Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Fell asleep on the plane, woke up and found the screen of my phone completely discolored. Looks like somehow, soda or something spilled on the thing. Who knows? Anyway, Applecare Plus is wonderful. Cost me $49, but they did fix the screen. Makes me really want to get a waterproof case and barring that, it…

Offline for a few days without an easy way to do updates (unless you like tencent weibo :-), but here are some notes for touring Beijing: Restaurant Reviews. There a huge variety, but basically for the overseas traveller who wants some pretty interesting (but safe!) food, Fodors and Trip Advisor tend to be too touristy…

A whole set of cameras are coming. I just got an RX100 Mk II for a trip, but looks like more are on the way. Of course there is the Olympus OM-D EM-1 which looks great, but here are some more coming in a few months. It probably means, if you can hold off, do…

Well, go this as our RX-100 is going on to bigger and better things. So some reminders about how to reset the controls so that they work well: For Video, it a little hard to follow, but here are the setting and how to save them in a custom mode: Top dial: Movie Mode  …

Well, the micro-4/3 family is looking better and better. Optically, it is grat, but the one limitation is the lack of really fast zooms, but Olympus seems to be fixing this; Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens coming in 2014, new ZUIKO lens roadmap, no more Four Thirds products | Photo Rumors “The…

Well, I had two of these and I lost them both. One on a plane. Another in a hotel. I loved these things for the fit and the sound. So time to figure out what to get. Ive tried lots of headphones and they are OK, but time to figure out what to get next.…

Spec-wise, the EOS-70D continues to be behind (unfortunately) in color depth, dyrnmaic range and low light ISO with the 5D3 being much better. Canon 70D. 22.5 bit color depth, 11.6Ev dynamic range, 926 low light ISO Nikon D7100. 24.2 bit color depth, 13.7Evs dynamic range, 1256 low light ISO Canon 5D Mark III. 24 bit,…

More cues that we could soon see a/two new Canon EOS M camera(s). The latest rumor suggests that Canon could announce an entry level and a more feature-rich EOS M body at the same time. The more pro oriented body should be available with some interesting accessories, as an EVF and a new flash CanonWatch…

Sony’s latest star performer isn’t a gadget like the Walkman or PlayStation. Instead, it’s a chip found in almost every high-end camera and smartphone. Apple’s iPhones 5 and 4S use it and so do Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 and LG’s G2, researchers say. The company that helped invent the compact disc has captured almost a…

Ricoh describes the Theta as “the world’s first mass-produced imaging device that encapsulates fully spherical scenes with one shot.” To elaborate a bit, it’s a small, peculiar looking point-and-shoot camera that features two 180-degree wide-angle lenses mounted on opposite sides of the device. When one captures an image with the Theta, the result is a…

Well with the Sony RX100 dropping to $600, the price difference is now very substantial, the RX100M2 (formally the RX100 II) is at $750, but if you dig a little you can find better deals: Amazon has it at list price, but in trolling the reward sites and also the feature merchants you can find…

Don’t ask. But if u want the coverking to look good on the back of a rear seat, removing the back is nearly impossible. So for every supercab model from 2006 to 2013. A great video youtube

I miss Steve Jobs! Somehow I wish Apple would finish the features it starts. A good example is photostream. It is nearly wonderful. But here are the strange things about it: It deletes photos that are copied up there very 30 days or when you get over 1000 photos, so to archive them, you either…

Well, thanks to Lensrentals.com, I did a big test of all four cameras. It wasn’t super precise since I didn’t have the RX-100 with me, but this isn’t a technical review, but more of actual usage by a not very good photographer. I shot in raw and in jpg and used DxO to process for…

OK, this one is really complicated. Four ways to earn miles? (well really three): Hilton HHonors Double Dipping – Earning Hilton Points and Airlines Miles | LoyaltyLobby. Points & Points Points & Points Double Dip option allows you to earn additional 5 Hilton HHonors points per eligible dollar spent on your room. At Home2 Suites…

Seems like everyone is offering something these days. It is so hard to find them all, so here’s my short list that I get from the occasional reading, although loyaltylobby,com seems to ahve a good list: Premier Gold on Mileage Plus can now register and become Marriott Rewards Gold elites at http://united.com/rewardsplus which is just…

This is actually an amazingly cool idea. You just make a one room suite be multipurpose by the stage prop method of raising the bedroom up and having the living room come out of the floor. Pretty cool! YO! Home: Tour with Simon Woodroffe on Vimeo. Watch Simon Woodroffe, Founder of YO! Sushi and YOTEL,…

Batteries How about Batteries. We have lots of AA, AAA and even D rechargeables, but not 9V. Duracell Procell sure gets a high rating. $18 for 12 at Amazon Super Glue And then there is super glue for those of us who hate to throw things away, always worth a try and a quick spin…

Well here is what you have to do: Airline Miles Expiration | Million Mile Secrets Enroll in the Alaska Air dining program and dine at a partner restaurant Register any credit card with Thanks Again via Alaska Airlines to earn miles at participating merchants Download the Alaska Airlines toolbar and earn 1 mile for every…

Thinking about privacy. Been trying OpenPGP and this works pretty well with MacMail. Also SpiderOak is a 2GB service (if you use the code worldbackupday, you get 5GB) and if you refer people then each of you gets an additional 1GB just by clicking on my link.

Well at school, it is so easy to rip off a laptop, so some thoughts gathered from the web about how to protect yourself: TUAW has some good suggestions. The best is to change the system preferences/accounts so you disable automatic login and ask for the name and password. Also in System Preferences/Security/General, set it…

Sigh. Why is it that people sometimes get so close to great and then fail. Apple photostream is nearly wonderful but feels half implemented. The main issue is that while sharing, u only get low resolution images. The sad thing is they do store the original resolution somewhere but other users can’t access it even…

Some good ones and you can even peel them off: Now All Who Wander Are Lost. $10 at Amazon. P.S. I Love You. Another great little saying :-0 $3 from Amazon.

As if there wasn’t more to think about. The Canon 70d is pretty amazing with its dual contrast detection sensors. Canon 70d really works for incredible videos. Now if they would put that into a new full frame. Wow.

I have some old home movies which were split up into different AVIs in the old days of CDs at 700MB, so how do I put it all back together: AVIdemux2 is a freeware product that takes things in AVI containers and joins them or transcodes them. Since we are at it, if you have…

As my buddy Sam said, it is always interesting to see what Rich finds interesting and watch him burrow down…well, continuing that tradition, we were in “Back to School” mode and someone asked, what’s the best pen? Can’t help but use Google to answer and found some wonderful sites like Penaddict to help. We were…

Its amazing how quickly you can use storage. We have our star windows machines in a 2x250GB soft raid. But the new drives allow more questions. Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech like. There is going to be a sea change shortly as SSD moves to PCI Express and we could even slam a drive into the…

Its amazing how quickly you can use storage. We have our star windows machines in a 2x250GB soft raid. But the new drives allow more questions

Well spent a weekend using these are some quick thoughts: The Sony RX100 is actually a spectacular camera. It is much smaller than the smallest of these and its photo quality at wide angle is comparable to these in good light. And it is definitely nice to have a zoom. And the video mode is…

Back to school time. Time to figure out a daypack that works not just for school but also can do double duty as a hiking pack. I would get the osprey talon 22. In fact I kind of want one. A little heavy but perfect for big loads like school books. $99 from amazon The…