Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Haven’t been back to Shanghai in a while and haven’t had time to study and look for cool places to go, but here are some quick notes: Bakeries. Well, 85 degrees C Bakery seems to be the most popular (a  Taiwanese chain), but none seem to be close to Lujiazui. But you have to see…

I’m glad we waited a bit, there is a slight spin of the GTX780 to a GTX 990 (the 8xx series is the mobile family). The main thing is that it is the new Maxwell architecture which is a midlife extension to Keplar. Designed for “mobile first”, it doubles the power efficientiy (watts/gflop) of Keplar.…

Here’s a reason not to buy a GPU right now. But the big problem is that the 20nm technology at TSMC and Global Foundries is having trouble. But it makes it pretty clear we are late in the cycle, so if you can wait hang on until next year where you will see 20nm graphics…

These seem to be the two best cards and the pricing on them varies very significantly. For instance, the PCS Pro+ varied between $650 and $460 over a two month period (I just missed that $460 price not realizing this). I’m using camelcamelcamel.com and just monitoring a newegg.com wish list to try get a good…

This whole interconnect is a little confusing particularly if you want to plug multiple computers into a single monitor. The easiest way is to just have different connection. Most monitors autosense so just plugging thing in work weel. The long and short is that: HDMI does support 2550×1440 at 60fps with most cables (HDMI 1.4)…

OK I was a geek and got one via Verizon. Extremely painful at midnight. There was all kinds of bugs, but this morning at 6AM, it worked like a charm. Although it won’t ship until next month 🙁 Here are tips tricks and traps of buying a new iPhone Trade in bonus in the first…

If you’ve got some MP4 videos and want to quickly convert them to say just the audio track, it seems hard to find this. The simplest (if most arcane way) seems to be for iTunes 11: Start iTunes 11 Import your MP4 videos into iTunes Switch to the Movies, click on the Home Movies Tab…

Been a long time since I’ve had to buy various computer accessories to run Linux machines, but here’s a quick list: Monitors. We’ve tried both the ASUS PB27Q and the BenQ BL3200PT. They are both pretty amazing monitors. I really liked the extra size of the 32″ monitor and at 2550×1440 it is really nice.…

While we have battery jumper for all our cars, for the ones we don’t use too much, you need a Battery Tender. These are top rated on Consumer Reports and are trickle chargers: Amazon.com: Battery Tender 021-0128 Battery Tender Plus 12V Battery Charger: Automotive. $47 and this is a 1.25 amp charger There is a…

Time to get ready for skiing, so what sites to look at for an back-side all-mountain women’s ski: Onthesnow.com. Realskiers.com A very clean and easy to use website, realskiers.com is the first place to go when you are trying to decide which pair of metal rods you want to strap to your feet this year.…

I’m not sure why (maybe because of ad blockers), but two sites won’t handle ecommerce properly on my machines. I’m running Adblocker, Noscript, Ghostery so this may be the issue. I have disabled them all, but the transactions still don’t work. They do seem to work fine on Windows 7 and Firefox though. So maybe…

We have a great Osprey Talon 22 that we can use for big day hikes, but sometimes it is more like a quick two hour jaunt and it seems like overkill. So off to find a nice fanny/lumbar/hiking/trail running pack that let’s us carry say two liters of water and a phone and a flash…

After two years of loyal service, our Aquarium PC died and one of the graphics cards caught fire (as noted). We pulled it out and found the rest in good shape with the major problem being: 1. The CPU Fans (there are two of them) have always spun slowly because of viscosity of the mineral…

Crib Recommendations. (Subscription required) has a good set of recommendations. The main one is that you don’t want the older style where the sides drop (they are dangerous), so get used to hoisting your baby with a crane (:-) Some places to look and also looking at Amazon ratings Graco Lauren. This has a good…

Well our Razor mousepad seems to have just decided to start folding in on itself. Pretty inconvenient. So on to look for something better. There don’t seem to be many reviews of these things, but Amazon has a nice sort of mouse pads for gaming by rating: SteelSeries QTK+ is the highest rated at Amazon.…

Ok, our trusty Aquarium PC wouldn’t power up. It has been in mineral oil for close to three years now. Taking it out is quite a mess, but it is amazing how clean the components are. Here is what we discovered: 1. The CPU Fans on our Noctua NH-14D were burning out. there is too…

Well need to buy some monitors and it is a tough time right now. The best values are the ASUS PB27Q which is a vanilla 27″ 1440p monitor. But the 4K monitors are coming and what you really want is a 32″ 4K, but they are horribly expensive. This BenQ is a nice compromise if…

Canon U.S.A., Inc. says (this is the 93rd time that I’ve reviewed this). So obscure to use a two letter code and lower is higher for quality. And where do you get the driver? You have to actually go and install their printer driver I think. It comes with the driver. Argh! Understanding Canon ICC…

I’ve been getting a strange hang on my old iMac (24 inch early 2008 if you can believe that!). When I try to use the Finder, I get the spinning wheel of death for anywhere from five minutes to a day. It does eventually recover. In a reading about.com, it says that this is because…

This is a complicated topic. There are three things to know to get UltraHD (aka 4K) running with your Macs. The main thing is how to get to 60 hertz so it is a reasonable experience using it as a display. The other issue is if Apple supports their “Retina” technology so the fonts are…

It is an interesting to see how the market has stabilized for computer monitors, the 27″ 2500×1400 category has stabilized and the new UltraHD are not quite affordable yet. So here are some choices. Going through  Anandtech and TNTCentral as technical site, then  Amazon customer ratings for reliability and having a quick over from Wirecutter…

We have so many of these little AA and AAAs around it is incredible to me that we ever need to buy any new ones. But sadly, the cupboard is bear (and we want to get these for work as well). So what to get? The LaCrosse BC-700 is a terrific battery charger. Relatively expensive…

I’ve had my Speck Smartflex Case for a month now and I have to say it is super convenient and I haven’t lost my wallet. The main things that are sad are that it completely hides the very nice gold iPhone underneath and you have to be careful with just three cards. But it is…

LensRentals.com – Good Times with Bad Filters. Is a great example of how filters affect image quality. Most folks I know don’t put a filter on top of the lense. I put them on all of mine because one scratch and your $$$s lense is well not so nice. In terms of brands, I’ve been…

Wow, it is always complicated (and rewarding to get points). Looking for the superb Canon 15×50 IS binoculars. The lowest price is on Amazon, but if you shop a little with Chase Rewards Mall, you can find them with 1 extra point (worth about 2 cents per dollar) on Rakuten. But on Merrill Lynch Mall,…

We are using Git’s version of Markdown for most of our documents. A big advantage over a regular Word file is that this is easy to diff and edit and manage. But while the syntax is nice, it certainly isn’t WYSIWYG. It would be nice to find something that is and is free. Here are…

The latest iMovie appears to hate NAS drives. It looks like Apple is now checking to make sure this is a true Apple file system (why???!). In any case, if you want to use a NAS or something else, you have to hack through this workaround: 1. Create a custom .dmg file that lives on…

This is a terrific VPN. It costs $39 per year and it works on iOS and Macs perfectly. Seems extremely fast as well. Their own application seems a bit buggy, but the Tunnelblick which is an open source VPN works great. You do have to download the beta to get it to run on Mac…

The Sony RX-100 seems to have started a trend. Amazingly high quality 1″ sensors. Now the Mark III has an EVF and a much faster lense, but others are catching up: Lumix LX8. Rumors about a 1 inch sensor compact and fixed lens Panasonic LX8 camera are floating around the web for weeks now. And…