Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

I always seemed to have trouble with certain sites especially advertising ones. My main machine worked fine and my backup phone. At first I thought it was content blocking. Or maybe cross site tracking. Then I cleared the history. Turns out it was Safari Experimental Features. I had wandered in there and enabled them all.…

Well they have been sitting around unused for quite a while and for some reason I decided to get them working again. I also have an old receiver, so why throw away speakers, yes they are 20 years old, but they also have 12 inch subwoofers in them and 1kW of power each. Here’s the…

itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ride-the-lightning-tesla-motors-unofficial-podcast/id1025399574 The very last tip from Ryan is mine about supercharging pairing 🙂

Wow, the world has certainly never stopped providing the power nerd with cool products. Apple’s latest announcement provides ever more expensive and ever cooler technology for every day use. Here are some notes on things to get the person who has everything this Christmas. In order of coolness to value ratio. iPhone XR Red 128GB…

Wow it’s just gotten so much easier to write machine learning applications. A great case in point is bringing up your very own chatbot that understand natural languages whether it comes in on SMS messages, via Google Assistant or Whatapps or any of a zillion of other places. Looking at various tutorials, most or them…

[IMG] On the Road! Driving a Tesla is a bit different from driving a gas car, or even most electric cars. On a daily basis, there is no concern about… — Read on teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/ A great summary of what to do to get maximum range on road trips. Only thing I’d add is run in…

OK, so Vlad was wonderful and recommended a nice beginner set of lenses, so shooting with DxoMark database as a first cut, here is a quick review: Sony Zeiss Planar T* FE 50mm 1.4 ZA. This is the classic prime Lense. It is big heavy but boy is it every so sharp. Having such a sharp…

If you are away from home, what are your options with Tesla gives you out of the box. Well they give you the so called Universal Mobile Charger), this is a 240V x 32A or 6kW maximum charger, they provide you with two connectors out of the box: 120V by 12A NEMA 5-20. This is…

OK been playing with these cameras for a month now and figuring out what the best mode is. The first consideration is that you really want the highest resolution and also the lowest noise for each. Aperture Priority and Base ISO in good light There seem to be two really good settings for this. The…

Well since having a backup modem is pretty critical these days, here’s a list of modems to think about. The first thing to ask is how much bandwidth you are buying. For 99% of all users, they are getting way less than 300Mbps, so the lowly basic Docsis 3.0 modems should work. But if you…

Ok, you knew life wouldn’t be simple, but now that Apple (and Google and everyone else) are eliminating that 3.5mm jack, it does seem like a push to Bluetooth wireless headphones is inevitable. Naturally, technology means that it is super complicated to get audiophile quality from these things. Here’s a short decoder ring: Format available…

These days the cable modem is the weakest link in most homes. Even if you do enterprise networking the way that Comcast work is pretty mysterious and hard to figure out. Here are some pointers for diagnosing problems. As an aside they have a push on to get you to rent modems. Makes great sense…

Well the emergence of really cheap voip and nearly free phone numbers means that this kind of spam is on the rise. Even with T-mobile anti spam we still get messages every week. Here are some notes on how to prevent it. iPhones On the iPhone there are few things to turn on. The first…

Well Mojave has been a pretty seamless upgrade for me at least. The quality push at Apple seems to be working. The only glitch I’ve seen so far is that on one of my machines, Finder is not refreshing properly so you see old files even after you move them. The fix seems pretty simple,…

OK some more notes about using these cameras. Brian Smith explains how it works with the older app from Sony: DxO PhotoLab 2 costs $80 for the latest upgrade, but does a nice job of processing the A7R III images The Sony RX100 M6 appears to overheat pretty quickly. I had it set for proxy…

Well it’s time of year, so time to check that everything is safe and ready for the winter. Here are some things that may need upgrading: Water hoses. The cheap plastic ones are hard to manage and they get brittle. Bring them in for the winter. Alternatively, get the Wirecutter recommended Flexzilla which is 50…

Wow it is super complicated to get all the syncing working right. But if you are biking and running here’s a quick guide. First you need a list of sources and sinks (uses) then figure out what sync apps you need. The net is that using the right apps it is nearly all automatic except…

Well that was a pretty good list of things, but as always I forget a few. Here are some additional things that a good high end camera needs. Quick Release Plate and L Brackets If you have a tripod, then you probably have an Arca Swiss 1.5″ long quick release on it. That means all…

OK so what about the Sony RX100 Model 6, what are the settings that matter, let’s ask DPReview.com: Set camera mode to P for program JPEG Quality to extra fine which is 26% less compression Panorama Direction to UP. You want to turn the camera vertically, so you get more pixels on the height dimension.…

Wow what a camera, this thing is small yet super complicated 🙂 The main notes for first time users is You have to do a firmware upgrade by sideloading from a Mac or PC. This is a USB C camera, so on a modern Mac, you just need your USB C cable and then do…

Ok, there are so many different terms when you use Training Peaks and they have lots of different help buried everywhere. Here’s a simple decoder ring: It all starts with your FTP, that is your functional threshold power. This is the amount of wattage that you can generate for an hour. For the average person…

One of the things about the Garmin 1030 (and the 820) is they do have an app marketplace. This is actually pretty cool because it let’s you do some great integration. Right now I can’t get my Garmin to work with my iPhone. They actually require that you do a full iPhone reset to try…

OK, I’ve used the PowerTap P1 for quite a while now and it was mostly just automatic, the Garmin Edge 810 just picked it up and it displayed right and left balance no problem. Because the 810 is older, it just uses ANT+ for connectivity and this worked flawlessly with the Wahoo Speed Cadence, PowerTap…

Wow these cars are pretty incredible. You basically just change the oil and then you hit the 60K major maintenance interval. Looking at the Owners Manual, here is what is required then. Don’t let a repair shop lead you wrong, if you haven’t been abusing the car, here is what you might expect to see,…

OK, there is basically no user interface for the dash cam. Here is what I’ve figured out: If you stick a USB key in one of the front USBs and one of the partitions has the folder TeslaCam and it is formatted as FAT32, you will get a Dashcam icon. If the icon has an X on…

OK, this is all a bit complicated, but basically the new Autopilot 9.0 on Hardware 2.5 Teslas. These are Model 3s and Tesla Model X and S manufactured after August 2017 need two forms of USB storage. (Why they didn’t put a real storage architecture in the cars and charge an extra $1K for a…

Ok, for your high quality backup camera that fits in between your camera phone and your mirrorless, what are the accessories to get. Hat tip to Brian Smith (his list is a little outdated so make sure his recommendations work for the M6),  Kain Photo for SD card recommendations Sony Battery and Charger Kit with NP-BX1 Battery…

So you can’t wait anymore. You have a big trip planned and you gave your other camera away. […]

Well, Sony must have done something right because it seems like everyone else is launching cameras to keep up with them. While it is hard to figure out what is up, here’s a quick analysis: Canon. Their main claim to fame is that they are compatible with existing Canon lenses, however, if you have “old”…

OK there is a lot of misinformation about what is going with the 20″ tires with the larger red caliper brakes. For one thing, Tesla has said that you cannot use the 18″ or 19″ wheels with this setup. What are the reasons for this. The folks at Tesla Model 3 Owners Club really explain…