In my previous article , I discussed the process I went through to digitise my family’s Video8 tapes to produce a high-quality archive. The files were quite large, interlaced, low-resolution, and had messy borders. I wanted to process the video further to produce a modern file that will work consistently in players for years to come. It’s worth noting that we’re not aiming to replace the archive…
In 1995, just a few months before I was born, my parents purchased a Sony camcorder (CCD-FX730VE). This camcorder documented my brother’s and my childhood - from family outings to random evenings at home, and everything in between. It was used regularly until around 2002 - at which point we switched to digital, and my brother and I used it to make silly little films. In total there were about 13…
I’ve been using Evernote since 2013 and I had over 1,800 notes stored. Evernote significantly increased the price of my subscription so it’s finally time to move to an alternative. I started using Evernote as a poor university student - it was a free option and was far more powerful than alternatives like Apple Notes and more flexible than OneNote. Eventually as my number of notes and devices grew…
When I was about 10 years old I was getting into the first of many little projects on the family computer. I used NeroVision Express 2 to create a Super Video CD (SVCD) containing a collection of family photos, excessive transitions, obnoxious menus and (unbeknownst to me at the time) inappropriate music choices. NeroVision Express 2 menu creator tool (original source) I’ve been sorting through a…
Since I got a Synology NAS (DS920+) about two years ago I’ve had a few false starts with my Time Machine backup, but I think I’ve finally gotten it right. What is Time Machine? Time Machine is the built in macOS backup tool. It launched all the way back on Mac OS X Leopard in 2007 but I feel like it’s lost some popularity in recent years with the prevalence of cloud storage and cloud backup…
When I was a kid, my brother and I really enjoyed playing Dungeon Siege . For the uninitiated, Dungeon Siege is a 2002 action based roleplaying PC game by Gas Powered games. I recently built a budget gaming PC so I finally had a way to play Dungeon Siege again (it’s available pretty cheap on Steam and GOG ). Dungeon Siege has a co-operative multiplayer mode which my brother and I wanted to try.…
I switched my personal account to Google Workspace so I could use my own domain name for my email. I remained a loyal user but the alternatives have improved and the things that kept me loyal have changed. It’s finally time to migrate from Google Workspace to a personal Google account. I’m not intending this article to be a full step by step tutorial, but I hope it can point you in the right…
Moving your Google Drive files from a Google Workspace account to a personal Google account is harder than it should be! I’ve broken down my process and the many hurdles on the way. This is one part of my recent project to escape Google Workspace. You can read more about this in my Escaping Google Workspace post. Assumptions This post makes the assumption that you’ve; still got access to your old…
When I first started out on my budget home server journey back in 2016, the most logical choice was the Raspberry Pi 2 micro-computer. This has served me well, but my needs for a server have changed and the Pi just wasn’t keeping up. I want a quicker server but with the small size and low power consumption that made the Pi great! What’s wrong with a Raspberry Pi as a NAS? As I breifly mentioned at…
In 2016 I finished my Software Engineering degree at the University of Waikato with my fourth year honours project. The objective of my project was to create a system which would allow the owner of an off-grid house to monitor their energy system and access this information from anywhere. What resulted is Kauri Energy Monitor , a cloud based system for monitoring a renewable energy system and I’ve…
Ten percent of my work time is dedicated to professional development through two ‘Hackdays’ a month. For my most recent Hackdays I wanted to combine old-school phone technology with ‘modern’ web technoligies. I came across a service called Plivo which lets you work with the phone network through a web API. What is Plivo? Plivo is a web service that gives us a web API to interact with the phone…
About a year ago, I posted two articles about setting up my Raspberry Pi as a home server and how I setup remote access to it from anywhere in the world without using portforwarding . I’ve had a few people stumble across my post, asking questions and sharing details about their projects with me! I thought I’d take the time to better address an area people seem to be having difficulty with, which…
In November of last year I finished my Software Engineering degree and moved to Wellington to start work at Flux Federation . Flux builds software that runs energy companies like Powershop - an energy retailer in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. I work as part of the team that builds the Rails app that brings the power to the people. My first few months were spent in training on what…
Last weekend I wanted to see the latest movie trailers. Of course, there are plenty of websites out there for this, however, none of them meet the excitement of watching movie trailers before a film at the cinemas. So that’s what I set out to build. First, I needed to find a source for movie information. I don’t want to populate this information manually, so I found TheMovieDB has an API. This…
For a few years now I’ve been wanting to organise a family photo and video archive. Digital content is much easier to deal with, but my family members still have boxes of old photos sitting around in their cupboards. In our case, this is basically everything prior to the year 2000. Capturing the content These physical photos degrade over time and are vulnerable to being destroyed in a disaster.…
I have a Raspberry Pi home server that I can remotely access through a tinc VPN tunnel with my VPS . Most services can be accessed through the tunnel with addresses like plex.crawford.kiwi, but some of them are only available on my local network, for example, SMB and SSH. Accessing these services from the local network is actually more difficult than the services available remotely for two…
My parents just got two IP cameras. These are cameras that connect to your home network to allow access over a computer network. I had some requirements to make the IP cameras useful: Remote Access. Obviously, an IP camera that can only be accessed from the local network isn’t very useful if you want to check up on the home! The cameras should be accessable from anywhere in the world via an…
My Raspberry Pi is setup as a home server, providing me access and control of my content through several services : A Deluge server for torrent downloads. A Plex server to manage and stream my media collection. A Pydio server for remote access and management of files. This is great, but I want to access my content when I’m away from home. Previous experience with remote access solutions inspired…
I was in need of a server that gives me remote access to my files, can run Plex, torrent and is quiet and efficient enough that it can run 24/7. The answer? A Raspberry Pi of course! I brought mine for about $60 NZD!). What is Docker ? I used Docker to manage the services on the Raspberry Pi. Docker containerises services allowing them to be shared and scaled easily. For me, the main benefit was…
Over the summer of 2014 I decided to enhance our home theatre PC’s with a launcher that simplifies the use of media player apps and web content, while saving time and energy. The Problem The world of home entertainment is changing rapidly, especially with the advent of connected devices like the Apple TV, Roku and other ‘smart TV’ solutions combined with the ever-changing world of cloud services.…