Today, I published a beginner’s tutorial to Maven using Amazon’s ‘Kindle Direct Publishing’.

In my tutorial, I cover:

• generating a Maven project
• scripting Maven commands
• adding dependencies to a Maven project
• packaging dependencies into a Maven project
• installing Maven projects into the local repository
• installing non-Maven projects (using third party .jar files) into the local repository.

And if you get stuck on any of the commands, code, or XML examples, you can view the projects’ source code and files online. You can check out my tutorial here! Thanks!

Today I discovered ‘OnyX for Mac‘. It’s an application that allows you to change some of the hidden settings on your Mac, in addition to doing some cache cleaning, volume checking, and general maintenance. I haven’t fully explored it, but it looks like there is a lot there that you normally wouldn’t have GUI access to. One thing I noticed off the bat was that there was a little check box to change Finder to display the long form address of the folder location, and also to show hidden folders. (which I ended up running a console command to do the last time I needed it) Pretty neat! If you have a Mac, and would like to be able to customize some of the hidden settings while using a GUI, I’d recommend checking it out.

So, recently a friend asked me what I use as antivirus. And I realized in my reply that some of the following information may be of use to others! So here I go. =D

I personally use Avast! antivirus on all of my home Windows machines. It is a dual firewall/scanner, and can be used very effectively in combination with Windows’ native firewall. It’s also free for personal use.

Other free things I use to protect and lighten my Windows machines include CCleaner, the NoScript Firefox addon, the Web of Trust Firefox addon, Registry Mechanic (some features are not free), WinDirStat and finally, controlling the services and processes on my computer by hand, as I have described in a previous post.

While if you run a Mac not all of the above may be useful to you, installing the NoScript Firefox addon still protects you while browsing, and the Web of Trust addon still helps you stay away from vicious websites.

I hope you find these programs to be useful. =D
Ben

Do you feel like your computer has gradually become ‘slower’ since you bought it? It has. This is a tutorial to help you take back some of that ‘brand new computer’ speed. It isn’t hard, and it won’t take you more than a few minutes… However, I must warn you, this tutorial won’t bring back that new computer smell…

One of the most common ways a Windows personal computer becomes slower is because of the CPU and RAM being overwhelmed. It could be that you need new hardware, but let’s try a cheaper solution first. The slowing of your computer could be a software issue.

As a personal computer owner, you probably install applications on a regular basis. But as you install programs, you often times end up installing things that you didn’t know were being installed. And those things stay in your computer’s ‘Startup’ folder. Any executable inside your computer’s Startup folder starts running in the background whenever you turn on your computer. This means that the more things you have in your Startup, the slower your computer will be, whether you wanted those things to run or not.

You can edit your Startup list to counteract this effect. Follow the arrows below to find your Startup editor on Vista.

1. Open your start menu

2. Click on 'Change startup programs'.

Now choose a program to disable in the startup menu folder. Be warned that any program disabled here will not start up when the computer starts up, but will have to be executed manually.

Click 'yes' on the popup.

If you change your mind, come back later and reactivate the program in the startup menu, in a similar fashion to the way you deactivated it.

Below are a few programs I tend to disable in the Startup. These programs will still run when you need them, but you don’t need them running all the time. 

Quicktime

iTunes

Google desktop

Google updater

The best way to decide whether to disable something in Startup is to look up its functionality online, and then think to yourself “Do I use this functionality often enough to justify having it run in the background?” Most programs will still execute when you need them, even if they don’t run in the background. It will just take them slightly longer to load(This extra time still generally being < 1 second if your hardware is fairly new).

For example, since I disabled Quicktime, the next time I watch a movie on the Internet, it will take slightly longer to load(Startup time) than if I kept it running in the background. Allowing Quicktime to run in the background would mean no Startup time, but all computations on my computer would take that much longer because my computer would always be thinking about Quicktime. I prefer having a short Startup time and very fast computations than to having no startup time and very slow computations. Startups happen once, but computations are always happening.

It’s a bit like juggling. You can either juggle ten balls at a time, and have to wait a long time for each ball to come down, or you can juggle one ball and have it in your hand instantly. Admittedly, if you want one of the other ten balls, you have to reach down and pick it up, but in the long run you will save time.