Hey, Where'd My Space Go?

Recently I was doing some routine stuff when I noticed the was a LOT less space on my main hard-drive than I expected. I was down to less than 500MB of space! I remember the days when I was smug about having a 30MB drive when the guy working on the next PC only had a 20MB drive. It's hard to believe in this age of relatively gigantic drives we can still fill them up without too much effort. I guess we can put it down to the ever increasing filesizes driven by higher pixel counts of digital cameras, the recent epidemic of software bloat, and the invention of peer-to-peer file sharing.

I needed to free up some space, so I dug out my favourite drive-space analysis tool. It's pretty lean and has a great interface, so I thought I would share it here.



This is Steffen Gerlach's freeware application for Windows called Scanner. Once the application has scanned your drive, you can drill down through each folder of the sunburst chart to easily identify what has been gobbling up your drive space. Admittedly the initial scanning can take a few minutes, but no more than it takes to grab a cup of coffee.

How To: Use a PS3 with LCD monitor

This topic is a little step away from my usual content but the question has come up a couple of times lately and I thought I'd post a "How To" guide.

Many owners are content with using their TV for PlayStation 3 games and Blu-ray DVD. Some will be taking advantage of recent advances in HDTV and using an HDMI cable, while others are stuck with standard TV via an RCA AV cable or SCART (in Europe).

If you own a recently manufactured LCD monitor, then it's possible that you could take advantage of the PS3's HD capabilities without having to shell out for a new HDTV. Many LCD models feature a DVI input (digital) as well as SVGA (analog).


Converting HDMI -> DVI
The PlayStation3 has two different audio/video outputs. The HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port will transmit uncompressed digital data for video and audio. We can covert this to a monitor friendly format by using a HDMI->DVI cable. This cable drops the audio data but allows the digital video data to plug into a standard monitor DVI input. I'm using one of these cheap HDMI->DVI cables into a LG FLATRON W2042T and I'm more than happy with the result. The monitor also accepts SVGA which I use for my PC and switch between the two using the monitor's "Source" button.

What about audio?
The HDMI->DVI conversion drops the audio data - since most monitors don't support audio, especially not digital audio, you're probably going to need something else to produce the sound. The PlayStation 3 simultaneously produces output on both HDMI and AV channels, so we can use the AV audio feed. In my set up I am plugging the Red and White RCA leads into a Logitech X-230 Multimedia Speaker System via an adaptor that came with the speakers (2x RCA female to stereo 3.5mm female). This is probably the best sounding system in the lower price bracket and features a handy headphone jack on the front of one speaker.

What about Xbox 360?
As I understand it, this technique will not work with the the XBox 360 as it only transmits data on either HDMI OR standard AV. Apparently you can plug your Xbox 360 into SVGA using this Xbox 360 VGA Component Audio Cable. I've not seen the output quality, but from what I've read it's quite acceptable, although some users experience ghosting on text.

HiPPOs and A/B Tests

This 20 minute video from videolectures.net is good food for thought. It's got some great anecdotes about some big industry players and how hard it is to guess how users will react to UI changes. Well worth watching when you get a chance.


Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web:
Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO
Ron Kohavi

FontSoup Screensaver

One weekend back in the middle of 2008, I spent a little bit of time rewriting the FontSoup Screensaver that I created back in 2001. It was long overdue for a revamp. The new incarnation is a lot more polished and now has two configurable display modes (Rainbow or Muted Tones).



This version displays your TrueType fonts in an elegant Win32 screensaver. You can download FontSoup 2.0 now for free.

Essential Add-on Tools for Firefox

Any good developer should have a few different browsers installed in order to check things are working properly in all of them. I currently have Firefox 2 and 3, Opera and IE6 installed and have IE7 on another box. I haven't gotten around to installing Chrome yet, but I guess I will have to sooner or later.

Firefox 3 is my browser of choice and here's why:

• Tabbed browsing
  
• Decent rendering engine
  
• Live Bookmarks (Feeds)
  
• Ctrl+U access to Page Source
  
• Useful Add-ons
  

I don't like how much memory Firefox hogs, but it's much better than it used to be and maybe I should curb my tab usage. Sometimes the Shockwave Flash plugin flakes out and won't play until I disable/enable it or restart the browser, but that could also be related to tab usage too.

The following Add-ons are the reason Firefox is the first browser I'll turn to. They are incredibly valuable additions to your development toolbox. You've probably already got many of them installed.

Firebug allows you to "edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page." I couldn't count the number of times I've right-clicked to Inspect Element. It has a tiny footprint in your status bar when you're not using it. This is the best web debugging tool I've used.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

Web Developer adds a toolbar and menu that allow you to manage cookies, CSS, Forms, Images, Outline elements along with a host of other tools. Highlights for me are the Cookie management, Outlining elements (to help debug layout issues) and the Error Console for debugging Javascript.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

NoScript is a security add-on that allows you to protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks by only allowing active content to run from sites that you trust. It's this flexible script blocking approach that also makes it a useful debugging tool. You probably should have it installed to see how borked your sites are - it has a huge user base.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

ScreenGrab lets you save webpages as images. You can grab the whole page or just the visible portion, or even copy it to the clipboard. No more copy+pasting sections together to screenshot a long page.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146

Adblock Plus allows you to browse without ads. It works very well and is incredibly popular because of that. Users love it, advertisers and websites dependant on ad revenue hate it. As long as flash banners keep soaking up CPU cycles, I'll keep using it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

YSlow for Firebug analyzes your web pages and tells you why they're slow (based on Yahoo's rules for high performance web sites). Some of the criteria is a bit subjective or inapproriate for smaller sites, but generally it offers some good tips.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5369

SeoQuake SEO extension helps you "deal with search engine optimization(SEO) and internet promotion of web sites." It's possibly a little bloated for some users, but it does cover a lot of bases. It's worth checking out if you're doing any SEO work.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036