Musings of a dad with too much time on his hands and not enough to do. Wait. Reverse that.

Tag: tools (Page 35 of 35)

Tips to improving your vocabulary

My oldest child has engaged in the college quest: meditating on what profession she might want to pursue then reverse-engineering that to an associated major and ideal college to support that vision, visiting schools, and, most importantly, studying for and taking the standardized tests–ACT and SAT.

On more than one occasion, she’s complained about the English and/or writing portions of the tests, bemoaning the fact that these sections make use of advanced vocabulary than she’s unused to. For many years, I’ve tried to press on her the importance of expanding her vocabulary; yet, she continues to ignore my appeals (as seems to be our standard father/daughter dynamic). If she would ever listen to me, here are ten practical tips I would encourage her to employ to increase her command of the English language.

1. Go looking for great words on the Internet

As you’d expect, the Internet is a great resource for improving your vocabulary. There are word-of-the-day sites that you might visit daily for new material, but there are also plenty of “themed” lists to work your way through, as well. Here are a few that I’ve found educational:

2. Install a word-of-the-day application on your phone

Why go to the words when they can come to you? There are a number of free word-of-the-day mobile applications out there. Currently, I’m using Dictionary.com’s app. One nice feature of this app is its notifications: at 8:00am every day, the app sends me a notification with the new word. If I like the new word (or any other word I might look up in the app), I can add it to my “favorites”–so, I always have a list handy of some of my favorite words.

 

3. Get a word-of-the-day calendar

There are a variety of calendar and planner-type products out there aiming to help grow your vocabulary!  If you prefer more of a traditional interface from which to learn, this just might be your ticket.

 

4. Get a dictionary and/or thesaurus

Maybe this is my pre-Internet brain talking, but a dictionary and thesaurus should definitely be part of your library. Probably your kids’, too!

 

5. Read challenging books

Words only work when they’re uttered in proper context–and reveal your ignorance when used otherwise. What better way to learn a new word than through the pen of the professionals? Read the likes of Umberto Eco, Gore Vidal, and David Stockman, among others, to deepen your communication options.

 

6. Listen to challenging podcasts

There are podcasts, like the Grammar Girl podcast, dedicated to improving your communication skills. After that, merely listening to intelligent people discussing challenging topics can be quite beneficial. For example, just the other day, Tom Woods reintroduced me to the wonderful word, “vicissitudes“. Podcasts, then, can be an excellent way to both learn more about a particular topic and extend your vocabulary.

 

7. Listen to word-of-the-day apps on your Amazon Echo or Google Home devices

To my Amazon daily briefing, I’ve included the Peppercorn Media word of the day skill. Every school morning, just before venturing out to the bus stop with one of my children, we listen to the daily briefing and acquire a new word of the day. Thus, we get our word-of-the-day in a quick and entertaining way.

 

8. Watch challenging movies or television

Personally, I find movies and television predominantly a waste of time, but if you must imbibe, try to make it media that positively augments your intellect. I find science fiction and historical works occasionally useful for this purpose.  Star Trek, The Martian, and Amistad are a few creations that seem to work in this regard. However, I did learn the word “flibbertigibbet” from the highly underrated Joe Versus the Volcano.

 

9. Force yourself to use your new words in conversation

Stephen Covey wrote, “to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.” It’s not enough to learn new and interesting words, but to actually incorporate them into your regular dialog. Similar to martial arts where you repeat a punch or kick hundreds of times until it becomes part of your muscle memory, you must also invoke your new words multiple times so they become easy go-to options in your conversations and writings.

 

10. Write more, forcing yourself to use your new words

As with enhancing your conversations, littering your writing with your new words can help ingrain those new options into your writing toolbox. Also, look for additional writing opportunities like the school newspaper and yearbook (and even blogging) to help further hone your craft.

10 things I need to teach my kids about computers

I find it fascinating–and a little troubling–that my kids’ schools require them to do much of their homework and projects on their laptops, yet my kids seem challenged to perform some of the more basic functions of using a computer. So, I feel I need to block off some time and teach my kids a few of these basic operations.

Lots of folks have their various lists of topics they believe are important to convey to young people. Here is mine:

 

1. Always be checking for the latest operating system patches

With Windows, the default is that Windows is always checking for updates. I think that’s a good thing. Nevertheless, my kids should know how to get to the Windows Update configuration screen and make sure they’re up-to-date just to be sure.

Occasionally, Microsoft will push out a large update like their Creators Update.  Of course, these large updates always hit at the wrong time: like the night before a paper is due that hasn’t been printed out yet. Thus, my kids need to plan ahead: if they know they’re going to need their computers fully available for work on a particular night, they should try to power through any updates in the proceeding nights just to reduce the chance of interruption.

 

2. Always be checking for the latest Java updates

Like Windows, hackers like to find exploits in Java since it’s everywhere. So, like Windows, computer users should always be vigilant about new Java updates. Java is pretty good about detecting new available updates, but, depending on your settings, it may or may not update automatically. So, I’m constantly checking the system tray and, in particular, looking for the Java icon that usually indicates a new update is available. If one is, I’ll launch the Java console and get the update. My kids should be on the lookout for Java updates, too.

 

3. In general, check the system tray and notifications panel frequently

I rely on the system tray to let me know about Java updates, but it’s pretty good at alerting me to other potential problems, too, such as letting me know I haven’t ran anti-virus in a little while (see #4). Similarly, the notifications panel occasionally lets me know about important events or problems on my machine–it will also sometimes post useless information there, too, like entertainment news and related fluff so you might want to take action to reduce some of that noise. In any event, kids, please frequently check your system tray and notifications panel. If you see an alert there that you don’t understand, let me know.

 

4. Run anti-virus frequently

I used to explicitly deploy Microsoft Security Essentials to all the machines in my household, but since most of my machines are now on Windows 10, I don’t need to worry about that as much.  However, I need to make sure Windows Defender is set to run periodically and automatically get updates: or, rather, I need to show my kids how to do these things. Laptops make running AV scans a little more difficult. I might set Defender to run every night at 1:00 AM, but if the laptop’s off at that time, Defender won’t be running. So, I think it’s important to show my kids how to open up Defender and manually start a scan. More fundamentally, I need to make sure my kids know what a computer virus is and how you can go about protecting your machines from them.

 

5. Backup your files frequently

We had an iPhone crash recently and my kid cried half the day at having lost lots of important information. I’ve certainly lost valuable files in computer crashes myself. As a household, we need to do a better job at backing up our files. I have a NAS and take a few other steps to set up redundant file backups, but I definitely need to teach my kids more about backing up their important files and I probably need to provide some resources to them, too, to make the process easier. Regardless, the kids need to know where their important files are on disk and how to at least back them up to one or two alternative locations, like a flash drive and maybe the cloud.

 

6. Manage your passwords responsibly

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of never using the same password twice (you could probably say the same thing about userids) and how I use the tool Password Safe to make all that easier. This is yet another concept I need to convey to my kids.

 

7. Install important plugins in your browsers

Browsers and email are two of the most popular ways for computers to get infected with malware.  I think/hope enough people (including my kids) know about how to be safe with email: don’t open email from people you don’t know and especially don’t open their attachments, be very careful about the links you click in an email, etc. I don’t think that level of awareness is there with browsers, though.

When I set up laptops for my kids, I install lots of plugins on their browsers to reduce the risk of their machines getting infected by visiting a malicious site (or even a legit site that’s been compromised). Unfortunately, these plugins usually makes for an unpleasant browsing experience. My kids need to learn a) the importance of locking down their browsers in this manner, b) how to decide when a site and its third party components looks legitimate (hint: takes a lot of experience) and c) how to whitelist the bare minimum components in those plugins to make the site functional for their needs.

 

8. Use email safely

I guess I should probably still call out this point, because I’m sure my kids don’t understand the finer points about being safe in the email channel. Microsoft has identified some pretty good points here and probably going over a few examples with the kids would be a good exercise, too.

 

9. Cover your webcam

Two years ago, the Internet was abuzz with the fact that Mark Zuckerberg tapes over his webcam.  It’s not a bad practice. It’s not uncommon for malicious software–and even school software–to turn on a kid’s webcam and start recording. My kids should know: a) where their webcams and microphones are on their devices, b) how to turn these devices off in their settings and only turn them on when needed and c) be prepared to cover these devices with an appropriate tool or tape if nothing else.

 

10. Be thoughtful on social media Don’t be an admin on your machine

As a parent, I’m supposed to instruct my kids about being safe on social media–and I do–but I think that’s kind of a “gimme”; plus, I think they hear that message from other sources, too. So, I’m going to skip that one in my list and go to the next one: don’t do your day-to-day work as an administrator.

Most windows machines have two default roles: administrator and standard user. As you might guess, administrators have full access to all the important parts of the machine while standard users are locked down from a lot of these critical areas. As a result, standard users can do less harm on a computer and the network than an administrator can. If you’re running your computer as an administrator, which most people do, and you inadvertently install malware, it’s pretty much game-over. However, if you’re running as a standard user and get infected, the malware/hacker has to escalate privileges and/or bypass User Access Control to do any real damage. Unfortunately, our hacker friends have indeed found ways to bypass User Access Control (UAC), but still, the more obstacles you can put in their paths, the better.  So, kids, do your day-to-day stuff as a standard user.

 

Well, I still have several items left in my list, but I will stop at ten for now. Time to put my talk into action!

10 of My Favorite Free Tools

My dad has countless shop tools to support his mechanical wizardry in the garage. Conversely, I wield a great many software tools to aid my work and interest in technology. Several tools I use are free and others cost some dough. Here’s a list of 10 free tools I find quite useful (in no particular order):

1. Jupyter Notebook

I’ve been teaching myself Python the past 2-3 years and have found Jupyter Notebook an indispensable tool in the endeavor. Jupyter Notebook is basically an integrated development environment (IDE) in your browser. You write your code in “cells”. Console output from a cell will be written right below the code. Even cooler, you can create chart and graph visuals right within your notebook. You can also intersperse your code cells with “markdown” cells. True, developers have a reputation for despising code documentation: nevertheless, interspersing your code cells with markdown cells providing some commentary on what you’re trying to do can make for a neat effect in your notebook–it can certainly remind you of what you were trying to do (if you had to walk away from your code for a while), but it can also turn your entire notebook into a report that you can hand in to management.

2. PowerShell

I’ve talked about PowerShell a few times in the past. I’ve heard people call PowerShell the old Windows DOS shell “on steroids” (what an overused suffix!). If you run Windows 7 or higher, you have PowerShell–so that’s at least 74% of Windows users.  The primary lever in PowerShell is the cmdlet and there are a ton.  Plus, you can write your own. What I find even more compelling, though, is that PowerShell can tap into the entire .NET framework, which gives it tremendous capabilities for a scripting language. If you have some sort of operation you want to automate on your Windows system–from backing up files to pulling down stock closing prices–you can make that happen in PowerShell.

  • Check out some of my PowerShell work here

 

3. Logparser

Logparser is probably one of the more esoteric tools on this list and, frankly, I use it much more at work than I do at home. For the developers, DBAs, and IT operations people out there: imagine if you were able to write everyday SQL, not across a database table but rather across a large, delimited file?  Imagine being about to find the five error messages out of a log file of millions of lines, at the command line, in seconds? Yes, grep can do this, but we’re talking Windows.  And that’s not all: just about all the standard SQL operations are available to Logparser including group, distinct, count, order by, etc. Some basic charting is available, too. I’ve found Logparser to actually parse large files faster than PowerShell, so I’ll often write PowerShell scripts that call Logparser and work with the results. Super combo!

 

4. Slickrun

Slickrun is a tool that probably won’t make a lot of sense until you start forcing yourself to use it. Then, before you know it, you won’t be able to live without it.

Slickrun is like the Windows Run command but on steroids (dangit!).  You start by creating Magic Words: short words or phrases you associate to some action. For instance, I’ve created a “jupyter_notebook” magic word that launches my Jupyter Notebook platform. That way, I don’t have to click the Start Window and scroll through various program files to find the Jupyter Notebook shortcut. Instead, I hit a key combination–in my case, Alt-Q–that opens up the small Slickrun window, then I just start typing “jupyter_notebook” and hit <Enter> to launch. Slickrun even auto-completes magic words, so I tend to be able to launch Jupyter Notebook in about four keyboard strikes–Alt-Q then “ju” as Slickrun will usually auto-complete that to “jupyter_notebook” then <Enter>. I can hit those four keys in a fraction of the time it would take me to navigate the Start Window and find the program. I tie magic words to applications, websites, and even PowerShell scripts and the like to do things like back up my files. Pretty slick, eh?

 

5. Password Safe

Security experts are always telling us to never use the same userid/password combination from one site to another. That way, when your online Dungeons & Dragons account gets pwned, your bank account doesn’t.  But if you’re suppose to have a new userid/password combo for every account you create, how in the world do you keep track of all those credentials?

Well, Password Safe is one way to do it. With Password Safe, you create a strongly encrypted file–your safe. You then protect it with a strong password–the only one you really have to remember. Then, within the safe, you create as many credential entries as you need. You can also create folders within your safe to better organize your credential entries. Furthermore, Password Safe can create strong passwords for you. So, for that next account you create, you can click a “generate” button and have Password Safe create a strong password for you automatically.

In the end, your safe is a file, so make sure you properly back it up.  Sharing your safe across devices can be a challenge, although I believe there are some techniques available to make that easier and there are other products out there like LastPass that focus on solving that problem.

 

6. Visual Studio Code

I still use Microsoft Visual Studio for a number of projects and love JetBrains’ PyCharm, but I’m really trying to embrace Visual Studio Code more and more.

Visual Studio Code is a free IDE developed by Microsoft, of all companies. It supports a great number of programming languages including C#, Python, Java, and even PowerShell. At first, I struggled to learn my way around the tool, but I’m starting to find an increasing number of tutorials and presentations that use it, so that’s helpful. All the cool kids seem to be using VS Code, so it’s probably a good thing to add to your toolbox.

 

7. Notepad++

Notepad++ has been around for a while, but I continue to use it everyday. While I also use Microsoft Notepad for simple tasks, nothing beats text editing in Notepad++ with its multi-tab interface and plugin support. I find it very helpful for formatting XML and JSON files, using its regex find/replace features, and even using XPath query operations on occasion.

 

8. Paint.net

I’ve known about Paint.net for a while, but have only started using it recently to build logos and images like the one at the top of this page. I am absolutely no graphic artist and Paint.net’s interface can be quite intimidating, but it can help you craft some pretty nifty images. I’ve scoured YouTube for as many tutorials as I can find to try to shorten my learning curve with the product–I recommend this one in particular for making logos.

 

9. Git-Bash

Git is what all the cool kids do for software source control and, since all the cool kids work frequently from the command line, Git Bash is what you need for all your source code management operations. Aside from git utilities, you also get a fair amount of Bash utilities–like a two-for-one special! In the past, I used Cygwin to get a Bash experience on my Windows machines, but, going forward, I’m going to try to perform all the Bash-based work I need to do in Git Bash, instead, and see where that gets me.

 

10. Q-dir

Pop quiz: how many Windows Explorer instances do you have open right now? How many of them tend to stay open? Q-dir stands for “Quad Directory” or “Quad Explorer”. By default, Q-dir is a single window split into four sections. Each of the four sections hosts its own Windows Explorer instance. So, off the bat, you have four File Explorers in one window. Even cooler, each “mini explorer” can have tabs that point to other directory paths. Pretty awesome! So, for the most part, you don’t need to have five instances of Windows Explorer running and then try to rifle through each instance of find the one you’re looking for: instead, run one instance of Q-dir and find the Windows Explorer you need there.

 

So, that’s just a small taste of many of the free tools I use to try to make better use of my time. If you really want to geek out on tools, I highly recommend Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tools guide.

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