Choosing the Right Laptop for a STEM Major
It’s back-to-school time, otherwise known as the credit card companies’ Christmas in August. This is an expensive time of year for parents who are trying to help their students get off to a good start…
Author Archives: Ray Klump
Effective and Easy-to-Maintain Digital Signage on the Cheap
Using Google Slides, a Chromebook, and a Chromecast, it’s easy to create and update digital signage for your organization. This blog post explains how. My academic department has two TVs in a hallway that we…
A Way to (Almost Automatically) Record Your Presentations for $140
I’ve been using Camtasia to record my lectures since 2009. It is an outstanding product, and it rarely has failed me. But I know that there are “smart classroom” that automatically record class sessions, and…
Compressing mp4 files, listing directory contents, and copying files to a remote server in Python
Bear with me. In this tutorial, I’m going to create a ridiculously specialized app that might not have relevance to anyone but me. But, as I describe how I programmed the application, hopefully I’ll communicate…
CompSci How2: Setting Up a Virtual Training Environment for Learning How to Hack
Penetration testing is the practice of figuring out what makes a computing system vulnerable. As a penetration tester (pen tester), your job is to find the holes in a system so that the owner of…
CompSci How2: Using Git and GitHub to Manage Your Code
This article is part of a series of brief tutorials I’m writing on performing particular tasks with computers. Indeed, this series may seem random, because I’m writing it partly with selfish intentions: I want to…
CompSci How2: Setting Up a Deep Learning Server on Amazon Web Services
This article is part of a series of brief tutorials I’m writing on performing particular tasks with computers. Indeed, this series may seem random, because I’m writing it partly with selfish intentions: I want to…
CompSci How2: Setting Up Ubuntu with Python for Data Science Work on a Chromebook
This article is part of a series of brief tutorials I’m writing on performing particular tasks with computers. Indeed, this series may seem random, because I’m writing it partly with selfish intentions: I want to…
Ransomeware Goes Critical
A virulent strain of malware attacked critical infrastructures throughout Europe today. Croatia has been hardest hit so far, reminding many of the Christmastime episode two years ago when the country’s electric power grid in…
Ransomware that makes you WannaCry
The Internet was attacked on Friday, May 12, 2017, by a fast-spreading piece of malware that asks infected users to pay up if they want to see their data again. It has already affected 200,000 victims…