Drag this link onto your bookmark bar, and it should give you a nice Today’s Readings button (right-click and hit “Add to Favorites” if you are in Internet Explorer; unsure of Mac/Safari or Chrome):

Today’s Readings

What gives? Well, when you started with that fancy dynamic disk, it wasn’t hard for VirtualBox to remember that the entire drive was empty, so the VDI had pretty much no data stored in it; any sectors of the drive which weren’t present in the VDI were assumed to be blank. This is how, despite the guest OS thinking the drive is a 5TB drive, the VDI file only takes up a few GB after a clean Windows installation.

As you installed more stuff in the VM, VirtualBox needed to write the contents of the non-blank sectors to the VDI, and so the VDI grew as expected.

Now, here’s the catch: when you deleted the pile of data from the VM, the guest OS didn’t actually go through and blank out every sector which was in use, as this would be insanely slow. It only marked that chunk of space as free in a table in a different area of the drive.

So, without making any assumptions about how the data is stored, VirtualBox has no way to tell the difference between an important glob of data which allows Windows to boot and a glob of deleted love letters to your now-ex. Because of this, the VDI doesn’t shrink immediately when you delete files.

Okay, so how can you fix it?

First, since VirtualBox looks for consecutive blank sectors to drop from the VDI, the free space on the drive actually needs to be blank. There are many tools to do this, but the best one I’ve found is the Sysinternals’ SDelete tool. Running sdelete -c inside the VM will blank out all free space. Don’t use the -z option; -z first blanks the free space, then proceeds to write random data, which will actually lose you space, rather than gaining it. sdelete will take a significant amount of time, depending on your hardware and disk size, as well as factors such as star alignment and ocean temperature.

Once the free space wipe is complete, shut down the VM. The VDI will still be huge, as it now has a whole bunch of unnecessary data saying “this sector is blank”. To remove this fluff, on the host OS, run

VBoxManage modifyvdi full_path_to_vdi compact

where full_path_to_vdi is the full path to the disk image (if on Windows, include the drive letter onward, such as C:\Images\image.vdi; if on anything else, use the absolute path such as /home/username/image.vdi). After a few minutes, the VDI should shrink down to roughly the size of the contained data.

Of course, the image will grow once again over time, but as far as I can tell, there isn’t a much more elegant way of mitigating this problem.

That’s it for this tutorial. If you run into any problems or just want to let me know what you think, feel free to do so in the combox below.

Speaking of Kingdom Hearts, I found a bunch of Kingdom Hearts sheet music on SquareSound.com. A few of them are in Sibelius format, which is a bit annoying, but I definitely intend to practice up at least a couple of these songs. There are these and many more available; take Google for a spin if you are interested.

According to the company’s FAQ, the ball can be thrown as a normal bowling ball, but it works best when rolled down a ramp. It appears that the niche this company is trying to fill is that of assisting handicapped bowlers. After having helped with the bowling event of Special Olympics, I can definitely see the need for a device like this.

Also, I stink at bowling and always have, so I definitely would like one of these for myself.

Video after the break.

I dug around online, and found this site; the solution wasn’t in rebuilding my project, but rather in the comments.

Go into Window > Preferences > Java > Editor > Content Assist > Advanced and make sure “Java Proposals” is checked.

If you find that some members are missing, you may need to muck with some of the other checkboxes in that screen. However, when I checked “Java Non-Type Proposals”, “Java Proposals”, and “Java Type Proposals”, every member was duplicated in the list. That’s not damaging, but it is irritating. Just leaving “Java Proposals” checked seems to have made everything happy once again.

Videos of each of the following are embedded after the break.

Todd Harrison carved a pumpkin like many of us, but unlike many of us he filled his with some electronics, including some lights, a big red button, and a car horn. It would be obvious enough for the horn to go off immediately when someone presses the button, but Todd made it light up the eyes, wait a moment, and then honk the horn. I want one! A video and writeup is available on his website.

Blogger Macaba created a balancing scooter that functions much like a Segway. I have been intrigued by these since I rode one, and once I get some money I very well may make one of my own.

The original source is here, but I cannot seem to find the original source’s video; this YouTube link will do. The video shows a speaking piano–that is, a mechanically-controlled piano with a computer playing the correct frequencies so that it plays back the words originally recorded into the computer. This has to be one of the coolest videos I’ve seen, and it is definitely worth watching. As a side note, I think the YouTube video I linked seems a bit spammy, but the presence of a translation makes it worth bearing.

And last but not least, three guys from Poland got together and created another of the coolest videos I’ve seen. They made a glass tabletop on which they placed bottle caps; each bottle cap represents a sound. A webcam underneath the table connects to a PC, and the PC does some image processing to find the bottle caps and play back the track, left-to-right repeatedly. It makes a lot more sense if you watch the video. A full writeup is available in Polish on their website (Polish) (Google Translation).

Honking Pumpkin:

DIY Segway:

Speaking piano:

Beatmachine:

Now, music is fun, and computers are fun…what happens when the two are fused is something I could spend a whole lot of time on. There are a lot of music enthusiasts who are computer geeks…hence the plethora of projects out there for working with music on the computer.

Continue reading to see a couple awesome and free music-centric programs available!

Lilypond

Lilypond is a music notation program, available for Windows, Mac, and any flavor of Linux. The entire goal of the project is to produce results that compare with a hand-engraved piece of music, as opposed to the ugly grid-based output of competitors. The input to Lilypond is a simple text file, and the output is a PDF, and if desired, a MIDI file. Lilypond isn’t a graphical program; rather, it is a command-line tool that does its job and quits. There are many tools available to work with Lilypond–ones that make entering notes as easy as working with Finale PrintMusic, as well as specially-designed text editors to work with the Lilypond text notation. However, all you really need is a text editor (Notepad or GEdit work beautifully), Lilypond, and a PDF viewer. In-depth tutorials are available on the Lilypond Documentation site.

OpenMPT

While Lilypond is a music notation software, OpenMPT (formerly ModPlug Tracker) is what is referred to as a tracker. Basically, it is a player piano. This program is in the same class as Fruity Loops. You create instruments based on short audio clips, and then you write music for the instruments to play. This software is much like what artists like DNA-Groove and Anamanaguchi (CollegeHumor feature) use. In fact, you could probably use it to construct music similar to most pop music, because that’s what a lot of the artists are using now. OpenMPT is available only for Windows, but it runs flawlessly under WINE.

What I didn’t anticipate is that iTunes would work worse than it did years ago.

I will let my message to Apple Support speak for itself.

I would like to report a problem with iTunes Store. I purchase iTunes Plus songs, they download quickly, and then iTunes “hangs” with a screen saying “processing file”. While it is “processing”, it consumes 100% CPU time and the interface becomes sluggish. After a *very* long time (somewhere between 15 and 45 minutes) the “processing” completes, and the song is playable…kind of–iTunes is “processing” the next song, and is so sluggish that it does not respond to presses on the stop, fast forward, etc. buttons. It has done this for every single song I’ve bought. I have iTunes 8.1.1.10, Windows XP Service Pack 3, a dual-core 1.67 GHz processor, 3GB of RAM, and plenty of hard disk space. I see from a quick Google query that this is a fairly common problem, and as of yet, no working solutions have been posted. Please advise. Thanks, Jacob.

About a day later, I received an email from Darrell which was completely unhelpful:

Dear Jacob,

My name is Darrell and I will be more than happy to assist you. Some Windows-based iTunes users have been having issues downloading iTunes Plus content. I found some information on our user discussion boards. It seems that the download error is caused by third party phone company music programs such as Verizon V-Cast or Sprint Music Manger. You can disable the program by using Task Manager.

1) Press Control+Alt+Delete to access task manager

2) Select the “Processes” and end the task for Memonitor.exe

If you don’t use any third party phone company music programs, you can go to the Control Panel, access Add/Remove programs, and remove these phone music softwares.

My hours are listed below for your convenience, and if you have anymore questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thank you for being a part of our family, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Darrell
iTunes Store Customer Support

Nice try, except that I haven’t ever loaded any kind of manager on my PC. Time for round two; Apple-1, Jacob-0.

Darrell,

I saw the discussions you refer to regarding the problems with iTunes “processing” being caused by some ill-behaved music management software from Sprint or Verizon. I can assure you that I have never loaded any such software on my machine. In fact, this copy of Windows barely gets any use at all, and hence has barely any software loaded on it; the processes that are running are either Windows-native processes or iTunes-related.

I really would like to express my frustration with this issue. Being forced to wait the better part of an hour for an album to download is a major inconvenience, and it seriously sweetens the deal that your competitors, namely Amazon MP3, provide. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to what iTunes is actually doing once the download is complete.

To add to the frustration, the album did not even download properly. One of the files was named incorrectly–the filename was incorrect, but the tags were correct. The file that was supposed to be in the place of this incorrectly-named file was in the Downloads folder inside my iTunes folder.

Thank you for your time, Darrell.

Jacob

I will post back when I get a response. In the meantime, really consider using Amazon MP3 if you don’t want to be frustrated. It seems to have almost as good of a selection, and once the files download via the Amazon Downloader, they are automatically added to iTunes. So basically, it is a drop-in replacement for the faulty iTunes Store.

EDIT: No such luck.

Dear Jacob,

I am sorry to hear that the previous troubleshooting tips I provided proved unsuccessful, and I can also fully understand your frustrations. However, as an iTunes Store Customer Support representative, I handle issues related to billing, customer accounts, and the items available on the iTunes Store. The issue you are experiencing falls outside of my area of specialty, but Apple does offer some resources that should help you.

You can call Apple technical support. The representative will be able to tell you about Apple’s complimentary and fee-based support options and can help you determine which option might be most helpful. To find the appropriate phone number here:

http://www.apple.com/support/contact/phone_contacts.html

You can also create a technical-support case via our website and arrange for an Apple technical support representative to call you. To do so, visit:

http://www.apple.com/support/expert

As to the purchase that is mislabeled if you can please reply back with the song title that is mislabeled. I can proceed to open an investigation to have the song correctly labeled.

My hours are listed below for your convenience, and if you have anymore questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thank you for being a part of our family, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Darrell
iTunes Store Customer Support

Now, this is somewhat of a dead end. The Apple Expert program is a hardware-only program, and thus doesn’t cover iTunes Store. So what does?

Darrell,

Why would you refer me to Apple Expert when you know that it doesn’t cover iTunes Store-related problems? I do not own any Apple products, and this support transaction is not encouraging me to buy any in the future.

The purchase was not mislabeled by iTunes Store; rather, the file was named incorrectly by iTunes during the download. This issue and the issue I initially reported could very easily be fixed if the programming team knew about them.

If you cared whatsoever about Apple’s well-being, you would escalate this issue to where it needs to be to get fixed. As long as this problem persists, I will strongly discourage those around me from buying iTunes credit, as the Store functionality is broken.

I’m trying to help you out. Help me out.

Sincerely,
Jacob

I really doubt that Apple has any interest in fixing this problem. Therefore, I strongly suggest you check out alternatives.

EDIT 2: The response is a dead end.

Dear Jacob,

I apologize if I caused any confusion with my last email. The reason I referred you to our Apple Technical Support Team was due to the fact that something on your computer is interfering with iTunes processing your purchase.

I have confirmed that the iTunes Store is functioning and accepting connections. Therefore, the issue is likely related to your Internet connection, local network, or computer. A tech support representatives will be able to assist in resolving the conflict. I wish that I could assist you further but I only have basic troubleshooting tips that are not relevant to the issue you are experiencing. Unfortunately the only way to contact them is by phone. Since I work with email I have no way of escalating your request to them. You can find the correct number by using the link here:

http://www.apple.com/support/contact/phone_contacts.html

As to the file that was labeled incorrectly by iTunes during download. If you can please reply back with the song title I can let our engineers know so they can investigate and resolve the issue as well.

Clearly, more than just the iTunes Store is broken. iTunes Support is as well.

So I’m making a list.

• Geocache. It is a fun sport, even with a crappy GPS. Some people would argue that it is more fun with a crappy GPS… There’s a lot of caches around Ludington, and the area is beautiful!
• Migrate my site to Frihost–”Free Reliable Internet Hosting”. The deal there is that I stay active on their forums to keep my hosting account. I’m kind of torn right now; whether or not I migrate depends on the results of the next point.
• Figure out traffic shaping on my router at home. Right now, this site is hosted out of my parents’ basement. As such, I’ve got a pretty tight upload speed cap on my server so as to keep from disturbing their network. If I use QoS to ensure that the parents get highest priority, I can use as much traffic as I want, greatly increasing the speed of this site. I really, really don’t want to pay for a host.
• Muck about with music-making programs. I have messed with Fruity Loops, but I found it so resource-intensive that it would not run on my 1.66 GHz dual-core laptop. Now, I know that my specs aren’t that impressive. But I also know that programs like Impulse Tracker ran on 486-class systems. Therefore, something is severely brain-dead with FL. Besides, who wants a proprietary program to do what open source could do better?
• Sink my teeth into gnome-power-manager. I would like to participate in Google’s Summer of Code but I haven’t had any experience with any of the projects they host. I see many improvements that can be made in gnome-power-manager, so I am going to work on that and try for SoC next year.
• Go to Indiana Robotics Invitational. Hopefully with Susan. I will post pictures if I get to go.
• Finish Copper Bots’ website. That’s the team from Calumet I’m helping out. They need a website; right now it’s only a plain-vanilla WordPress blog.
• LEGO Camp with Truck Town. It has been epic every year that I’ve done it, and I am excited to help with it again.

I’m sure there’s more, and I will add to this list as things happen. This summer should be amazing!

The penlight, in its nonfunctional state on the palmrest of my laptop.

My penlight stopped working.

It’s perfectly fine with me; it was a freebie I snatched up from the Michigan Tech Advanced Technologies Development Complex during orientation week. But still…it worked, and then it didn’t. And I wanted to know why.

So I cut it apart.

Turns out that these puppies house an entire triple-A battery inside them! The outside housing of the battery is connected to the negative side of the

The penlight, cut open and splayed out on the table.

battery, so it comes all the way around to the positive side. It has a spring that pushes the battery away from the light bulb; when I press the switch, it mashes the spring and pushes the battery to the light bulb. Except the bulb was burned out. Oops.