Computing Trivia

While trying to install a trial version of Windows 2008 server, my PC refuses to boot from any device and instead reports the following: Your PC/device needs to be repaired.  A component of the operating system has expired. File: \WINDOWS\system32\winload.exe Error code: 0x0000605 After a little research, I discovered that the problem is that a certain file, winload.exe, was set to expire at a certain date. See for example:  http://superuser.com/questions/915564/windows-10-recovery-loop Solution: During booting, select Setup. Different computers use different keys for this. Some could be Esc, Delete, F2 and so on. On my PC it is F10. Change the date in BIOS to some date before 2015. You may have to experiment but the principle is that the BIOS date should be earlier than the expiry date. I set mine to 2008 and all was well. 

The Tensions of this Realm The earthly realm has its struggles. The most fundamental are those to do with our being and identity. Being is fact, not philosophy. Whether we are butterflies or mountains, we are . But beyond being and all its attendant mysteries, is the practical strife for sanity and balance in an increasingly insane world.  This blog article is an attempt to list the sources of tensions in our spiritual (yes, spiritual), social and vocational existence - and in our relationships with the Creator. Some do not believe in a Creator but nonetheless, if you deny the existence of air that denial does not change the reality: You will continue to breathe and live.  Therefore, from minute to minute, moment to moment, life is full of tensions. Here are some of them. Add the details for yourself. Extend the list yourself. After all, its your life... 1 Digital vs Analogue 2 Left vs Right 3. Christ vs The Rest 4. Educated vs Uneducated 5. Internationali...

How to Save Windows Print Screen (PrtSc) Its as easy as ABC. The key on your keyboard with the letters " PrtSc " (or "Print Screen") takes pictures of your entire screen. If you press Alt and PrtSc at the same time, it takes pictures of the currently active window that is open on your screen. But none of these options saves the picture to file. Instead, the picture is saved in the Clipboard. You can Paste this picture into a Word document or any other application that allow images to be inserted which includes most graphics editing software. In order to save the picture to file, press the Window key at the same time as PrtSc . This will take the picture of the active window and save it on your disk. This command will save the image of your screen to a folder called Screenshots in your pictures folder as a .png file. Normally, your Pictures folder and Screenshots will be at this location:  C:\Users\UserName\Pictures\Screenshots "UserName...

 Updating to Android Studio  2.3 - "Cannot delete" file Error Android Studio can be a challenging IDE to get going with. Customizing settings, connecting to version control systems, configuring the interface, updating... There are enough sources of headaches to thoroughly demoralize the new developers. Recently, while updating to a new version of Android Studio (2.3) in Windows 10, I came across a very stubborn error that looked like this in the console window: Cannot delete file C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio1\gradle\m2repository\com\android\tools\layoutlib\layoutlib-api\24.5.0\layoutlib-api-24.5.0.jar Unfortunately, the error always appears in the last stage of the update as a patch is being applied. It appears that this stage requires API level 24.5 libraries be deleted and replaced with API 25.2 and 25.3 libraries. Attempting to delete the .jar file [layoutlib-api-24.5.0.jar] manually results in an error saying the file is opened by the Java SE process or s...

Simplifying Life with CSS Frameworks Responsive Design, Mobile First, Material Design, UX, IxD...   You can choke on technology. It's coming fast and furiously. The biggest challenge of the 21st century may be how to simplify life. How to do one thing at a time when you have five LCD screens blinking at you all the time each with multiple notifications, announcements, ticker tapes, breaking news and all the rest of it. I can't solve all your li f e's problems but can share a little trick or two here and there. If you gather all these tricks, you could actually simplify life.  Mobile First  This is a recent approach to website design. In Kenya 97% of web users use their mobiles.  Few have computers, many have smartphones. Therefore, why make websites for computers when these are the minority? Why not make them for mobile first and adjust to fit the few who visit with computers. The chart below shows the data from Google Barometer for Kenya: Mobile a...

A4 is a very common paper size. Most office documents seem to favour this paper size. Student notebooks take on this size and shape. A4 Problem? There is no problem with A4. The problem is created when digital documents that are designed for reading online are assigned physical sizes and aspect ratios that were designed for printed documents. The most problematic such format is PDF.  Why is PDF a Problem? PDF is not the problem. The problem is created by the absence of an option to change the document's aspect ratio at the time of saving it. Most computer monitors use the 16:1 (widescreen) aspect ration. Ideally, PDF readers should allow the user t o set the aspect ratio to use when reading the document.   PDF creators should offer a number of common ratios as a minimum or , even better, set no fixed aspect rati o but leave this to the reader. Fixed is Bad PDF is not a responsive e-document format unlike ePub. Its a fixed layout format. Fixation is a key str...

Windows 10 has some quirks. After some updates, you find changes in the user interface and may eventually find that the search that opens when you press the Windows button or the power user key combination (Windows Button + X then Search). It used to be that you could open the Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del  or Ctrl + Shift + Esc), you could look for Cortana and kill it (Right-click, select "End Task"). But now no more. Cortana seems to have disappeared from the Task Manager. But a search online reveals that Cortana is not gone, just renamed. You now need to look for "Search" in the Task Manager. Kill this process. In its place a new process called "Search and Cortana Application" will be loaded as shown below. Perhaps someone need to write a tiny little app to carry out this simple task of killing "Search" and forcing Cortana to relaunch properly. Once you do this, Windows 10 search is now well behaved.