“Legends of Chima” is a free LEGO game at ChimaOnline.com. All you need is a computer and the right browser. Google Chrome worked fine for us, but using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, gave us a message saying we needed an upgrade — even though we were already using the latest version.
Starting next year, you can call or text friends from up in the air — if your airline allows it. (Joy thinks it’s amazing that calling from an elevator is virtually impossible but calling from the air won’t be. The reason, of course, Bob says irritatingly smugly, is the steel shell of the elevator acts as what’s called a “Faraday cage,” named for the famous scientist. This cuts off wireless transmission. You can look all this up.)
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Running a malware (bad stuff) program on our test computer picked up over 950 “PUP” files. “PUP,” is short for “Potentially Unwanted Programs.” This triggered the computer to go wild, filling out web addresses with bizarre characters and slowing everything to a crawl.
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“3D Game Programming for Kids,” by Chris Strom; $36 from oreilly.com. Here’s a great system for teaching you to program, no matter what your age.
All you need is a computer and preferably the Chrome web browser, though anything except Internet Explorer will do. The author explains things so well that in literally a few minutes, Joy had created a colorful ball and cube on her screen and was able to animate them.
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“Why the U.S. STEM Initiative Shouldn’t Ignore Computer Science,” is a fascinating “infographic,” (a pictorial presentation of statistics) from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. We’ve shortened the long web address to just tinyurl.com/USlag. The chart shows that 150,000 new computing jobs will need to be filled every year for the next ten years. In five years, there will be three times as many computer science jobs as applicants, yet nine out of ten elementary and high schools offer no programming classes. Ironically, computer science is one of the top five highest paid college degrees. See the books below.
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There are several programs that will save your passwords and other critical private information — and they promise to be uncrackable too. We dutifully try as many as come in, and have come to the conclusion that you can do just as well on your own.
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We recently wrote about the free programs, Avast and Bitdefender, just days before the new Avast 2014 came out. The new version is free and instructs you to burn a boot-disk on a CD or DVD. After all, it’s all well and good to have anti-virus protection, but what if your computer won’t start at all? Then you better have a boot disk ready. If you Google “create boot disk,” you can get instructions to burn one to CD or flash drive, but it’s nice that Avast prompts you to do it.
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