Tongfamily (Richtong.com Sync)

Alex says my water filter (MSR Miniworks) is too slow at 1Q per minute and that my Steripen Adventurer (thanks Rennie!) is broken with a dead wetness sensor. Both are sad things, so off to find what the latest gizmo’s people have cooked up:  

Well, I finally got the DroboPro stabilized with the data recovered. Because I’ve become paranoid, I’ve also got Crashstation running nonstop (glad Comcast has suspended their 250GB/month limit) so I have an offsite backup. For good measure I’m using my old Time Capsuls (3 x 1TG of them) to get…

Wow, I now have a wonderful tiny box which is the Fit-PC2i. I haven’t run a non-Mac machine in something like 4 years and it is so embarassing. Here are some notes to use it: There is no manual included in the box, so you have to go online This…

Well since I’m buying all this equipment and we’ve settled on Apple for most of our computing needs, there are still that aren’t being met. First is the really small (think AppleTV size) box that is really an open PC with Linux so I can learn that development world and…

Well the standard trick for sharpening photos is the wonderfully named unsharp mask (ugh what a name), but there have been better approaches. Adobe Photoshop implements something called Smart Sharpen and there are lots of papers on the topic. For a while I used FocusMagic but they don’t have version…

Right now I’m trying to get most of my videos as 1080p with DTS. Seems to me the highest quality. But this does mean transcoding on playback but with today’s fast processors, its not such a big deal.  But there are still AVI containers around that are chopped up, so…

Well got to go to Pax Prime. Man, I had no idea it was such a cool event so close to us. Anyway, need to go there from now on. The gaming section on the 4th floor of the convention center is terrific. Crowded though so you probably just have…

Not quite sure what model, but it is an old Time Capsule, I think 2nd generation, in any case, just beware that there is a strange bug with 7.6.1 firmware. If you want to do 5GHz mode, you need to set it to 802.11n (a compatible), if you set it…

Well this has gotten way easier. If you have an AT&T iPhone and it is off contract (e.g., two years since you bought it), here is how you get it unlocked so it will work with any carrier (eg T-Mobile or you can use it overseas with a different SIM):…

Well, it is great Apple is spending so much time on iPhone, iPads and maybe a little on MacBooks and AppleTV, but sadly, that leaves much of the promise of home networking in the dust. With Airport Extremes and Time Capsules kind of forgotten and a sea of not so…