Tong Family

Argh two Google problems today. The first is really annoying, I downloaded an extension that would force Dark Mode on Chrome, but when I uninstalled it, the backgrounds were still DARK. Argh! I tried changing the Dark mode on the Mac and also changing the default Theme. It turns out that plug in actually turns…

Well, this is a truly nerdy post, but I just read that with Superhuman worth hundreds of millions, everyone is back to building the Superhuman of X keyboard shortcuts as the way to get common applications faster. I completely agree with that and those of us who have used vi forever sure know that is…

OK, suppose that you are too paranoid to get on an airplane and instead decide that any trip within 1,200 km of your home city are fair game for a road trip. What do you need to make the trip as safely as possible. Here are some notes 🙂 Safety Stuff: Of Snow tires and…

This has been bothering me for literally a year. I can’t seem to get rid of these relentless emails from Microsoft Teams. If I want to see random water cooler chatter I would ask for it. Finally, the latest email from them tells you exactly how to shut it off… Update your email preferences in…

Well, I have NordVPN with it’s Cybersec ad blocking and also run Safari with UBlock and while it seems to block some ads, a bunch more seem to appear. So to welcome in 2021, let’s see how to figure out how effective these are. I normally use open source blockers like UBlock origin or KaBlock!…

These two things are tiny, but they are very helpful. If you have some photos that you don’t want to transmit everywhere, but still want to keep them around, you can hide them. The interface is really hidden (no pun intended, but here is what you need to do) iOS Devices you Share to Hide…

Well, I’ve tried a number of other hosted Jupyter environments from Google AI Platform Notebook to Saturn and I keep coming back to Google Colab for one reason mainly: We don’t have things that are that complex (yet!), so simplicity is key and Colab is just so simple to use with everything you need already…

OK, a quick report on my life with dongles and other attachments for MacBooks. Suffice to say these dongles definitely have a spotty record for me. Most of the time they seem to work fine if you leave them plugged in, but it’s detection that seems like the problem (and the occasional burnout, see below)….

Well, I seem to have bought just a boatload of different keyboards, microphones and mice in 2020. The first world problem of staying at home for the last seven (?!!) months have led me to become the foremost expert on various junk like this. so here’s a flash review of what seems to work and…

Well, it’s probably a testament to Apple hardware design that I regularly end up with machines that are perfectly functional but no longer get updates. A good example is the Mac Mini 2011. It is nearly 10 years old yet still runs just fine for basic tasks like typing this blog entry, but it is…