Computer Hacking at MICO – Roast Breadfruit and How to install and Test Portable Apps on a Thumb Drive

I’ve improved my cooking methods so as to make more food with less, now incorporating food not only from Hi-Lo in Cross Roads but vegetables from downtown. Bagjuice and Peppersteak as noted in my blog article entitled “Cooking Restart at MICO - How to Cook a Meal in under 30 minutes and make Drinks with Bag Juice” now with Roast Breadfruit at JA$100 is now on the menu.

I purchase Roast Breadfruit from a Lady located outside of the Hi-Lo Supermarket in Cross Roads for JA$100. Good deal for a good size snack that lasts for weeks that you can cut and eat as is or fry like French fries or potato chips!

After my experiences last year with using the computers at the MICO University College, I’ve come back for my Second Semester of my Professional Diploma in Teaching a lot wiser. This time on campus, I’m no longer wearing my warm and fuzzy Green Hat on a campus overflowing with females and PNP  (People’s National Party) colours.

This time, as the theme of my Teacher Reflection Blog MICO Wars: The Teacher Force Awakens, I’ve come prepared for War!

Computer Hacking at MICO – How Portable Apps helps me avoid computer without proper software

Instead, I’m now wearing my Black Hat, symbolizing to all females on the MICO University College that Lindsworth Deer is in his Hacker mode i.e. Bluefox mode. Where I’m from, May Pen, Clarendon, May Pen is no play Pen.

As part of my transformation to my old Hacker self, I’ve begun walking with my 16 GB Thumb Drive which I’ve yet to christen with a name. But never mind that. As a part of the new me, I’ve come prepared against using computers on Campus that have slow Internet Browsers as well as slow Adobe Acrobat to read *.pdf files.

That software is Portable Apps, which I discovered after watching this video online.

The advantage of Portable Apps is that the programs are not installed into the computer, but running from a *.exe in a Portable Apps folder. This reduces the amount of installed programs on my Laptop by reducing them down to mere *.exe files, making them portable on a thumb drive as well. 

I can theoretically make my favourite programs executables and copy them unto a thumb drive and carry them anywhere I want to use them, be it on a computer at the MICO University College or any computer that doesn’t have all the programs that I need!

How to install Portable Apps – Roast Breadfruit makes a Hungry Man Patient

Since I already have a Dropbox Account and an active Dropbox folder on my Dell Latitude D520 Laptop that’s only got about 80 GB, I went to the Portable Apps website, downloaded the software and began the installation process in Dropbox as shown below.

Once installed, it’ll appear in your list of Programs. You then download all the programs you need to use. In my case, that list includes the common ones missing from the computers at MICO University College:

1.      Firefox Browser

2.      Google Chrome Browser

3.      Mozilla Thunderbird email client

4.      Skype

5.      uTorrent

6.      VLC

It then installs them one Application at a time. Now would be a good time to fry some Roast Breadfruit that I purchased from a Lady located outside of the Hi-Lo Supermarket in Cross Roads for JA$100 and munch Breadfruit chips, which are as tasty as plantain chips.

This while Portable Apps installs itself in my Dropbox on my Lappy!

After it installs itself, it’ll take awhile to upload its various components to the Cloud. You’ll notice it actively doing so after the installation of the programs you selected from the list are complete. Good to note here that this updating happens often, so be prepared to wait while it updates itself and then synchs to the Dropbox Cloud.

Once it finishes synching up to the Dropbox Cloud, everything should be all green. You can take a peek into the Portable Apps folder and see all your fully installed Portable Apps as shown below.

At this point, you can take it for a spin on your computer to see how it works. Basically it loads from the Cloud Drive on your computer and gives you a menu that appears from the Right hand corner of your Desktop’s Taskbar, giving you the option to choose which programs you wanna run.

The advantage here is that these programs are not installed into the computer, but running from a *.exe in the folder. This not only reduces the amount of deeply integrated programs by reducing to *.exe files, making your computer run faster, but also makes them portable in a thumb drive as well. 

That’s what I decided to test out next.

Portable Apps on MICO University College – Testing out Portable Apps on my Thumb Drive

Created a folder on my 16 GB Thumb Drive and copied my Portable Apps folder from Dropbox to a folder appropriately named Portable Apps as shown below. Make sure you copy the Portable Apps folder from Dropbox folder as well as the associated Start, Autorun and .dropbox files.

Once at MICO University College, it then plugged my 16 GB Thumb drive into a computer in the E-Learning Lab and ran the program and lo and behold it worked! The Portable Apps program menu opened in much the same way it did on my Lappy at home.

Even more exciting when, for the First time, I was able to access my Gmail and Microsoft Outlook emails on Mozilla Thunderbird, my email client which I now use in portable form  on my Dell Latitude D520 straight on this computer here in the E-Learning Lab!

I basically browsed though my Gmail emails and answered a few emails from my Microsoft Outlook. It was an awesome and surreal experience, as I was able to access Mozilla Thunderbird and use it as if were installed on the E-Learning Lab’s computers.

So that’s it folks. It works. Best of all, I purchased Roast Breadfruit from a Lady located outside of the Hi-Lo Supermarket in Cross Roads for JA$100.

Have fun using Portable Apps to not only lighten the load on your computer, making it run a little faster but also allow you to carry your necessary computer programs around with you on your Thumb drive.