“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life” (Chinese proverb)

I’ve just been asked a question I get asked often so I thought I’d write up the answer. The technique to find the tools can be used to solve many computer problems where you can only find the name of some pricy software to solve the problem. Specifically here we will look at a tool to identify what is using space on a HDD under OSX. The technique could be used for Windoze or Linux too.

Reader Josie asks:
“…my hard drive is 110GB and I have only 4gB free.. Ive moved all my pictures, all my movies, and a good chunk of documents to my external drive; and the music I have in iTunes is only 5.5 GB. Is there a way to see where hard drive space is being used?”

I’d recommend doing a quick google search with the term “recover HDD space osx”, then look for a review of tools to solve the problem. Your looking for a blog post that compares sever options, or a forum topic with many responses. My search quickly revealed ‘4 ways to recover disk space and keep your Mac hard drive tidy’ by Ross McKillop. Read the solution, if you have to pay for the tools or programs required head over to AlternativeTo and look up a couple of the programs. Refine the results by operating system and ‘Likes’. Download a couple of the tools and try them. Keep the AlternativeTo site open in a tab, and when you pick your favourite tool ‘like it’ so others can benefit from your effort, after all you benefited from them!

Since I use OSX I can recommend WhatSize and OmniDiskSweeper to identify what is using disk space.

I often get asked how to solve a computer problem, and the above proverb resonated with my approach to providing the solutions. While many computer techs relish in getting attention in the form of computer questions, I would rather empower people to solve there own problems (and I encourage other computer techs to take this approach too!). You can solve just about any problem that arises in your life today with a bit of google investigation, that said if you do get stuck shoot me an email! More than happy to help, and I love a good challenge!

Hope this helps Josie,

All the best,

Nathan

Image curtsy of sahrizvi.

I love this one… my friends did too.

At age 14, in poverty and famine, a Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family’s home. Now at 22, William Kamkwamba, who speaks at TED, here, for the second time, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed his life. [1]

William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

After reading about Kamkwamba on Mike McKay’s blog Hactivate (which picked up the story from a local Malawi newspaper), TEDGlobal Conference Director Emeka Okafor spent several weeks tracking him down at his home in Masitala Village, Wimbe, and invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship. Onstage, Kamkwamba talked about his invention and shared his dreams: to build a larger windmill to help with irrigation for his entire village, and to go back to school.

Following Kamkwamba’s moving talk, there was an outpouring of support for him and his promising work. Members of the TED community got together to help him improve his power system (by incorporating solar energy), and further his education through school and mentorships. Subsequent projects have included clean water, malaria prevention, solar power and lighting for the six homes in his family compound; a deep-water well with a solar-powered pump for clean water; and a drip irrigation system. Kamkwamba himself returned to school, and is now attending the African Leadership Academy, a new pan-African prep school outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

Kamkwamba’s story is documented in his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. A short documentary about Kamkwamba, called Moving Windmills, won several awards last year; Kamkwamba and friends are now working on a full-length film. You can read the ongoing details on his blog (which he keeps with help from his mentor), and support his work and other young inventors at MovingWindmills.org. [2]

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_the_wind.html

[2] http://www.ted.com/speakers/william_kamkwamba.html

p.s. This is a shameless copy of content over at Ted Talks, in an attempt to get family and friends hooked on TED.