Month: December 2014

How to install a (portable) JDK in Windows without admin rights

Nick Russler

It recently happened to me that I was stuck at work on a Windows installation without access to admin privileges. While I could use a bunch of portable apps I could not find a portable JDK. To get a portable JDK without admin privileges in Windows you have to follow three simple steps.


Listen to some relaxing music while reading my blog post


1. Download

Download the JDK from Oracle (e.g. JDK 8 8u111).

2. Extract

If you want to use the x86 version simply open the .exe file with 7-Zip. It contains a single file tools.zip, which contains all the files we need.
Open with 7-Zip

For x64 the tools.zip can be found in .rsrc\1033\JAVA_CAB10\111\

Extract the tools.zip to the desired JDK directory (e.g. “D:\JavaJDK\”).
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How to get the current windows wallpaper in C#

Nick Russler

Being able to make software is great. Not only because you can make a living from it, but also because it helps you in everyday life. Like when you have to manage your 10k+ wallpaper library. I for once always get baited by these “575 awesome wallpapers you absolutely need” posts and download them right away into my library. Every now and then a black sheep sneaks in but i only see it after it pops up on my Desktop (as if i would review all of these 575 wallpapers).

And here it comes together: as a software developer i have the means to write a small piece of code that gets rid of these ugly wallpapers.

So i hacked this snippet that moves the current wallpaper out of its current folder and into a “reject” folder.
The current wallpaper path can be found in a registry entry “TranscodedImageCache” in “HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop” (at least in Windows 8.1). It’s encoded with unicode though and has to be cleaned a little bit.

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String replace with callback in Java (like in JavaScript)

Nick Russler

When you use JavaScript a lot you are more or less used to the callback-hell, but i hope you love the benefits of passing functions around as much as i do.

For example when replacing a portion of a string:

"test6test12test".replace(/\d+/g, function(str){
  return parseInt(str) * 2;
});

When doing such things in Java it can be a bit of a hassle, but Lambda-Expressions to the rescue!