Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

I’ve had first a Canon 350D six long (at least by technology count) years ago and with an 8MP sensor, it was really remarkable. Then a Canon 5D Mark II for the last four years (also a long time). I switched away painfully from Nikon back then. But now that the Nikon 800D is out…

OK, I have am old Mac Mini (late 2010) that has two 500GB hard drives and on DVD. So how do I get it so that one disk is Mac OS X and the other runs Windows 7 Ultimate Edition so that I can run Windows Media Center and get my HD Homerun Prime working…

Well, things are well on the way to getting the home theater up to speed (mainly by using iPad applications and AppleTVs to control things), so now onto home audio. There is also a big change here: Airport Express. This is a $99 device that pushes out just audio. It is perfect for attaching existing…

Now that there is such a wide and broad conversion to electronic books, it makes sense to figure out what format to keep your own DRM-free ebooks (eg, classic books that aren’t copyrighted that you can get from the Gutenberg project for instance). For music, I keep everything in MP3 mainly because it seems like…

Well, with AT&T, for $10 incremental a month, you can get free Canada calling, but be careful the texting and the data are expensive. Make sure to call AT&T and get your phone internationally enabled. Their page is really complicated but when you go overseas, here is what you have to do: Sign up for…

Well haven’t been down to Disneyland in years, so interesting to see how things have changed. Last time it was a blizzard of fast passes and early entry as well as single rider lines. According to Trip Advisor things haven’t really changed much, but here is the scoop: There are two parks there. California Adventure and…

Well, the Scorsche dual usb chargers while cheap have not been durable of the four I’ve bought, two had things snap off, so I’m back to the Griffin which for $4 more includes a iPhone charge cable. I also got a $40 iPhone holder fo the car, but it gets loose, so trying a $13…

When outfitting the house years ago, I literally went through consumer reports looking for things and picked up a highly rated upright from Sears. Now the little blinky light is flashing and i”m thinking, have I ever changed the bag? Can’t remember even how to open it. But full it looks. So thanks to the…

Well while it is easier than Windows (at least up to XP the last version I really used heavily), the Mac OS X does have its issues. It can slow down and I’ve had a bunch of times when it would just hang on boot with the spinning wheel of death. And lately with also…

They actually do a nice meta review. Here are the current 2012 models. The ones to try are the ford fiesta and fusion. Honda fit The Hyundai elantra and sonata The Audi a3 and a4 Volkswagen. Gti Small Cars Ford Fiesta ranks #1 in Affordable Small Cars Affordable Small Cars Generally priced under $20,000. #1…

As just about everything I adding social networks and checkins and so forth in literally drowning in all the feeds. So here’s richs list of how I at least divide them and here’s a stack of what I did useful… Tongfamily.com. This Site. I use mainly for posting reviews of in depth areas such as…

We’ve been finding Google calendar is working great with the iPhone, but Google contacts is pretty unstable. Doesn’t sync all the time and for me will often completely reset and start downloading if you make too many changes. Google doesn’t seem like its going to make it much priority to fix, so the solution is…

Well, before Apple revolutionizes the TV business with whatever it is (can you believe BTW that Apple is up almost $100 a share since Steve’s passing and it worth more than Google and Microsoft combined now), what can you do to make actually using your home theater easier, here is what I’ve found: The new…

Ok, the season is nearing its end, so now is a good time to pick up some dribs and drabs. The good news is that the tremendous innovation in skiing seems to be ending. There are now all kinds of reverse camber skis out there, so seems like a good time to buy. Also for…

The economy must be getting better as some folks seem to be raising prices relentlessly. These include: Chinesepod. They have been a great service for learning, but I’ve had them for three years and every year there is a 50% plus price increase. Now they are up to $120 a year and I have to…

I used to love Call of Dutry because it seemed so realistic, but today with bunny hopping, running and gunning, it isn’t close to the first games I played when simulation of real stuff was the fascination. Although boring by today’s standards, the original F-16 simulation (you can still get it open source), F-15 Eagle,…

Thanks to the iPhone and Android, it seems like the application market has reawakened, but PC Magazine et al don’t seem that good at doing reviews. Lifehacker actually has a pretty good list of top utility applications. Mac Here is my list culled from them and what I use: VLC. The best all around video…

FingerPrint let’s you do this…

Well the world is changing so much and my Tivo subscription is expiring, so it is good to look at where we are and what we use in priority order: Comcast for HD Content. We mainly use this to watch Glee (of course!), HGTV and other documentary channels like Discovery Channel in HD. We use…

OK when you are skiing, how do you actually get to type without taking off all your gloves. The answer are glove liners that have conductive tips. There are a sea of these things and they can be everything from overpriced to reasonable. $10 seems like the usual, so there isn’t much of a premium…

Right now if you can hang on, wait for the new Intel processors that are coming in April. But if you can’t wait, CNet has a pretty good list:   ‘re looking for. Apple MacBook Pro Fall 2011 Best mainstream laptop  A MacBook Pro is a significant investment, especially when adding in optional upgrades. Cost…

OK, well time to buy a few more, but quick note on golf clubs for newbies, here is what you need to get. Most iron sets include all the irons you need, so what is harder are the driver (1 wood) and then I need the 3 Wood, have a 3 Hybrid, so need a…

Just like energy efficient cars, the amount of innovation in the market for the so called mirrorless or ILC (interchangeable lense) cameras is amazing. These are small cameras that can at their best be super portable and have the image quality and most importantly the low light performance of a dSLR. Here’s the list of…

Very strange problem. But my iPhone after an update to 5.0.1 now thinks i thinks it is in the Netherlands so caller id doesn’t work etc. Here is the fix   In case anyone is still working on getting this fixed for themselves or future folks looking for a fix, I thought I’d post what…

Well. You can make it half way around the world and there r so many ways to find out what is going on… 1. Flightstats.com gives u real time location of your airplane. 2. On your iPhone flight track does the same and for a few scheckels more u can look at a flight board…

Well eventually all cars fail, and what a difficult year it is to buy a new car. There is so much innovation happening in the car business right now, it is hard to believe and so many new models for 2012. So the big decision is essentially, what to do until those come out and…

Well Im in the middle of a little project to get an HD HomeRun Prime connected to a Mac Mini using Touchpad to control it for watching internet TV and also Comcast. More on that later, but it is pretty cool the way you can use an Ipod Touch or an old iPhone to control…

Well I supposed it had to happen, I’m getting a print head error on the venerable 8 year old Canon i9900, so what can I do. A new printhead is $125 which we can get as, so what are the other options…well here are some ideas. And this actually did work. I did a little…

With an iPhone there are so many cool applications now. The best traffic one I’ve found is called Waze. Gives you free turn-by-turn navigation and nice UI (compared with GPS Drive which I used to use) and it has traffic, police and accident reports that are user generated.   But onto wine applications. What a…