Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

You better hope you bought it from Amazon. Got a UHDTV and it did have a defect. It is literally a one click call on the site, they call yo instantly and schedule someone to pick up a gigantic TV and return it.

Now that Apple is out of the business, it’s time once again to look for a reliable and fast wifi network for home and small business. But it is really hard to figure out what is going on without at least some background in wifi and how it has evolved. So, this is a huge…

Wow the world has really improved. Three years ago you had to get a dedicated 4K playback thingy from Sony to watch UltraHD content. Now life is way simpler. Let’s start with the easy stuff and then move on to the tougher stuff Movies (a first start) There’s a great movie guide at 4K.com, but…

Ok, we’ve been using Google Fi for a while when we are away traveling because they have the T-mobile wonderful feature where they do not charge for roaming. However beware if you try to use their new group plan. We put two numbers on a group plan thus saving $5 on the second line (Instead…

Well Facebook sharing is cool but limited in resolution. What if you want to share the high resolution images? TL;dr Amazon Prime now offers unlimited high resolution storage for five family members. It’s sort of free if ur amazon anyway  Two sort of good choices: Apple iCloud (for low resolution only but essentially unlimited) and…

Well the price of UHD (aka 4K) has just collapsed. Three years ago a 4K monitor cost $5K now a basic one is more like $500. But if you want a monstrous 70″ one what’s a person to do. Rtings.com is really helpful with detailed reviews and buying guides. They even tell you the best…

OK this is a little annoying, but the standalone (perpetual license) versions of Adobe Create Cloud like Photoshop etc. do not install properly on MacOS Sierra, you have to manually navigate to the Installer/Contents/MacOS/install and run the command line application manually. This seems true for Creative Cloud 2015 and 2014.

Well with Apple making a huge statement by moving to a single connector for everything, it’s time to look back and figure out how we got here. So here in chronological order is a short incomplete history of computer cabling and some explanation for how we got here. TL;dr The future is that all peripherals,…

OK for the last year I’ve been terrible at Amazon affiliate links. First I missed the deadline to update my website information (there is some regulation about sites) so my old affiliate ids (tongfamily-20) were invalidated and I have to start again with new ids. But how to change 20 years of links? Well, at…

(another break from the political news) Well we’ve had two of them break in the last six months, so time to actually spend some time shopping for the. Three big sources are Amazon reviews (I know they are biased for small things, but people do not often give away microwaves for reviews ;-), Wirecutter’s home…

It’s a sad day when the best battery reviews are found buried in an Amazon rating, but there is someone who actually went ahead and tested batteries but: AAA Alkaline. AC Delco. the no-name AC Delco came up on top and for less than the cost of Amazon Basics even? AA Alkaline. Duracell Quantum. Then…

Seems like there is some sort of strange bug in the USB driver on MacOS Sierra and Vuescan. I’ve been having trouble with hangs for a while and this seems to have gotten worse with Sierra, although El Capitan had the same issues. The calibrate for this 35mm image scanner takes forever. Sigh. Old hardware…

Well with my troubles with Bluehost, time once again to see who the best hosting partner is. Now that Bluehost is owned by a mega-corporation, I wonder what else is out there. A quick test at webhostinghero.com does show the speed issues with this site. Bluehost has been pretty decent to me, it’s about $12/month…

I spent a couple of days tearing my hair out. Word to the wise, if you are on bluehost and hit the Spam Experts trial (which I gather I did at some point). What happens is that when the trial ends, it silently queues all your mail into the spam experts and no mail at…

(A small refuge from all the political news), here are the latest recommendations: 9V Batteries. if you use them in smoke detectors, etc., then you want one with lots of charge. But Powerstream.com recommends the Energizer Industrial has 450 mAH or the Rayovac Industrial Plus. They have nearly 50% more charge of a Duracell Coppertop. SATA SSDs…

Well figuring out how to get useful data from your car is definitely an obscure art. Here are some notes for noobs: There is a standard connector for all cars after 1996 which is called OBD. (Onboard Diagnostics), you have you to google your car to figure out where the port is. But it is…

OK, there are a couple of ways to save some money: Cashback Monitor will tell you click through sites with discounts. Right now Top Cashback is offering an 8% discount if you click through to the App store on a Mac. pretty good. Once you click through, you should if you’ve been thinking ahead, you…

Two quick notes. Since upgrading to MacOS Sierra, I’ve found that DxO in both its version 10 and version 11 is a little strange so some quick notes: The main window seems to get stuck in a highly vertical view. You have to click between the crop and move buttons and then drag the zoom…

Well I guess if you’ve built 20 machines by hand, it is inevitable you are going to get hardware problems and boot problems. Here are some and what to do to solve them: Ubuntu 14.04 gets stuck in a logon loop. I’ve had this problem twice now. You reboot your machine and then at the…

I’ ve been hitting quite a few these days, here are two annoying one: iPhone Upgrade Program. The actual loan you take from Citizen’s is managed by a site called fdec.com. Just be aware that this site does not work on either Safari where you get a blank page when trying to login or on…

Wow it is incredible what Chase is doing with rewards cards. Hey Paul if you are listening here is the ideal portfolio. It does seem like the devaluations of airlines has meant cards are where the action is :  1. Chase Sapphire Reserve. Effectively $150 per year ($450 plus $300 for any travel expense). 100K…

This is an awesome card, but you have to dig down deep to activate benefits. It is buried deep in Redeem Points on the portal. Go to ultimaterewards.chase.com and do: First if you have other Chase cards, transfer all those points to the Sapphire Reserve so you can use them with the Chase Travel portal…

Well, now that 4K ultra high definition televisions costs as much as a bag of chips. (OK maybe not that little, but they are really inexpensive), the next jump in state of the art of high definition. That means a much higher color range than before so models like the new Samsung UN65KS9800 provide the latest bells…

OK, I finally had a sous vide meal with my buddy Paul, I can see why geeks all over the world buy these things, some notes: Buy a sous vide controller. The Anova immersion controller is less than $200, but the big boys get either a $1,000 Fusion Pro immersion controller or a dedicated water…

Ok shooting a bunch of candids and here are some quick reminders for best settings: Canon 5D Mark II. I know it’s old but trusty. Base ISO is 100 and you want to start below ISO 800 before dynamic ranges disappears For lenses Canon 70-200/f2.8 L. This is not the mark II but still a…

This is one of the more tricky things to find, but if you are running Marshmellow, here are the instructions that seem to work. With Android, you do not get a hard drive that appears on your screen, nor does Photos work with Android, so try this instead: Plug in your Nexus 5X into your…

This is actually harder than you think. Make sure to leave more than plenty of time as you have to get your way across the city.  Uber. I tried twice but uber drivers in NJ will refuse to take you to JFK. They mumble something about licensing. Probably more likely they don’t want to be…

Ok the many mysteries of travel. Here’s a big one. What’s the best way back from the airport assuming ur tired don’t want to spend too much but want to get of the airport as fast as possible. From best to worst Driving there and back. Ok still the most reliable for dropoff and assuming…

I’ve been using Karabiner to remap a PC keyboard to a Mac keyboard. This however only works for El Capitan and earlier. You need to use Karabiner-Elements for Sierra MacOS. By default, this switch the function keys to the brightness and other keys. You can also edit a ~/.karabiner.d/configuration/karabiner.json

Some notes on how this should work: At least with a Mac, the bleeding edge releases of flux software does not work, but the stable release does. The scanner heads keep popping up, you have to contact them and get better brackets.