Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

For a long time I used pricegrabber.com, but then it really changed to a resell site. Then I used the Merrill Lynch rewards site which was decent, but had some great mileage bonuses, now I’ve just been hacking away looking at some random store (Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Wal*mart, Newegg,…

I haven’t seen much about this on the web, but with our two older machines (MacBook Pro 2010 and iMac 2009), we have had hang problems with File Vault. On the former, the upgrade just failed and hung at a blank screen. The on the later, it worked, but then…

We just started our first Skylake build on micro-ATX taking the Haswell build and using it with a system cost of $1500. The main changes with the Z170 board called the Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5 is that we now get: USB 3.1 Controller. So 16Gbps for 2 USB 3.1 ports (10Gbps…

Happy 2016. I can’t believe we are already here. Wow, and we are getting close to 2020 and driverless cars and even hoverboards, but the old tradition of New Years resolutions lives on. So here are mine: Really understand computer vision machine learning. Ok nerdy in the extreme, but last…

Ok been reading way too much about AI lately and helping folks do everything from buy a computer to getting a summer job. Some meta rules. And then some rules. Metarules Ok here are some tips. First meta rules (an ode to Zombieland): Have someone who has done it before.…

Well we’ve use the Ubiquiti Unifi’s for the last few year and have had good luck with them but now the product line is huge a little confusing, so in order from most capable and expensive to least. It is tough because all the names sound the same with all…

Well I know that it isn’t practical, but wow, the new MacBook is kind of amazing. For $1300 you get a 256GB flash system with 8GB of memory and it is completely fanless. Most importantly it has a nice keyboard and reasonable 7 hour battery life. The main issues are:…

It’s always hard to know the best time to buy things. But for electronics the main question is how rapidly the technology is evolving.  For things that are moving fast it makes the most sense to try to buy “ahead” because the software typically will end up depending on new…

Ok I’ve been trying to be good and use the bus and run to work. One strangeness with the Orcacard. If u get down to zero balance and have autologous enabled you can actually get on the bus. Auto load only triggers if u get to zero and the refills. …

Wow what a confusing set of ideas. With these modern graphical operating systems, making character or terminal applications look nice takes you back literally 40 years.  Here’s the scoop for pretty terminal colors for developers.  The default colors in vim are pretty bad. http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized has devoted way too much time…