Matt

Odrive or ExpanDrive for Cloud Unification?

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17/12/2017 UPDATE: This comparison was based on ExpanDrive 5. ExpanDrive 6 has been released with some big changes. Check out my review! I’ll be updating this article soon to represent a comparison between Odrive and ExpanDrive 6

That is the question I am presently trying to work out, but to what end?

Well, Odrive and ExpanDrive both provide unified access to your cloud providers as though they were local drives on your computer. What this means is that you can do away with file synchronisation and the need to store local copies of files.

As an example, a typical Dropbox setup would have your Dropbox folder on your computer where you store everything. If your local hard drive gets full then you need to look at what you can remove by selectively synchronising the files you need and not the ones you don’t. The downside of this is that when you do need some of those files you chose to stop synchronising you have to either re-sync them or download them from the web interface, neither of which is ideal. Odrive and ExpanDrive take this and say ok, how about we just synchronise the files we need as we need them and until we need them they live in the cloud, thus freeing up lots of local disk space. In addition to that, they enable access in the same way to multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon Drive, Google Drive, Amazon S3, OneDrive, Box and more.

Which one is better, though? I don’t want to fork out cash for something I don’t use in the long run, and ultimately I’d like to use it across a few computers without paying extra.

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How Do You Move Apple Photos to Dropbox or an External Hard Drive in OS X El Capitan?

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A good question.

I recently needed to move my iCloud connected Apple Photos library to an external hard drive as it was taking up too much space on my laptop. Since I was doing that anyway I decided to also put it in my Dropbox so that I could get an extra backup of it as well.

If you just move the library and then delete it, Apple Photos tends to not like you too much. Apple has made it possible to move the location fairly easily though, you just need to do the steps in the right order. Here is the process I used.

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Need to add an external hard drive to your Mac Time Machine backup?

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I’ve moved my Dropbox onto an external hard drive because it’s just too big to store all the files I use regularly on my local hard drive. However, I like to keep a local backup in addition to the Dropbox backup, so I wanted to add it to my Time Machine which has more than enough room for the extra drive. Here’s how I did it in 50 seconds.

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Lautoka Fijian South Sea Island Experience

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Welcome to South Sea Island

We had trouble finding much useful information online or from people we know about things to see and do in Lautoka, Fiji, the third stop and first Fijian port on our South Pacific cruise on the Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas. As a result, we didn’t book any shore excursions in advance. After reading … Read more

What Does The Bible Say About Being Attacked and When You Don’t Know What To Do?

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I’ve been reading Ephesians 6 this morning, and it occurred to me, the armour of God in and of itself helps to answer a lot of questions about what to do, both in every day life, but also when we are under attack.

If we put on the belt of truth (Ephesians 6:14), it dictates that we have to be honest.

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Getting the best value currency exchange on Royal Caribbean

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On our South Pacific cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas we were sitting with another passenger who was not impressed that when he made a payment on his SeaPass account he only got USD$0.63 for each AUD$1.00 when the exchange rate that day was USD$0.74. I’ve also read a number of complaints from others on blogs and forums, with people questioning why this is and if Royal is taking a cut beyond the 3% exchange fee they publicise.

I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that there are factors that can influence it. For example, it is possible for Royal Caribbean to buy say AUD$100,000,000 at the start of the Australian season for a ship at an exchange rate of USD$0.63. They can then operate the entire season off the Australian dollars they purchased to start with, they then know exactly what their Australian budget is for the season and while there can be unexpected costs it allows them to know pretty close to exactly what their expenditure is going to be. This means they can plan for the season more cost effectively. It also means that for the duration of the cruise season the exchange rate when exchanging on board the ship is the rate that they purchased Australian currency at to start with. This means the exchange rate on board the ship remains the same and simplifies currency exchange for crew and passengers by allowing them to know exactly what it is for the entire season.

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Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas Virtual Balcony Room 9593 Final Review and Thoughts

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After spending 12 nights aboard Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas in room 9593, a virtual balcony room, it has proven to be a very comfortable place to live for that period of time.

The room is larger than regular interior rooms tend to be and has a king bed that can be split into two singles. It also has a small but comfortable armchair with footrest, dressing table, bar fridge, kettle with tea, coffee and mugs, in room safe, reasonable cupboard, safe, flat screen TV on a swivel arm, and bathroom. The bathroom is much the same as what is on other ships in interior, oceanview and balcony staterooms with a basin, large mirror, a hidden cupboard behind the mirror in the corner, toilet, and a curved shower.

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How To: Export OP1a compliant MXF video files in Adobe Premiere for Channel 7

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In Australia, one of the formats commonly used for television broadcast files is OP1a compliant MXF. Channel 7 has very specific requirements for how the file should be formatted for their primary and all their secondary channels. MXF is essentially a container, and inside it is the video content, the audio content, and it can also include the subtitle content. If you’ve never worked with broadcast media before it is a bit of an obscure format that you will probably not have heard of. Fortunately Adobe Premiere makes it extremely easy to export into this format. Below you will find the settings I use that are accepted by Channel 7. I cannot promise that your media will be accepted using the same settings, but I can’t see any reason it wouldn’t be.

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Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas Flowrider Review

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Matt on the Voyager of the Seas Flowrider

I’ll start this off by saying: I’ve never used a Flowrider before and I am not a surfer either, I have never surfed.

The only places I’ve been that have one have been theme parks and it’s always been where I haven’t brought swimmers (eg the one they used to have at Dreamworld) or it isn’t included in the standard ticket and you have to pay more (eg Wet’n’Wild), so it’s just never happened.

Since we were on Voyager of the Seas for 12 nights which included 6 sea days I decided it was time to give it a go, even if there was a long queue.

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