Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Got to love the internet, got just the coolest solder and hot gun engine today. Of course there are no directions that make any sense, so thank goodness for Youtube, with lovely musak, here’s how to assemble it! See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NUqV2tGApg

It is incredible sometimes how prices fall. Just a few months ago the sweet spot for pricing was the 16GB microSD card. You could get those for about $10. Now the pricing curve for a Class 10/UHS-1 (so a decently fast card at 10MBps) is: 8GB: $8 16GB: $9-12. Amazon seems to have really low…

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…

Given how tough the last releases have been particularly with iOS 7.0 and 8.0 and Mavericks (which seemed pretty rough), I have to say I’m surprised by how smooth 8.1 and Yosemite have gone. Seems like it runs the same if not faster on old hardware. Our venerable iMac 2009 seems to like it (albeit…

Not surprising really: Tunnelblick. This is an OpenVPN system. Seems to hang network access on Yosemite. This gets fixed by the latest update to Tunnelblick. You have to manually down load it. Lastpass. Seems to forget the email and that I have already typed a password. This gets fixed by the latest version of Lastpass,…

Well, this is so typically Apple, when it works it just works, but when it doesn’t who knows why. I just updated to Yosemite OS X 10.10 (when are they finally going to OS X 11 I wonder 🙂 and iOS 8.1. Things seem to be going very well and amazingly after a little delay,…

Both nVidia and AMD are going to ship their next video card generation (the 880?) next year on 20nm. Wow, what a tough time to be buying cards. It sounds like, if you can wait, then you might want to see that turn of the crank. Rumor is less power required and maybe cheaper. That…

OK, it is a bit eccentric, but when you have 10,000 or so photos a year (?!!) that need to get processed, you begin to rely on yourself more and less on software. That is I’ve had various photo programs (iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom) lose databases and crash several times. Also I’ve had bad hard drives…

This is a nice 20MP camera merged into a phone: The Panasonic Lumix DMC-CM1 is a 1″ sensor with a 28mm F/2.8 leica DC lense and full manual controls and 4K video. via Cinema5d.com GoPro’s latest Hero 4 does 4Kp30 video and it will finally have a touchscreen so you can see what is going on:…

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.…