Switching to Disqus and Tags in prep for WordPress to Ghost migration
Well about to experiment with using Ghost as a blogging platform so it’s a good time to do some basics with tongfamily.com: Installing Disqus. After you create a login on Disqus, look at the at the tutorial, but basically you install the Disqus Plugin. I actually used a third party tool called Disqus Lazy Load.…
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Best Websites for Searching Star Alliance Award Availability
Looking to book an award flight on a Star Alliance carrier? These are the best websites to use to find availability. The short answer is that ANA is the most accurate for figuring out availability if a little hard to read. Then comes Air Canada. The United site unfortunately often shows phantom awards that don’t…
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Fixing WordPress crashes on DigitalOcean Droplet
OK I get this about three weeks or so on our new DigitalOcean Droplet running WordPress. The good news is the JetPack does inform you when it dies. TL;dr If you have your WordPress created with the one-click Droplet under DigitalOcean it works great except that there is no swapfile, so with a 1GB RAM…
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What’s all this then about MacBook Pro and their cons
Mark sent me a note from some random person about how MacBook Pro’s are the stepchildren of the Apple world. The complaints which I’ve heard quite a bit come down to: The keyboard isn’t great. The updates have been slow. It doesn’t have enough ports with only USB C. I’ll be a little contrarian about…
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Update on sunglasses Julbo Aero Pro Zebra Light now the Julbo Aero Segment
Well, I’ve really loved the Julbo Aero Pro with photochromic lenses. I got them for $105 on Amazon which I now realize was an incredible deal from Backcountry as a closeout. Sad to say. But the aero pro with zebra light is really good. I got the ones which were Zebra Light lenses category 1-3…
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End of Summer: Things for Hiking
OK after a whole summer of hiking, this is a good time to pick up all those vital things that you can forget about. Here’s a reminder of real necessities when hiking: Trekking Poles. Yes, they really do help the knees Microspikes. You don’t need them until you need them, but they are really great…
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Light and Sound helps Alzheimers
link.medium.com/9jatcGRSYZ shows some incredible new results. It is only with mice, but some research shows that the right light and sound flashing at 40 hertz can reduce Alzheimers how is that possible???
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Buying a bike for someone getting serious
Pradeep asked me other day what bike to get for someone who is fit and where you want them to love biking. Well there are many choices here but if you are fit and maybe someday want to do the Seattle to Portland or you are generous enough to want to get someone into touring…
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Lightsail Multisite WordPress Tips and Tricks
OK, we’ve had this domain sort of working for the last month and here are some tips and tricks for doing this Multisite Fixing Security: SSH Keys Using your own SSH keys. Lightsail is really convenient. By default it creates an SSH key pair for every region that you have. This means that you don’t…
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How to Increase Media File Maximum Upload Size in WordPress and managing upload sizes
Wow WordPress is so complicated, there are a zillion different ways to change the maximum image upload size. With WordPress 5.x single site, while you can edit the maximum file size in wp-config.php, the easier way is to use a plugin that sets it called brilliantly, upload-max-file-size With Multisite WordPress 5.x, this again moved, but…
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Network Subsite User Registration – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org
Multisite WordPress is a little strange on registrations of users for commenting. Basically, the default is that you register only at the top level. That is there is a user that works across the entire network. You enable this in the Network Admin/Settings/Network Settings/Registration Settings. But then you need to add a plugin that let’s…
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Indenting with Vi
OK I keep forgetting all these tricks, but make sure to turn autoindent on and then you get nice indenting. So with the > and < to indent forward, there is CTRL-T to indent and CTRL-D to outdent. Then you get these tricks. Where you combine those operators with % which says go to the…
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WordPress the right way to import from a new to an old site.
Suppose you want to move from a site.com to a new site.com on another hoster. Here are the steps: First if you use WordPress Export/Import, the one quirk is that the export does not include the actual Media Library, instead, it includes URL links. That means that to do a swap, you need to leave…
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Argh Multisite WordPress and redirect loops with debugging and JetPack
Well for sure I’ve been having incredible problems with redirect loops. The symptom is the site just keeps looping with problems. This first started with iThemes Security where I had: The subsites kept redirecting back to the main site with the message that user creation was not available. They had really strange referrer URLs. Then…
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Installing WordPress on a DigitalOcean Droplet Redux
OK I had a chance to redo a droplet installation and I’m trying to make this the minimum path. There are so many different pieces that you need to know, so here is a guide that should help: First of all you need to buy a domain name. I use namecheap.com for this. With some…
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Beware MacOS Catalina not compatible with Sony A7RIII Firmware updates
Argh, Sony is such a strange company sometimes. But, with the update to MacOS Cataline (10.15), all their utilities break. The most important of which is firmware updates for the Sony A7R Mark III. The version 3.0 added human eye AF and animal eye AF and this won’t download properly with Catalina. YOu just have…
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First time in a long time I’ve wanted to play a video game
I got bored of video games about five years ago. They just all seemed the same. I used to love the realistic simulations of things. The original F-15 Strike Eagle (designed by Sid Meier and shipped by Microprose) was amazing. In fact, you can still run this game as F-15 Strike Eagle III on Windows…
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Protected: Urinary Tract Infections UTI Treatment
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Electrically Powered Yachts
No I don’t mean the submarines, I mean putting electric power into a boat. This has been a difficult challenge because of the power that it takes when you get close to planing. Boats draw very little power when they are at hull speed. For example, the Silent Yachts 55 (55 foot long boat), draws…
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Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) Q3 2019 Earnings Call Transcript
TSLA earnings call for the period ending September 30, 2019. — Read on www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/10/24/tesla-inc-tsla-q3-2019-earnings-call-transcript.aspx Wow Tesla just killed it this quarter incredible decreases in cost of goods bodes very well. Also very positive on shanghai gigafactory. They say it is 40% less capex and built in less than a year. Finally model Y moves up…