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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…
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tech: Time Machine Backups to Synology again and Gregory Alpaca Duffels
Well, since I’m now rebuilding my MacBook 2014 for the third time and the MacBook Pro 2010 for the second, it’s time once again to think about backups. I have not used Time Machine for years because the MacOS has been so stable, but with these old machines and the use of OpenCore Legacy Patcher,…
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tvl: Overseas making and receiving calls like a local
So if you are traveling around the world things have gotten a lot better. Most phone plans have global roaming (the T-Mobile 5GB/month of free international roaming is great). But you still have to be careful about phone calls where they are charging $0.25/minute if you are an international plan. So what do you do…
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edc: Hobonichi Notebooks deep, deep dive
OK, this is only for true nerds, but I was listening to April’s Stationary Cafe podcast and saw on her Penguin Creative and then directly to Hobonichi Notebooks. I had no idea that this was a thing, but the idea of a small A6 notebook that has a day for everything is a great idea.…
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tech: Authy 2FA failed me now onto 1Password and iCloud Keychain
Argh, what a stupid thing I just did! Authy which is now owned by Twilio is discontinuing their desktop versions. That is a real pain for me as I do so much on the Mac. You are supposed to be able to run the iOS application on Apple Silicon but this didn’t work for me.…
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win: Windows 10 update fails and Windows 11 does not see SSD and SSD Shopping
Well, I do have two PCs which I admit I don’t use regularly, but I’ve been pretty lucky with Windows 10 and upgrades. Dave called me because the machine we had built for him (a nice AMD with a fast 1TB SSD) has mysteriously failed Windows 10 updates with long zillion-digit error codes. Then when…
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hw: Awesome Keychron Q2 Max with Gateron Melodic switches and GMK Neon keycaps but you need extras
Well, since I got my first Keychron Q2 Max with the crazy nice linear Alpaca v2 and my first GMK Retro keycap sets, I’ve just been raving about how nice they feel. With the included 2.4GHz transmitter, the connection is rock solid and reliable. Well, I was away for 10 days and just dreaming about…
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mac: OLCP stuck on boot after root patching and MBP 2014
OK, I’ve been using Opencore Legacy Patcher for a few months now and it has been working well, but the big issue has been updating it and rebooting. There is a step called root patching where the boot drive gets kernel extensions in /Library/Extensions and on reboot these can fail. I had in the past…
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sec: Passkeys are everywhere how do I add to 1Password and Apple Keychain
The new passkey thing is pretty confusing, suddenly applications are asking for passkeys, what’s the right way to do this? Here I’m assuming you have two useful tools, 1Password which allows cross-client passkeys, so you do them once and it appears across all your machines. The main ones I’m using them for are Google, GitHub,…
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net: Argh Google Workspace Price increases keep coming
Wow, they’ve been jacking up prices by 20% in their latest round, we started with Business Standard which was $12 and now it is $14.40, so they keep ratcheting the price up. It gives you 2TB/user and Shared Drives and many other things I’ve forgotten (150 vs 100 participants in a video meeting). Personally, for…
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av: MOONDROP littlewhite and Variations do rock
I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, I took a trip with the MOONDROP Variations hooked up to the Qudelix 5K, and the auto equalization and other features are great. The only thing that is a little tricky is the I had forgotten how having a cord to a little dongle on the belt can…
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AV: Truly great Qudelix 5K with MOONDROP Variations Auto-eq (and Schitt Magni Soundsource shutoff)
Well on our first flight in months and it was the first time to try the MOONDROP Variations with the highly rated Qudelix 5K and they are a pretty amazing combination. I can see why. First of all , use them with the recommended ear tips not stock, the noise isolation is tremendous. This is…