Only showing posts with the tag Software.

Migrating 1 terabyte of files from OneDrive to Nextcloud

This post documents my journey to find a cloud storage provider that is better than Microsoft OneDrive and migrating all my cloud files there.

In general, I want to store (some of) my files in the cloud for these reasons:

I want to have the data available on different devices (mostly a MacBook and an iPhone).
I want to back up the most important files, so I don’t need to worry about losing access if I lose or break my devices.
I want to share specific files and folders with other people from time to time (for collaborations or just to share a folder with images or videos).

All in all, I’ve accumulated around 1 terabyte of files in the last years. This includes:

Photos from different cameras and smartphones (~750 GB)
Music projects, including recorded and processed audio files (~170 GB)
MP3s with music that’s not available on any streaming platforms (~45 GB)
Design projects, including assets and exports (~25 GB)
Backups from other devices, video game save files, etc. (~22 GB)
Videos and video projects (~17.5 GB)
Text documents, scans of letters, etc. (~1.5 GB)

With this amount of data, I’ve run into the storage limit of my current storage provider, Microsoft OneDrive. With my Microsoft 365 Personal subscription (69€ per year), I’m only entitled to 1 TB of storage (plus some extra gigabytes from some special discounts or events).

Awesome web-based tools.

29 August 2015 Everyday Software Web

What’s great nowadays is that you can basically run your computer as a thin client and do a lot of work and entertainment entirely web-based. You’ve probably already been doing it for a while with emails, documents (Google Drive or Office Web), music, games and more. Why not extend those use cases to more complex areas like graphics editing and music creation? Some tools are surprisingly feature-rich and performant. Here are some examples:

Gravit Designer (aka Corel Vector), a design app for vector-based illustrations and more
Pixlr, a Photoshop-like editor
Tridiv, a 3D editor that outputs 3D models as HTML and CSS
Audiotool, basically a complete DAW in your browser
smallpdf.com, a nice tool set for a lot of PDF actions (merging, splitting etc.)

Once again: All those tools are web-based which means they are easily accessible from anywhere while the results are stored in the cloud (but can also be downloaded and/or rendered for offline use). Most of them can be used for free as well and are based on Open Source code.

Of course there are downsides, too. Businesses and privacy-savvy people might criticize the idea of storing their data “cloud-first” and not every computer and browser might handle all the features and bigger data assets. Also, in some situations you cannot access the web at all.

However I’m excited for the future and the dawn of new possibilities, especially on the audio side of things (e.g. Web Audio and Web MIDI APIs).

If you know or find a cool web app yourself, please let me know!

Using Canon EOS Utility without a CD

3 February 2015 Review Software

A few years ago I bought a DSLR camera by Canon and I’m very happy with it. What “grinds my gears” is that Canon users are required to keep and use their packaged software CD whenever they need to install the corresponding software for their cameras. Because all you can get online are “updaters” that would update the previously installed tools (which you’re supposed to install via CD only).

Luckily there are easy ways to alter those updaters in order to properly install the tools without the need of a CD. I’m just wondering what the motivation behind this installation/update policy is. Does it really hurt to give proper installers to everyone via the internet and forget about putting CDs in the boxes? (Let alone four thick manual books in four different languages.)

Hack-a-Lesson

29 November 2014 Berlin Event School Software

Requested by one of our professors Mrs. Prof. Dr. Lemke, we organised our own little hackathon in Berlin last weekend! Since the topic was all around teaching beginners how to code we called it Hack-a-Lesson and invited people to create some nice concepts and ideas that will eventually influence the second volume of Mrs. Lemke’s book Einführung in die Wirtschaftsinformatik.

Hack-a-Lesson lasted for two full days, Saturday and Sunday, and we got 32 people to join and work together in 6 teams while we tried to keep them alive with food and drinks while also observing the event and eventually rating the results (because there were some serious prizes involved, too!).

It was a great experience and the feedback was more than positive from all sides so far. We were even featured in a long article in the Berliner Zeitung (no longer available online). I’m glad I was able to work as part of a great team and collect new experiences and got to know new people that way while at the same time making other people happy.

Nonetheless for now I’ll return to being a participant of those kind of events again. :)

P.S.: Check out that awesome cake that was made just for that event!

Choosing an Unzip / Extraction Tool for Mac

22 October 2014 Everyday Free Software

Is it really called “Unzip Tool”? Or rather (un-)archive software? Anyway, I guess you’re already aware of what I’m referring to. Since Mac OS X doesn’t provide the capability of extracting (or creating) certain archive types like rar or 7zip, you’d really need some third-party software for that.

The real struggle is now: Do I choose the (boring) Unarchiver or the recently discovered Keka with such a cool app icon?

But wait, there’s more: iZip ~~and UnRarX~~ (down by now) also seems to deliver the same features! Oh well, I’ll probably just stay with the tool which has the better symbol.