How To Add the Google Play Store to Kindle Fire 7 5th generation

I just added the Google Play store to my old Kindle Fire 7 5th generation. It was super easy and it actually worked!

Here's how I did it:

Make sure you have a Kindle Fire 7 5th generation by going to Settings, Device Options, Device Model

If Device Model says Fire(5th Generation), then do the following:

Go to Settings, Security & Privacy, click Apps from Unknown Sources to allow the installation of non Amazon appstore apps

Open the Silk browser

Click on this link to download and install the Google Account Manager APK

When that is finished,

Click on this link to download and install the Google Services Framework APK

When that is finished,

Click on this link to download and install the Google Play Services APK

When that is finished,

Click on this link to download and install the Google Play Store APK

For each of the above links, click the Download button on each page. The apk will download. Click the Open button. Click Next until you get to Install. Click Install. The APK will then install. Proceed to the next link and do the same thing.

When all 4 APK's have been downloaded and installed, there should be a Google Play Store app on your Kindle.

You will have to log in to your Google account. After that you can download apps like you would on an Android device. This works because the Kindle's Fire operating system is based on Android.

So far I have installed Ebay and Etsy on my Kindle Fire 7. They both work great!


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How to Fix Jar Not Recognized Error On Windows

The other day I was trying to view the contents of a jar file by entering this on the command line:

jar tf jarfilename.jar

I got the following error:

'jar' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

To fix this error:

Make sure a JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the location of your Java installation, such as C:\Program Files(x86)\Java\jdk1.8.0_25

Then add the following to the PATH environment variable to include the Java installation's bin directory: %JAVA_HOME%\bin


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How To Send a Fax for Free

Every once in a while I have to send a fax, so I've always bought printers with fax capability. The last printer I bought doesn't have a fax capapbility, but it does scan. There are a bunch of websites out there that will fax a document for you. Most of them have a cost involved though. There is a website called gotfreefax.com that is completely free. I've used it a bunch of times and it works great. You fill out a form with your information, the receiver's information and fax number, upload the file or enter text data and hit send. There is an option of adding an ad free cover page. You can send a max of 3 pages and 2 faxes per day. There are options to send more pages for a price. The largest plan is 30 pages for $2.98, so it's pretty reasonably priced, if the free plan isn't enough.


Fax Machines

How to Fix Verizon Jetpack MiFi 8800L Dropping Connections

I recently upgraded my Verizon 7730L jetpack to the Verizon mifi 8800L jetpack. I've been a little reluctant to do so because it has such bad reviews on the Verizon website. A few months ago the reviews were great. Recent reviews are terrible though. They all talk about how the device randomly drops connections. Well, my 7730 was doing that too. Pretty annoying, but it sounded like the 8800 was even worse. I did some research and came across this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCRjj6lT1cA. It talks about how there is a setting called Sleep Mode. The default value is 5 minutes. I took a look at my 7730 and sure enough it also has a sleep setting and it was set to 5 minutes. What this setting does is put the device in sleep mode if there is no internet activity after whatever the sleep mode is set to. If the setting is set to 5 minutes and you walk away to go get a snack and are gone for at least 5 minutes, when you come back, the connection will be dropped. I keep my jetpack plugged in all the time, so I think this setting is relevant when running only on battery in order to conserve battery power.
I changed the sleep setting to never on my 7730 and have not had any issues since. With this great result, I took a chance and upgraded to the 8800. Sure enough, the sleep setting was set to the default of 5 minutes. I immediately changed it to never and it has worked great. The 8800 is actually a pretty big improvement over the 7730. My son's Fortnite ping has dropped from 60 - 70 to 30, which is good. The lower the ping, the less lagging.

Python Tutorial Series - Set Up

I'm working on learning Python as part of learning about Data Science, so in the process of doing that, I thought I'd put together a series of Python tutorial blog posts. Python is supposed to be easy to learn, so we'll see.

In order to use Python on your local machine, it needs to be downloaded from here. There are 2 major versions available. The latest is 3.7.1. There is also a version 2.7.15. I'm going to focus on version 3, which is the result of cleaning up version 2 without regards to backwards compatibility. Version 2 will not have any new major releases, but it's still in use by a lot of people. In fact, an online course I tried taking still used version 2. It is possible to install version 2 and version 3 on the same computer though. The trick to getting them both to work from the command line is to rename the executable of one version a different name than the other version. For example, I renamed python.exe for version 2 python2.exe. In a Windows command prompt, I can run version 3 by typing python. I can also run version 2 by typing python2 in the command prompt. Both versions need to have their directories added to the environment variable PATH setting.

For version 3, add the following to the environment variable PATH setting:

C:\your path to python3\Scripts\

C:\your path to python3\

For version 2, add the following to the environment variable PATH setting:

C:\your path to python2

To code in python, Anaconda is a popular data science tool which comes packaged with Python. There are also online Python editors, such as https://www.onlinegdb.com or https://repl.it/repls/SoftRashSearchengine.



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Columnar Database

I recently read about an interesting database concept that uses a columnar database, which is where data is stored in columns instead of rows.
Apparently this approach has several advantages over a row based database. A columnar database has better performance when a large number of queries are run at the same time. Joins and aggregation are faster as aggregate function results are incrementally calculated. Columnar databases can be compressed which eliminates the storage of multiple indexes, views and aggregation. Columnar databases also load data quickly. Each column is built in one pass and stored separately, so multiple threads can load different columns at the same time. Also, since columns are stored separately, data can be added and removed without updating the system after each change.
There are disadvantages to a columnar database though. It doesn't work for every case. Converting a row based database into a columnar database can be slow for large datasets. Incremental loads can be slow. Uncompressing data for reading can be slow. There are structural limitations, such as some columnar databases require the same primary key on all tables. These imitations may make it difficult to expand the system in the future. Columnar databases are also meant for large datasets and may not be suitable for small datasets.

This post was brought to you by your friends at MemSQL.

How I Learned PHP

Learning PHP was on my list of things to learn for a while. Two years ago, I finally started.
I learned PHP by taking two online courses at ed2go.com. They were called: Introduction to PHP and MySQL and Intermediate PHP and MySQL. They were fairly good at getting you started. The first course guides you through the creation of a recipe website with it's own content management system (CMS). The second course guides you through the creation of an online store.
I also purchased a few books:

PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy

PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition)

Programming PHP

Codeacademy.com offers free online courses, including PHP. They are actually pretty good.

Php.net is the official PHP documentation site.

If you have the foundation of knowing another programming language, PHP is pretty easy to learn. For me, the hardest part is remembering to include the $ sign.


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