I’ve been having trouble opening WebEx because of a Java error message. The “security settings have blocked the application”. Here’s what I did to fix it…
Error message:
Your security settings have blocked an application signed with an expired or not-yet-valid certificate from running.
This topic is a little out of place on this blog, but it is a technical story that I have dealt with, so I wanted to include it anyway…
The story starts with my mother-in-law’s computer running slow. It is running Windows 8. Chrome was taking about 20 minutes just to open up, and the whole computer just felt sluggish to me. She was also complaining about popups from McAfee saying that the computer was unprotected.
When I opened Task Manager, I found that McAfee was using almost 1G of RAM! Is there any excuse for that? McAfee supposedly was out of date and shouldn’t have been doing anything anyway. Why would I want to pay for the subscription if this is the way it is going to run?
McAfee took forever to uninstall, but once it did and rebooted, the computer was back to new again. Chrome started immediately, and the computer felt normal again.
Now, to install an antivirus back on to get it protected again. Does anyone have suggestions?
I have been partial to Clam Antivirus (Windows version) because it is open source. For now, I just activated Windows Defender. It was easier with no extra install. I just search for it in the control panel and updated the virus definitions. I assume that it will automatically download the definitions, whereas Clam would constantly popup and require manual downloads. I have also heard that AVG is free for personal use.
Does anyone have any recommendations? Please comment below.
I am trying to zip up a large virtual machine to send out to a client, and my root drive ran out of space! The virtual machine is on an external terabyte drive, so I should have plenty of space. Here’s my notes on my research and what I learned about the process…
Many times, I find that I need to create a document that includes either code or output from a command-line. I haven’t found that either LibreOffice or Microsoft Word provide good styling to make that code or output look nice in a technical document. Below is how I created some Paragraph styles in both programs to display the code. I would love feed back on how I can improve the look. Please Comment Below.
It’s been a while since I have had VMware Player. I have been using Virtualbox instead, but I have a client who wants a machine worked on that is already a VMware machine. It doesn’t make sense to convert it to Virtualbox, do the work, and convert it back afterward.
So, my notes on installing VMware Player…
Recently, I received my annual report from WordPress/Jetpack. I have always enjoyed these reports, so I thought I would make it public.
For the complete report, view it here: Linux Sagas 2014 Year in Blogging
Our church has a Sharp MX-2600N printer, and I occasionally need to print to it from my laptop. It isn’t the easiest to setup and configure on my installation of Ubuntu, so here are my notes.
I’ve just set up my new server, and I want it to act as a print server. I want it to accept jobs from both the cloud and from my other Linux machines in my house. Here’s what I did.
I have an old wireless Logitech mouse that I haven’t been able to get working. My batteries were low in my bluetooth, so I thought I would give it a try. That’s when I ran into Solaar and OMG Ubuntu’s article. So, I gave it a shot…
Blockly Games caught my eye the other day and finally got me to pull together my notes on programming teaching tools for kids. There are some really cool tools out there. If you have a sphere of influence with kids whether they be your own or just ones who might listen, check out these resources…
This is the tool that I just recently ran into. The nice part is that it is web-based so you don’t have to install anything. Also, it is puzzle based. Instead of just giving kids something to explore, it gives them a challenge to try to accomplish.
Link: Blockly Games
The tool is made up of multiple games that motivate kids to explore and learn:
For example, the maze game requires that you write a program to walk the user through a map.
I found another very similar tool. The one-up from a kids point of view: angry birds. It looked very similar to the blocky games (in fact, I think it is the same library), but the character in the puzzle was an angry bird. There’s also a nice little intro video to explain what is going on.
Link: Hour of Code
I’m not sure where I first heard about Alice, but it sounds like a pretty cool learning tool. It uses a 3D interface, which makes it a bit heavier. The download was 1.2G!
Link: Alice Homepage
Getting it working wasn’t hard at all. I went to the Alice 3.1 Download Page. After uncompressing the download, I ran:
sh ./alice3.sh
That was for my Linux system. For Windows, there is an Alice3.exe that you can run.
I think that I may have learned about Alice from this Google Tech Talk:
Oracle has a little tutorial for using Greenfoot. It looks a little involved, and I haven’t been through it all yet.
Links:
Installing Greenfoot was pretty simple. The download page has a deb package that I could use. I simply installed it using the Ubuntu Software Center.
This is a book that I came across a long time ago. I haven’t ever delved into it, and now I find that there is a new version out on Amazon.
Link: Google Code Project (Old Version)
Here’s the new version:
Scratch is an online tool. It seems very similar to Blockly, but instead of puzzles and challenges, it is just a tool that lets kids explore.
Link: Scratch Website
A long time ago, I ran into this cool game. It makes programming fun. The idea is that you write a small program to control a virtual robot. You pit your program / robot against others in a virtual arena.
Link: RoboCode Website
The original RoboCode requires Java and running a program from your PC. I found another version that was ported to Javascript. I’m not sure it is as complete as the original, but it allows you to play the same game in Javascript and a browser.
Link: RoboJS – Robocode in Javascript
You can check out the source code:
BBC has launched a website with various resources. There’s a bunch to explore here, and I haven’t explored it all.
Link: BBC Schools Computing
This is more like a web development course. You can go through the material and learn HTML, PHP, etc.
Link: PHP For Kids