How Microsoft Made Windows XP Icons

Found another neat article about how Microsoft handled making the program icons for Windows XP. Really interesting stuff for anyone that has to make icons. Check it out here:


https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997636.aspx

Tetris

Found this really detailed article about how a computer can play the classic game Tetris. Lots of history and information in this article. If you've ever been into the game or wanted to know more about how it is made, check this out:

https://www.colinfahey.com/tetris/tetris.html

Music Review: D-Rail - Mr. Miyagi EP

Fresh tracks coming out of the Houston/Canonsburg area! Darrell Thomas has just released his new 5 track EP on Hollow Entertainment titled, "Mr. Miyagi" this week:

SoundCloud link to the EP here: https://soundcloud.com/d-rail724/sets/mr-miyagi-the-ep-ft-dt

He recently became a verified artist on Spotify as well:

 https://open.spotify.com/artist/1llYxMO15QIcqoSAvVemno?si=SZ6wK9ZTS4WSM5eye08oAw

D-Rail has been a good friend of mine for a while and he's always working hard to get his music out there. This 5 track EP hits in the middle of summer and provides nice cruising music. The EP clocks in at 16 minutes and 7 seconds. The official track list is:

1. Way Back

2. Vacation (feat. DT)

3. Faster Than The Wind

4. Magic (feat. DT)

5. Time

This EP has a much more relaxed and laid back vibe to me compared to some of his other stuff like "The Last Step" mix-tape. The beats are well polished and tie in nicely together. All of the tracks flow well and the audio production is very well done. Off the EP, my two favorite tracks are Faster Than the Wind (great to drive to) and Magic. 

Take a listen to Faster Than the Wind here:

https://soundcloud.com/d-rail724/faster-than-the-wind

(Girl catch me if you can, I'm going faster than the wind). 

D-Rail is currently selling physical copies of the EP for $5. I nabbed one up yesterday and it is a pretty slick package:

To contact D-Rail and buy a copy, hit him up at the following places:

drail@hollowentertainment.com

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

And even if you can't buy a copy right now, please follow, listen, and share his music around with others. I've noticed all the hard work he has put in and it deserves to be recognized. 

'App is Damaged and Cannot Be Fixed' Mac OS High Sierra Fix

Have you downloaded a program in Mac High Sierra and noticed this error? The program refuses to open and the only option is deleting it to the trash. This happened to me and I thought my software was bad until I saw of this fix. This is actually a security setting change in High Sierra. 

 

Once changed, under privacy and settings you will see the option appear for Allow apps downloaded from: anywhere. 

 

This anywhere option is turned off by default, but many advanced users will want to enable this so their software can run correctly.

 

To enable this, open up a terminal window and run the following command:

 

sudo spctl —master-disable

 

That will enable software from anywhere to run on your Mac system and your apps should now open properly without displaying the message that they need to be trashed. 

 

 

Google Docs Add-ons for Teachers

Just a quick video today of some neat add-ons that can be used used within Google Docs:

Thanks to Rachel Porter for creating and sharing this video.

Find Wireless Signal Strength in Windows

Today I have a quick little tip/command to find the signal strength of a given wireless network a computer is connected to.

For this to work you will need to be running Microsoft Windows and you will need access to the command prompt.

To test the current signal strength, open up a command prompt and run the following command:

netsh wlan show interface

Note: You may have to run the command prompt as Administrator depending on your system settings.

The stats will pop up and you will want to look at the bottom portion where it says signal:

                                     The signal field shows the wireless strength percentage


Quick little way to double check the connection other than looking at the network bar.

How Many Languages Do You Know?

Just a random Youtube channel I came across, but it’s very impressive. This guy has studied lots of languages and likes to catch people off guard by his knowledge. 

Find the channel here: 

www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000

 

So, how many languages do you know? Do you use them regularly? 

 

Scratch Programming For Everybody

Have your children showed an interest in programming? Do they enjoy learning through technology? Have they already learned some fundamentals in school or been asking to try it at home? Summer is a great time to introduce or continue them on their programming journey!

Recently, our school has started getting children introduced to programming at the elementary level through the Code to the Future program. Children can learn many important skills through programming that can be helpful to other subjects. Here is a quick list of beneficial skills that children can acquire while practicing programming. I've been in the classrooms and have seen the great projects our students have worked on.  I've always noticed the enthusiasm and teamwork of the students as they complete their projects. One programming language that the children work with here is Scratch and it is has been a big hit.

Scratch is an interactive programming environment created by MIT. The focus of the project was making programming concepts fun and easy for children to learn. This is accomplished using block-based drag and drop programming. Children learn about these concepts by moving items around the screen, waiting for mouse clicks to occur to update items, playing sound effects when certain events happen, and much much more. Children can use Scratch to make little games, animations, or even tell a story. 

The Scratch programming environment looks like this:

Scratch is a great programming environment to start children on because it was built with kindergarten level children in mind. The programming environment uses images, bright colors, sounds, and animations to keep children engaged. Scratch is also very accessible. It is web-based, so no extra software needs to be installed and programs are built and ran within any web browser. This means Scratch can run on all types of hardware like desktops, laptops, Chromebooks, iPads, Android-based tablets, and even smartphones. 

To get started on a new Scratch project, simply go to the web address blow:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tip_bar=getStarted

My boss Justin has recently made some good intro Scratch videos. These could be used by both parents and children. He currently has 3 Scratch videos on his YouTube. I'll link to the first video in his Scratch tutorial video series below: 

The nice thing about following along with these video tutorials is that you can go back and watch how things are done and you can follow along at your own speed by pausing the video to try the programming steps. Justin has been actively making videos and is taking suggestions for new tutorial content. If there is a concept you would like to see a tutorial made for, just hit him up on his YouTube channel and let him know! His channel can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjoyFwlzKL0svQIswEixCxQ

Beyond that, some other Scratch programming resources can be found at:

https://scratch.mit.edu/tips

https://www.ossblog.org/teach-scratch-programming-open-source-books/

https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/Getting_Started_with_Scratch

Please pass this post along to anyone that is interested in learning the basics of programming. As always, if you have any questions about Scratch or if your children are working on a program and get stuck, feel free to send me a message and I'll do my best to help out. 

Have a great summer of coding! 

~ Michael 

Programming in C/C++ Within the Sublime Text Editor

Hi all .

In this post, I'll describe setting up a C++ environment using Sublime Text 3 and the GNU compiler. This will allow you to write code in C++ and be able to build and run it all from within the Sublime Text 3 editor.


Things you will need:

Sublime Text 3 - https://www.sublimetext.com/

MinGW -w64 - https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/

Build system file - https://gist.githubusercontent.com/sagebind/9039773048a3900fa49a/raw/e465947afb43948b471f739992ce303a92befbf8/MinGW-w64.sublime-build

About 10-15 minutes to complete setup and test. Note: You will probably need to install under an admin account to make sure everything installs correctly.


Steps:

1. Install Sublime Text 3 onto your system.

2. Install MinGW -w64

(Note the location/folder it gets installed to)

3. Set the path variable for MinGW

 Note: If you need help at this step, please see the following link and check the 'Environment Settings' section: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started

4. Copy the following build file and place it within Sublime Text's package folder:
  https://gist.githubusercontent.com/sagebind/9039773048a3900fa49a/raw/e465947afb43948b471f739992ce303a92befbf8/MinGW-w64.sublime-build


Once the above file has been copied to a file and saved within the package folder, you can should be able to build code under Sublime Text.

Write your code in Sublime and then test by going to Tools > Build.



Enjoy!

Impossible To Tell if Laptop Was Hacked Article

Found this interesting article today and thought that I would share:

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/28/computer-malware-tampering/

PowerPoint Saving Tricks

Just a quick 2 "tricks" when working with PowerPoint files.

1. When saving, instead of doing the usual save as .ppt...instead save your slides as a .pps. When you open this, it will go directly into presentation mode.

2. When you're going to be doing a presentation from another computer, consider saving your slides to .pdf format. This will ensure you don't run into any weird software mishaps if the computer you're presenting on has a different version of PowerPoint than the one you created the slides on.

Finding Inactive Computers With Powershell

Here is a quick script I ran at work yesterday to find inactive computers in our active directory. It checks the last time a system was logged on for a given amount of days specified by the user in the script.

Here's the code:

# Michael L. Kelley Jr.
# March 15, 2017
# InactiveComputers.ps1
# A script to find inactive computers via days not logged on

$DaysInactive = 90
$time = (Get-Date).Adddays(-($DaysInactive))

Get-ADComputer -Filter {lastlogontimestamp -lt $time} -Properties Name.OperatingSystem , lastlogintimestamp| Select Name.OperatingSystem,
@{N='lastlogontimestamp'; E={[DateTime]::FromFileTime($_. lastlogontimestamp)}}

Read-Host -Prompt "Press enter to exit"

Running this script on your AD server, will check for computers that haven't been logged on for 90 days or more. It will return the AD computer name, operating system, and time last logged on. Perfect for cleaning up active directory for systems that are no longer around. Just change the $DaysInactive variable as needed. 

Ridge View Coffee

Over the weekend, I got the chance to drive up to Uniontown to meet an old college friend. Josh and I shared a lot of the same programming courses at Cal. He currently has an IT gig up that way and has recently began acquiring, roasting, and packaging coffee. At lunch he presented me with a sample of his product, Ridge View Coffee:

Ridge View Coffee is a little side project of his. This coffee gets it's start in Ethiopia and is yirgacheffe. This was the sample packet that he gave me that he had just roasted and packaged that very morning. Ridge View Coffee will also (hopefully) be used to aid in funding for his church and the many mission projects that him and his family are so passionate about.

Last night, I made a cup as it was suggested that after roasting, to wait at least a day before brewing. I opened the packet and the aroma hit me. It smelled so fresh and good:

. 

I just added a tiny bit of whole milk after snapping this photo and jumped in. This is good coffee. If you looked at the packaging photo above, you'll see that it has tasting notes of: blueberry, strawberry, and chocolate. I picked up on the blueberry right away and the chocolate. It was light, but packed full of flavor. It was a nice cup to have right after I had finished my dinner.

Josh is still currently streamlining his sources, processes, packaging, and marketing. When he gets his site up, I'll be sure to let everyone know. In the meantime, if you would like to reach out to Josh about buying a sample or you think his product might be a good fit in your shop, you can reach him at: ridgeviewcoffee@gmail.com and know that it would be benefiting a worthy cause.

Printing the HTML of a Web Page Using Python & Beautiful Soup 4

Below is some code I wrote today in Python to quickly parse in a web page and then print out the HTML found in the page.

Feel free to use/modify/share the code as needed. Was getting Beautiful Soup 4 on my new computer and doing a couple little things to make sure it is working correctly. More code to come!

New Laptop Day! Lenovo IdeaPad

Hi all,

Just got a slick new laptop for work today. A Lenovo IdeaPad:

It's a pretty slick machine with the following specs:

Win 10 Pro
Intel i7 @ 1.80GHz
512GB SSD
16GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce MX150
14-inch screen
back-lit keyboard

Still getting all of my software setup, but my first impressions are good. Really liking the keyboard and the display is beautiful. Hope to be posting lots of content in 2018 so keep a look out!


~ Michael