Computing

Virutalbox: Resizing a static disk

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Yesterday I launched one of my virtual machines to find out that I am low on space. I wanted to expand the static (fixed size) disk but apparently this couldn’t be done on a static disk. Some posts indicated that one could clone the disk as a dynamic one and then resize that.

I wanted to resizing the vdi disk from 7GB to 12GB. To do this I

  1. converted the static disk into a dynamic disk using
    vboxmanage clonehd disk-name.vdi new-disk-name.vdi
  2. resized the disk using
    VBoxManage modifyhd new-disk-name.vdi --resize 12000  #12000 is 12000MB
  3. replaced the disks in the settings of the machine (ie; removed the old disk and added the new disk)

But this did not solve the problem. Albeit the disk is now dynamic and 12GB in size, still the additional space was detected as unallocated space in the virtual Ubuntu 12.04. Given that the unallocated space was added to the end of the partition table, there was no way of resizing the root partition. Continue reading

OpenDNS: Parental control and internet protection

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I have been searching for a way to filter out inappropriate internet content. I thought one time that a tool (something like iptables) must exist that has an index of such sites and their IP’s which can be used to filter them out or block them. I thought maybe one could use such an index if it exists to feed it to a modem or router and have the modem/router do the job. Unfortunately this is not possible. Actually any modem or router has the ability to block and allow certain domains but that would require the manual labor of entering each specific domain, which is inefficient in any case.

After some searching I found out about something called OpenDNS and FamilySield. It turned out that OpenDNS is actually what I have been looking for. It does everything I was thinking of and even more. So hereafter, I “outline” the four main steps to get OpenDNS working on your network hoping that this might actually be of use to you. Continue reading

Mainframs, Unix, CERN computing center, Ubuntu driving Mercedes-Benz

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Here’s a couple of interesting videos I’ve watched recently:

Mainframes and the Unix Revolution

If you liked this video, I suggest you read the book “Turing’s Cathedral”. Check the review.

Continue reading

Book review: “Turing’s Cathedral” by George Dyson

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Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
by George Dyson
Pantheon (2012-03-01)
9780375422775
Amazon.com link
goodreads link

I was drawn to this book by its title & cover design. “Turing” in the title plus the punched cover directly meant (at least in my own mind) that it was about Alan Turing and the Universal machine.
Before this book I knew little about Turing’s universal machine and the origins of the computer. I knew about Von Neumann only by the name.

After reading this book, I got more interested about computers. I now have an awareness about how powerful the computer is (especially in our times) and how inefficient we (or at least me) are using it. Now I know the origins of the ENIAC, MANIAC & their derivatives. Know I know what an “app” was like in the 1950’s.

Turing’s Cathedral (still not sure why “Cathedral”!; maybe referring to the computer as the cathedral?) is an exciting read especially for the computer enthusiast, mathematicians, physicists, and scientists in general. It is eloquently written and describes things in details.

What I liked most about it is that it has references to actual scientific papers written the creators of the computer. As a matter of fact I have selected a couple of papers too read.

I finished the book without even knowing it. It suddenly stops without prior notice, as if there is a continuation that has been cut.

I really enjoyed reading this book and recommend it for everyone, literally everyone.

until next time…

The History of FORTRAN

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Interviews with the original developers of FORTRAN back in the 1950s.

other source: http://www.fortranlib.com/FORTRAN-1982.wmv