Astronomical Calendar Repetitions - Happy New Year 2017!

On the eve of 2017 I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

For this post, I'm using information from one of my old blog posts from 2011 and have slightly updated it.

I recall way back to my 16th birthday. It was just after November of 1995 and I was given my first PC computer system for my birthday. It's a pivotal moment in my own history since that is when I really started to get into I.T. and the technical computing field. This will be my 22nd year being in I.T.

I discovered a number trick in a really nerdy way. The way I discovered this number trick was after my older brother Clyde gifted me this awesome Playboy Playmate calendar full of beautiful women for Christmas. I wanted to figure out how the calendar system worked and to see if the Calendar would repeat itself so that I could re-use the sexy calendar in the future. I utilized my Windows 95 PC to help me find it.

Here's what I did. I recorded the number of the day, the day of the week, and the year. Then I used the calendar on Windows 95 to discover when the exact same day occurred again. I found that the exact same number of the day, exact day of the week occurred again 5 years later, and then 6 years from that date, and then 11 years from that date and then again 6 years from that date. Then the cycle would repeat.

For an example I will just use my birth year. I was born in 1979. The next time my birthday would occur on the exact same number and day of the week was 1984, then 1990, then 2001, then 2007. Then the cycle of 5,6,11,6 years repeats again. So my birthday will be the exact same day as my actual birth in 2012, 2018, 2029,2035 etc.

Another interesting fact is that it works universally for anyone's birthday and for any specific date. If you are tracking your birthday like I was, the date will repeat on the exact day of your birth on your [5th, 11th, 22nd, 28th,] [33rd, 39th, 50th, 56th,] [61st, 67th, 78th, 84th,] [89th, 95th, 106th, 112nd] birthday. This works for any day. It doesn't need to be your birthday. It can be used for any day of the year that you want to track. If you wanted to see when a Holiday event occurred on the exact same day in the future, you can also use this method to check it out.

I have never been interested in Chronometry or Horology but this is an awesome calendar trick! It is pretty interesting to see how time is measured and is associated to Astronomy. Spread the word to your friends and family.

Free Up Spare Hard Drive Space On Every Reboot

I've figured out a way to clear out any temporary files and folders that Windows uses by using automated batch files. Batch files are simple computer command executions that run through the Windows command line prompt that is similar to DOS. If you want to use this method, the instructions are further down in this post.

The reason I went about finding ways to free up hard drive space was because I kept getting odd errors in PhotoShop. The error message said something like Error: can't open file because Scratch Disks are full. Translation was that PhotoShop could not find enough temporary hard drive space on my computer. Most people won't even have PhotoShop installed on their PC but the benefits of freeing up space on your computer spans much further than just a single app and is helpful in almost every way possible.

First Step - Enable viewing of hidden folders and files
We are enabling viewing of the hidden folders so that we can access a certain folder where temporary files are stored so that they can be deleted by the batch files later.

--> For Windows 10 and Windows 8 - open any drive or folder on your computer.
--> click on the menu "View" --> "Options" --> click on the tab "View"
--> at the bottom of that window look for items with checkboxes and make sure the option beside "Show hidden folders, files, and drives" is selected with a black circle beside it. Click on the "Apply" button and then the "OK" button to close it.

--> For Windows 7 - open any drive or folder on your computer.
--> click on the menu "Organize" --> select "Folder and search options" --> click on the tab "View"
--> at the bottom of that window look for items with checkboxes and make sure the option beside "Show hidden folders, files, and drives" is selected with a black circle beside it. Click on the "Apply" button and then the "OK" button to close it.



Second Step - Find your main User Account Name.
- Browse to your main Operating System hard drive which is usually the C:/ drive for most people.
     ---> then open the "Users" folder
     ---> then look for the main user name of the computer. The list will look something like this:
               - Default
               - UserName
               - LocalService
               - NetworkService
               - Public
     ---> the main user name in this case is "UserName" but it will be different on your own computer.
     ---> make a note of it because we are going to use it when editing the first batch file so that it works.

           
 Third Step - Download my custom batch files by clicking the links below.
--> Batch File 1: clear temp app data.bat
[ https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7tRqAQPpWGTRWRETWhUcC1oTnM ]
--> Batch File 2: clear windows temp data.bat
[ https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7tRqAQPpWGTQkVYamFWTXJjSEk ]


Fourth Step - Edit Batch File 1: clear temp app data.bat
Once "clear temp app data.bat" has been downloaded, locate where you saved it, and the right-click on it.
--> select "edit"
--> it should open within the app called Notepad. If not you'll need to open it with Notepad.
--> look at the second line and where it says "UserName", replace it with the one that you found in step 2.
--> close Notepad and save the changes to the file.


Fifth Step - Copy the Batch Files to Windows Startup
--> find where you saved both batch files "clear temp app data.bat" + "clear windows temp data.bat" and select them both.
--> right-click and select "copy"
--> press the Windows Key + R key together
--> type "shell:startup" without the quotation marks and press the "Enter" key. This will open the Windows startup Folder.
--> right-click anywhere in the folder and select "paste"
--> close all open windows.
--> That's it folks. Now every time that Windows starts up or when your computer reboots, temporary files and folders will be safely deleted and will free up hard drive space automatically. Restart your computer to test it out.