Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label support

Completing a Coursera Specialization for Free

Coursera provides continuing education just like Udacity and offer the full learning experience that I am accustomed to, including lesson videos, reading materials, projects, discussion forums, and graded projects which are peer-reviewed. I recently completed the Full-stack Web Development in React specialization from Coursera, all for free. It’s called a specialization because it is made up of three courses below each with their own certifications and which takes 4-6 weeks each to complete: 1. Front-End Web UI Frameworks and Tools: Bootstrap 4 2. Front-End Web Development with React 3. Server-side Development with NodeJS, Express and MongoDB I started the program in December 2021 and finished it in June 2023 however. The intent of this post is to explain how I was able to fund the entire specialization for free. In December 2021, I read on social media that Coursera allowed for one free course per year if you were a student and had an email address from a partner school. I gave my stu

Logitech Circle 2 Security Webcam has gone Offline (SOLVED)

In November 2022, I realized that my webcam had stopped working. I took it down from above my door mount in order to troubleshoot closely. The unit would power on with a steady white lighting around the front but I was used to seeing green. When I press the button to reset it, it would reboot and start flashing different coloured lights but when I release the button, all lighting would stop.     I looked at Logitech’s support site to find out how to properly reset it. It was simply to hold the button a few seconds until lights start blinking, which is what I have been doing. I had the wired model so I plugged in the unit via USB to my Windows computer to attempt to connect to it. I had a hunch that there was a firmware update that it automatically tried to download and run, and that update caused this. I was right. A few other users on the Logitech forums reported the same symptoms I was experiencing with my Circle 2 webcam. Here was one specific post that I responded to: https://suppo

4 Things You Must do When Taking a Proctored Exam

This was my proctored-exam transcript last night when I took the AWS Solutions Architect exam (SAA-C02) as part of my recertification because it expires every 3 years. This was a remote proctored exam through PSI and should have been easy because this wasn’t the first time I used their service. For whatever reason, last night’s experience was so bad  that an exam that started at 10:45pm didn’t finish until early morning 2:15am.  Some things that you could do to avoid what I went through: 1) Test your computer 24 hours before start time This was my fault and I should  tested sooner. I did start preparing foe the prerequisites as early as 8pm and thought I had enough time to complete everything as it was the same computer I used three years ago when I got certified with AWS. However, I found that since the last time I took this exam, my hardware changed (different web cam, different speakers) and I installed more software like Docker that the proctoring software (PSI Secure Browser) didn

Fixing ads.txt error in AdSense for your websites hosted on Blogger

We were recently approved to setup Google Adsense for a few websites. I was so ecstatic because I hadn't been able to get this going for a while due to some accounting errors. I assume there was a time duration where that token expires and am now glad to be able use this product. During the setup on our blogger sites, I ran into some technical errors pointed at fixing ads.txt otherwise it may impact ad revenue, i.e. "earnings at risk you need to fix some ads.txt file issues to avoid severe impact to your revenue".  To summarize the steps needed to enable Google Adsense on your site, you would simply need to do the following:  1) Create an ads.txt file in the root of your Blogger site like example.com/ads.txt by going to Settings > Moentization > Enable custom ads.txt slider;  2) Add your publisher ID to the ads.txt file in Blogger using string "google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0" where pub-0000000000000000 is your personal publisher

Unable to get to computer BIOS because monitor goes to sleep at startup?

I just enrolled in a course that requires running virtual machines on my Windows 10 Pro computer using VirtualBox. I couldn't start the virtual machines because of this error "The native API dll was not found (C:\WINDOWS\system32\WinHvPlatform.dll)". After doing some troubleshooting, I found this to mean that the hardware acceleration settings required by the CPU to support virtualization are currently disabled in my computer BIOS. I had to enable virtualization on my CPU chipset (VT-x/AMD-V).  Seems easy enough, right? I rebooted my computer and was expecting to see the memory counter and options to get into the BIOS. It must have been so quick that it took me straight to Windows 10 login prompt right away. I tried again and as usual I am immediately back to Windows 10 login. Each time I reboot, there is a box that says my monitor is going to sleep and does not wake again until presented with Windows 10 login prompt. I can hear the disk and fans spinning during startup,