Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

It’s a scary world out there and Vlad was wondering what I use to make browsing safer. Here’s a list ordered by how hard it is to live with:: Password manager. There are two good ones. I’ve used Lastpass but 1Password at least is open source so you can inspect it. Two factor authentication. Turn…

Well, you have two choices. Manage all your .sh scripts so you know what is happening with your system configuration. Or use etckeeper which pours things into a git repository, so you can play back your /etc changes. Then use the Some cool uses: – For your web server configuration files if you have manually…

Having spent 24 hours trying to figure out how to share a file, it sure doesn’t feel good have so many different versions and release of Linux out there. Over the last two years, we’ve had the (mis)fortune to use a bunch of different Linux distributions so here are the tips, tricks and traps: Decoder…

ARgh, this should be so simple, but it isn’t. Trying to build a linux file server is complicated mainly because of the network naming (how do you file your server) and the administration of users. Here’s a quick guide for Ubuntu. It is amazing to me it took a whole day and a half to…

  Small choice UCFF Form factor This idea of a next unit of computing (NUC) that Intel gave name to is just the next in a series of very small form factor PCs that are mainly fanless. So SFF has given way to UCFF (Ultracompact) We have had an Atom based processor a while ago,…

This is a great question that Vlad asked me. I’ve done special builds now for file servers, gaming PCs of course, but what about just doing image editing, what’s the best build. Here are some criteria: Very quiet. I know this shouldn’t be, but why not, who need a roaring fan when you don’ have…

Well, if you can stand it, waiting for Black Friday or the virtual black fridays makes some sense. So here’s what I’ve got on hold: New hard drives for the many disk arrays. New monitors New MacBooks Hold on to those items as we are so close to the date. I’ve been putting things into…

Actually the move to Yosemite has gone pretty well for me. We’ve dodged some of the bugs I’ve heard about (Wifi connection) and it is definitely faster on small machines because the 3D effects are less. The only thing I’ve seen is a strong losing of SMTP passwords. In terms of thing that change, mac…

But it sure is interesting to learn about all the tools that are out there thanks to various contests online including: Disassembler which let’s you know what’s in a binary. SWI Prolog. Many of these problems need a constraint solver. If you can believe it, people are still using Prolog to analyze constraints. Pomona has a…

So what’s the best way to bring up a Ghost site on Digital Ocean and then have another site which is the test one. There is some support for a development version and a production site in a separate place. I tried the instructions in Digital Ocean but this didn’t work and nginx failed. I…

Wow this is a great thing for those of us who want to save a few things by using the Monoprice store on Rakuten. Rakuten has some good discounts (right now they are running a site-wide 10% off) and they also have a point system (1% rebate). Combine that with 2x points on Bank of…

Well with the market changing so quickly, our top choices of just two months ago (the the ASUS PB-27Q and the Benq 3200PT remain. The big problem is that the ultra nice Benq 3200PT has shot up in price from a decent $620 up to $750, so is pretty out of reach. So what’s a…

Well since we are all on Mac Mail, here are some typical issues and problems. Normally the thing works fine, but there is something strange with how it stores things and sometimes it forgets the SMTP password. Here are some of the tricks: You want to run IMAP and SMTP on initial setup, OS X…

Ok, doing the final purchase analysis as usual, the process was: Initial price on Amazon Check price on Newegg Check similar prices through rewards portals (BoA) to Rakutan, Overstock as these guys have better prices usually. See what the rebates are on with cashbackmonitor.com and what coupons are with slick deals.com Google search looking for…

Ok, nothing like learning a new stack everyday. It sure feels like I do that these days. This one is digitalocean.com running node.js, running the ghost blogging platform using handlebar for templating and bootstrap for the front end. What fun! Here are some tips: Digitalocean’s one click install really works. A $5 droplet and you…

Well it is probably unfashionable to still use the same editor that I first learned in college, but heck, vi is still around. It is arcane and hard to figure out, but man is it efficient. There are two modes, edit and command, but that means that your fingers never need to leave the keyboard.…

Well, Twitter’s Bootstrap is the most popular front-end framework and it works against just about any backend. WordPress, Ghost, whatever. So it’s a good time to figure out how to use it: The most minimal form w3schools explains that it is entirely hosted on the web, so you just need to create a web page…

Well we are testing ghost and getting away from WordPress. It’s been a great ride, but nice to learn a new system that is running on node.js and which is much simpler. I’m going to run the two in parallel for a while at tongfamily.com and richtong.org, so stay tuned. In the mean time some…

Wow this is a little complicated but getting Digital Ocean to work is a little complicated, but here are some tips: Ssh into Digital Ocean Droplet When you into the thing, you are using the root password, so you need to look at your droplet IP. Unlike things like bluehost you get a unique IP…

Ok last post on the file server topic. Vlad pointed out that there are two storage layers here. That is near line SAS plus a PC3500 when it’s available for high speed ssd. So with 20 slots in a Norco 4220 you could easily add a caching Sata ssd layer as well. So you end…

Well, I’ve been much more focused this year on using portals and getting cash back rewards. I would say about 30% of the times I’ve tried this, the rebate doesn’t work. And folks are smart, it isn’t worth it to make a transaction for $1 work right and there is no record you have that…

Wow you can see why Tesla is so valuable. I had no idea. The i3 is actually doing pretty well  which was surprising: The Focus Electric has been an absolute sales dud for Ford, although not nearly as bad as the Cadillac ELR. Through September of 2014, Ford only managed to sell 1,534 Focus Electric EVs. Even BMW’s…

It’s interesting to think about how to do this. Linux is so amazing because this support is: Included the Linux 2.4 kernel as part of USB Gadget Driver Android includes the drivers so that any Android build can use USB-on-the-Go PLX 3380 is a registered compatible 2280 (the USB 2.0 version) USB3380EVB is a PCI…

Well done with big file servers for now, what about really small systems with great graphics. The new Haswell-E has allowed building really small units: Gigabyte BRIX Pro is a good example. For $600, you get a 8-core Core i7 with its embedded graphics. Sure it’s loud but kind of amazing that with a 135 watt…

This will get incorporated into the new Haswell file server post but it’s big a bulky on the topic of DDR4 and LRDIMM: DDR4 DDR3 has been around forever and the stock ones are typically 1600MHz but range from 800 to 2200MTs, but DDR4 starts at 2100MTs eventually up to 4200 Mts! As an aside…

It seems like it never ends. Here’s a new problem with SSL using SSL v3 encryption. You have to make sure to disable it in your browser or check the site to make sure it doesn’t accept it. Firefox has an add-on that turns SSL v3 off. Chrome has a command flag. There isn’t any…