All Things Geek

Repartition a Hard Drive the Easy Way

2007-03-01T11:36:00.000-06:00

If there is one thing that I've tried to stay away from in my computer tweaking, it's been repartitioning a hard drive. Over the years, I've formatted, re-formatted and installed many a operating system. But I've never re-partitioned a drive. I've always tried to stay away from it for fear I'd damage a drive so bad, I'd have to make a trip down to my local Comp-USA to replace a drive I just fried.

But the other day at work, I didn't have a choice. I was given the task of running Microsoft Update on one of our Windows XP Pro systems. The problem was that the joker who had set the system up didn't understand the concept of "future growth". They had originally partitioned the 20GB drive to a primary partition of 4GB (for the OS and apps) and the other 16GB (which was actually around 15GB).

Lot's of room to grow right?

I guess this guy thought Windows updates didn't take up any space, or he was never intending to update it. It also sure didn't leave a lot of room for apps either... idiot...

So, back to the story, So here I am faced with re-partitioning a production drive. I was in luck on one account. The user primarily stored her files on the server (don't ask....) so backing up the important data was a breeze.

A couple of days before, in my random surfing, I stumbled upon a program called GParted. Well, I figured I might need something like this one day, so I downloaded and burned the image to disc.

Sure enough, a couple of days later, I needed the app. So I popped the disc in the drive, rebooted (already had the BIOS set to boot from CD-ROM drive first then the HDD) and watched as the program started up.

The program loaded quickly (especially on an old Dell 4500s) and was easy to use. At first, I was a little confused on how to move the free space from the second partition back to the primary small partition. But after a quick read through the GParted documentation section, it became very clear what to do. (The exact documentation is here)

The repartitioning itself also went fairly quickly. All in all I found it to be an easy-to use, strong and very useful program. So my thanks to the GParted dev team!

Are you a Hot Geek or Not?

2006-02-13T01:03:00.001-06:00

We've opened up a section of the site for fun called Hot Geek or Not. It's a light-hearted way for you and your fellow geeks to see how you measure up in your "hot geekyness". ;)

As an incentive for people to post their pictures and help get the word out about the site, we're giving away a free sticker to everyone who posts at least one pic to the site. Details are at the site.

We're also giving away one of our CafePress Store items away free to the hottest Girl Geek and hottest Guy Geek for the month of February. To win all you need to do is be ranked #1 in your category (Male or Female) at 11:59 PM February 28th. U.S. residents only please.

Read all the Enron e-mails you want

2006-02-13T01:03:00.000-06:00

Want to know something cool and scary at the same time?

You can read through hundreds of thousands of Enron employee and executive emails for free...

A company called Inboxer, Inc. has set up a website (enronemail.com) to demostrate their software to help companies manage their email. They refer to it as an: "Outbound Content Compliance appliance, [that] helps you protect intellectual property, maintain customer data privacy, demonstrate compliance, and manage inappropriate employee behavior."

And these days, with more and more folks using their company's internet connection for personal means, this kind of software is gonna be needed more and more.

How did they come upon the emails? According to the site, the Feds (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) gave it to them.

They're also holding a few contests for who can dig up the most firable message, the funniest joke, and the best "Oh crap! I wish I hadn't just sent that" emails from the database.

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Fresh Ice Cream while you wait

2006-02-13T00:56:00.000-06:00

At the 2006 Demo Conference they had something very cool. MooBella has created a vending machine that will make you a customized Ice Cream scoop right in front of you. We're not talking spitting out a pre-made scoop and tossing some toppings on it. Nope. We're talking this puppy will mix together the fresh ingredients that you've selected, flash-freeze your selection and serve it right up to you in less than a minute.

Pretty freakin' cool huh? I have *got* to find one of these machines! If anyone finds one let us know what you think.

On the technical side of the machine, you can select from 96 differnet combinations of flavors and toppings, it runs on Linux, and it's smart enough to know that if it's out of a topping or flavor to not display it as an option.

There are videos of the system on both the MooBella under the "Click here to see what people are saying link" and at the 2006 Demo Conference site.

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Captain Picard Gets Funky

2006-02-06T23:27:00.000-06:00

Somebody put together this music video of Capt. Picard and the crew of the NCC-1701D getting down and funky to a techno song pieced together from what I can only guess is bits of sound clips from ST:TNG.

It appears to have been made with the help of The Sims 2, and you can tell a lot of work went into it. Whoever posted it on PutFile misspelled Picard though. Dumbass...

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You may be eating crushed beetles and not even know it

2006-01-30T23:28:00.000-06:00

Quick, check your refrigerator and look for the following ingredients: "carmine" or "cochineal". If you see those listed, you've got crushed bugs in your food.

It seems that those are the two names the FDA asks manufacturers put on their labels when including bugs in their products. But apparently they aren't required to do so.

You might also want to check the products you don't eat too. According to CNN the ingredients can be found in lots of other products:

"Carmine puts the red in ice cream, strawberry milk, fake crab and lobster, fruit cocktail cherries, port wine cheese, lumpfish eggs and liqueurs like Campari, according to the FDA. Carmine is also used in lipstick, makeup base, eye shadow, eyeliners, nail polishes and baby products, the agency said. Meanwhile, cochineal extract shows up in fruit drinks, candy, yogurt and some processed foods."

How's that for a crappy Monday surprise?

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NASA's Visible Earth: Super High-Res photos of Earth

2006-01-29T23:29:00.000-06:00

Check it. Over 200 GB of high res photos of Earth all freely available from NASA. Some of them are so huge that they're now offering them via BitTorrent.

Visit the Visible Earth site.

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Spaceport coming to New Mexico

2005-12-08T23:30:00.000-06:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051208/sc_nm/space_virgin_dc

Looks like all you folks in New Mexico are getting a spaceport courtesy of Billionaire Richard Branson. "Virgin Galactic" flights will cost around $200,000 a pop when they start flying in 2008...hmmm better start saving.

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Oregon State University HUGE Firefox logo

2005-10-08T22:32:00.000-06:00

http://lug.oregonstate.edu/index.php/Projects/Firefox

Students from Oregon State University painted a huge mural of the Firefox logo on their campus Quad.

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Fun with Vader

2005-09-24T10:35:00.000-06:00

Aw man this is a hoot. Somebody took a bunch of James Earl Jones audio clips and redubbed them over Darth Vader scenes. check it out:

http://media.putfile.com/vaderfun

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GeekFury now offers T-shirts via CafePress

2005-09-19T10:38:00.000-06:00

We now offer many of our designs at our own cafepress store!

Just how fast is the Millennium Falcon?

2005-08-17T10:39:00.000-06:00

A fan of the 'ol gal has closely and scientifically examined the Star Wars films, placed markers on the film and computed her average top speed. They has also done a quick comparison to the speed of the Enterprise. :)

Check out their findings

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Tinkerer gets his Toyota Prius to get 80 mpg

2005-08-15T10:39:00.000-06:00

Looks like there may be a new form of "hot rodder" in the near future. :)

A guy in California has rigged his Toyota Prius hybrid car to squeeze even more gas milage out of it.

According to the article:"It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret - a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel.

Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car."

'"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what they can do about increasing fuel economy."'

"The extra batteries let Gremban drive for 20 miles with a 50-50 mix of gas and electricity. Even after the car runs out of power from the batteries and switches to the standard hybrid mode, it gets the typical Prius fuel efficiency of around 45 mpg. As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a day, he says, he gets 80 mpg."

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Is NASA incompetent?

2005-07-28T10:40:00.000-06:00

NASA...

Ya know, when I was a kid, I looked up to NASA. They did some pretty amazing things. From landing men on the moon to sending probes to the edges of our solar system, it was all pretty fantastic.

Then the shuttle Challenger exploded. That shook my faith in them a bit.

But they soon pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and...puttered around from the next 10 or so years. They were happy just sending the shuttle in and out of orbit. So much so, that most of the public lost interest in shuttle launches. They became an ordinary event. Boring almost.

NASA claimed that they were doing research and preparing for a space station. Which we did *finally* get, but at a snails pace.

It seems to me that during the early 90's NASA slowed down to almost a crawl. It lost it's drive, it's curiosity to explore and innovate like no one has seen before. Perhaps it's the upper management's fault, who knows?

All I know is that it seems to me that the NASA that put us on the moon and was so bold and adventurous died in the 90's and now we're left with a shell. Another bumbing governmental agency. I mean the DOT and DMV might as well be running NASA. Hell, they couldn't do much worse.

This latest bumbing of the chunch of insulation coming of the main tank and nearly missing the shuttle. They spent boatloads of our money to try to find the problem, and insure that it would never happen again. So that we would not lose another crew like we did when the Columbia was lost.

But what happens? The same damn thing. Luckily, this time the chunk missed the shuttle. So what was all that time and money spent for?

Nothing apparently.

I think it's time there was a house cleanning at NASA. Obviously, the folks who are running don't know their ass for a hole in the ground. I know there are a lot of hard working men and women at NASA, and I don't blame them. I know their hands are tied by the endless bureaucracy and group think that must be going on at the higher levels.

But this kind of crap has to stop. It's embarrassing. It's sickening, and worst of all it's not necessary.

I want the NASA of my boyhood back.

I want the NASA who knew how to do amazing, inspiring things, and do them right.

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Remote controlled Star Wars models

2005-07-26T10:40:00.000-06:00

Here's some cool stuff. R/C Star Wars models.

Yann's R/C Naboo Royal Cruiser
Visit the site

Go-RC's Millennium Falcon
Project thread 1
Project thread 2

Oldpilot's Jedi Star Fighter
Project thread

Artsloper's X-Wing in progress with working folding wings!
Project thread

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A new tool in the fight against SPAM

2005-07-25T10:42:00.000-06:00

New Scientist Magazine is reporting that a team from IBM and Cornell have developed a new anti-spam technique that may help to stop those *wonderful* "Purchase generic drugs from our #1 ranked generic drugs provider" and "have your quicker alleviations. quickly" email messages we all get every single freakin' day.

From the article:
"A team from IBM and Cornell University in New York state, US, developed the anti-spam technique, which they call "SMTP Path Analysis". It involves examining information embedded in email messages about the route it has taken across the internet. This allows it to make a good guess as to whether or not a new message is electronic junk mail."

"The SMTP Path Analysis algorithm "learns" by examining the string of internet protocol (IP) addresses included in both spam and legitimate email headers. When a new message arrives, it is then able to judge, with relative accuracy, whether it is legitimate or, in fact, unwanted spam."

Sounds good to me.

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What the hell is this outside of Beijing?

2005-07-25T10:41:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I'm puttering around with Google's new 3D globe software trying to find the new Disneyland in Hong Kong, and I notice some weird blue splotches on the map just outside of Beijing.

Click for larger version

So I zoom in for a closer look:

Click for larger version

Did I mention how cool Google's new 3D globe software is?

And this is what I discovered:

Click for larger version

Now I'm puzzled by this, what could all these blue patches be? Anyone know?

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Become a "Certified" Geek

2005-07-16T10:43:00.000-06:00

According to The Japan Times, a Japanese publisher, Biblos, is offering a geek exam that if passed, would certify you as an official Geek, or "Otaku". They've set up a website for the exam: http://www.otaken.jp/

From the Article:
"The computer-scored test, which will be in a multiple-choice format, will be conducted by mail so anyone can apply, even from overseas. But the applicants must be able to get the question and answer forms and comprehend the "postgraduate"-level questions, which will be written in Japanese.

The article also goes into a bit of the culture of the Japanese geek. Click those mechanical pencils boys and girls, let's get ready to test our geek knowledge!

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We were slashdotted to death

2005-07-04T10:43:00.000-06:00

On July 4th you may have noticed that the site was down for a little while. Well, it appears the guys at Slashdot.org that it would be cool to link to our Star Wars Lego file *WITHOUT* our permission.

Needless to say, it pushed our bandwidth over the limit and I'm pissed. We had to buy more bandwidth this month (which means no more video, at least this month). The thing that pisses me off the most, is that we only got a mirror link. They didn't ask us, they just linked directly to the file, so the leechers went directly to the file, and NEVER saw the rest of the site. They missed the blog, the radio station and the forums.

They know about the slashdot effect, and yet they didn't care. This is why I don't visit Slashdot.

I'd like more people to visit the site, especially in a slashdot manner, just not leechers. I'd like folks to visit in Slashdot numbers, and come enjoy the site and the forum and stick around. Not just fly in like vultures, take what they want and leave.

Man I'm pissed. The one time we get numbers like that, and they sneak in the back door. :(

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Assembling a LEGO Star Destroyer in under 5 minutes!

2005-06-28T10:44:00.000-06:00

Watch a couple assemble a LEGO Star Destroyer in under 5 minutes!

Watch this:

turn into this:

in less than five minutes...through the miracle of time-lapsed webcam shots. :)

It took Michi and Edda ten hours to build the Lego Star Wars Star Destroyer, and they took shots of their progress with their webcam every five seconds. They then assembled the shots into a AVI video, compressed it with DivX and shared it with the world. It's a heck of a model and a heck of a build. Check it out.

Edda's post with the video on her blog

Mirror link removed due to Slashdot linking to us as a mirror without our permission and bringing down the site. Sorry. (7/4/05)

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Starbucks Logo: From naughty to nice in four easy steps.

2005-06-21T10:45:00.000-06:00

Deadprogrammer.com has an interesting look at the origins ot the Starbucks logo and how it started out as a whorish Melusine. :)

It's an interesting read and I have one question to the original owners of Starbucks. Why a Melusine?

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Full CSS Property Compatibility Chart

2005-06-16T10:46:00.000-06:00

The chart on this page is a handy reference for those of us who can't keep our browser/CSS compatibilities straight. ;-)

The chart is also interactive allowing you to click on the CSS property to find out more details about that property and sample code. Clicking on a browser on the page gives ya a compatibility listing for that browser only.

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Need cheap printer supplies? Call the LaserMonks.

2005-06-14T10:46:00.000-06:00

I don't know why I haven't heard of these fellas before, and by fellas I mean monks. That's right, monks. Selling printer toner and ink...cheap. I'm running low on ink and I think I might give these guys a try next time.

Here's some of their backstory from Lasermonks.com:

"All I wanted was a little bit of black dust for one of our monastery printers. In my search for a toner cartridge, I was suddenly struck with how incredibly expensive this black dust and a few squirts of ink were. "There must be a better way," I said to myself.

And so began my foray into the world of imaging supplies. What I discovered was a revelation. Simply stated, the mark-up on ink supplies is sinfully high, reaching in some instances into the 1,000-2,000 % levels. I also discovered that there were many companies that manufactured either new compatible cartridges or remanufactured cartridges at a fraction of the cost of the big name brands. My thoughts starting racing. Imagine the money we could save schools, churches, and other organizations if we could negotiate some deals with the manufacturers directly and cut out the middlemen.

LaserMonks.com was born.

Our monastery is part of the 900-year-old Cistercian Order; our particular Abbey was founded over 75 years ago in the United States. Every monastery has a monk in charge of all the temporal needs and activities of the community. Among my duties as Steward of Temporal Affairs are developing and managing ways to support our life and charities.

The manufacturers were elated with the possibilities. They immediately said we should market not only to schools, churches, and other non-profits, but especially to businesses. "Look, you're monks. You have an image and long tradition of being trustworthy and providing top quality products. You're offering a great product at a great price. Once people hear about you, it's an easy decision. Why would anyone pay more money, when they can have quality products for less, from monks who use the income to help others?"

Pretty cool idea if ya ask me. :) Their prices (plus shipping) seem to be what you'd have to pay if you went to your local faceless, souless Wally-World. But this way the cash goes to something more "productive". :)

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How build your own Gauss Rifle, or Magnetic Linear Accelerator

2005-06-12T10:53:00.001-06:00

Ah nothing like building your own magnetic linear accelerator. :)

According to the article it's easy to build:

"This very simple toy uses a magnetic chain reaction to launch a steel marble at a target at high speed. The toy is very simple to build, going together in minutes, and is very simple to understand and explain, and yet fascinating to watch and to use...

When the gauss rifle fires, it will happen too fast to see. The ball on the right will shoot away from the gun, and hit the target with considerable force. Our one foot long version is designed so the speed is not enough to hurt someone, and you can use your hand or foot as a target.

Sounds pretty darn cool to me. Now where did I put that wooden ruler...

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Coke's new Vault drink

2005-06-12T10:53:00.000-06:00

So I stopped off to get some gas today and noticed a new drink at the quickie-mart: Coca-Cola's Vault. According to Coke's website, it's being tested in certain markets.

The label says: "Drinks like a soda, kicks like an energy drink™" and it has a sharp citrus flavor to it. It definitely "kicks".

Well, I took my first swig, and I wasn't too impressed. Then again, I took a swig when I was chewing gum. So I tried it a bit later without the gum and it tasted real familar...BAM! it hit me. This stuff tasted like my old beloved drink for late nighters: Surge.

Could my old favorite be back? Only this time, it's back with a different name... Pick up a bottle and see for yourself. I'm curious as to who else out there thinks Vault tastes like Surge.

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