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dev: Markdown editor for Mac
It is surprisingly difficult to find a simple Markdown editor that can deal with Git Flavored Markdown and the latest Mermaid.js. I have this running in vim with MarkdownPreview, but if you just want to view a rendered README.md, what’s the simplest way: There are some nominal chargeapps like Typora which I might try, but…
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tech: 1Password for Safari hang
Wow, what a strange problem. 1Password has been pretty reliable for me and the Safari extension has never given trouble, but two days ago, I got to the point where Safari would open, then the keyboard would lock and the Safari menu bar changed to the 1Password menu items. Very strange. I don’t know what…
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bike: Rebooting bike electronics Lumos, Stages, Garmin, Hammerhead
Well, I haven’t ridden my bike outside in over 18 months and with all this electronic gear, it is a mountain of work to get it running again, so here are some notes on getting: Shimano Dii 11-Speed Shifting Shimano DII 11-speed Derailleur. This one is a little cranky. You plug the two-prong power adapter…
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tech: USB RF Dongle Keychron Q2 Max
OK, I had this problem where the high-speed USB RF dongle failed on my Keychron. Those folks have great support and asked me what the serial number is. Just beware that unlike many products, the Q2 Max doesn’t have a serial number on the keyboard itself, you have to make sure to keep the box.…
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tech: Too many Keyboards Keychron, NuPhy, GMK…
You know you have too many keyboards when you forget the four builds you’ve done and how they are constructed, so here’s a review of current keyboards and this is an update to my 2022 rankings of my daily drivers: So here are the keyboards that I’ve been using by ranking. The big change is…
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net: On UniFi, do not turn up RSSI too high
Well after that long post about RSSI levels, I learned something important which is that if you set the RSSI too high, I have too low a value then you have the following problems: So the net is that I turned up all the APs to -67 and the result was that even though the…
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net: A day spent fixing three (subtle) UniFi network bugs
OK, I spent a very profitable Saturday finally figuring out some things about the Ubiquiti UniFi network that we have. As UniFi has become more focused on enterprise deployments, the interface has become more powerful and also harder to figure out how to use for simple cases, but here are the three lessons I’ve learned.…
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tech: Boneheaded manuveurs to avoid for USB and Synology
OK, I’ve two boneheaded things I’ve done this month. This is embarrassing because my last silly mistake was burning out half the USB C ports on my MacBook Pro 2017 by buying an off-brand USB dongle. Synology Loops Creation and RSTP and not STP OK, this is a strange one, if you have a switch…
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home: truly bizarre problems, never move your HomePod to New house without removing it from Apple Home
This works be obvious but amazingly I’ve not found it noted on the internet. But one issue is that if you move Apple home devices from one home to another some truly bizarre things happen. I moved three HomePods, an Aqara hub and a safe alert fire alarm. The confusing thing is that even though…
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tech: NuPhy Gem 80 on 2.4GHz USB RF
I’ve been moving devices off of Bluetooth because of this strange problem with my Shure TWS2 where I get glitching and I have no less than three keyboards each with their 2.4GHz USG-RF dedicated dongle. So I found an old USB 3.0 hub (actually two, one no longer acts as a hub but charges, and…
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av: Paradise found Thieaudio Monarch Mk II, Schitt Audio Vali 2+, Modi+, Shure TW2, Moondrop VARIATIONS
Ok, in the adventures of being a dance look alike, I ended up wanting a great set of in-ear monitors. Many people are not sure about Crinacle, but I have to say his sound tastes are close to mine. I’m not a bass-heavy kind of person and am trying to protect my high-end hearing (still…
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home: Sense power monitoring analysis
Well a few years ago, we got the Sense utility monitoring system. This has induction rings that go around the mains power of your house and then it transmits via WiFi to the cloud. This thing is great and has been really reliable. It attempts to sense various devices by their power usage and estimate…
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goog: Automatically adding meetings to calendar
This by default doesn’t happen which is why I’ve been missing events, but if you want to automatically a meeting invite that appears in your calendar, you have to explicitly enable it. I’ve been missing a lot of meetings because I didn’t realize this. You have to do two things: For those of us with…
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wp: Cloudways vs Digital Ocean roll-your-own vs Full Hosted choices
Well, I spend about $25 on Cloudways with its WordPress-managed installation and about the same on Digital Ocean with a roll-your-own system. It’s kind of a toss-up which one I like better, here are the conclusions after a month: Net, net for me it’s kind of a toss-up right now. Fixing your site is a…
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nas: Synology disk operations go faster
One of the problems that I’ve been having is how slow the rebuild times and data scrubbing are. For instance, a rebuild of 12x20TB took 2 weeks! Turns out there is a parameter to get it all running buried inside Synology that is not just for RAID Resync speed, but also for data scrubbing, repairing…
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ops: Mandatory 2-Factor Verification (aka 2-Factor Authentication
With the many ransomware and other hacks, it’s pretty clear that having more end-user security in addition to other things is vital. But the convenience of the password is still very high, but it’s time for even small organizations to tighten things up particularly if you have customer data floating around somewhere (not to mention…
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scan: New 2024 workflow with Vuescan and Silverfast and GIMP
Another day, another dollar. As you know, I got a new Plustek OpticFilm 8200i and I had to learn the new SilverFast AI Studio and also GIMP so I can now export to 10-bit HEIC. The last time I tried HEIC, Preview wouldn’t generate it in 10 bits, darktable would not as it is using…
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tech: Shure TWS 2 Adapter and Keychron Q1 Max interference
Ok, here is a weird one for you, I have a Shure TWS2 Bluetooth adapter which actually works great with my Moondrop VARIATIONS in-ear monitors. But when I use Bluetooth with my Keychron Q1 Max, I get stuttering and buffering issues. If I hook in the dedicated 2.4GHz wireless dongle no problem or if I…
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pen: Cleaning your fountain pens
The one thing about the fountain pen world is that when you get one, they sort of expect you to know everything about it and half my pens don’t have instructions at all (Pilot is different that way). And I admit it, I’ve not cleaned these pens in three years, so my bad, so here’s…
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nas: Folder and file comparisons when moving and deleting
Well, one problem with all my data migrations is how to know what’s really in a folder. I want a kind of graphical indication of what is different and it should be a low-level check first with date and time and size and finally with a CRC. I’ve used GoodSync for this and you can…
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it: UniFi Switch turns off if DHCP IP conflict
OK, I returned home after a few weeks and discovered for whatever reason that the DHCP server in my UniFi DreamMachine Pro had shuffled all the addresses. This means that my three servers are now conflicting because of two problems: Solution: Set static IP addresses for the servers with DHCP Reservations One strange thing about…
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tvl: Google Voice for local calls over Airalo
Well, this actually works pretty well: To turn on Google Voice for local calling You have to go to the website voice.google.com and then: Turn on data roaming and enable Airalo If you have a global roaming plan like T-mobile, it only provides 256Kbps in the UK and Norway on their old Mobile One plan…
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tvl: The miracles of captive.apple.com for public WiFi
OK, I can’t believe I hadn’t learned this tip, but if you have trouble connecting your iPhone or Mac to a public WiFi captive portal. Many times, the phone seems to hang. The trick is to go to Safari and type in captive.apple.com This is the magic URL that will repoint you to whatever login…
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edc: Hobonichi every day really works
Well I ended up getting a complete Hobonichi a6 Techo planner ($37 Amazon) and I’m glad I did. I have a decent collection of fountain pens and no reason to use them. But going through our parents old stuff I realize how valuable artifacts like this are. Pen Chalet is a great local source and…
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nas: Synology Disk Not supported by this version of DSM
Argh, what a pain, I had thought I could just swap disks to different Synology machines, but it turns out my software on my flavors of Synology NAS (RP2423+, DS2413+ and DS1811) are all different enough that none of the SHR drives are compatible. And I get the dreaded. These each run different versions of…
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photo: Plustek OpticFilm 8200i with Silverfast 9 vs Vuescan 9 and ProPhoto and 10-bit HEIC rules
I’ve been using Vuescan forever and get the many quirks, but since my dear old Minolta Dimage 5400 died, I needed a new scanner and the Plustek OpticFilm 8200i is a reasonable replacement that is well-loved by PC Magazine, Photo Focus and 35mmc ($499 with SilverFast AI Studio 9). They market this as a $299…
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wp: Amazify is dead long live Auto Tagger for Amazon and Cookie handling
OK, I discovered my Amazon Affiliate application Amazonify died silently, and suddenly I am not covering even the modest $20/month hosting charge. That’s not a big deal, but I thought you all liked me 🙂 Turns out I was doing a lot of things wrong, that a quick search revealed: Cookie Consent Man, the legal…
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wp: Fail at WordPress on Cloudways vs Digital Ocean (and Bluehost)
OK, wow that was pretty easy, migrated to Cloudways with their migration tool and I was shocked at how simple this was, it ported with their plugin including the Cloudinary plugin and the various Redis servers. The big reasons for moving to Cloudways are: Net, net richtong.com is now the Digital Ocean site and tongfamily.com…
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gt: Wow Grace’s Dance was great!
Well Grace Tong continues to rock it. Back on March 30, 2024, Zoo! by Grace Yi-Li Tong happened at the Flushing City Hall to a really nice review. I’m biased of course and loved it too! Zoo!, which was immediately, as it’s description reads, a “fun and feral illumination of memory, charade and the unsaid.” Please read…
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wp: Migrating to Cloudways from DigitalOcean
OK, I’ve been managing my WordPress instance on a DigitalOcean droplet for the past four years. It has been faster than my old Bluehost, but costs have been rising, so it is now $25/month up from a much lower number. And I’ve had my share of management issues like installing hand things like redist and…