Running Number Munchers on Windows

This quick write-up is a short guide on getting the classic game Number Munchers working on current Windows systems (Windows 7, 8, 10, etc.).

I mean who wouldn't want to have this number-munching goodness running on their system?!?!?

First you will want to download a program called D-Fend Reloaded. This program comes with DOSBox and provides a nice graphical menu system to show and run games, so the user won't have to do any work on the command line. I chose this because it is the most user-friendly choice.

You can down D-Fend Reloaded from:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/d_fend_reloaded.html

Next you need to download Number Munchers. You can find that download here:

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/number-munchers-z0

Make note of where your copy of Number Munchers gets saved to. Install D-Fend Reloaded onto your computer and then open it. The prompts during the install are straight-forward and nothing will need to be changed.

When you open D-Fend Reloaded, you will want to find where your game downloaded and drag it into the D-Fend Reloaded window. This is the white space in the middle/right portion of the screen. Once dragged over release the file into the window so that it will make a copy of the game files. It will look like:

Now you should see Number Munchers listed under your games. To open it up, double click on the name or highlight the game name and click the Run button in the upper left-hand side.

The game should then launch under Windows:

Note: When re-sizing windows or going from full screen to windowed, Windows may change the theme to basic as the program isn't meant to be running for under these versions of Windows. If you see that message, it's normal and can be changed back after you're done playing.


Happy gaming!

Summertime Pi - Part 1

At last I got to open the CanaKit up and check out what I'll be tinkering with. The kit that I received is the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 2 complete starter kit with Wifi adapter and black case. It also comes with a 8GB micro SD card that has the NOOBS operating system installed. Learn more about the included software at - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/introducing-noobs/

The complete kit can be found here - http://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-starter-kit.html


The box it comes in looks like this:

Let's open that thing up:

The black case seems sturdy:

This kit comes with a wifi adapter which is nice if you want to have less cable clutter:

An HDMI cable is included for plugging into a display:

And now onto the main event....

Ir'a incredible to realize how small these boards are getting. This thing is amazing:

The kit also comes with some decent instructions to get started. There are a few more things you'll want to get to use this kit. You'll need a monitor to hook into and you'll want to get a USB keyboard and mouse.

For educational purposes, I would let the students take each piece out of the box separately and see if they can explain how they will all interact together. The board might be a little shocking to some as they may have never seen the inside of a desktop or laptop computer.

I would also have them look up some images of older computers compared to the Raspberry Pi 2 board to see the major size differences. While RAM and hard drives are getting larger in space, the boards and components are getting smaller and smaller.

Depending on their ages, they could also be told about Moore's law and look into it further if they are a little bit older. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

They could also identify all the components on the board and talk through what each piece is used for:

From there, they could place the Pi into the case to get it ready to use. This is a good stopping point for our first look at the Raspberry Pi 2 CanaKit complete starter kit.

Join back next time for part 2 as I'll be hooking the device up to a monitor and booting into the included micro SD card for the first time.

Old and New Together

"Technology is only going to become faster and more all-encompassing. We need to be careful not to take it all for granted and become overly dependent. If something were to happen to your phone, could you still communicate? Can you write a sentence without relying on spell checker? Are you able to multiply without a calculator? Can you find the stars in the sky without an app? The list goes on and on, but the basic idea is that simply making the knowledge available on a device is very different from learning how to get the knowledge or understanding what it actually means. We risk having an abundance of facts without having enough wisdom."


~ Old and New Together
   2600
   Volume Thirty-Two, Number Two
   Summer 2015

CS Paper: The Ghost in the Browser

Recently I got to read an interesting paper titled: The Ghost in the Browser. Analysis of Web-based Malware.


It's a pretty neat paper detailing how Google crawls web links to look at malware and how they go about checking webpages for dangerous content. An example would be going to a page and having rogue JavaScript run in the background that installs malware onto your machine without permission or prompting. That could open the gates to other infections or total loss of control.


It's a short read and I would recommend it if you have the time. It can be found at:

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotbots07/tech/full_papers/provos/provos.pdf

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Available Now

Head on over to:

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/free-developer-offers-vs.aspx

Check out the latest releases for the Visual Studio family of tools.

Visual Studio Code looks neat. It's a free text editor that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux making it the first cross-platform dev tool in the Visual Studio suite.

Check them out and see what you think.

Easily Transfer Contacts from Android to iPhone

This is a quick little post on some issues I ran into today doing this task at work for someone. They had just gotten a new iPhone and needed their contacts pulled in from their old Android.


Problem: Contacts synced from Google but Google only had their email addresses and not the actual phone numbers as they weren't being saved that way. The phone numbers were saved only on the phone itself.


To transfer contacts from an Android device over to an iPhone:

1. Go on the Android device and open the contacts page. Go to the settings menu and chose to see settings for contacts.

2. Chose to export a backup of contacts onto the device. This will be a .vcf file that will get saved onto the device. For more on the .vcf file type, see: http://fileinfo.com/extension/vcf

3. Find the location that the .vfc file was saved to on the Android device and chose options > share via and chose email. Send the file as an attachment.

4. Email the file to the person so they can access it on the iPhone.

5. On the iPhone, open the .vfc file attachment and it will ask you if you want to import the contacts into the iPhone.

That's it! Contacts are now moved from the old Android device over to the iPhone.


Bonus Problem:  A problem I ran into after getting the contacts transferred was mass deleting contacts in iOS. Android allows you to easily select multiple contacts at a time, while the iPhone does not have this functionality. How can you mass delete contacts on the iPhone?

To get around this, I installed an application on the computer that I have used in the past. It is called AnyTrans. AnyTrans is a tool used to transfer content from iPhones, but it always gives access to a few neat features. AnyTrans can be found here:

http://www.imobie.com/anytrans/

I connected the phone to the computer after installing AnyTrans and opened the program. I went into the program and chose the Contacts section. You'll see on the left-side check boxes next to the names. You can now go through and mass select contacts to delete from your iPhone!

Using Chrome Dev Editor to Deploy to Android Devices

The Chrome Dev Editor can be used to edit programs and deploy them for testing onto your Android devices.

Install the Chrome Dev Editor here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-dev-editor-develop/pnoffddplpippgcfjdhbmhkofpnaalpg?hl=en


You'll need to make sure your device is ready before you can deploy to it. You'll need to install an app on your phone or tablet called the Chrome App Developer Tool. Follow this article to get your Android devices up and running with the editor:

https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chromedeveditor/blob/master/doc/GettingStarted.md


Once your device settings have been set to interact with your computer, you can begin to work on your first example app. A good tutorial to follow can be found here:

https://developer.chrome.com/apps/first_app


Now that you have some code, you can deploy it onto your Android device for testing. I had a few troubles getting mine to deploy at first and ended up having to specify the IP of my device.

For troubleshooting deployment issues, these two StackOverflow pages helped:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21925992/chrome-devtools-devices-does-not-detect-device-when-plugged-in

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8162581/why-does-adb-return-offline-after-the-device-string/9966660#9966660

I think the Chrome Dev Editor is a great step in the right direction for not only Chrome development (extensions) but for mobile apps as well.

GradCalc 2.0 Released

Good morning everyone.

GradCalc version 2.0 is now released on Google Play.

I have updated this app to included the correct years for the 2015-2016 school year.

Quickly find the year that a student will graduate. Works for grades K-12.

You can find it on Google Play at:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mkelleyjr.k12gradecalc&hl=en

As always, any feedback can be sent directly to me. Please check it out if you have some time.


~Michael