Spotlight on gal.vin

App Spotlight: Directory Opus

Sat, 21 Dec 2019 21:27:20 +0000

Directory Opus is a file manager – remember those? I haven’t thought about them for years. DOpus (as it’s known for short) has a long history starting on the Commodore Amiga where in later versions it was available as a Workbench (the Amiga’s operating system) replacement. I only used Directory Opus version 4 on the Amiga, but it was a great file manager and was a great tool to have back then.

Directory Opus became available on Windows in the early 2000’s and is now up to version 12. I’ve been using it non-stop over the last few weeks to do a lot of file management where it’s really helped provide more features over standard Windows file explorer. DOpus is incredibly configurable. Almost everything about the program can be customised, even the visual aspects of the program, down to the icons. There is an active community around the program providing user created themes as well as advice and support. Support is also available from the developers. DOpus can be used as a separate program or as a complete Windows explorer replacement, much like the old Amiga versions of the program could be used to fully replace the OS. Even though there are plenty of free Windows file managers, Directory Opus is fully featured and, in my opinion, worth the $90 Australian. That is a one-time payment for the current version and all updates to the next major version. Looking back at the release history, major versions come out every few years and upgrade prices are discounted. You can run the program in evaluation mode for up to 60 days and see if it suits your needs. I highly recommend Directory Opus. It handles millions of files, complex operations and can help make heavy file management tasks much more manageable. You can check out Directory Opus at GPSoft’s website here: https://www.gpsoft.com.au

Please note: This post is not sponsored content. I purchased Directory Opus with my own funds.

If you would like to support me with a one-time donation then please use PayPal. If you are unable to or prefer not to support me monetarily, no problem! Sharing my work and following me on social media would be a huge help. Thanks!

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

App Spotlight: Windows Admin Center

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 12:12:04 +0000

At the time of writing Windows Admin Center has been around for almost 18 months, in those 18 months it’s come a long way and is still being actively developed and updated. It’s a simple install, can be installed on either Windows 10 or Server 2016/2019, doesn’t require an internet connection or Azure, and will work with your existing on-prem servers. It’s also free. Windows Admin Center (WAC) is a much needed tool for modernising the management of servers in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Cool. Why should I use it?

It seems like for years Microsoft have been trying to make a “Server Manager” that can be a central place to administer all of your servers, well that’s where Windows Admin Center comes in. But wait, there’s more! Not only can it manage on-premises servers, but also Azure Virtual Machines, Windows Server clusters and also Windows Server core (no desktop experience) servers. Up until now Windows Server core has been difficult and cumbersome to manage for many and in my experience WAC makes Server core feasible for a number of users where it might not have been before. WAC supports extensions. Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell and other manufacturers have already released extensions that add additional functionality. There’s a Light and Dark mode!

Installation

To install Windows Admin Center, go to the WAC home page and click download now to get the .msi file. Installing is just a simple “click next”. When complete the installer will tell you the URL to use to access it. Generally it’s https://servername.domain.name. WAC is being actively developed with the IT Pro community so if there’s something that’s missing, get involved with the Insider Program and help make this tool the best it can be. To obtain the preview version you’ll need to enrol in the Windows Insider program which is easy to do, just visit this link, login with your Microsoft account and follow the instructions.

If you want to get in touch with me please use the comments. I hope this article helps you out. Thank you.

-Mike

App Spotlight: Groove Music

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 20:40:49 +0000

Update 02/10/2017

The Groove Music service is being discontinued, here’s the blog post from Microsoft covering the details.

A small home project I’ve been working on recently is trying to consolidate all my personal music files along with deciding on a streaming service. Up until now I’ve only had my music files on my main PC and used Spotify along with a monthly subscription for tracks not in my personal library, but I really wanted one place to host my personal collection and also have access to a streaming catalogue. I looked into Microsoft’s Groove music service and discovered that it pretty much solved my problem.

Groove Music has some pretty great features without the music pass subscription, but if you do pay for the Groove Music Pass you’ll gain the following benefits:

Ad-free streaming music from the Groove music catalogue, plus features that depend on this functionality such as artist-based radio and playlists.
2 ‘offline’ devices, which means you can download music from the streaming catalogue for offline play.
An additional 100GB OneDrive cloud storage.

It’s worth mentioning that here in the UK right now, if you want to trial Groove Music Pass you can get 3 additional months, making it a 4 month trial in total. For me, a big benefit is having my personal music collection available anywhere by storing my music in OneDrive, as well as the Spotify-like features of playlists and streaming music that I don’t own. The ability to play your own music from OneDrive (and therefore anywhere with an internet connection) is free and a Music Pass isn’t required. Of course you have to have the space available in OneDrive for your music, so it’s nice that if you do pay for a Music Pass you get a good amount of extra space available. Moving my music collection to OneDrive was a relatively painless process, but there were a few things that I feel are worth noting. I moved my 70GB approx. ~10,500 files music collection from the local music folder under my user profile on my main PC, to a folder that I created called Music in OneDrive. According to Microsoft’s FAQ page documentation, he folder should be called Music in the root of OneDrive. It took some time to upload fully, but once it was completed, I launched the Groove Music app on my main Windows 10 PC (which I was logged into with my Microsoft Account) and the app scanned my files and detected them as being on OneDrive, rather than local.

I then launched the Groove Music iOS app for my phone and at first it didn’t show my music. Over the next day or so my music started to appear in the iOS app as well as in Groove Music on another PC signed in with my account. It took around 2 days for it to show everything. My main PC was left on during this time and I noticed that in the Groove Music settings, there’s a option called Sync my music which I did click after the first batch of files had uploaded and I believe these were also the first songs to appear in the iOS app. I had just assumed that when the files where uploaded, they would be instantly available in the iOS app, but alas not in my case. I’m not sure if that’s expected behaviour or whether I was just unlucky. My guess is that the music sync might be a part of a Windows 10 background sync process. Your mileage may vary, but should you do the same as me, eventually you should see all your OneDrive music.

I then downloaded launched the Xbox One app, which is near identical to the Windows 10 app except designed to be controlled with an Xbox controller. Like the iOS app, by this time the Xbox One app saw all my OneDrive music and music I had added from the Music Pass catalogue. I quite like the various versions of the Groove Music apps, I think they all feel right for their platforms. I previously used the Spotify app and felt it was good for the streaming catalogue but browsing and playing local files felt like an after thought - admittedly the focus of the app isn’t to play local music files. The Groove Music apps work well and have a nice looking full screen slideshow view, and on Windows 10 a nice mini-player mode - I would say the only thing that’s missing is WinAmp style visualisers and last I heard they are coming in a future update. With regards to the streaming catalogue itself, for the most part, I think it’s pretty well fleshed out. Most of the obscure stuff I listen to, I own myself, but I have come across an odd omission. Forewarning it’s obscure and I admit I’m nitpicking. Groove Music Pass has the Turrican Soundtrack Anthology, Vol 3. however Spotify has the Turrican Soundtrack Anthology, Vol 1, 2, 3 and 4 (I wasn’t even aware there was a 4!) I’m not sure exactly if this is a regional thing, whether there’s legal issues or contracts that need to be negotiated but I think in this very specific case, Groove’s catalogue could be improved in some areas. Otherwise I’ll probably stick with Groove Music for the foreseeable future. I think at the very least, with a 4 month trial it’s worth a look.

Windows 10 Groove Music mini-player.

Eventually the text fades away and all you see if the album art and the white progress bar at the bottom.

Windows 10 Groove Music full screen play mode

I take great care to test my ideas and make sure my articles are accurate before posting, however mistakes do slip through sometimes.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

Feature Spotlight: Night light

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 17:18:28 +0000

A feature that I’m very happy to see coming in the Creators Update for Windows 10 is Night light. It’s not exactly a headline feature, but I’m happy to see it and wanted to draw attention to it. What Night light does is change the colour temperature of the display as the sun sets, reducing the blue light and enabling your eyes to relax as you work into the night which, I personally do a lot. I already use f.lux to provide this feature and I’ve found it really makes a difference for me.

I used to be quite sceptical of these type of features and the utilities that provide them, but after trying f.lux it really helped me switch off at night. Although f.lux does change the colour temperature of your display, it’s easily disabled for doing colour sensitive work or watching movies, playing games, although I’ve found I leave it on for playing some games, such as Civilization VI.

In the current Windows Insider build, Night light can be enabled in Settings > Display

I’m a big fan of f.lux, but I’m looking forward to having this feature without having to install extra utilities. If you need to quickly turn off Night light for colour work, movie or games, you can do so via the action center.

Please note that having Night light turned on didn’t colour my screenshots, it’s working as an overlay on top of the normal image, not actually changing the colour of the pixels being displayed. Here’s a photo of Night light enabled on my Insider build machine. The white balance/screen viewing angle still doesn’t quite convey the effect, but it’s subtle and I find it pleasing.

You can always give it a go yourself when the update is released or by becoming a Windows Insider. To get started, check out the Insider website: https://insider.windows.com.

This is a small feature but I was pleasantly surprised to find it in the latest Insider build. Big headline features are great, but sometimes it’s the smaller features that I find myself looking forward to more.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

App Spotlight: Plex

Sun, 19 Feb 2017 13:12:45 +0000

Recently I’ve been looking at my home NAS/media server setup and been wanting to update it. Up until now, I’ve either watched movie and TV show DVD rips locally on my PC or on my Xbox 360/One through the media apps, served via DNLA from my old QNAP NAS. At some point the experience became very slow and clunky, either due to my NAS' DNLA server not being very good or the Xbox One media player app not being very good. Enter Plex.

I’d heard a great deal about Plex over the years but never really thought about setting it up. Plex requires a bit more setup than just a DNLA server, which served the raw folder structure from my NAS to my Xbox - simple. Plex, is best when your files are named and structured correctly, luckily mine were for the most part so I didn’t have much work to do, but even if your files aren’t there are apps that can rename them for you automatically, although I haven’t tried them personally. Reddit and the Plex forums are your best friend here. I decided to install the Plex server just on my main PC - it’s always on if I’m home, and I generally use it as a server anyway. I didn’t have many other options, my NAS is powered by a low powered chip and barley any RAM, so I didn’t feel comfortable even trying to install Plex on it, and my other server that I use as a Hyper-V lab, I don’t keep on all the time due to the power consumption. My main PC is quiet, on most of the time anyway, has more than enough RAM, and a decent enough CPU for Plex. It’s not that Plex has incredibly high requirements, it’s depends on what you want it to do. For me serving media to devices on my local network with no transcoding is all I required for the time being, so using my main PC is kind of overkill.

Installing the Plex Server install a application which runs at user login, so it doesn’t run as a service, although if you’re installing it on a real server it can be made to run as a service. Again, Reddit and the Plex forums are you’re best friend here. I don’t currently require this, so I can’t say how easy it is to do.

Once Plex is installed, setting it up is reasonably straight forward. Even with my media files being mostly named correctly I had problem getting my TV shows to be found and the media art added correctly, I solved this by removing the TV Show library and going into Settings and reordering the agents for the Shows so that The Movie Database was ticked and above the TheTVDB agent in both the TheTVDB tab and the The Movie Database tab. From what I gather, it seems to get the art from The Movie Database and the TV show information from TheTVDB. See the screenshots below.

After Plex has indexed all your media, it is now ready to serve it. The beauty of Plex is that it will convert your media on the fly for the device you’re viewing it on. It can also be setup to work over the internet, so you can watch your media on your phone during your lunch break at work or school. You can also watch via a web browser on your home network or via the Plex app which you can install on your home consoles and media players. On the Xbox One, it was as simple as going to the store, searching for Plex and installing it.

There we have it, much prettier and more flexible than a plain DNLA server.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike