OK, this took a while to figure out. But, I’ve had a Rega P3 turntable that is plugged into a Rega Phono Mini that suddenly stopped working. It was strange the LED looked on but no sound came out. Finally, the hint for debugging is that a phono preamp amplifies the low signal generated by […]

OK, time for my annual, I really don’t like Comcast. They just love to raise prices without much notification and then you always have to go back and sign up for a new annual plan. So today, the issues are that I was on a $80/month plan for 400Mbps (and a lowly 10Mbps up but […]

Well, this replication stuff sure does work, so now from a Synology, here is a backup strategy that is pretty good for me: Synology Redundancy and UPS Well, this isn’t really back up, but to increase the reliability of any disks, you really want them RAID protected. That is when you write to the disk […]

OK, one maddening thing that happened is one of my MacBooks has a tiny, as in 256GB hard drive. This is just too small for most uses particularly if you have lots of iCloud Photos or big github repos. I have both, so what are some solutions? Slim down the random files Well, if you […]

OK, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the new payment scheme where rebate sites like Topcashback.com and legal settlements give you this tiny amount of prepaid Visa and Mastercards. Other sites just let you put in a Paypal account or give you an Amazon card directly. The problem is that you […]

Well, I’ve been using Synology for more than six years now and I have to say what started as a small shell on top of base Linux has become a really nice easy to use interface. Note that these notes are for the older DSM6, I haven’t had time to upgrade to the new DSM7 […]

We were introduced to these amazing morsels called Calissons while in Provence. It’s from Aix en Provence and doesn’t take too long to make the main ingredients are very simple. The nice thing is that you can make them dairy-free as well. Old Fashioned and Manhattens Ok, I was suddenly in charge of making drinks […]

Well, six years ago we got our Anova Sous Vide and it worked pretty well, but with the pandemic, we got it out again and one thing we didn’t do well got a vacuum sealer, so the bags would just leak. Turns out there are a huge number of these sealers around now, but ironically […]

Well, we ended up getting two of these and beside deciding whether to get AppleCare or not (you probably should particularly for the steel version) Aluminum vs Steel Well, there is a huge markup if you decide to go steel, but it is shiny and looks really nice. Net, net I would say go with […]

Now that the dry spell for Thunderbolt 4 docking stations seems to be ending, I will say the Razer TB4 that I got late last year is good, but it has relatively few ports and there is an issue with my LG C9 and it is not quite syncing when the MacBook goes to sleep. […]