Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

If you’ve got videos say in MPEG2/DVD format and want to convert into smaller H.264 format, then the Mac choices are pretty different from PC. Essentially, you need four tools: # “Handbrake”:http://trac.handbrake.fr to take it from a DVD and convert it into a computer quality (e.g,. high quality .AVI or .MP4). # “MacTheRipper”:http://mactheripper.com. This is…

“Anandtech”:http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3226&p=23 has done the first full Macbook Air review that compares the SSD performance. As an aside folks are asking me how the new SSD is on the MacBook Air. First, the system is completely quiet. Second, for normal use, like Internet browsing and reading email, it feels just as fast and responsive as my…

Now that we know “comcast”:http://www.macworld.com/article/132101/2008/02/netneutrality2.html is shutting down traffic, its a good time to safeguard your privacy and make sure that you are in good shape with all those prying eyes. The first thing is to encrypt as much as you can. The second use a VPN or encrypted tunnel so no one can figure…

“Gamespot”:http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?type=games&platform=42&tag=header;logo has a good list of Macintosh games. With all the Macs, the kids are asking, what games can I play. Interestingly, they have Age of Empires III, Need for Speed Carbon and Prey all available on the Mac and they get good reviews from “Macworld”:http://macworld.com Also there is a really fun game called sketchpad…

Someone was asking me, so I love 35mm and love photography, but if I’m jumping in as a serious photographer, how do I really get started. Well, here’s a quick guide if you’ve got the bucks for the best price/performance today: # Nikon D300. Just reviewed in Popular Photography, it is expensive at $1800 or…

Hey if you go there frequently, “Alaska”:http://www.alaskaair.com/www2/Promo/Registration/PromoEntry.asp?pid=AS0803 has a double miles promotion but you need to register. Powered by ScribeFire.

With the new Macbook Air, I’m trying to live life without having to install Parallels and Windows OfficeLife h2. Life without Windows Did that with Macbook Pro. Just loaded Mac Office 2004 and found that Entourage was a good enough Outlook replacement and that of course Word, Excel and PowerPoint were fine. The only thing…

This is a pretty mysterious thing to me. It seems to work out of the box for HP printers that are network connected which is amazing. The net is that you can’t get an i9900 to work with a print server or off your Windows machines. It only works if connected to a Mac or…

OK, I’ve been printing a bunch of 8×10 photos on Red River Paper for Calvin’s basketball team and it just comes out way too red despite all the color matching. Super frustrating as the profiles for the Canon Photo Pro is perfect out of the box. So it is either time to buy a “Colorvision…