So you created a disk for your Windows or Linux VirtualBox VM and you made the mistake of not creating the drive as a dynamically expanding storage drive, you chose fixed size.

Now you’re running out of space and all your Google searches point you to stupid posts on the virtualbox.org forums that lead to nowhere, specially if you are a MacOSX user, look no further, you’ve found the solution to your problem on this post.

VirtualBox for Mac comes with a tool called VBoxManage, this tool is all you need to resize your virtual disk.

When you’re using the VBoxManage tool make sure your VM is not running, stop it completely to be safe.

Step 0. Backup your current drive (optional)

I recommend that before you do anything you clone your existing drive, just in case…

You can clone your drive using guess what? yes, the VBoxManage tool. No need to download any external tools.

$ VboxManage clonehd <path to your original drive> <path of the copy>

in my computer it looked exactly like this:

$ VBoxManage clonehd /Users/gubatron/VirtualBox\ VMs/windows7-64bit/windows7-64bit.vdi /Users/gubatron/windows7-64bit.cloned.vdi
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

If you don’t know where your .vdi file is, it’s very simple, right Click your VM > Settings > Storage, and mouse over the .vdi to see it’s physical location on your Mac hardrive.

Step 1. Resize!

The command to resize is:

$ VBoxManage modifyhd <path to your vdi> --resize <new size in megabytes>

In my case I had a 20GB drive that I wanted to double in size (40GB), a quick Google search for “40GB to megabytes” yields the number 40960, so that’s what I put on my –resize parameter.

This is how it looked for me:

$ VBoxManage modifyhd /Users/gubatron/VirtualBox\ VMs/windows7-64bit/windows7-64bit.vdi --resize 40960
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

The ‘resizing’ is almost immediate.

Step 2. (Re)Start VirtualBox

After you’ve physically resized your drive, both VirtualBox and your OS should know about the changes.

At this point, clicking on your VM in the VirtualBox window will show that it still has the old size:

Before: (Note the size of the drive at the bottom of the image)

After doing the resize, shutdown completely your VirtualBox, and launch it again. When you see the information about the storage drives attached to your VM you should see the new disk size.

After: (Note the size of the drive at the bottom of the image)

Step 3. Let your OS know the new logical size of the drive

When you start your VM, it won’t know right away what the new size of the disk is, you’ll have let the operating system know that there is additional space it can use.

If your VM is running Windows 7, the way to let the operating system know that it can use the additional space on your drive is very straight forward.

Click on the Windows (Start) Icon on the Bar > Right Click on “Computer” > Manage (You’ll need to be an Administrator)

The “Computer Management” window will open, in it go to:

Storage > Disk Management > Right Click on the partition you want to extend.

Select the option that says “Extend”, a Wizard will open, just hit Next until it ends if you want to use the whole space.

After you’re done, if you refresh your “Computer” on the File explorer the resized drive should show right away

That’s it, enjoy and let me know how it went.

Saw these on a McDonalds near Paris.

Haven’t seen it anywhere in the US, if you have, please share a link of a picture and let me know how was your experience.

They did a great job with UX on it, it was quite easy to put together an order for three people, very flexible and easy to use.

So I had to work outside today, and as usual I wanted to use my Verizon 4G Android (Thunderbolt) to connect my laptop using the Wi-Fi hotspot feature, as I’ve been doing since I got the phone, it’s been a real life saver many times.

This morning I saw that there was a firmware update, and I gladly accepted it, after that upgrade, now dear Verizon has decided to charge 4G users with $30 A MONTH to use the Hotspot feature that was free on my phone.

Really Verizon…?

So well, the outcome is that, NO, I’m never gonna pay you $30 a month to use my own Wi-Fi card to share my internet connection, but instead I’ve gone and signed up for Clear’s 4G hotspot, which allows me to connect up to 8 computers.

Verizon, I was happy with you until now, you suck balls, Android users are not stupid, this is pure evil. I guess my $250 a month on my line and my family’s lines are not enough for you.

So, if Clear ends up working well for me, what I think I’ll do at the end of the contract will be radical and I hope more and more people will do the same, I’m gonna get rid of my phone line, bye bye stupid 10 digit numbers, bye bye dynamic monthly bills, bye bye Verizon. I’ll just have it connected to my Wi-Fi hotspot, I’ll have faster internet access, and if I need to make a phone call, I’ll use either GTalk or Skype, fuck it. I don’t answer the phone anyway, I’ll send everyone straight to Google Voice.

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Getting this error every time you start Chrome?

Fix for MacOSX

Remove the “Web Data” file inside your Home’s Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default folder
“~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Web Data”
Then restart Chrome and the error message should be gone.

Fix for Windows

Remove the “Web Data” file inside the following folder
%APPDATA%\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
Then restart Chrome and the error message should be gone.

Front

Back (Message encoded in Morse Code)

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What If Life is a collective avatar of almost an infinite number of individuals whose infinitely contradictive number of commands/decisions towards that avatar result in what we think is “free will”. These “video game” players sharing the avatar seem to like creating mathematical laws while playing this game, we’re talking about the ones responsible for the laws of physics to keep the universe going for ever.

Now imagine each one of those guys is a shared avatar too.
Putting the infinite into something small feels good in the brain.

So you had a pimped out eclipse.ini file and for some odd reason in the world, eclipse.ini is missing in action after one of the numerous updates, you try to put it where it was, but none of the options you pass it seem to have an effect.

Here’s what I did

After I gave up on reading the documentation on what the hell happened to eclipse.ini and why it’s not having any effect on my eclipse, I just created my own eclipse launcher.

Here’s what it has inside:

#!/bin/bash
./eclipse -vmargs -XX:MaxPermSize=512M-Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:PermSize=256M

Here’s a snippet of something I did tonight to play a bit with the Canvas and 2d Graphics context objects in javascript.

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Playing with Canvas</title>
  </head>

  <body style="padding:0 0; margin: 0 0; background:black">

    <canvas id="myCanvas" width="1024" height="1024" ></canvas>

    <script type="text/javascript">

    //convert to CSS friendly Hex String
    function d2h (n) {
      var result = n.toString(16);
      if (n < 16) {
	result = '0'+result;
      }
      return result;
    }

    var preparingBackground = true;
    var canvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas");
    var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");

    var canvasWidth = parseInt(canvas.getAttribute("width"));
    var canvasHeight = parseInt(canvas.getAttribute("height"));

    var r=255; var red;
    var g=255; var green;
    var b=255; var blue;

    var rectHeight = canvasHeight/256;
    var rectWidth = canvasWidth/256;

    var rectX = 0;
    var rectY = 0;

    var Rect = function(xval,yval,speedXval,speedYval,r,g,b) {
      this.x = xval;
      this.y = yval;

      this.speedX = speedXval;
      this.speedY = speedYval;

      this.r = r;
      this.g = g;
      this.b = b;

      //so colors dont jump from 255 to 0.
      this.rDelta = 1;
      this.gDelta = 1;
      this.bDelta = 1;

      this.width = 1;
      this.height = 1;

      //so rectangle colors wont change so fast.
      this.colorChangeDefaultValue=1;
      this.colorChangeAcumulator=1;

      this.move = function () {
	this.x = this.x+this.speedX;
        this.y = this.y+this.speedY;

	//if you reach a borders change direction.
        if ((this.x+this.width >= canvasWidth && this.speedX > 0) ||
	    (this.x <= 0 && this.speedX < 0)) {
	  this.speedX = this.speedX*-1;
	}

        if ((this.y+this.height >= canvasHeight && this.speedY > 0) ||
	    (this.y <= 0 && this.speedY < 0)) {
	  this.speedY = this.speedY*-1;
	}
      }

      //draw and change colors
      this.draw = function () {
	//play with color gradients when you have a chance...
	if (this.colorChangeAcumulator--==0) {
	  if ((this.r >= 255 && this.rDelta > 0) ||
              (this.r <= 0 && this.rDelta < 0)) {
	    this.rDelta=this.rDelta*-1;
	  }

	  if ((this.g >= 255 && this.gDelta > 0) ||
              (this.g <= 0 && this.gDelta < 0)) {
	    this.gDelta=this.gDelta*-1;
	  }

	  if ((this.b >= 255 && this.bDelta > 0) ||
              (this.b <= 0 && this.bDelta < 0)) {
	    this.bDelta=this.bDelta*-1;
	  }

	  this.r=(this.r+this.rDelta) % 256;
	  this.g=(this.g+this.gDelta) % 256;
	  this.b=(this.b+this.bDelta) % 256; 

	  this.colorChangeAcumulator=this.colorChangeDefaultValue;
	  this.width++;
	  this.height++;
	}

	//paint the reactangle
	ctx.fillStyle="#"+d2h(this.r)+d2h(this.g)+d2h(this.b);
	ctx.fillRect(this.x,this.y,this.width,this.height);
      }
    }

    //animation interval ids
    var prepareBackgroundIntervalId = 0;
    var rectsIntervalId = 0;

    var speedX = 7;
    var speedY = 7;

    var theRects = [new Rect(0,0,speedX,speedY,10,44,100),
		    new Rect(canvasWidth,canvasHeight,-speedX,-speedY,125,0,0),
		    new Rect(canvasWidth,0,-speedX,speedY,0,210,80),
		    new Rect(0,canvasHeight,speedX,-speedY,40,40,0),
		    new Rect(canvasWidth/2,0,0,speedY,-4,40,40),
		    new Rect(canvasWidth/2,canvasHeight,4,-speedY,0,100,250),
		    new Rect(0,canvasHeight/2,speedX,0,210,100,100),
		    new Rect(canvasWidth,512,-speedX,0,100,10,0)];

    function prepareBackground() {

      if (preparingBackground) {
	r=r-1;
	g=g-1;
	b=b-1;

	red = d2h(r);
	green = d2h(g);
	blue = d2h(b);

	ctx.fillStyle = "#"+red+green+blue;
	ctx.fillRect(rectX,rectY,canvas.getAttribute("width"),rectHeight);

	rectY = rectY + rectHeight;

	preparingBackground = !(r==0 && g==0 && b==0);
      } else {
	clearInterval(prepareBackgroundIntervalId);
	rectsIntervalId = setInterval("moveRects()",33);
      }
    }

    function moveRects() {
      for (i in theRects) {
	var rect = theRects[i];
	rect.draw();
	rect.move();
      }
    }

    prepareBackgroundIntervalId = setInterval("prepareBackground()",1);

    </script>
  </body>

</html>

What you see above is a picture of the last 30 USED CDs I bought on Amazon.com.

These 30 CDs total a number of 454 tracks.

CD prices ranged between $1.61 to $9.18

The total of these purchases, including shipping was $291.78

This makes the average cost per track only $0.64.

ITunes charges $1.29 per track, that’s a 48% saving per track, and I keep the CDs and the booklets, if anything happens to my hard drive, I just rip the CDs again to put my music on as many devices as I can.

So I ask you… Should online music stores get their prices down to $0.50 per track? or you think $1.29 is the price of getting your song whenever you want, wherever you want?