Yes, this is the big one for me. Seemingly unlike a lot of folks, Plex is my main music server. Years ago I ripped all my CDs (1800+, IIRC) and Plex + Plexamp is really, really, really good for listening. I haven't yet found anything else that works as well.
I use Plexamp on desktop/laptop computers and then the Android and iOS apps for on-the-go music. I tried Symfonium [1] because it seemed promising and would give me a Jellyfin path, but it was weird and kinda buggy and ate my phone's battery.
I'm hopeful there'll be a good replacement available eventually, but for now, I just have to stick with Plex.
I use (and contribute to) Finamp the Jellyfin PlexAmp alternative and it's just done a 1.0.0 release which brings it up to parity with PlexAmp for me. I've previously been a long time PlexAmp user but FinAmp now does everything I want it to.
Looks like it isn't on the android play store though? Any info on this?
Play tells me there is a version for a prior version of android, which is won't let me install. Not helpful...
Yeah PlexAmp is amazing. Feels like it's the only music client around these days that has a functional "shuffle by album" option, instead of treating my library as only a collection of individual songs.
> Feels like it's the only music client around these days that has a functional "shuffle by album" option
foobar2000 has this!
After trying dozens of music clients (including PlexAmp) I eventually settled on simply using foobar2000 pointed to an smb share - nothing else seems capable of properly handling playback by folder structure. (e.g. I've got all my Led Zeppelin albums in the "Led Zeppelin" folder, and I want to just select it and play their discography in album release order.)
My audio needs have been satisfied for many years with subsonic, then airsonic, and now navidrome. They all expose the same subsonic API, which gives quite some flexibility on the audio player client to use. At the moment, Tempus (Android) seems well maintained, but I miss from DSub the lower clarity as to what is cached for offline consumption.
yeah I'm in a boat of similar shape. plex and plexamp is very simple and plug and play - it handles the IP stuff for remote play, which is the tough part for me.
I don't mind lacking features in the server or the client honestly, if I can find and play an album or playlist I'm good. But the connectivity piece can be hard if you're not familiar with self host stuff. I tried to do Jellyfin and Tailscale and some client and it... kind of worked? But it was definitely not as seamless.
I do hope every year that it's my last year paying for Plex. Maybe this year!
I'm fortunate that somehow I ended up with a lifetime PlexPass for... I want to say like $50 a bunch of years back?
Because yes, the remote stuff -- and PlexAmp just working the same wherever I am -- is the huge part of it. Music sits on my NAS and things... just work.
I also really like how easy the caching and offline mode is, because I frequently find myself driving in areas without mobile data service. I keep a couple favorite albums downloaded to my phone, then knowing the app will cache the next ~2 albums of queued tracks generally makes it Just Work.
I personally use Apple Photos for this. It stores the original, plus makes them nicely searchable, so I have a Hazel action that takes screenshots from the desktop (and from my NAS where mobile devices back them up) and imports them.
I build and maintain trails for hiking and mountain biking. We build a new trail or change a route and I can just put it in OSM and off it goes into all the other systems. And then I can pull the data back and use it to make maps for planning, signage... whatever.
Google you just give them data, in their format, without all the nice OSS tools that have developed around OSM and... Let them use it. I'm wholly uninterested in contributing to Google, most especially because the barrier to entry is so high.
I absolutely love OpenStreetMap. Back when I first started building (legal) mountain bike trails I realized that without a map they aren't the most useful. OSM gave me the system in which to document them, and then from there I was able to reuse the data to make print maps and eventually my current project: https://trailmaps.app
100% this. I use OsmAnd very very frequently (it displays on my dash via Android Auto whenever I drive), but try and do something like load a GPX and show the line in a given color... Or add a pin at a specific point... It's not straightforward at all.
Summary quote from IMDB: "The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war against Canada."
I love this kind of step-by-step solving post, but it bothers me that the author didn't track down what the JPEG in the Alternate Data Stream (ADS) was for. Something put it there... Might it be a surprise when it ends up not being there later?
Also, it kinda sounds like the UNAS might not be supporting ADS' for some reason? That alone could be a problem later on...
Yes, I certainly wouldn't have just skipped past ADS not working. Since samba and zfs support it, this is weird that Ubiquiti wouldn't. If this isn't just a config problem, I would call it cause to return the device.
Not ESP32, but development in general with (let's just say) "AI", I've gone to a dedicated machine. I'm not sure how many peers have told me, or articles I've read, saying to use containers/VMs/whatever, but taking an old-but-still-decent business class laptop, slapping Ubuntu on it, and running right in the native OS has so much less admin overhead.
I can just turn it off. I can unplug it from the network if I'm worried. I can easily isolate it network-wise using just a VLAN and normal firewalls. Hardware connectivity (ESP32 stuff I'm doing this weekend) -- as you describe -- is just easier.
Maybe it's just me and I haven't used it much, but my fairly non-technical wife has a Cricut and the few times I've wanted to use it I had absolutely no problem creating a vector in whatever program (Illustrator or Affinity Designer, IIRC) and getting it to separate the color layers and cut at the desired size.
The Electron app felt a bit weird, but I was able to accomplish the goal of cutting out my design at a desired size, so I didn't think any more about it. <shrug>
It seemed more to me that their app leans hard into getting people to buy vector designs through them, and making it easy for those who might not even understand what a "vector" graphic is, but it didn't seem to preclude me from cutting out my own stuff.
> but my fairly non-technical wife has a Cricut and the few times I've wanted to use it I had absolutely no problem
This is this is one of those situations of knowing their audience. The machine is nice and does some impressive things for the price. Their software works fine for the people that the hardware was designed.
I too have designed things in Illustrator and imported them into their software. It took a bit of getting used to, but I've designed retail packaging with cuts and scores so I can create custom boxes that I was not able to find premade and having the custom design made was too expensive. Could the design software be better? Of course, but that software would be out of reach for their target audience. So instead, I've stopped holding it wrong, and work within its constraints.
> Their software works fine for the people that the hardware was designed.
HARD disagree. Go look at all the youtube videos of craft people finding insane workarounds to try and get it to do things outside of the narrow lane of accepted uses.
One small example. It has a pen plotter mode. But it has no way to
1) generate single-line text (like a Hershey font) - the only text mode is outlines.
Well, you need a font that is single-line by design. Then it works just fine. There are some single-line default fonts, too. For filling shapes, there is no automated cross-hatch or anything, that's true, but you could create such a pattern in a vector program.
I tend to think this comes from the Cricut being a cutter first, with the pen stuff a sort of also-can-do add-on. I suspect that very, very few of the device owners are expecting it to be a plotter.
> This is this is one of those situations of knowing their audience. The machine is nice and does some impressive things for the price. Their software works fine for the people that the hardware was designed.
Very much so. When she (my wife) was first looking at getting one I went down the whole "maybe you should get an X, Y, or Z instead..." and then began thinking about her having to learn a more complicated design package, seeing how cheap some of the different Cricut tools can be when bought on sale, and I realized that it probably was just fine.
Sure, it's not a pro level device, but it did allow her to easily get shapes cut out of vinyl or cardboard or whatever with very little ease. The software worked for someone without a background in traditional design software. And it really didn't cost that much.
Few years on she still uses it, it works well enough... And that's it.
I sometimes/often think/realize the HN crowd falls hard into the technical perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good, and a number of the replies here clearly illustrate that.
For my purposes, it was the thing that took the PoC to MVP to get physical things into hands of people. It took me from "never gonna happen" because of price to purchase minimum order quantities that I would never use all of in multiple lifetimes, or fiddle with a tool targeted at crafting/hobby world and get it done.
If I sold it today, I'd get enough money where ($purchasePrice - $sellPrice) > $valueToMeForUsing. That seems like a pretty good deal for something that did that job I asked of it.
Reading your comment it sounds like you're asking the author to do more work to potentially/likely undercut their own sales. They are already offering a quality device at a reasonable price without any untoward restrictions.
If you want a Free work-alike, why don't /you/ put in the work and make it happen?
I use Plexamp on desktop/laptop computers and then the Android and iOS apps for on-the-go music. I tried Symfonium [1] because it seemed promising and would give me a Jellyfin path, but it was weird and kinda buggy and ate my phone's battery.
I'm hopeful there'll be a good replacement available eventually, but for now, I just have to stick with Plex.
[1] https://www.symfonium.app/
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