Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Today seems like a day to collect things that I need…here are the many cool Blu Rays coming out thanks to blu-ray.com Lord of the Rings. The extended edition is finally out and it looks and sounds great Matrix. I already have this and it is great Terminator. Well the ones that are worthwhile are…

OK, just had a really wonderful photography do an event for us. There were two amazing things: 1. The lowlight performance of the Nikon D700 is just incredible. Can’t believe how wonderful those shots are with the soft light. Too bad I’m a Canon lense person 2. If someone really cared about me, they would…

Well who wants to pay $30 for an iPhone charger for your car or whereever. I just bought a round of dual chargers at half the price, here is a review: XTG-IPAD2USB. The nice thing is that it has a 2.1 amp and a 1 amp charger for an iPad and something else. Actually because…

I’m not sure what it is and not posted, but this application which I’ve used forever because it is so fast for previewing and going through photos is broken for me. The resume windows feature is very strange. It brings up old windows I don’t need. No apparent way to turn that off. Also it…

Well one drop and it is all over. With an iPhone 4G, it costs $29 from Apple to get a new one. Pretty reasonable. But it costs $200 if you can believe it for an older model. Fortunately Jet Repair does this for $70 and they are actually in Seattle. Good to keep that 3G…

Well a couple of important tools to make sure your disks are healthy: 1. DiskWarrior. Pretty invaluable. You should run it to make sure your file system is healthy. 2. TechTools Deluxe. It doesn’t quite work on Lion yet (at version 3.1.3), but it is free with Applecare. Checks everything 3. Disk Utility. Part of…

Yuck. DroboPro is nice. Get a new Drobo by fedex and I inserted all the drives, but a bunch of problems. First I upgraded to Lion and iSCSI and Drobo’s on Lion don’t work. Others on Apple’s community and here have reported this. Seems like a problem with something called the iSCSI initiator that comes with…

We have the original PSP (called the PSP-1000) and Calvin fixed it. It had a sticky analog joystick. Looking at Youtube and Google, someone recommended just lifting and blowing the gunk out. That didn’t work. So disassembly is just 7 screws detailed here Here is your familiar PSP, we are going to remove the 7…

no matter how long u live in a certain spot it is so surprising. Here r some in Columbia City and International District. Two places I’ve never been to 1. La Medusa. 2. Geraldine’s 3. Carribean place I’ve forgotten the names 4. The original Tutta Bella And in the I-diatrict 1. Harbor City. Dim sum…

Yikes, what a host of failures over the last month, 2 of my 3 Tivos have failed (both look like temperature related hard dirves). And the Drobo iSATA controller has failed. Here are the diagnostic procedures: Drobo. Main lesson here is that even on a power conditioner, you need more and leave it off enough.…

My stocks are finally running low (thank goodness, for some reason the original Red River 68lb Glossy) just is so red with a Canon i9900, Mac and iPhoto. So I ordered the Ilford Smooth Pearl (hopefully adheres better), the Red River sampler to try all theres. Surprisingly the Canon Pro Paper Platinum is only about…

It’s a good thing, I backup on a Drobo, Crashplan and also do occasional backups to a Time Capsule, but anyway now the Drobo is failing in continual reboot and Crashplan shows files on the web but not my local client so I can’t restore.  Another reminder that you can’t be too careful. So I’m…

I have a DroboPro and it has been working like a champ, but we’ve had two power failures and I’m reminded I should put the whole computer and Drobo on a UPS so it can safely shutdown (yikes! but I already ordered one for the phone system, so if that UPS works, I’ll order another).…

Hilarious! See it now.

Just had a power failure, so the mind turns to UPS and backups for all those hubs and routers in the house. Nice to plug in your router and access point as well as any other mission critical things (like computers or home alarms) in. You don’t need an industrial one to run for say…

To prepare for this Call the Cascade Locks and get a camping area. Find a site with water and electricity. These are a little more, but more convenient. The area that is the overflow for the regatta is not near the toilets and so forth. Want to be in the main area where the sites.…

If you have an old iPhone 2G (like Asa and Grace), then you can unlock them even with the latest firmware. Redmond Pie has a guide, but with the old bootrom, you basically Find a custom IPSW that you just use iTunes to install which is nice since it can be hacktivated  Go through iTunes to…

You can now transfer miles for free between the two programs, so you get to monitor twice as many promotions. And you can link them so you get rewards on both… see thepointsguy.com. The biggest one is to get a free Continental card and then you get 25k miles for free 😉 And Continental has…

Or breaks as it is plastic, then you have to get your audio out from the 30-pin Iphone connector. Here are the parts you need: A iPhone connector to 3.5mm plug. I can’t find one that is female So you need a female-to-female connector for 3.5mm like Monocable has for $0.47 Some cheap headphones like…

These routers do support logging, but you have to mutter strange incantations to the Mac OS X (revealing its Unix roots), then point the Airport Extreme with the Airport Utility to the IP address of your machine…according to Mintel: Change syslogd configuration   # echo “local0.notice /var/log/airport.log” >> /etc/syslog.conf   Touch the logfile   #…

Wow an amazing array of cars are headed to US in 2012 model year so hold off if you can. Clean Fleet reports that the Honda Fit is outselling the Prius in Japan. And is the best selling car. THe fit is much roomier and gets 72 to Prius 77mpg on the japanese average mileage…

Ugh I somehow didn’t get the tines gift card discount in best buy. Somehow didn’t make it through the whole purchase process. But here are some new gizmos and things… 1. Apple AirPlay makes it easy to build music systems. As Macworld points out. How to. Just buy an airport express and hook it to…

Well nothing like doing a quick review of things to get for the geek who has all the cameras he could want 🙂 Canon 500D Close Up Lens. This turns your regular lense into a macro for about $125. A nice step before you go buy a dedicated lense Canon EF 1.4x III Teleconverter. This…

You don’t normally see iTunes gift cards discounted, but Best Buy is doing it. 15% off!

Well iMovie 7 in iLife ’11 (is that confusing or what!) has been remarkably stable as I’ve produced things (not like iLife 08), but here are some of the quirks: 1. If you are really a power nerd, you want every frame to match up. At the playhead there is a time listing, but if…

End of school year and everyone seems to want movies. Here are the latest tips. I had to actually make a DVD. Hadn’t dont that in a long time. iDVD in iLife ’11 is about the same, so Apple isn’t spending much time on this. I’d forgotten all about chapter marks and so forth. Don’t…