Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Well somehow things just keeping getting more annoying, but here are the gotchas if you have your own generic IMAP account: MacOS seems to get confused about the default account. And you get this strange, cannot move message to (null) message. What this means is that you need to go to Mail/Preferences/Accounts and look into your…

Ok this is a good one. If you use the chase portal and your Chase Freedom card on hotels and car rentals, you get 10 points (worth about 22%). go for it!

Well these are confusing results: T-Mobile is first in OpenSignal and last with Root Metrics. Makes some sense if you think about it. One is weighted by people. So there is a bias where most people are on the cities. Root metrics is by region. So the best plan would be to use t-mobile mainly…

Well, we’ve been using Verizon for a while (mainly because coverage in house was just so poor with AT&T). But two years ago, GoogleFi shipped and the ability to pause the service and the roaming with T-Mobile and Sprint actually worked pretty well. And of course the zero roaming charges was really great. It has…

How maddening is this, with traditional Mac Apps, it is pretty simple. Got to Edit/Emojis & Symbols. Find the arrow or whatever and then double click. This however does not work with Gsuite at least on Safari: Google Docs. You cannot double click, you can however drag and drop the symbols Google Slides, does not…

I haven’t ripped a DVD in a very long time, but sometimes I see these VOB files. I have used Handbrake in the past to get my old DVDs of the kids over to a modern format, but somehow the latest Handbrake fails me and stops after the first segment. Sigh. So onto looking for…

Wow been binge watching quite a bit and some of these new series have just awesome soundtracks. Tunefind.com is wonderful as it is a place where these get aggregated and you can play with Apple Music from there, so some great soundtracks. I wish the thing would just make a playlist for Spotify or Apple Music,…

When you want to read, here are the great sources beside the usual suspects (Amazon Kindle and Audible that is): Overdrive. They connect to your local library. They have ebooks and audiobooks and the app works well. Mobilism.org This is another great source of hard to find books

OK, so I think I’m on the right track. This sudden shutdown is likely due to bad memory. There is nearly 32GB of memory in the iMac 2009 and it is third party, so could be bad. But figuring out how to diagnose it more a riddle. The main problem is that hitting the D…

With prices and hardware changing there are so many different choices for a good developer setup. Here are some of the edges assuming a relatively modest $6k budget: A monster gaming laptop. Today for $6k Ok got it so that’s a $6k box that weighs 13 pounds. And it sure is powerful. And relatively cheap.…

MacBook Pro 2016 prices are falling. They are now 10% off at B&H so remember prices keep falling. If you want to get decent battery doc on your MacBook Pro turn on the battery checker but you should Safari instead as it is much more efficient than Chrome and Firefox. Also when u see the…

Ok when u use computers enough the usual problems get fixed. Such as bad drivers or lack of uodates or hard disk corruptions. Here’s my current list of mysterious problems and what I think is going on Spontaneous reboots of an iMac 2008. This has been bugging me for a while. I will get visual…

Ok the monthly notes about cool widgets I’ve found: My favorite status monitor is now broken on Sierra, so swapping to a new one called called Menu Meters with hat tip to Lifehacker, so that is still open. One confusing things is that there is a dead site that has menu meter but to use for…

OK, I’ve been trying to use the Satechi ($59) USB C hub. I actually brought the wrong one, there is another version with a 1Gbps Ethernet connection as well ($79), but I’ve been having trouble getting it to work reliably on a Benq 32″ monitor. Here’s the main lesson, I think it is the active…

http://4k.com/news/lgs-2017-oled-4k-hdr-tvs-now-available-for-pre-order-prices-revealed-18396/ if you can wait then let the 2017 LG oled drop in price. If I can’t wait the 2016 b6 is a great value. The main features at 25% greater brightness for a tv that was already the brightest. And a little more color space. Net the 2016 b6 is good enough for many…

http://m.thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wireless-carrier/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=RSS%20Feed the best review of cellular I’ve seen. Try whisperout to figure out cheapest plan and root metrics to look at coverage.

OK some more strange things about this 4K display. Besides really being washed out and inaccurate color-wise, it has another problem. It does not seem to advertise itself properly with DisplayPort. On an older MacBook Pro 2010 that can display 2.5K properly on other monitors, like the ASUS 2.5K or the Benq 32″ 2.5K, this…

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/9to5macToys/~3/3V3uxUh-VFQ/

Well someone just asked me what laptop would you buy. The good news is that with Intel performance stalking you have lots of choice. Even three year old laptops are the same speed as even the newest Kalby Lake versions. PC Magazine remains a decent source of reviews for this so here’s a summary but…

Batteries are rated in one of two ways. Watt Hours which means for how many hours can they supply 1 watt of power. The new MacBook Pro 2016 has a 76 Watt-hour battery.  Put another way if you load Battery Doctor and see you are drawing 18 watts then you will have roughly 76/18=4 hours…

Ok so this weekend, I’m staring at a phone on a Verizon MVNO (the AARP sponsored one) which worked fine and suddenly it can’t access the Internet. I also see an exclamation point next to the LTE signal symbol.  And when you click on the internet you get to a site called datareplenishment.com and it…

Well folks were asking on Facebook (it does seem like most of my “clicks” are landing there and on Yelp these days) about battery life with the new MacBook Pro 2016, I put a battery meter on this for the last few days and here’s what I’ve found even after applying the 10.12.3 update which…

Well with so many headlines, it’s nice to find some really engrossing (non big budget) action/thriller series. We’ve watched two you should check out: Shooter. Yes the original movie was kind of hokie (although I loved it), but the series is really terrific. 10 hours of really, how does he get out of this anyway.…

Well, we are in a new era in 2017, so nice once again to look at how to stay safe and private in this new age, here are some recommendations. For the truly tin foiled hat paranoids Remember just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean you don’t have people snoopy into your digital life, so…

One Mile At A Time reminded me of a good way to save significant dollars by quadruple stacking ITunes gift card are currently 15% off there Signup for the free staples rewards program. Over time this is another 1% off Signup for a Chase Ink business card. This gives you 5x points for every $1 spent…

Well, if you are lucky (woohoo!), you have gotten yourself a Chase Sapphire Reserve and also got an American Express Platinum Business card. Now in the rewards game, things are pretty exciting if complicated, here’s a short list and you can see how when you start with one program, you often get a cascade. That…

OK, there have been about a million opinions about the new MacBook Pro, here are the tips, tricks and traps: Unexpectedly cool Touch Id. I didn’t realize how much time I spent typing my password in and it is super cool that it is integrated into the phone. The Sound. Ok, this is the biggest…

Now that I’m taking so many more pictures with iPhones, I’ve been thinking about how to best move files off. With digital cameras, here is the flow: offload the SD or CF card use DxO to process them as I find it’s automatic features blow things out less than Adobe Photoshop. Add location information with…

There is a dizzying array of ways to make your tax payments. And I have to say they are not super discoverable, but here is what I have found from cheapest to most expensive: directpay.irs.gov. This requires that you valid by knowing some facts from previous returns and then it will let you put your…

Ok in consumer electronics, here are the next recommendations: TL;dr TVs as Computer monitors. Do not get one, instead, get a low-end TV. At 43 inches, this will let you really develop software well assuming you have the room on your desk and believe me you will want to. The Samsung 6300 line for instance…