deprecated blog
18-Dec-09Naraku, the blahog, has pretty much been dead for awhile now. I finally figured out what I want to write about and keep up on. Stuff that’s Fun To Think About. The name leaves me so much wiggle room I’m virtually guaranteed to fit in no matter how many tangents I take.
As for naraku, I’m not entirely sure what to turn this domain into yet. There’s a lot of history here and a decent number of visitors still for the archives. So it’ll probably continue to “live on life support” for now at least.
Head on over to Fun To Think About to keep up w/my daily Internety antics. Or follow me on twitter here and funtothinkabout here. Thanks for visiting!
resizing a Virtual Box hard disk
21-Oct-09Here’s a “quick & dirty” way to resize that Virtual Box .vdi hard drive you made too small. (Yeah, I did too.)
1) Get a “rescue OS” iso, System Rescue CD is the one I used
2) Create a new hard disk in Virtual Box by going to File -> Virtual Disk Manager
3) Update your current Virtual Machine settings to use the new disk image as a slave hard disk
4) Mount the rescue OS iso file in the CD-ROM settings
5) Make sure the boot order will boot off the CD
6) Once booted, type startx
7) Once in X, type gparted in the terminal
8) In gparted, select the primary partition you wish to make bigger and choose copy
9) Use the drop down menu to select the new second hard disk
10) Right click on the representation of the disk and click paste
11) gparted will prompt you for the size of the disk, drag the slider to the new size, leave space for a swap partition if desired then click apply
12) Once complete, right click on the disk and choose Manage Flags, check Boot then Exit gparted
12.5) If you’re Guest OS is Linux, you’ll need to reinstall grub; if not, you can skip the next two steps
13) To reinstall grub type these setup commands in the terminal:
- sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/root/proc
- sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev
- sudo chroot /mnt/root /bin/bash
- sudo grub
14) In grub, type these commands:
- find /boot/grub/stage1
- root (hd0,0)
- setup (hd0)
- quit
15) Shutdown the rescue OS and update the Virtual Machine settings to use the new disk as the primary master
16) Make sure you Unmount CD iso
17) And now you’re done, go ahead and Boot the VM and you’re new size disk is ready to go
Supposedly you can use vditool to do something like this but I think the preceding is the method most people will find easiest.
ze frank’s The Show is “back”
24-Jun-09…in it’s new & permanently sponsored form, “That makes me think of”, the first of which is here at time.com.
as a fan of the original “The Show”, I see that Time has essentially allowed Ze to exercise his presentational art form to it’s near fullest. while I doubt very much we’ll see anything as awesome, like “fingers in food” (see vid below,) coming out of this new venue, I am excited for the world at large that once we again may bask in his comedic and insightful interpretation of current events.
wordpress new user SPAM
17-Apr-09this blog gets about 3-5 new *spam* users per day. I imagine they are trying to post comments post-login but I have that function cleverly spam-trapped. anyway, since *real* users don’t need an account to post comments I’ve disabled user creation.
I have been using computers for damn all my life and never had too much trouble with the repeditive stress injuries that are so common for folks like me. finally though, it turns out I am not immune: my hand and wrist have been aching like hell almost all the time for about a week now. other than complaining, I’ve done some research and have set out to change my otherwise passive-prevention ways.
while IANAD, and have not yet seen one, I believe conforming to basic ergonomics (the passive ways I personally have always abided by) can help a lot. But on top of that, and possibly more important is stretching frequently. I hope that doing some simple exercises will help me and possibly you avoid similar and annoying pain while ultimately preventing carpal tunnel and/or other equally unpleasant syndromes.
first up is this guy, who demonstrates some simple, quick and (likely) effective stretches:
and then for more, mostly full body, including some bad ass animated gif action, is this link to Preventing and healing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome & Repetitive Stress Injuries and exercises for RSI tendonitis.
LED SHEEP! very cool indie ad
23-Mar-09this brings a smile.
the credit catastrophe clearly conceptualized and manifest by clever little animations.
while no solution is offered, the purpose is elegantly achieved – a clear outline of the cause of and contributing factors to the problem our global economy contemporarily faces.
of course, the latter only applying to the geekiest among us as it is the digits represented by the unix time stamp as of today (Friday, February 13 3:31PM) for systems in the pacific standard timezone.
so today, thank your friendly neighborhood developers, who work feverishly deep in the underbelly of modern-day-internet-society, and share a drink. maybe a scary story, too.
[via 1234567890day]
funny, was just talking about this. questions like, do women actually have to track their cycle? can’t they just feel it coming on? apparently there are many who keep a record on a calendar. (fortunately for me, this is not an issue, my lady is as cool as a cucumber.)
while the site is targeted to men, perhaps the ladies too, could saddle up to a new e-pal – for the good and civility of a peaceful relationship.
related links: pmsbuddy pms stories, pmsbuddy tips!
When all else fails, flowers will always do the trick. They are kryptonite to PMS.
[via slantback]
took way too long to find this; we have certainly entered an era where “traditional search” engines are fail. I finally found a link for Pres. Obama’s inauguration speech on twitter search after going through countless pages on y!, goog’ and utube. the reality is clear: news publications and search engines are too slow for news, now.
crooks and liars has the speech for download in wmv and mov formats.
enjoy and be humbled by our 44th president’s speech, which was written 27 year old, Jon Favreau.
indie sitcom The Remnants pilot episode
13-Jan-09Very happy to see Ze in something.. anything. seriously, I guess I still miss the show.
The pilot for The Remnants, written and directed by John August. Starring Justine Bateman, Michael Cassidy, Ben Falcone, Ze Frank, Ernie Hudson, and Amanda Walsh.
It was shot during the WGA strike in February 2008, using the SAG internet agreement.
The project is currently in development with 60Frames in association with NBC/U, so it could in theory become a series at some point. Either way, we had a good time making it.
watch below, or go to vimeo for the hd version.
The Remnants from John August on Vimeo.
via the writer’s blog, john august. here’s wishing him and all involved luck in bringing the series to fruition!
In a war this close, choosing the victor is far less fun than waging the battles themselves. I say this because it was a tough call and regardless of outcome, have thoroughly enjoyed both of these memory-capture devices.
Aesthetics and usage
While I generally prefer the color black to silver, I can’t get over the awkward wannabe-sports-car shape of the SD990IS. Further adding insult to injury is that those odd contours lead to a physically clumsy holding position. The thumb has no home like it does on the SD880IS. Holding the 880 feels far more natural. Insignificant as it may sound, this small difference has led me to generally enjoy using the 880 more than the 990.
Even so, the SD990’s optical viewfinder will inevitably be missed by SD880 users, and the quick-shot mode which makes specific use of, is very cool.
The SD880’s wide angle lens is fun – useful in both indoor and outdoor situations, simply a great feature I wish the 990 had an option for.
Manual-mode on the SD990 is as it is on all Canon camera’s – useful if you read the manual and/or are particularly meticulous about photography. The SD880’s program-mode offers a few manual options such as exposure time. I figure, if you’re the type to really tweak, you probably have or are in the market for a D-SLR camera.
Win: SD880IS (but very close)
Overall photo quality
So do the additional 4.7MP spec-advantage of the SD990IS equate to better pictures? Absolutely – the SD990IS has superior IQ and a bigger sensor (however slight) than the SD880IS. This is apparent in the clearer less noise better focused pictures in every shooting environment. Noise is the single largest complaint of the SD880IS and after taking some 200 photos with both cameras, I can see why.
Photo file sizes (.JPG only used, in auto-mode) are also advantage SD990 – at 9MP/Large which is comparable to the SD880’s 10MP setting, files – in general – are almost ½ as big as the 880. With the larger file size there is no discernible quality advantage. At full resolution, a typical 14.7MP 990’s image file range from 3.5 to 5.5MB depending on settings.
Win: SD990IS
Which to choose?!
From the first moment I held the both, I generally wanted the SD880IS: ~$100 cheaper, wide-angle lens, huge LCD and subtle-yet-slick styling. In the weeks I wavered between the two, I really wanted to want the SD990IS for it’s better picture quality and optical viewfinder which I knew I’d eventually miss. However, I found myself more often picking up and snapping shots with the SD880IS. Its elegant and modern form factor as well as “handling” I can only continue to say is totally natural won me over – the slightly lighter and smaller body certainly helped pull the tide, too. Undeniable though, was the nicer photos the 990 consistently delivered.
Tie (yes, I know, COP-OUT!)
So… wait, what?
I’m keeping the SD990IS. The facts are that aesthetics are ultimately irrelvant and awkwardness is hardly a reason to dismiss an otherwise superior camera. I want to take great pictures after-all, and while the wide-angle lens is a loss, the additional zoom and capabilities are definite gains.
The final factor was made by a weight neither camera had control over. Dell is fantastic for returns and I waited too long to return the 990IS to Adorama (they only offer 14 days from order, oops!)
Ultimately both Canon’s are fantastic point and shoot cameras. Their differences place them in similar yet different target audiences: SD990IS edges towards the professional photographer type and the SD880IS is certain to be a favorite among party-goers, like those who love(d) the infamous Polaroid camera.
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Miss part one or two of this “series?”
one) Sizing up the competitors
two) Through the eyes of the combatants
