Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

OK this has to be the most undiscoverable thing ever. When will someone say that every option needs a visible menu item. Anyway, if you hate the complex “grid” view on your watch, then in Apple Watch, you hard press on the grid view and you can change. And another strange thing is getting into…

I can’t believe how hard it is to figure out how iPhone and iPad charging work. The mysterious parts are what cables and what chargers work where… Here’s a quick summary The original USB standard was 5V and 500mA. This is why when u plug a phone into old computers it charges so slowly. That’s…

How sad is that. The 2018 is though so if you fit your phone into that little slot it will work there. Sad to say I’m not sure why they made it a spot rather than a tray. The 2016 Prius has it about right although as a tray underneath the dash it still isn’t…

Ok this is actually pretty hard to decipher but here’s the scoop: Apple finally supposed USB C Power Delivery. This means that with a USB C to lightening cable it can vary the voltage and amperage. The shipped system is a USB A to lightening cable and adapter that charges at 5V at 1A so…

OK, I love Veracrypt, it is a very nice tool for running encrypted volumes on your system. On the Mac though, it uses MacFuse underneath and you can run into not having enough file system slots to run it. You will get a cryptic message like: mount_osxfuse: File System is Not Available (255) Thank goodness…

If you have someone at home that has allergies or other health issues, it’s nice to be able to track. There are a host of startups and home devices that track this and let you see them in the cloud or on your phone: PM2.5. These are the small particles that get past your defenses.…

Wow it is so cool the world is finally converging on Qi Charging (and USB C), we are near the grand unification. The idea that a phone never needs to be plugged in is nearly here with Air Pods (as long as you don’t lose them) and putting charging pads everywhere. So here’s the scoop…

Ok this is probably pretty obvious to Tesla geeks, but it took me some time playing with ABetterRouteplanner.com to really understand how to minimize the time you spend waiting around. The big things are to minimize the power consumption TL;dr You really want to draft behind big cars and realize that going from 75mph to 80mph…

The main thing as The Wirecutter points out is to get adapters which are solid. I’ve lost all kinds of electronics because there is arcing across the plugs. So you really want a set that is durable and really plugs right in. The big decision is whether you should get 3-prong which are safer, but…

Wow, it’s a good thing I’ve spent time working with Raspberry Pi’s because these wifi connected devices that try to be consumer friendly are really a nightmare, here’s a set of notes on this particular product. Note that it is not their fault, it is so common for these problems to crop up: The Greater…

This has been driving me crazy for years. But Preview has an idea about groups of photos, so if you open up a subset and then later a bigger set of photos, it opens multiple windows. The fix is pretty easy as Daily Motion points out, just start Preview and go into the settings and…

Well this has been a strange set of events, suddenly one of our Unifi APs reports that it is in isolation mode. I had no idea what it was. The one report said that it was possible that the network cable was bad. The symptom is that you reboot the AP and it looks OK,…

Yes you can get lots of different bands (although this Apple Watch Series 3 Nike band is actually pretty awesome, looks good and is comfortable). But as usual, there are some things you should really have according to Wareable and PC Magazine: Topvision combo Watch and USB Charger. What a good idea, combine a USB…

Wow, while Apple may not be the revolutionary company of Steve Jobs, overall in the industry, they still lead the way on making things simpler. I used Apple Watch Series 1 initially and it was so confusing with this landscape of little tiles, but using WatchOS4 is so much more natural and the setup is…

These cards are pretty amazing. When you pair a Chase Ink with a Chase Sapphire, you can get 5x points instead of 5% back, that is worth 11% off (assuming 2.2 cents/point). There is a $75K cap per credit card for this, but you can multiple Chase Ink cards for each LLC and for each…

About 5 minutes after you buy a cable you will probably forget how much data and how much power it can carry. Unlike all previous generations there are all kinds of limitations as and differences that you can’t see. The basic problem is the amount of amperage and the data rates for cables differ and…

I don’t know about High Sierra but with Sierra, the latest encrypted PDFs just show up as greyed documents in the MacOS Preview and even if you file open in Safari. They do work in Adobe Acrobat Reader and also in Chrome. Seems like Apple needs to update their encrypted reader. If you actually want…

Well the Anker 60-watt USB C Charger with 3 USB A ports is half the price and seemed to work well. Sadly, it just “loud popped” and failed. You can actually hear the capacitor that blew up rattling around inside. Sometimes half the price with more features is not the answer. I was using it…

Ok if you are outfitting a new apartment, there are so many things to get, here’s a quick summary: Tools. Well, if you want to get fancy, you can get either a basic kit from Home Depot for $20, a bigger kit for $60 from Amazon or if you want something that will last pick…

Every time they change iTunes there is a change to how you look at things, the latest is that when you create a Playlist, it comes up in Playlist mode and you can’t change the track order. Also the track order for recently played is by Artist which makes no sense. You can click all…

OK here are a list of dumb things: If you want to connect it to your wifi, make sure that you have 802.11/bg enabled. I had it turned off because I literally can’t think of device that needs it and it slows down 802.11n as I recall. Best to have an access point in the…

For some reason this is one big blind spot for Ubuntu and the like, getting these dongles to work is a pain: On Ubuntu 14.04, I got the DWA-182 working by installing drivers. It uses the rtl8812au driver and you have to modprobe that in actually find a repo by abperiasamy to make it work.…

Figuring out charger you should get at home is pretty complicated and if you want to charge from a variety of different locations away from home at grandmothers or at a shop, this is even more confusing. There are three steps: a) figure out the maximum intake rates of your car and then b) get…

Wow, Mike, thanks so much for the Hook Up to T-mobile. I can’t quite believe how well it has gone. Basically we pay half as much as we did with Verizon and the features seem endless, but if you are a T-mobile subscriber, then you do need to get on the billing page and make…

This actually works for any Cherry MX keyboard with Cherry MX stabilizers on the big buttons. I’ve been trying to figure out the ideal keyboard. The Cherry Green has an awesome click, but my fingers literally got tired from the 0.65N force required. So I got $15 Cherry dampeners. These are the lights variety that…

Seems like semi-aero is the way to go and I’ve got a bunch of standard tubes that don’t have enough stem to inflate properly. You need about 10mm to make sure that a presta tire pump works. ENVE has a nice table for this but basically Standard rim is 25mm high (an inches). Use standard…

With all the notes on security, figuring out what a good vpn has been hard and you probably do not want to use those $50 for life services, seems to be good to be true, so in looking over reputable providers: Private Internet Access. We’ve been using them for year, but sadly over the last…

iOK, it takes forever, but I finally have the complete decoder ring for what you need to charge most EVs at home. TL;dr If you have a Bolt EV In stall a NEMA 14-50R plug (these are $8 parts, but you want an electrician since you will need a 50 amp circuit breaker). While you…

It has been at least 15 years since I last built up an AMD machine. We’ve looked at it over the years, but although AMD has been cheaper, they never had the single core performance that was even close and they chewed up power. Now however things have changed with their latest processors. They use…