rich
rich
@rich@tongfamily.com
6,913 posts
4 followers
  • Rogue Access Points

    Well, imagine my surprise. We suddenly had an access point pop up and I thought it was the neighbors. Actually there were three. One called `tsunami` and another call that started with PS3- and then a PS4- So here are the steps to keeping your network clean: Run an IP scanner, it is incredible, but…

  • Getting points for your tax payments

    So this can work if you are getting more than 1.87% from your credit cards. This is also potentially a good way of hitting your minimum spend limits, but it does cost you Here are the two lowest cost tax folks I could find: Fed.choicepay.com. They also charge 1.87%. I don’t know about their yearly…

  • Cameras to try

    Well, this is indeed the best time to wait for the perfect camera to arrive. Although high end camera sales have literally collapsed (they are 50% of sales compared with 2012!). There seems to be more innovation than ever. So here’s a list of cameras I’m dying to try what with 4K arriving for video…

  • Good bye iPhoto hello Photos, Picasa and maybe Fotobounce and GeoTag

    Well, Apple is changing things again. Now they have stopped development of iPhoto and they have basically ported Photos from iOS. Here are the problems for folks with a decent number of photos (how about 20K!): Apple is focused on people with relativeliy small collections and everything is stored in the iCloud. You have to…

  • Learning Swift…argh

    XCode is just so complicated that even the very good Ray Wenderlich Tutorials typically leave something out causing errors. So for the Swift Tutorial Part 2, here are errata: When you are looking at main.storyboard, the tutorial talks about the navigation Document Outline. This is only visible is you right click on the main.storyboard on…

  • Compact cameras

    Ok, I admit it, I’ve really liked the Sony RX-100 and then the RX-100 Mark II. Actually, the additional depth of the Mark II at least to me wasn’t super worth it, but now I seem to have misplaced our RX-100 Mark II (I know, I need to put a bluetooth tracker on it!). So…

  • Hotel credit cards

    Until now, I have spent much time on hotel credit cards and optimization. The first thing was a big focus on getting airline status (better seats), then on more credit card points (thank you The Points Guy!), then airline business portals (Easybiz) and then internet portals (evrewards, cashbackmonitor.com) now hotels are gradually in our view.…

  • Protecting your Lubuntu installation

    When you are trying to eke out a simple machine, there are a few things to think about: Ubuntu uses Unity which requires 3D acceleration. On a Atom Z550 this is unbearably slow. You can actually convert to LXDE with a simple `apt-get install lubuntu-desktop` Then when you log off then you can click on…

  • Lost Windows XP Password how to recover it all

    Well, if you have an old Windows XP machine then its easy to forget all its passwords. What’s the easiest way to get it back. Well you can try to use a password cracker like ophcrack which is complicated and uses brute force techniques to find the password. Or you can take the easy way out…

  • Deskjet 3050 All-in-One J610a for Linux

    Getting this stuff to work on Linux is actually amazingly easy: Deskjet 3050 is part of the HPLIP (HP Linux Imaging Program) that is now part of Ubuntu. You can download an update from hplipopenrsource.com To actually run the setup, you need to do `sudo hp-setup`