SpaceMonger vs. SpaceSniffer

Out of the 4TB that I got for my NAS a year ago, only 14GB is left. Time to find out what's been hogging my disk and purge some files.

Tried out two freeware utilities: SpaceMonger 1.4 and SpaceSniffer 1.3.0.1. SpaceMonger has since been acquired by Stardock and has gone commercial. What we'll be reviewing is the old freeware version.

If you're not too fussy, either is just fine. Both works as advertised, no installation required. SpaceMonger (SM) is 105kB in size; SpaceSniffer (SS) is much bigger at 1.6MB. And there's a reason for that. While SM reads a drive, then presents the drive usage as a static treemap, SS is able to analyze drives and arbitrary folder paths, and updates the treemap in realtime. No need to hit refresh. I guess, due to this feature, it seems like that SS is faster.

Looks like the winner is SpaceSniffer!

Card Trick #5: Identifying a Random Card (Multiple Cuts)

The trick here is to memorize the bottom card without the volunteer noticing.
Ask the volunteer to pick out a card and place it at the bottom of the deck.
Ask him to cut the deck multiple times.
Fan out the cards. The chosen card will be to the right of the card you memorized.

Card Trick #4: Identifying a Random Card (Multiple Deals)

Deal a row of three cards.
Continue dealing overlapping three cards per row until you have three columns of seven cards.
Ask your friend to select and memorize a card, and tell you which column it's in, but not tell you what it is.
Pick up the three columns of cards, making sure the column with the chosen card is in the middle of the stack.
Deal again in the same way - seven columns of three cards. Ask your friend to identify the column with the chosen card. Gather up the cards witht the chosen column in the middle of the stack.
Do this again twice.
On your fourth deal, the chosen card will be the middle card of the middle column.
At this point, you can pretty much reveal the chosen card any way you like. Shuffle the cards, cut them, fan them out and pick it out as if by magic.
Even better, use the Magician's Choice. This force basically uses selective discard and retention of cards to give an illusion that your friend is the one choosing the cards, but in reality you're forcing them to choose one.
For example, lay out the chosen (middle) column into a row of 21. Ask your friend to select three card. If the chosen card was not selected, discard and select again. Once selected, retain the three cards, and discard the rest. Next, ask him to select two cards - using the same principle until he ends up with the chosen card.

Card Trick #3: Aces Together

For this trick, the aces end up on top of 4 piles of cards, even after multiple shuffles and deals.
Keep the four aces on top of the deck, and do some false riffle shuffles.
Hand the deck to your friend, and ask him to deal (face down) and to stop any time he likes.
Now ask him to pick up the cards and deal them into four piles.
Once done, ask him to turn over the top cards of each file. Aces all.

Card Trick #2: Keeping the Face and Ace Cards Together

Collect the face and ace cards in four piles.
Make up a story about the aces being the best of friends, which is why they always stick together. The same goes for the kings, queens, and jacks. They make such a commotion when they're together, so the teacher decided to split them up.
Lay out the aces in one row, deal the four kings on top of each aces. Do the same for the queens and jacks. You end up with four piles with A, K, Q, J each.
Turn the four piles face down and stack them up in one big pile. Ask your friend to cut the cards to separate them even more.
Deal the first four cards face down, deal the next four on top, and so on.
Turn over the cards, and the face and ace cards are still grouped together.

Card Trick #1: Cards of Same Suit Always in Order

For this trick, you'll need all 13 cards of the same suit, sorted in order.
You'll be dealing out the cards, and your friend will help you mix them up. When he says "Deal", you'll deal out one card face down. When he says "Double deal", slide the top card under the next card, then deal them both together.
This gives the impression that the order has been changed, but in reality, it's the same as dealing two cards separately - leaving the order untouched.
Once all the cards have been dealt, turn the cards over to find them all still in order.

Windows 10 Guest Account

Had some overseas guests staying with us, and realized that Windows 10 doesn't support guest accounts anymore. By guest account, I mean an account where you don't need to be authenticated, but can still use the PC and the internet. Not allowed to change any Windows settings though.

As far as I can tell, the guest account option is well and truly gone in Windows 10. There are lots of websites out there that tell you how to do it, but:

• they either don't work and just mess up your OS, or
• they're actually just a standard user account that is not as restrictive as the real guest account

If you're fine with option two, then read on.

1) Run Command Prompt as administrator.
2) Create a user account called Visitor. Can be any name as long as it's not Guest.
> net user Visitor /add /active:yes
3) Create a password for the Visitor account. Double-enter if you don't want to enter any password.
> net user Visitor *
4) Remove the Visitor account from the default Users group.
> net localgroup users Visitor /delete
5) Add the Visitor account to the Guests users group.
> net localgroup guest Visitor /add

To delete the Visitor user account, just go to Settings > Accounts, select the Visitor account and click Remove.

Now, apparently this does not actually give you a "real" restricted guest account, even though Visitor is part of the Guests user group. When you open up Computer Management, and read the description of the Guests user group, it says, "Guests have the same access as members of the Users group by default, except for the Guest account which is further restricted." If that is true, then might as well create a local (non-Microsoft) standard user.

1. Go to Settings > Accounts.
2. Under Other people, click on "Add someone else to this PC"
3. Scroll down and click on "I don't have this person's sign-in information"
4. Again, scroll down and click on "Add a user without a Microsoft account"

Connecting Fronius Datalogger to Solar.web

First thing you'd want to do after having your solar (PV) system installed is to monitor how much power the solar panels are generating. Most inverters will have an LCD panel in front to show the relevant stats. But if you're like me, you probably don't want to be standing in front of the inverter out in the sun (or inside the garage) just scrolling through the numbers. Most inverters would also have realtime monitoring available through an online portal. In the case of Fronius, they have an app called Fronius Solar.web Live on Android and IOS, and an online portal called Solar.web at www.solarweb.com.

Two ways to get the inverter connected to your home WiFi network to get data monitoring going. The first is using an online wizard (wizard.solarweb.com), which you can access via a web browser (desktop or mobile). I tried using a desktop PC running Windows, and for some reason it didn't work. Second option is to call the commissioning wizard from within the app. Just click on the red icon on the lower right corner of the app.

Setup procedure is similar to how you would integrate wireless speakers and Chromecasts to your home network. Basically, you pair your app to the device using a special WiFi access point provided by the device. You provide the SSID and password of the home WiFi, so that the device can connect to the Internet, and continue the setup process from there.

The inverter access point is enabled from the inverter panel - under the Setup tab. Note that the inverter AP will only be active for an hour, so try to finish the setup by then. Ideally, the app should automatically switch APs, but if it doesn't, the inverter panel will display the SSID and password (12345678) anyway. Once connected, a form comes up and you'll have to specify the ff. information:

• feed-in tariff
• grid supply tarriff
• time, day, timezone
• a name for your PV system
• PV power in watts
• home WiFI SSID and password

Once this is done, the inverter will connect to the home WiFi, and you should do the same on your phone/tablet.

The app will ask you to set up a password for your inverter, and add more user accounts if you want to. You will then be redirected to the Solar.web portal to create an account to manage your PV system. Once you complete the verification process via email, you're pretty much done. You should now be able to monitor your system using the app or the web portal.

If you need more help, check out this video.

Next stop, PVOutput!

Setting the Clock on Sharp Carousel

Just realized that the Sharp Carousel microwave ovens to not have a clock button that allows you to set the time, unlike the Panasonic inverter ones.

So how to reset the time after a power interruption?

1. Press the INFO/TIMER pad, then the number 3.
2. Enter the correct time of day by pressing the numbers in sequence. (Note: 12-hour clock only.)
3. Press the INSTANT COOK/START pad.