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When comes to anti-virus utilities, there are quite a few available. There are some anti-virus suites which are quite useful to detect malware and viruses.

https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/fdl
https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html
https://usa.kaspersky.com/downloads#tools
http://www.f-prot.com/download/
https://www.avast.com/en-us/free-antivirus-download
https://www.pandasecurity.com/en-us/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/

Antimalware and Antispy tools
https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/
https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pin/1004/security-software/antispy-for-windows-10
https://www.emsisoft.com/en/home/emergencykit/
https://www.avira.com/en/free-security-suite
https://www.hitmanpro.com/en-us.aspx

There are now a ton of new browsers made available for Windows / Mac devices and on many mobile devices. There are five browsers that are quite popular, which we will list based on personal security.

The first browser which is quite similar to Opera Browser and super secure.
https://vivaldi.com/

This browser based off of the OpenSource project called Chromium.
https://brave.com/

This third browser which i've used for over 1.5 decades and is one of my favoriate browser of all times.
https://www.opera.com/

This fourth browser is the OpenSource project.
https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium

Fifth Browser is also an OpenSource project with tons of plugins and perks.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Lastly, this is by far the most popular.
https://www.google.com/chrome/

There are two web browsers which i will note them here in this area.
Microsoft's new edge replacement browser
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge

Apple's Safari which will only work on Apple Devices.
https://www.apple.com/safari/

Browser when using linux.
https://kde.org/applications/internet/org.kde.konqueror
https://www.waterfox.net/

There comes to a time where one would need or require additional software on mac where the apple store might not suffice for your programming purposes. Fear Not ! There are quite a few third-party repositories which will cater to mac users.

The three popular mac software repo are as follows:
1) https://brew.sh
2) https://macports.org
3) http://finkproject.org

I have used the first two repos on a macbook pro laptop. There are pros and cons to each of these repos. Once must pick carefully yet two can be installed on one machine. I found macports has newer software than brew when comes to programming. Brew has the latest stable programming languages made available for all mac users. Both of these repos have excellent volunteers to help answer questions as well as fixing issues when they arise. I am not familiar with the fink project.

if you are familiar with linux, the approach to install and search for anything is quite similar to the apt command.

Install Homebrew:
mkdir homebrew && curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew

As of this writing, macports v2.6.2 is available:
https://github.com/macports/macports-base/releases/tag/v2.6.2

For Example:

brew list
brew info python3
brew search python3
brew install python3
brew update
brew upgrade
brew uninstall python3

After upgrading windows 10 to v2004, python silent installed stopped functioning. I was able to use this silent install via the terminal rather than a xml file

python-3.8.5-amd64.exe /quiet InstallAllUsers=1 TargetDir=c:\Python38 AssociateFiles=1 CompileAll=1 PrependPath=0 Shortcuts=0 Include_doc=1 Include_debug=0 Include_dev=0 Include_exe=1 Include_launcher=1 InstallLauncherAllUsers=1 Include_lib=1 Include_pip=1 Include_symbols=0 Include_tcltk=1 Include_test=1 Include_tools=1

I've had a hard time in getting PC windows 10 machines consistently installed the same version of Python3.8.0 with same results. After realizing that one could script the install process using the Python38*.exe file to silently install this version to many laptops. Silent Install aka Unattended Install is the best approach thusfar. There were no many examples i could find online but came up with this list of parameters where it worked for me. This will only install for the user of the machine instead of for all users.

<Options>
<Option Name="InstallAllUsers" Value="no" />
<Option Name="DefaultJustForMeTargetDir" Value="C:\Python38" />
<Option Name="DefaultCustomTargetDir" Value="C:\Python38" />
<Option Name="AssociateFiles" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="CompileAll" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="PrependPath" Value="no" />
<Option Name="Shortcuts" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_doc" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_debug" Value="no" />
<Option Name="Include_dev" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_exe" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_launcher" Value="no" />
<Option Name="InstallLauncherAllUsers" Value="no" />
<Option Name="Include_lib" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_pip" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_symbols" Value="no" />
<Option Name="Include_tcltk" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_test" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="Include_tools" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="SimpleInstall" Value="yes" />
<Option Name="SimpleInstallDescription">Automatic Install</Option>
</Options>




Download Python3.8.0 from this link.
https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-380/

save the above XML content to a text editor and named it: unattend.xml

Fire up a DOS PROMPT on window 10 and execute the following line:
c:\users\hobbit\python-3.8.0-amd64.exe /quiet c:\users\hobbit\unattend.xml

Of course, my user account on my personal windows 10 will be different from your windows environment. So.... Alter your environment as you see fit. Generally speaking, one could place both the exe file and the xml file inside download directory and fire up the DOS prompt from download dir and execute that particular command.

Happy Coding !

Become one with the compute node. There are scientific research projects one can participate. The Einstein@home https://einsteinathome.org/ is super unique as well as Rosetta@home http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/ Many of these research projects required a powerful CPU along with a GPU.

Projects
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

Research Node Software then once installed, you can then participate in any of the projects mentioned from above.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Before each semester, i often found myself reading this descriptive article on teaching.

advice firstday

Bloom’s Taxonomy

teaching commons rubrics

blended learning UCF

Active Learning in Hybrid and Physically Distanced Classrooms

Butler Online Learning

trauma teaching during COV2

Radford Uni online teaching Resources

Inclusive Teaching Practices Toolkit

Diversity-Inclusion

inclusive-teaching

bias guides

discussing_racism_policing_and_protest

avoid-burnout-during-pandemic-opinion

quarantine-fatigue-is-real-heres-how-to-cope

There is a scenario where i didnt think i could encounter in my years of computing, especially on a newly purchased ridiculously expensive 2019 macbook pro. Not knowing how Apple's hardware (T2 chip) works made this a tiny bit challenging when working on this 2019 Macbook pro. There was a happy ending to all of this but it took almost eight hours in clicking and waiting on download of a new Mac OS, and finally reinstall the latest MAC OS Catalina which differed from the original factory de facto OS. This was a bit of a hack and a bit of luck in revitalizing a Mojave into Catalina OS over the course of roughly a day.

Assuming a Macbook pro hardware would function just like an PC, i made a boot USB Catalina earlier in order to prep for a new OS install. There were obviously knowledge i wasnt aware of, when doing this install. Assuming installing a clean version of mac OS X Catalina would be the same as installing a new ubuntu linux.

After holding on the "option" button to boot the USB, it prompted me with a message informing me that i could not boot USB due to some security item i must first resolve or disable. Not caring what that was, i then rebooted this macbook pro using "Command + R". I ended up with a similar screen and started to use the Disk util software to wipe the native SSD disk. After formatting this disk to APFS and renaming the disk to something a bit more obvious, i then exited out of disk util and returned to the main screen. At this point, i was ready to install Catalina onto this new disk. Without realizing that i had just wipe the factory recovery partition, along with the existing Mojave OS which i didnt cared about and had yet to allow to boot external USB and set security to medium. I panicked for around 5 mins due to not able to boot into this Catalina USB after several reboots !

After several reboots trying and hoping to boot external USB, all these reboot failed miserably. Each of the screens came immediately after each reboot went directly to a screen prompting me to enter a wifi name and a password. There was nothing i could do to inform this POST that there is a USB connected to a type-C port on the machine. At this point, scratching my head was the next best thing for me to do. Now, the damage to this laptop has been done but this wasnt completely lost. I wasnt quite sure what this wifi screen was about initially. The good thing was that apple provided this wifi screen was for a last resort to install an OS directly from Apple.com. As long as a mac owner can connect to a wifi network without username and password credential set, this was satisfactory on the reinstall side. The wifi screen required a wifi network name and a router password for it to connect to apple.com for it to download a new leaner Mojave OS.

After some network magic, i was able to download a version of Mojave OS over DSL, but this isnt what you would call a safe approach. i didnt know whether it would be suffice to download something this large (5.5 - 7.5 gigs) over a 400-500 KBps network. Also, i wasnt sure if there is an internal bittorrent kind of software when streaming this large OS file rather than a simple ftp transfer kind of thing from apple's end. This certainly was some apple magic, but i was glad this was provided from Apple since T2 chip prevented me from booting from any external USB !

After realizing that i could use my local network by entering the network name and its password. I then gained entry to a boot software after holding "Command + R". Thirty or so minutes went by, i could now see that boot menu screen started to appear. I then had chosen an option to reinstall Mojave. I clicked to reinstall the factory Mojave OS but this literally took a long time over DSL. Once the download was completed, all of the boot software began to conduct a reinstall. Much relieve at this point, since the OS installation process was working after a long awaited download from some random apple place. There was nothing to inform me of where this Mojave OS was coming from, by looking at the re-installation menu screen. One has to trust apple at this point, probably even much earlier.

ultimately, this reinstallation using apple's approach with their recovery download network worked !!! At this point, i still dont have Catalina but i do have a USB to boot Catalina. With much hope, i found that there was a menu item i would need to conduct first once i see a Apple logo after a reboot by using "Command + R". I held down "Command + R" then a boot software came up, i immediately looked for a menu item called "Security utility". After clicking this drop down menu, i was presented with another dialog box to disable FULL-SECURITY and enabled USB boot. Woot Woot, Success ! https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198#open

Finally, we are getting somewhere logically and there is light at the end of this tunnel. I rebooted once again, i held down the "option" button and MAGICALLY booted into this usb with Catalina. Now, i then deleted this disk and used this "disk util" to recreate this blank slate for Catalina with APFS. After more clicking and waiting on this clean install of catalina, macbook pro rebooted and came up with Catalina.

The lesson was not to wipe disk after holding down "Command +R" but to click on the "Security Util" on the menu item and enable the external boot along with set the security to Medium on all apple certified boot ISO downloaded from apple store. After a reboot, this second phrase, we can now hold down the "option" key to install a new OS using USB.

When installing Node and NPM, it is best to download the node package rather than from your OS distribution source. For mac and linux, it is fairly straight forward yet window might be slightly easier.

1) download the LTS node v10.x.x binary node*.tar.xz file from https://nodejs.org/en/download/

2) sudo mkdir /opt/node
3) cd $HOME/Download/
4) tar xJvf node-10.16.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
5) cd node-10.16.0-linux-x64
6) sudo cp -pr . /opt/node
*7) sudo chown -R username:username /opt/node
8) cd /opt/node/bin
8.5) cd /usr/local/bin; sudo ln -s /opt/node/bin/node node
9) ./npm install -g npm
10) If you are on linux use .bashrc file otherwise on mac try .profile
vim $HOME/.bashrc
insert the following items inside this file:
NODEJS=/opt/node
export PATH=$PATH:$NODEJS/bin
:wq (save data and quit the vim editor)
11) source .bashrc
12) npm -v
13) Now we have this latest npm package application, we can now installed any of the JS Framework as we pleased.
14) cd; mkdir nodeware
15) cd nodeware
16) npm install @angular/cli
17) npm install -g vue
18) npm install -g react

*we are using ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS at the moment and our user account could very well be different from your user account, so bare in mind that you should adjust your chown user accordingly. Also, to prevent root being use excessively in /opt, we 've decided that we would be using our own user account instead. You can easily create a simple nodejs user account and only have access to that /opt/node directory for this special software. There are other ways to remedy this ownership of this directory besides this approach.