Musings and things that amuse us

WinDirStat: Windows Directory Statistics is a Windows utility which allows you to view disk space usage, broken down by:

• Folder/Directory – percentage of parent folder allows you to identify the folders taking up the most space.
• File type summary – useful for seeing how much space your pictures take up
• Individual files

The graphical view, called TreeMap, allows you to easily identify the largest files.

After installing and letting it analyze my disk, I was able to instantly free up 2.0 GB which was used by archives of old database backups I had forgotton about.

WinDirStat took 12 minutes and 39 seconds to analyze my disk which contains 36, 406 folders and 460,374 files totalling 54.5 GB.

And the best bit it is open source (hosted on SourceForge.net) and free.

Found this Web 2.0 site which creates animated gifs.

You specify:

• Style
• Background color (any) or transparent
• Foreground colour (any)

It calls itself the “ Ajax loading gif generator“; however, it is ironic that it doesn’t behave like an Ajax based Web 2.0 (is this redundant) Web site, since pages are reloaded; nor does it remember the transparency setting.

Anyways, free, fun and useful – win, win all around.

Hat tip to Matt, who points us to Full Code Press, a 24 hour contest to build a Web site for non-profits; the idea is cool in itself, yet gets way cooler when you realize the organizing committee is comprised of Australians and New Zealanders.

The event will take place in Australia on August 18, 2007; entries close June 29.  For more information visit the Web Industry Professionals Association Incorporated (Australia) or Webstock (New Zealand).