22 February 2015

Why is there no more space on my computer?

Possibly system restore is creating more restore points, or you haven't emptied your recycle bin in a while?
Get C-Cleaner to clean up temporary files.
Get TreeSize Free to determine where all the space in your computer is being used.
Go to DownloadMoreRAM to get more memory for your computer for free.

Climate Change

Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos episode on climate change was really compelling. The planet Venus is a great example of what could happen and the importance of balance.

Brian Cox believes that nuclear fusion research would be the best source of energy right now, whereas Neil believes either artificial photosynthesis or solar farms would be able to power our civilization millions of times over.

Algae is the best producer of oxygen purely because of the surface area - trees only account for 20-30% of all oxygen.

13 February 2015

Why should we use 7-zip, instead of Windows' in-built zip compression?


  • Free (open source) (as opposed to WinZip and WinRAR) and still in development
  • Excellent compression ratios and a customisable level of compression for many formats
  • Support for opening ISO, WIM, RAR and many more formats
  • 64-bit support
  • Very small installer (only 1MB)
  • Windows' in-built compression format does not warn you if the folder you're trying to extract the folders to is too deep - instead it gives you a red herring password prompt
  • Opening ZIPS with Windows in-built can take a long time - 7-zip is near instantaneous for regular sets of files

There are a couple of points against:

  • 7-zip isn't the most user friendly - WinZip is better, but it's certainly a lot less cluttered
  • When creating multipart files, the 'DVD' option is set to 4480MB - if you try an burn a file this size with Windows's burning tool, it won't tell you that the file will actually get slightly trimmed. So I would recommend using CDburnerXP, or InfraRecorder instead, or if you reduce it to 4400MB then it will work fine.