Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

XCode is just so complicated that even the very good Ray Wenderlich Tutorials typically leave something out causing errors. So for the Swift Tutorial Part 2, here are errata: When you are looking at main.storyboard, the tutorial talks about the navigation Document Outline. This is only visible is you right click on the main.storyboard on…

Ok, I admit it, I’ve really liked the Sony RX-100 and then the RX-100 Mark II. Actually, the additional depth of the Mark II at least to me wasn’t super worth it, but now I seem to have misplaced our RX-100 Mark II (I know, I need to put a bluetooth tracker on it!). So…

Until now, I have spent much time on hotel credit cards and optimization. The first thing was a big focus on getting airline status (better seats), then on more credit card points (thank you The Points Guy!), then airline business portals (Easybiz) and then internet portals (evrewards, cashbackmonitor.com) now hotels are gradually in our view.…

When you are trying to eke out a simple machine, there are a few things to think about: Ubuntu uses Unity which requires 3D acceleration. On a Atom Z550 this is unbearably slow. You can actually convert to LXDE with a simple `apt-get install lubuntu-desktop` Then when you log off then you can click on…

Well, if you have an old Windows XP machine then its easy to forget all its passwords. What’s the easiest way to get it back. Well you can try to use a password cracker like ophcrack which is complicated and uses brute force techniques to find the password. Or you can take the easy way out…

Getting this stuff to work on Linux is actually amazingly easy: Deskjet 3050 is part of the HPLIP (HP Linux Imaging Program) that is now part of Ubuntu. You can download an update from hplipopenrsource.com To actually run the setup, you need to do `sudo hp-setup`

Strange and strange, but for our old Atom Z550, we weren’t able to get Unetbootin to put down a reliable image, but when we followed the Ubuntu directions for using DD, it did work. Go figure, utilities that don’t actual make bootables. It would instead say the bootable image is corrupt: Download the ISO you…

This is last time in the next twenty years to see this, but we are on the third for four lunar eclipses that happen in two years. It will only be a few minutes long, but worth watching. But how to figure out where it is. First thing is figuring out if it will be…

You have to opt out, but here’s a way to get rid of Verizon marketing cookies (the other way is to use a VPN).

Well, having suffered through Objective C and liked XCode compiler, it has sure been interesting to see what Apple has come up next with Swift. It’s the brain child of Chris Lattner. He’s had a pretty incredible career, developing LLVM (a compiler backend) and then Clang (a front end) and finally XCode that’s been used…

Are you confused as to the best workflow for your iPhone photos. I am!  At least for my traditional photos, I get it, here’s what I do: Download the photos Delete the ones I don’t like. I’ve been using Preview when it isn’t too slow (but it’s gotten unbearable with Yosemite), so use Lightroom for…

Well sometimes life seems to be a circle. What’s a great baby monitor is also a great way to monitor what’s going on with dear old dad. That plus a door sensor and you don’t need to worry. There seem to be two sorts of gadgets. Things like Dropcam Pro (I’ve used a bunch of…

Sad to saying it is closing the Bank of America mall is closing. We discovered it last year and got over 55K points just by being careful where you click. Probably makes your first choice looking at cashbackmonitor.com and en evreward.com, but neither are as tasty as those ML Signature Rewards points 🙂

Well it seems like hard drive failure month for me. Here are the drives, for personal machines, we are putting SSDs in as they are much faster and more reliable iMac 2009. Yuck, this one is going to be hard to get out. It’s buried and I have to figure out how to get the…

Have you ever had this problem? Sometimes, the keyboard and the mouse just refuse to connect. Dave Meehan has some good tips. Basically they are: For the keyboard, put in new battery and HOLD down the Power button while powering up, this will reset the pairing. For the mouse, if it doesn’t connect, oftentimes it is…

Well things are always getting easier: atom.io. This is a Chromium application written itself to be compatible with node.js and javascript. Wow how flexible is that. cdnjs.com. If you don’t want to host all those minified libraries when you are playing with Javascript.

Well, here’s the best reason to keep the information you put into a site at the minimum, the latest hack is from Amazon’s Twitch:   We are writing to let you know that there may have been unauthorized access to some of your Twitch user account information, including possibly your Twitch username and associated email…

Well another last minute purchase. We’ve got a camping hammock for the woods, how about a bivy sack and nothing like 24 hours to buy one! So here’s a quick look at reviews from Outdoorgearlabs.com (they only review a few, but it is the base recommendation) and also looking at reviews on rei.com (sometimes useful), amazon.com…

Well, our trusty Canon MX700 finally gave up the ghost. Sad to see, it is was quite reliable and we used the scanning and copying. The consumables were ridiculous, but at least they were the same as the Pro9000 we have. With camera phones, it isn’t clear how important scanning is anymore or copying for…

Time for every quarter hack of a major company. This time of you Premera. I hope you don’t use the same password for everything! Time to change passwords. Ugh!

Well, I never thought we’d really be here, but here’s a list of home healthcare things that hopefully you’ll never need. Many of these are reimbursable by Medicare, but you have to get a doctors prescription and then use an approved provider. Sometimes Amazon is just easier. There doesn’t appear to be a good place…

OK, there are a few tricks: If you have a Visa Signature card, then go to Fandango and buy $25 gift cards for $20 so you are saving 20%. They do charge an extra fee, but it is still worth it. If you are going to Cinemark, if you buy a e-gift card from them,…

So quick summary, not that not everyone has already seen it: HBO Now is $15/month on the new $69 AppleTV MacBook Air is now 12″ and thinner than ever with Retina, clickless trackpad, fanless, USB C combines power, video, etc. MacBook Pro 13″ also get clickless Trackpad Apple Watch: Built in speaker and microphone. Dick…

Well, reading BackBlaze statistics (although the statistics are controversial), it is pretty clear that the Seagate 3TB have huge failure rates (25% plus annually). We have five Seagate 3TB from 2012 and now four of them have failed. It’s another reminder that it would be good to have RAID and ideally get to ZFS with…

Well they talk alot about a lifetime warranty, but here’s the fine print.  First they do honor it and will refund you up to the amount of the original purchase price so that is what the warranty really is. If the item has gone up in price since, then you have to pay the difference.…

OK, seems like the regular update on pens to buy. Here’s my latest favorites from Pen Addict: Pilot Iroshizuku Shin-Kai. The best fountain pen ink Uni-Ball Signo DX 0.38mm. You can only get form Japan, but it is a pretty awesome pen! TWSB 580 F Nib. We’ve bought three now and one leaked, but the…

Well, if you are worried about internet privacy, the first thing to do is: Use a more private search engine. Looking at google search history is pretty frightening. I’ve been using startpage.com with decent success. to use a VPN so that your ISP can’t snoop everything. Privateinternetaccess.com seems decent. It has good coverage. They also…

Well having the two operate together leaves to some strange conflicts as you might expect. Also I got this strange message having to do with an Icon file which has a carriage return in it. That is a Ctrl-M that really confused Git. But http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24186256/atal-reference-has-invalid-format-refs-icon explains that Apple or Dropbox throws an icon file in which git…

OK, United just announced that you no longer get “miles” in Mileage Plus, instead you get points based on your ticket price, ticket class and level. So according to http://mileageplusupdates.com if you are buying a full fare ticket (I would guess), if you are Premier 1K, you get 11x your purchase price. I would presume there would…

Well there are some tricks here to make this work right. Hat tip to Rennie on this: Setting up IOS Gmail has this notion of labels and always tries to archive vs delete mail so this can be really confusing. But fortunately with iOS, there is a way to fix this. Go to Settings/Mail, Contacts…