Jonathan Markevich

All that Snoo

  • Password Keeper

    I’ve been a huge fan of 1Password since the beginning. I bought several versions and upgrades for multiple machines and never regretted it. Something happened with version 7 though, and I haven’t been as happy with the change. What happened was subscriptions.  Now, I have a number of software subscriptions, very very few make me…

  • iTunes Without the iTunes Part

    I have been archiving all of my purchased media for quite some time now, I like the flexibility of a digital copy, but also flexibility to view it how and where I choose (i.e. Plex).  That usually means a lot of disc ripping, and I have set up a decent system and workflow to do…

  • M-Audio StudioPro 3 repair

    First of all, let me say “hi there, Googlers!” I owned the M-Audio StudioPro 3 speakers for quite a few years before they started to fail on me.  They were not too bad, gave decent sound at reasonable desktop volume.  In the last year or so, the right speaker conked out.  Well, it played, but…

  • Clown Sized Phone

    Despite my earlier misgivings, I got a biggie size phone – the iPhone 8 Plus.  After lots of research and analysis, I realized an error in my previous logic.  I said: It loses the magic of convenience that is so important to me in the iPhone. That seems now to be a matter of perspective.…

  • Mounting Cloud Drives

    Cloud drives are everywhere. OneDrive, Google, Dropbox, Amazon, Box, and a dozen others I haven’t remembered.  You can create your own with OwnCloud or even just WebDAV if you need. But the problem with having a half-dozen cloud drives (and we all do) is a half-dozen sync apps to interface with them.  That can go…

  • Rescuing Encrypted files on ACD

    So Amazon is shutting out Linux users.  But what if I have a bunch of encrypted files there using old encfs and acd_cli scripts? I can copy down the encrypted files using their client at any point, but how will I know which one is which? I did the following.  First, create a temporary directory.…

  • Amazon Drive Shutouts

    Amazon is in the process of revoking API keys for a number of apps used to access their Cloud Drive product.  They started with acd_cli and have now banned rclone, and apparently Stablebit CloudDrive.  As more users of these products filter into fewer and fewer available options, the API hit from those products will certainly…

  • Managing Encrypted files on Amazon Cloud Drive

    I have implemented a file system on Amazon Cloud Drive for a lot of media with the great acd_cli.  To protect my privacy, I have run this through an encryption layer encfs.  My writeup will follow. A problem I was trying to solve in my mind though, is how to manage – rename and delete…

  • A Dip in the Music Stream

    Music streaming has become a big deal in the last few years.  People don’t seem to care about bandwidth, they know its a resource that seems to be basically infinite (if metered). My problem is that it almost seems like the users are treating music the same way. I reflect back to my discovery of music.…

  • The Best eBook Reader, Again

    I came to the realization a few years ago that the eBook reader Marvin was hands down, the best ePub reader for me.  Very flexible, configurable and some (still) unique features made it well worth the price. That was, as I mentioned, a few years ago and I started to get a little frustrated with…