Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

When you live in a spot where the sun comes up at 5AM and sets at 10PM, a good set of blackout curtains begins to look pretty good (that or use eyeshades but they are a little uncomfortable). So what are some good ones to try, well there are review sites like some unlikely places…

I hadn’t realized these tricks, but as I use the thing more, I’m learning, but for MacOS, here are some good things to know First is that you can actually add faces to the system. It is a little complicated, but in Mac Photos, what you do is to go to a Photo, and then…

Well, my trusty (like 10 year old) Datacolor Spyder3Elite is finally obsolete. Not because the sensor is bad, but because they don’t support it anymore. How sad is that! I’ve actually found color calibration is getting better, particularly if you use sRGB as the default. On this Benq 3200PT, Tom’s Hardware actually gives reasonably accurate…

OK, there is another urban myth which is, well it is obviously far better to keep my gasoline power car for as long as possible instead of getting a new EV. Or to ride the bus instead or take an Uber hybrid Urban myth #1: I should keep my old gas car This makes some…

Ok I’ve heard this a few times that since EVs use burn more carbon in making lithium ion batteries and the electricity uses coal and is dirty. In looking through the lifecycle analysis a few things fall out But the short answer is that EVs do have a higher footprint in manufacturing but because they…

Well things are getting a little better, in the first half of the year, some great things happened. The main issue is that the reviews from wirecutter.com are mostly worthless because they do not use the fakespot to look at legitimate reviews and do not do long term testing, although Nathan K is invaluable as…

OK I’m by no means scientific, but by a search through Amazon.com plus checking with Fakespot.com for spammed reviews, there are many of these, here are some recommendations for protecting your very valuable AirPods, so in order recommendations are: Catalyst Waterproof case with Carabiner, these are the quite expensive at $25 (Amazon), but they get…

I seem to somehow have become a geek on how to get around with a Tesla. There are boatload of real experts at Tesla Motors Club, so here is a quick summary of some of things that I’ve learned. On Using Autopilot, pay attention on the first drive There is so much written on this…

Well I”m losing the Castelli Aero Bibs, but what about some of the rest of the accessories, for years (ok maybe more than that!), I’ve been relying on Defeet Undershirts and Defeet Aireater socks, but now’s the time to update. Cycling Socks First up are cycling socks, particularly for the winter, you want something that…

OK, I recently had the chance to get a high resolution audio soundtrack, it is a 24-bit/48KHz sound track, so quite a bit better than the compressed MP3s that most folks listen too. But how it is actually pretty hard to make sure you can listen to it and use it. There are a few…

This is actually a pretty useful feature. Right now on my phone I have 2GB of vidéos and junk stuck on my phone. And if I delete a message on the phone it stays on my Mac. Now if you update to iOS 11.4 and macOS 10.3.5, then this is solved. First enable iOS. message…

Someone was asking me, if you wanted to spend three days in Seattle what would you do? Well first thing is that it is very expensive to stay in Seattle itself plus assuming that you will have a car, they charge another $20-40 for parking, so Bellevue is a good option. You need to take…

Ok listening to “ride the lightning” by Ryan McCaffrey has been great. That guy is awesome as are the many folks on teslamotorsclub.com. Anyway if you have a brand new Model 3, here are some things to think about getting: Qi Charger There is a really cool pad made by Jeda that fits right in…

Well it is pretty incredible that all these fancy cars are basically filled with AA Lithium Ion batteries, that’s not exactly completely true, but there is nothing that special. Here’s the scoop on batteries. The current Model X and S have 18650 Lithium Ion batteries. These are standard batteries that are 18mm in diameter and…

Wow this is a pretty cool feature I had no idea about. I’ve uploaded 50K photos (and 1K videos) into iCloud Photo Library. Now Mac Photos is silently analyzing them all for images. For those of you worried about privacy, all the photos are encrypted and Apple cannot see them. One of the problems is…

Well, now that the Model 3 production is so well covered, time now to think about what happens in 2019 and 2020 with the new cars coming. Unlike traditional cars, electric vehicles are on an amazingly rapid timeline. While many of the changes (like full self driving) are mainly software improvements there are some key…

Ok still learning the differences between Github and gitlab. The good news is that the basic git commands do work properly between them, but the semantics are a little different. The biggest difference is that GitHub.com is completely flat, there is no hierarchy of repos, whereas with gitlab, you can have arbitrary nest of projects and…

Well, we have one Mac with just (I can’t believe I’m saying just), 256GB of SSD. This is not very much because the system and applications need about 60GB and then with iCloud Photo Library and other sundries, it is hard to stay below 120GB. The solution have been an external drive with a RAID1…

If you ever have the misfortune to get to manage a facility that has gates, good luck. Here’s a quick note for those of you that do, along with how to get something that is maintainable. As usual, the language is the main barrier here to success. In ground operator. This is the most beautiful but…