Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Scheduledirect seems to be the source of inexpensive TV schedules and it does work well for a decent $25/year. 

I’ve an old Netgear 48 port switch and I set the password at some point. Now I want to see about uploading later firmware etc, it appears that they have a reset button so I pressed it hopefully, it resets and I can find it on the network. And the default password is the very…

Well, I’m still depressed that I don’t have the lenses for a Nikon D800, but in the mean time, what can we do with the Canon 5D Mark II. A good note is that Magic Lantern really helps for both video (what it was designed for) and stills (what it can do). It is easy,…

Isn’t this a bizarre way to say, you can’t (at least in the latest version of iMovie 11 have special characters in the file name). Hope they fix this bug someday…This appears to happen when you say Export Movie…

I’ve been trying to get a movie out for days now with iMovie. There is a strange interaction with Time Capsule backups where with something as long running as an iMovie creation (in my case 7 hours to make an hour plus HD movie), so that Time Capsule tries to backup the file and thus…

Well if you have an old dimmer system, you can’t use the new CFLs, so trying to find the best PAR38 light bulbs. There aren’t many good review sites, so here is a summary. Right now you have a choice of a few technologies: Incandescent. The original, cheapest but last the last Halogen. More efficient…

Proving once again there is an application for everyone, someone wanted to do a stick figure animation and of course Stykz exists to make it easy!

This isn’t super well documented, but here are the things you can do with this photo-quality portable printer: Installing the BU-30 Bluetooth Adapter It is an extra $30, but worth it because then there is no USB wire needed, but it comes with instructions on installation at all and this is one thing Google doesn’t…

Happy Mothers Day. Spent a day watching the Avengers and printing lots of photos (worked well on i9900 with Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl, big change settings were to use Pro Paper Glossy, Saturation and on black point compensation so as to maximize dynamic range and then create a custom profile with SpyderPrint). Anyway, the regatta…

This used to work on me.com, but now with icloud.com, I haven’t been able to make it work. Turns out it needs to be 7.6.1 or better to run BAck to my Mac with icloud

Well Mothers Day is almost here and the perfect geek present is to get an easy to use computing thing for a mom who doesn’t like technology, so the iPad actually offers some pretty amazing features particularly when paired with an AppleTV and a stand. Here is how we set it up: Picture Frame. I’ve…

I have never had this happen, but when trying to start our old Volvo, you couid hear the starter motor turn, but there the engine didn’t turn over. The AAA guy called this a carbon lock, the Daisywagon folks called it carboned up valves. Not much on the web about this. But apparently, if you’ve…

Well, I’ve pretty much decided that it is just too much to switch from Canon back to Nikon. But for anyone starting with photography and wants a serious camera, the D3200 seems like the dream with the D800 as the higher end version.  I think I’ll soldier on with the Canon 5D Mark II for…

Ok a few quick notes, we have a Steripen thing that cleans up water with a UV light. Needs CR123 batteries, wandered over to Bartells and they are $16 a piece there (what!). A quick search of the internet reveals widely varying prices from $7  on Amazon to $2 at Thomasdistributing.com. I’m going to try…

You should really get this is you can. If you are United Global Services or American Express Platinum, they will even pay the $130 fee, but if you join GlobalEntry, then they will interview you and you can cross the canadian border quickly (Nexus) or use the fast line at the airport traveling internationally (GlobalEntry)…

Its getting sunny, so I discovered I like the clubs i got last year thanks to the internet which are: Mizuno JPX-800 set. 4-9 iron plus 44 loft, 6 bounce pitching wedge and 49 loft, 7 bounce gapping wedge  (their follow-on the JPX-800HDs are still tops) Adams. 3 Hybrid Taylormade R11. Mainly because it was…

  So I’m still working on getting everything right for modern Home Theater and here is the basic problem, you want to get content from any source to any device to any location the device may be, so let’s cover the content, the devices and the locations: Content from Anyone So what is the content:…

Now that the drive shortage is hopefully ending and you can actually get 4tb drives, it’s time to look again for a look at what NAS to get to be a hot backup for all my pictures, music and movies. Right now I have a 12tb drobo pro attached to a Mac mini. It works…

Our oldest MacBooks (technically the model MB466*/A or late 2008) at home are 2.5 years old now and a long way from 2008 when we got them. Here are some of the issues and solutions 1. Dying hard drives. Just a warning they are removable but if you screw them in tight they slowly fail.…

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…