Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

When you get a new job, you have to look the part. Some good reviews at the Wirecutter: Filson Original Briefcase. This is such a cool looking vintage thing. The one from Apolis is really amazing. It is canvas leather and made from cotton from Ugandan farmers. How amazing is that. The O.G. This is…

What a terrible time to love home theaters, we are the start of a big transition to 4K TV (4x the resolution of HD) and prices are literally crashing. The top models seem to be according to hdguru.com and soundandvision.com and their uhd reviews: Sony XBR65W900A. (TrustedReviews)he price is falling like crazy, now Amazon is…

Well if you care about the world, might as well put your money where your mouth is and also some cute local manufacturers; Apolisglobal.com. They source from around the world and help coops just about everywhere. Metamorphicgear.com. This is a Seattle company that recycles goods. Maybe not the prettiest but you can feel good about…

Well buying a vacuum cleaner might sound like the height of boooorrrringgg, but what if you have someone who really needs 🙂 Consumer Reports is usually a good source for this and the $30 a year subscription is well worth it. After looking there are other places, the best “stick vacuum cleaner” is the kind…

I had always thought that Amazon didn’t have any deals that include cash back. I was wrong. For certain stores, evrewards says ebates.com has them. 6% off for Toys for instance on top of the savings today. I’m so sorry I didn’t see this earlier! And its getting late but Cyber Monday is still on:…

Ok, I haven’t used a Windows machine in a long time, but here’s a tip. If you are lucky enough to have a fancy display like the ASUS 27 which is a 144 Hz monitor, then you can turn on Lightboost to get much less flicker and motion artifacts as http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion-blur/lightboost/ describes. You can either…

OK, I may regret it, but if you love bugs and other critters, you can’t live without: Sea Monkey Aquarium. Because brine shrimp are so cute.. Antsalive.com. The place to get ants and their habitats!

Well, you’d need a mighty big stocking for some of these things, but they are useful, so simpler  to more expensive: Cord wrappers. Don’t you hate it when your headphones cords are all over the place. I like the little man you wrap around Case of headphones. Headphones are too cheap to ship with one,…

Nothing like a few stuffers, but the Katoona Microspikes. Ok, they are nerdy, but when it is icy, you’ll be thanking me. Just $51 from EMS and if you click through mrrebates.com, you get an additional 10% off and if you sign up for emsrewards, you get an additional 3%. Plus free shipping and this…

Ok, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One might be a little big to stuff into a stocking, but they are clearly the big news of the gaming world. If you haven’t gotten one, then use zoolert.com and find one (like we did!). If you have these systems, then here’s a list of things that gamers…

Yikes, you can get this error on your own site if you (like me!) sometimes forget your passwords and use an automatic connection like Scribefire. In my case, I mistyped the password so Better WP Security locks my own IP out. Now when I try to access tongfamily.com, I get some strange errors: 403 forbidden…

Well if you are getting late into Boston airport and don’t feel like riding the T until 1AM, then what are your options: The Taxi cab quote is $95 out to the suburbs A check of Uber gives you $65, but you can’t do this in advance and make sure you have the app on…

OK, I got the dreaded, turn on your MacBook Pro with Retina and it boots to a black screen. Yikes! The fix appears to be to do a PRAM reset. There are lots of other suggestions, but you basically hit the on and then hit Command-P-R until you hear the ding.

Hey these sites really do work. Got a notice last night from Zooalert.com and Nowinstock.net that there was a PS4 that you could buy on Gamestop and it actually worked. Good to try for those hard to find items. The Gamestop store was really slow and hung several times (man a reminder of how good…

Alex told me that you could use “VI” commands with it and that got me to wondering about Sublime and what I was missing. Quite a lot. First decision is using Sublime 3 or 2. I’m going to try Sublime 3 for a while. Now I was wondering how to get it to: Be a…

And didn’t have the foresight to preorder. Well, use Zoolert or Nowinstock to get a notification. Amazing that things sell out online in 3 minutes!

An offhand remark about why some code was going to get implemented as a sea of events and handlers and wouldn’t a state machine be a better way. So what is it anyway? A few months ago I saw a great little blog post about state machines on the Shopify blog. The message was that…

Sigh, becoming more dependent on Netflix and got this error: netflix an error occurred loading this content Not too much help, but folks suggested: I was having the same issue with Netflix and HBO GO. Go to Settings > General > Restart. That worked for me. If that doesn’t work, check for software updates.. Netflix…

With 4K displays running at $3K (?!!), the sweet spot in displays looks like the so called 2560×1440 display (compared with the 1920 x 1080 of 1080p fame). We are in the funny phase where the move to 4K is still too expensive with a gap to the 1080p which are $400 or so. So…

OK, learning lots in the evenings and gotten some horrible crashes. This is the best yet! I got an ” Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSUnknownKeyException’ See… Here’s what wasted 2 hrs of my late night time: I had connected an UIControl outlet in the interface builder to the IBOutlet in the xib’s owner.…

Argh. Going through Ray Wenderlich’s tutorials and I keep missing the custom class creation. And the custom class doesn’t seem to work. It looksl ike an xCode 5 bug…Just reopen and try again or manually type the name of the class in. Make sure to select the entire controller. See… I have a UIViewController I…

Well, I finally have a little time to think about security and 1Password seems like they are more open than Lastpass (their source code is closed), so I’m going to try it. The big issue is how to import 816 passwords (?!!) from one to the other. The confusing thing is the latest rewrite of…

Well I’ve been using OpenPGP for a while with Enigmail on Thunderbird and also with OpenPGP and Mac Mail, they actually work quite well and the nice thing is all the private keys are self-created, so you don’t have to worry about some certificate authority having access to all your information via the private keys…

Well now that one of my 32GB SanDisk Extreme’s has failed and there is apparently a lifetime warranty, but in the mean time, I need a few more SD cards, so the Sony UHS-1 at $19 for a 32GB looks like a pretty good deal and UHS-1 does seem like it is faster:   Re:…

Yes, you can definitely develop a negative attitude towards the “2nd tier” sites and their security systems. At least now people are telling you waht is happening, but in short over the last two months four of my accounts have been compromised. Which means that people got my email and the encrypted password which they…

Been using Ray Wenderlich’s great tutorials to learn iOS. Pretty good. Now it’s time to install it on my phone (with great pride!): You need to get a certificate for each phone that you want to install. Xcode is the easiest way to register your iOS device. Connect your device to your Mac and click…

For a Retina MacBook Pro, here are the great stocking stuffers to keep the thing good as new: AppleCare. Although expensive, there is nothing like a true three year warranty and a local Apple store iPearl mCover. Yes it makes the MacBook Pro heavier, but there is no better protection for bumps and things. I…

Well with the 3D revolution well underway and the 4K (four times the resolution of HD!) as well as OLED coming, it’s a tough time to buy a flat screen TV. We seem to be in another technology wave at the the high end even as it is incredible what you can buy for $600…

Well, you can spend so much time convincing yourself you don’t need high resolution (reminds me of life before Retina displays and heck dating myself, when VGA was good enough), but finally someone just says it, at least for PC monitors (or when you are up close and personal to a TV), 4K is amazing…