27 August 2016 | Computers |
Windows 10 Anniversary Update, otherwise known as Windows 10 Version 1607, was released earlier this month.
Recent updates from Microsoft seem to indicate that only about 16% of machines running Windows 10 have actually been updated.
If you’ve got Windows 10, you’re going to get this latest update sooner or later. When you do, you’ll want to – once again – review your system’s settings to improve your privacy.
Fortunately, not much has changed…
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14 August 2016 | Computers, Programming |
You may have heard about “Bash on Ubuntu on Windows”. If not, you can check out my post on Bash for Windows 10.
First, you’ll need to make sure you have the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which you’ve probably received automagically by now.
Then, you’ll need to manually install Bash on Ubuntu on Windows to get your bash prompt.
When you’re done, you’ll probably listen to Microsoft when they say “no GUI stuff!” on bash… But actually, you can set yourself up with a lovely development environment including git – and even gitk – right in Windows.
And it’s much easier than you might think…
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7 August 2016 | Computers, Networking |
Everyone seems to be moving towards using “SSL” (which is actually TLS) so that entire sites load with the HTTPS protocol.
In some cases, this is a rather simple affair. But if you have a WordPress-powered site, it’s a bit more complicated than one would expect.
After all, WordPress is supposed to make everything easy, right?
Well, no.
So, here’s a list of tricks to make your WordPress SSL Conversion go as smoothly and quickly as possible!
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30 July 2016 | Computers |
The other day, I desperately wanted to log off, and then log back in again on Windows 10. I was trying to fix something, and a reboot wasn’t necessary.
Well, wouldn’t you know, I couldn’t find the dang “Log off” button any more?!
I also realized the “Switch users” option seemed to be missing.
This should be really obvious, but I’m afraid it isn’t.
Well, fear not, fine people! Both options are still there…
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22 July 2016 | Computers |
First, FYI: Exactly one week from today, 29 July 2016, Windows 10 will no longer be a free upgrade. So, if you’ve been thinking about upgrading to 10, now’s the time!
Next, I recently ran into a problem trying to upgrade a puter from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
I’d run the Win 10 installer from within Win 7. It would reach the point where it was about to reboot for the first time to actually start the upgrade, and I’d get the following lovely error message:
Something happened – Windows 10 installation failed.
Gosh, that’s helpful.
There are many “fixes” for this Something Happened Error, but none of them worked for me. After a bit of digging, I found a solution that works!
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17 July 2016 | Computers, Gizmos, How Does it Work? |
If you’ve read any reviews recently about phones, tablets, and other gizmos, you’ve probably come across a lot of talk of PPI (Pixels Per Inch) and “Retina” screens.
In short, the number of pixels crammed into a device’s screen seems to be uber-important to which gizmos get the best reviews.
But hang on a minute… Just what do these numbers mean?
Does it really matter that much?
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3 July 2016 | Computers, Do-It-Yourself |
Many of you have installed Windows 10 on your puters only to discover that every time you boot up, you get a screen that reads: Choose an operating system
Windows 10 will of course be at the top of the list, usually followed by either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. If you pick Windows 10, it fires up and everything works normally.
Obviously, there is still something wrong: Why is Windows 10 asking if you want to boot your old version of Windows? After all, you upgraded, right?
Fear not! There’s a very easy trick to remove this boot menu – and it works for all flavors and versions of Windows all the way back to Vista at least…
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25 June 2016 | Computers |
By now, you’ve probably heard that Adobe’s Flash Player is going the way of the dinosaur. Except, wait… No, it’s not. It’s still around, and it still works.
No, wait… Yeah, it’s dead. No it’s not. Yes it is.
You could be forgiven if, like most of us, you’re really, really confused about what’s happening with the Flash Player.
Okay, so, seriously: WHAT THE HECK is going on with Flash?
Is it alive? Is it dead? Is it a zombie?!
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12 June 2016 | Computers, Networking |
I’ll be honest: I didn’t think I had to explain any of this, because I thought it was obvious.
Given the number of recent online security breaches – including the release of really, really bad passwords – clearly it’s not so obvious.
Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, I think about this kind of thing as part of my work. Most people don’t. It’s my job to program things that work, but a big part of it becomes making things that other people will find difficult to exploit.
Otherwise, what’s the point? No one cares if it “just works” if some evil person out there can break it in 5 minutes! The way to go about doing this is to not program a single line of code until you’ve got the whole thing sorted in your head. Then, think about how you would hack it.
You don’t do this by thinking like yourself; you must think like someone who wants to attack you. Unless you’re a Russian chess master, you probably don’t think this way very often.
But, not to worry! The following are a few tips that will greatly increase your online security without making your brain catch on fire. Which is nice…
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30 May 2016 | Computers |
Every now and then, you upgrade your puter.
Let’s say you add an SSD. You copy your old hard drive’s contents to your shiny new SSD, and use your old HDD as a data-only drive. You boot from the new SSD, and poof! You’re done.
Well, sort of…
Your new E: drive is now only a data drive, but alas, there is still an E:\Windows folder, and it’s taking up lots of space.
So, you try to delete E:\Windows… Access Denied, you need permissions, and so on…!
There are a million and one articles out there about how to delete an old, unneeded Windows folder, but they usually involve some piece of software or complicated shenanigans.
Well, forget that! This method is a piece of cake…
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Windows 10 Anniversary Update, otherwise known as Windows 10 Version 1607, was released earlier this month.
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