Category: Useful Applications

I use HyperV quite a bit and it is easier to mount an image file as a pseudo-DVD into the VM for installing software than to copy the installers into the VM. The easiest way I’ve found for doing this is an application called ImgBurn.

ImgBurn bills itself as “…a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit“. It has quite a lot of functionality for creating image files, but I really only use the simple process of turning files and folders into an image for mounting:

I take a lot of screenshots and often want to get them the same size; if dealing with a browser this can be difficult over a period of time, so I did some investigation and found an application called Sizer which can be used to accurately resize and reposition windows.

The application is free and, based on my experience so far, very easy to both configure and use.

• Hot keys. Sizer actions, including bringing up the main resizing menu, can be assigned to a hot key that can be used at any time. e.g. by default pressing Ctrl+Win+Z brings up the Sizer context menu. This saves you hunting out the window border to right click it.
• Macros and expressions. Specify sizes and positions as formula. e.g. 0.7 * w:mon results in a value that is 70% of the width of the current monitor. With macros you can position several windows at the same time allowing you to layout multiple applications the way you want them. Further documentation will follow but in the meantime you can consult the railroad diagrams for details of the syntax.
• Menu groups. Simplify and tidy up the Sizer menu by creating cascading menus with groups.
• Portable. Run Sizer from a USB pen drive or keep your configurations in one place.
• Configuration file management. Export and import settings via the user interface.

I’ve tried a few FTP clients across the years, but alays come back to FileZilla as it is easy to use and seems to manage uploads/downloads better than the other ones I have tried. I work on a few different PCs and manage over a dozen different websites.

I quickly got tired of needing to create connection details on each PC when I wanted to access a site. I did some poking around on one of the computers (the one with most connections created) and found that the settings are stored in %AppData%\FileZilla; one of the files is sitemanager.xml which holds all of the details for the created connections.

It is a simple case of copying the file from that folder on one PC to the same folder on the other PCs and I have the same connections available, without the need to manually create them.

After visiting Italy in 2020 I started using Duolingo, but gave up on the Italian after a short time and switched over to learning German.

I decided I might not make it back to Italy again so there wasn’t much point learning the language, but I listen to a lot of German music so learning German would have an immediate benefit.

It did leave me with the Italian language course hanging around (along with Latin which was not intentionally added) and which I wanted to remove. Most of my use of Duolingo is via the Android app, but there appears not to be a way of removing a course via the app (or if there is it is very well hidden).

I did some exploring on their website. If you hover over your avatar in the top right corner, a meu will appear; select Settings.

Click on Learning language and then on MANAGE COURSES:

Continue reading “Remove a Language Course from Duolingo”

This post is part of the short series on using Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address.

With a No-IP account created with No-IP the next, and final, step is to install the Dynamic DNS Update Client. This does updates on a paeriodic basis to keep your current IP address in sync with your No-IP host or domain.

The client can be downloaded from here:

Continue reading “Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Installing No-IP Client”

This post is part of the short series on using Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address.

Signing up to No-IP for a free account is nice and easy to do. Using the browser of your choice, navigate to https://www.noip.com, enter the hostname you want and select the domain from the list of free ones and click the green ,em>Sign Up button:

Continue reading “Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Creating An Account”

This post is part of the short series on using Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address.

No-IP is a service which has been around for quite a long time now (I remember using a competitor of theirs back in 2004 (and possibly earlier) to use an external DNS entry to access a web server I was running at home on a dynamic IP address (my ISP at the time didn’t offer static IP addresses and I didn’t sign up for one wit my current provider).

No-IP as a company have several offerings, but the one I am looking at in this series is the Free Dynamic DNS offering which allows for 3 hostnames on a limited set of domains and requires you to confirm the DNS every 30 days. There are two paid offering with more hostnames, domains and which do not expire, but I only need one hostname so the free option is sufficient and I don’t mind clicking a link on an email to renew every 30 days.

As well as my use case of remotely accessing a NAS or computer, No-IP can allow you to access any Internet enabled device on your home network even when you have a dynamic IP address (if you have a static IP then you could connect just using the IP address, although using a hostname is easier to remember); there may be configuration required on your router to forward ports to the devices on your network.

I’ve also had my dad sign up and install No-IP so I can easily access his system remotely to help out with any problems he is having.

I do a lot of travelling for work and often want to connect to my home system to access a NAS or a computer which has been left on. Unfortunately, I have a dynamic IP address which means the IP address changes whenever the router restarts and, living in rural England, glitches which cause a router restart are not uncommon.

The solution to this is to use No-IP; a service I will introduce over the next few posts starting with what it is and how it works trough to setting it up and installing the update client.

The series index (below) will automatically update as each post goes live over the next few days, unless you’re reading it via a syndicated feed, in which case check Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address for the new posts.

Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address
What Is No-IP?
Creating An Account
Installing No-IP Client