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Windows 7: the blue screen with white bird near green branch

Trying to repair a computer this weekend has involved self-tutoring. The tutor mentions the beloved “blue screen with white bird near green branch.”

If you don’t know the screen mentioned in the title, you might be lucky. I’ve encountered it after the repair option from F8 during boot. However, it may not appear immediately after selecting the repair option. Rather, the user may have to wait well over half an hour before it appears.

Likewise, the blue screen with the white bird (near the green branch) may persist another 45 minutes – or longer – with no apparent action. However, it eventually can give way to the Startup Repair window. That process can persist for hours, then possibly offer choices, one of which may be System Restore.

That’s how I remember it, anyway.

With either of those screens (blue screen with white bird or Startup Repair), it’s best the user doesn’t hold their breath.

Source:

neosmart.net

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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CSS: word-spacing

Tutoring, I just love to bring up neat new topics. The tutor mentions word-spacing.

  1. This sentence has no word-spacing set.

  2. This sentence has word-spacing at 150% (which apparently doesn’t change the rendering).

  3. This sentence has word-spacing at 1em.

  4. This sentence has word-spacing at 6px.

  5. This sentence has word-spacing set to 0.25cm.

Sentence 2, above, seems to suggest that word-spacing cannot be set by percent. On my desktop, sentence 5’s word spacing is 0.4cm, even though it’s set to 0.25cm.

HTH:)

Source:

w3schools.com

Meyer, Eric A. CSS Pocket Reference. Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 2004.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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Lifestyle: handyman role: how to remove a tight lag screw (hopefully) in one piece

Yard work is constant self-tutoring. The tutor shares an observation from it.

Today I was disassembling some reinforcements made last fall for an abandoned project. The reinforcements were triangular, consisting of landscaping ties and 2×6 boards fastened with lag screws. They had purposely been made heavy and strong.

I began to loosen one of the lag screws; it started to turn with much difficulty. Suddenly, it turned much more easily: I knew it had twisted apart. It didn’t do so at the head; I still had to turn it out. However, only the top inch or so came out, while the bottom remained lodged in the wood.

I didn’t think any of the other lag screws would twist apart; rather, I believed the one that did was defective. When another one twisted apart the same way, I decided to change my method.

The next lag screw I turned slowly through short arcs with pauses in between. It stayed whole, as did the others I so removed.

HTH:)

Source:

provenproductivity.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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English: nouns: concrete vs abstract

Tutoring English, definitions are useful. The tutor distinguishes between two types of nouns.

Concrete noun: a noun that can be perceived with one of the five senses. Therefore, book, thud (from something hitting the ground), aroma (as from coffee), pin-prick (to the skin), and sourness (the taste of a lemon) are all concrete nouns.

Abstract noun: an idea or feeling that can’t be experienced with one of the five senses. Fear and contentment are two examples.

An interesting point is that, while concrete nouns seem more primitive, they are generally preferred by skillful writers and English academics. The reason to prefer concrete nouns is that they can be used as symbols, whereas abstract nouns cannot.

HTH:)

Source:

Hodges, Horner, et al. Harbrace Handbook for Canadians, sixth ed. Scarborough: Nelson Education, 2003.

grammar.yourdictionary.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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English: dangling modifiers: what are they, and how can they be corrected?

Tutoring English, this topic is a classic. The tutor recalls hearing it decades ago….

A modifier gives more meaning to its sentence, but isn’t the main idea. Some examples (with modifiers in italics):

Sitting around the campfire, we noticed a UFO.

We drank our coffee in silence, waiting for the executives to arrive.

A dangling modifier is one whose reference is vague. Consider the sentence

Lurking among the trees, the zombies appeared.

Who is lurking among the trees – the zombies or the viewers? Perhaps

Lurking among the trees, we watched as the zombies appeared.

or else

Watching the trees, we noticed zombies lurking among them.

clarifies the intended meaning.

HTH:)

Source:

Hodges, Horner et al. Harbrace Handbook for Canadians, sixth ed. Scarborough: Nelson Education Ltd., 2003.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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Java: overriding methods: what it means, and rules about it

Tutoring Java programming, you might be asked to clarify about overriding. The tutor shares some thoughts.

In Java, when you override a method, you either

  1. define its performance (give it a “body”), or else
  2. redefine (change) its performance

    3. .

Case 1, above, refers to the situation of writing a subclass of an abstract class, or implementing an interface: in either case, a method with undefined functionality must (typically) be defined, aka overridden.

Case 2 often refers to the situation of writing a subclass that alters the performance of an inherited method. However, an instance of a class can have a method overridden as well.

Rules:

When overriding a method, its return type, name, and parameter list (including types) must be identical to its original ones [from the abstract class, interface, or base class].

@Override can be used at the beginning of the line where the override is declared. For example:

@Override public void method_x(String param0, int param1,….){

This may give the compiler extra opportunity to check the validity of the override, as well as improve the code’s human readability.

Source:

docs.oracle.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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Java compile error: non-static method cannot be referenced from a static context – what causes it?

Tutoring Java programming, this error message might come up. The tutor talks about a couple of its causes.

The message

error: non-static method MethodX() cannot be referenced from a static context

has a couple of causes I know:

  1. The class that contains the static main method contains another method other_method that isn’t static. other_method can’t be called from the static one unless it, too, is declared static.
  2. An object has been created [Objectx Ox = new Objectx();], but then its method methodx() is called using the class name [Objectx.methodx();]
    as opposed to the instance name [Ox.methodx();]

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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Web design: CSS properties vs html attributes

Tutoring, definitions are important. The tutor shares the difference between CSS properties and html attributes.

A CSS property is something you change to affect the appearance of an element. For instance, the color property can be set to the color you want the text to print in. The font-size property can be set to the size you want the text to appear.

An html attribute doesn’t change the appearance of the element, but describes it in some other way. As an example, a name can have the title=”description” attribute to describe more about it when the user mouses over. The alt=”text description” attribute renders descriptive text when the image won’t be rendered. lang (language) and href (destination of an anchor tag) are two more attributes.

I would say that, indeed, properties belong to CSS, while attributes belong to html.

Source:

w3schools.com

w3schools.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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CSS resize: how to use it, and how to know when an element is resizable

Anyone tutoring web design knows that CSS is practically a universe. The tutor mentions CSS resize.

To make a div element resizable on a desktop, the CSS property resize can be used. For example, the resizable div

This div is resizable:)

has inline style

style=”width:50%;resize:both;overflow:auto;color:#222277;background-color:#99aaee;font-size:120%;border-style:solid;border-color:black;”

In my experience, resize must be used with overflow in order to work. I use overflow:auto

The little white square in the lower right corner, containing three oblique lines, lets you know the div is resizable.

My reading suggests that ie may not support resize.

HTH:)

Source:

w3schools.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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Err: Invalid Dim on Ti-83 Plus: What causes it, and how can you get rid of it?

Tutoring high school math, you might use the TI-83 Plus. The tutor shares his finding about an error message he recently saw.

The other day, when trying to graph a function, the error message

ERR: INVALID DIM

appeared.

From what I’ve seen, turning off the Stat Plot, which happened to be on unintentionally, lets the user go ahead and graph. (To turn off the Stat Plot from the Y= screen, just arrow up to the one that’s active – Plot1, Plot2, or Plot3 – and press Enter.) However, the source of the message seems to be that, in the Stat Plot parameters, an empty list has been selected (for the Stat Plot that is turned on).

It’s hard for me to imagine how the situation arose, since I don’t believe there were any empty lists in the calculator. To test, I deleted the entries from one of the lists, so it was then empty. Next, I selected the empty list in one of the Stat Plots, then turned that Stat Plot on. When I tried to graph, sure enough, the error message ERR: INVALID DIM appeared.

HTH:)

Source:

ti.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.