Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Wow sometimes I wonder about VMware. If u install Mac OS X capitan with fusion 8 then suddenly copy and paste and hgfs (the ability to see mac file system from VMware breaks without any symptoms.  Thanks to sam who ferreted it out here is what is going on: VMware switched from their proprietary VMware…

What to do for the guy who has everything? Order them some incredible foods over the internet of course. We are big farm-to-table types and love local stories, so collectiong from gear patrol, esquire and other fork & steve, here are some recommendations: La Frieda. In Bergen County, they had a show on HGTV, kind…

Was just talking to a new grad and realized this credit card and credit score thing is filled with disinformation and confusing… So if you are new to credit here are the three things to do to maximize your credit score Get free credit cards as soon as possible. I’d recommend in this order. Discover…

Wow, it used to be basically impossible to get more than the typical credit card discount (1 point or about 2 cents per mile), but now here are some nice offers because credit cards are getting competitive, in order, if you use Amazon: Amazon Prime Store Card. This gives you 5% off of Amazon.com if…

Well the biggest problem are lots of passwords and the solution are password managers but what if password managers get hacked or have vulnerabilities? Or are closed source? Sadly both the managers I’ve used have both.  Lastpass. I switched away last year because their site was compromised and more importantly they have your key so…

This is actually a really fun feature on the iPhone 6s Plus. you can see a mini movie next to each still. There are a few tricks: While you can export these out to the real world, you get a JPG and a MOV file and these do not import well back into the Mac…

Well I have a bunch of big panoramas and I normally use Hugin to process them. But it seems to have trouble on El Capitan and also apparently you know need to install a separate tool called autopano-sift-c to get control points to work properly but this didn’t seem to really help. I do find…

I wrote a script on this but of course I forgot how it all works. The brief summary is that there is a new encryption scheme that is supposed to be better than RSA called elliptical encryption using a curve handily named ED25519. It needs at least OpenSSL 5.7 or 6.5. The other great thing…

Well the phone wars don’t seem to be ending soon. We have 10GB+1GB for $80 and now this is down to 12GB for $80 in the new Verizon Plan, so what’s not to lose. The big change is that they are debundling purchase, so the access charge is down to $20/month but you have to…

Well bluehost used to be so inexpensive, but like all service, they gradually ratchet the price. Domain registration used to be $5 then $8 and now $15 for basically doing nothing. I’ve been meaning to look at alternatives and namecheap.com seems like a decent choice. They have a lost cost privacy guard as well. So…

I have to say that sometimes I like the “small” release without lots of issues. El Capitan is one of them. Only problem I’ve seen so far is that Private Internet Access needs an update.  But the new Side by side is pretty cool as are some of the gestures that are copied from IOS.…

Man, those guys are smart. They now charge $10 a month for a modem and an additional $10/month for a wifi access point built in. So what’s a person to do. Well, just buy your own modem and then hook it up and you get rid fo the charge. Comcastapprovedmodems.com has a list and the…

Not to say that Synology doesn’t do a great job (heck I have two of them), but sometimes it is nice to know how to roll your own. Anandtech explains how using a low cost Baytrail chip (vs an expensive Xeon), the right motherboard and the right chassis

Well the cost of these accessories has really collapsed, but here are the must haves: Tempered Glass screen protector. The glass is so strong now I don’t know if you really need one, but it for just $7 from Tensdar, you can get a tempered glass protector and never worry about it. We usually get…

Man this is way more complicated than it should be, but to summarize if you want to edit your google documents offline here is what you have to do from PCMag.com Use Google Chrome Make sure the Google Docs offline extension is loaded If you have multiple google account (eg home and work), then you…

Well digilloyd and mingthein are both saying it, with the improvements in Sony, it looks like a goto place for the pros. The A7Rii looks like the ideal landscape high resolution system and Zeiss lenses, but then the question is what is the long term path to make sure your lenses last a lifetime even…

I had not realized how many fixes were in there…but thanks to Tom’s Hardware that is clear: Six digit PIN. You should move to that or use Touch ID Two factor authentication. You need to have another device to login to El Capitan or iOS 9. Although a pain, it is very secure. LibreSSL vs…

I was wondering when this would happen. We have had great success with using an aquarium chiller in a mineral-oil cooled PC. Keeps the temperature down to 70C from 80C for just oil bath or 90C for air cooled even with the best cooler made (Noctua DH-14).  Sso phonoroic Hex 1.0 is a “mild” cooler…

It was kind of fun to do a series on what my life has been like in different things I’ve used… My life in languages: Shanghainese, Mandarin, English, French, Russian, PDP-8 Toggling, Basica, Mac-80 Assembler, C, Pascal, Mandarin (again!), RPL, C++, 1-2-3 Macros, Excel, HTML, PHP, Mandarin (again!!), Bash, Python, Javascript,… My life in keyboards:…

OK, maybe it is just a philosophy, but I do think that everything you need to learn is already in a book somewhere. After all with 7 billion or so people alive and billions who have written books literally, the only problem is finding the right one, so here’s my list of books that I…

No one is getting any younger, but Calvin mentioned in a a very cool webrtc conference call (appear.io is incredible) that his grandfather worked on information theory. It is one of those things lost in time, but 60 years ago was an incredible time for the basis of information theory. From Shannon to McCluskey, the…

Well, in the last two years, I’ve been way to glib about things. So now is the time to straighten up. There seems to be no really good guide about how to do this, but the steps are basically: Secure your passwords The advice here is good but it takes a long time to make…

We’ve been using mythtv for a while, but now it has a corrupted mariadb so nothing records. We have to start all over and the instructions are clear about getting rid of the software but not the man configuration and database files thanks to Mac Ports, this is much easier.   Note that the second…

OK, more stuff that no one cares about. About two years ago, we got a Razor keyboard. It cost more than many computers do ($140), but it had the famous Cherry Blue switches. These reminded me of the original IBM PC. Click and clack, but boy did they feel sure and sharp. Now we just…

I was stupid and installed Ubuntu on top of a Windows 7 and Windows 8 dual boot configuration. The result was that Ubuntu was fine, but those systems were lost. Googling, I found I could create a USB boot from an ISO with Rufus from a running Windows system. The other ways didn’t work. It…

Well it has been a busy two weeks of hacking away. Two main things have been struggling with understanding how Scons (a kind of super make works) by wrestling with it controlling the installs of a Cmake, Bjam and Node-gyp and npm installed programs. This stuff is not easy particularly when you get 300,000 lines…

I should not have enter so fast, I wanted to install Ubuntu next to Windows 7, but by default it wipes out the boot sector of the main drive. Argh. Now I can’t get to Windows (for all those wonderful games?!), so what to do? I don’t know if this advice from ubuntuforums will work,…

I read somewhere that Apple doesn’t say it, but they do design their machines to last ten years. That’s pretty incredible in an age where a phone is obsolete in two years. I have to say that it does feel like it is true. I’m typing this right now on a MacBook Pro 2010 using…

Well, in using 1Password on Linux, if you try to just double click on the .agilekeychain with Firefox or Chrome, it will fail because for security reasons, you can no longer access local files from a browser. To make it work, if you are internet connected, login to the www.dropbox.com site and click on the…

Well, I don’t know what is up with the thing, but it is eerie when you have *exactly the same problem as someone else! See http://forum.dji.com/thread-18942-2-1.html I’ve formatted the sd.. then put the 1.3 update on it. I put the sd in the P3 and left it on for about 40 minutes. The light on the…