Netbeans Portable JDKHOME

You may get this dialog message when starting Netbeans Portable: Cannot find java.exe in specified jdkhome.. For me, the dialog appears because I have a JDK installed instead of inside the Netbeans Portable folder. To avoid responding to this message every time I start Netbeans, I made two changes to my configuration files:

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1. Close Netbeans first. If you don't close Netbeans, it will overwrite your changes to the configuration files.
2. Edit ...\NetBeans_JavaSE_7.4_Portable\App\netbeans\etc\netbeans.conf and set netbeans_jdkhome to the path of your JDK installation.
3. Edit ...\NetBeans_JavaSE_7.4_Portable\App\AppInfo\Launcher\NetBeansPortable.ini and comment out the section that overwrites netbeans_jdkhome. You comment out lines in an INI file by inserting a semicolon in the first column of a row.

Install Perl CPAN modules behind a firewall

I had to install additional Perl packages using CPAN on a computer behind a firewall. The hack is to install the same version of Perl on a build computer first then copy the Perl/site folder to the destination computer as described in Cloning perl/site/lib directory?.

An icon called an icon

In Lotus Notes 8.5.3, some of the alternative text for icons in the mail view is useful (e.g. SameTime icons show the user's phone number and availability) but often the alternative text is the useless "icon called an icon" text such as "Paperclip Icon" for a paperclip or "Unopened yellow envelope Icon" for ... you can guess. Searching for the icon names in the Local Help results in 0 hits. Eye-rolling.

Adding portable programs to Windows 7 Start menu

A tiny addenda to Raymond Chen's series of posts about how programs appear in the Windows Start menu. According to Raymond's posts, Explorer counts the number of times the program is launched to place it in the Start menu. However, Explorer doesn't add the program's icon in the Start menu if you just start an executable (e.g. a PortableApp or a not-installed program) by entering its path in the "Search programs and files" field; a workaround is to add a shortcut to the program in the desktop.