RESIZING AN EXISTING HDD IMAGE IN VIRTUALBOX

[ If you deem this article as helpful, please consider downloading my game "Just Survive XP" on the Appstore (free for a limited time):

=> http://itunes.apple.com/app/just-survive-xp/id461876025 ]

Yesterday I was installing a new virtual machine on my desktop with VirtualBox and, don’t ask me why ‘cause I don´t know, but I made a rookie mistake …

… when I created the vdi file for the virtual hardrive I forgot to assign a custom size so it ended up with the default 20GB. Sigh!

Soon I noticed my mistake when I realized I would need more space on the drive to install the whole set of tools I wanted to use, so I opened VirtualBox in order to resize the drive and guess what … I found no way on settings to directly do it. Bummer …

Maybe it is there somewhere but I didn´t find it so fearing the worst –that is, reinstalling everything on a new image from scratch, I did a search on the Internet for a solution. Why not reading VirtualBox’s help file, right?

Well, to my surprise I found any kind of cumbersome solutions like cloning the .vdi file and using a parition manager to blá, blá, blá. Tired of this dead-ends, I finally did what I should have done on the first place: read the help file!

Yes; the solution was always there: VirtualBox includes a command-line tool named “VBoxManage” with a set of interesting options available and one of them is “modifyhd”. Its syntaxis is the following:

VBoxManage modifyhd <uuid><filename>
[--type normal | writethrough | immutable | shareable
readonlymultiattach]
[--autoreset onoff]
[—compact]
[--resize <megabytes>--resizebyte <bytes>]

Having opened a command-line terminal in the host OS of your machine, a simple way to use this command would be, say:

VBoxManage modifyhd “<fullpath>/<filename>”
--resize 30720

It is important to notice that you should use not a relative but the fullpath to the .vdi file for optimal results. So, if your .vdi file is located on “C:/mypath/myvdifile.vdi”, use this string on the command (in case of other OS than Windows, use the path from root).

If everything goes well you should see a new text line showing the progress:

0%…10%…20%…30%…40%…50%…60%…70%…80%…90%…100%

But sometimes, like in my case, things turn out not to be that simple. You may find your-self facing an error message like:

ERROR: Cannot register the hard disk 'C:/mypath/myvdifile.vdi' with UUID {someUUIDtext} because a hard disk 'C:/mypath/myvdifile.vdi' with UUID {someUUIDtext} already exists in the media registry ('…/VirtualBox.xml')
Details: code NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG (0x80070057), component VirtualBox, interface IVirtualBox, callee nsISupports
Context: "OpenHardDisk(Bstr(szFilenameAbs), AccessMode_ReadWrite, false, Bstr(""), false, Bstr(""), srcDisk.asOutParam())" at line XX of file VBoxManageDisk …

If that happens don´t panic; a solution that worked for me was using the UUID assigned to the virtual hdd, instead of the path to the file, so if the UUID is “{13f2…-…-…342a}” then the command should look like:

VBoxManage modifyhd 13f2…-…-…342a
--resize 30720

Now, when the new size of the .vdi file gets allocated, all you need to do is open your virtual machine, log into the OS, and assign the new free space to the hdd. If your hosting Windows, then execute the provided managing tool (rightclick on your PC icon and select “Manage”), find the vitual disk and extend its size.

Well, that’s it. Hope you find this tips useful.

Cheers!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 TRAILER FILMED IN URUGUAY

It’s been a nice surprise to find the following “live” trailer of Forza Motorsport 4, which has been mainly filmed –with the exception of the last scene with the mountains- in my hometown: Montevideo, Uruguay … !

Forza Motorsport 4 - “Endanger Species” Trailer

I´m a huge supporter of Forza Motorsport series on the XBox 360. Some may argue Dirt 3 has better graphics than FM 4, but for a DirectX 9 console system like the XBox 360, I don´t care what fanboys may say … ;)

´till next time!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

NETFLIX NOW AVAILABLE IN THE REGION!

First was Brazil, and now Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay will count on Netflix providing its multimedia services.

This is a huge leap on the region and many cable providers are starting to worry.

Uruguay has recently finished the work of laying a fiber-optics cable beneath the sea, thus before year-end uruguayan homes will be enjoying speeds around 100Mbs (hopefully sync). Finally!

Now all we need, and personally hope, is that Microsoft opens the XBox Live Arcade channel for the region (and Live services).

C´mon Microsoft! Show some love …

~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

RUN WEB CAMP URUGUAY

Last month Montevideo held a new edition of Microsoft’s one-day-all-day event in Uruguay, named “Run Web Camp Uruguay”.

During the event there were many sessions of talks divided as usual in two main categories: For IT Pros and For Developers.

From dev topics like WP7, Silverlight, HTML5, and ASP.NET MVC to IT ones like System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and Virtual Machine Manager 2012, the event covered tech that is available today and what we can expect in the near future.

At the end of the day, there were some round tables named “Ask to Experts” where you could go, grab a beer, and chat with experts in each field.

This year MSFT invited me to be part of the round table about WP7 as the expert in XNA along with an expert in Silverlight. I must say it was a really cool experience!

Kinect was also present. During the breaks, attendees could and did play with it. It was fun to see the ones that had their first contact with the device as they attempted to do some weird movements to control stuff. Of course the learning curve is low so they got accustomed in a heart bit.

To wrap it up, Run Web Camp Uruguay was really enjoyable and quite a success.

For more info and to watch videos of some talks, please go to this page:

http://www.puertadeenlace.net/post/Lo-que-nos-dejo-el-RUN-Uruguay.aspx

‘till next time,
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

LIVE STREAMMING: MICROSOFT’S E3 KEYNOTE

Today begins the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3! And guess which company will be holding a keynote today … yeap! Microsoft.

This expo is one of the most important events of the year where big players in the Industry usually announce big breaking news, stopping all speculation on rumors. So let’s see what they have up their sleeves this year!

If you want to watch MSFT’s keynote on your browser, just follow this link:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Community/E3

And here’s the link for all the events:

http://www.gametrailers.com/netstorage/e3/e3-live.html

Also, Apple is holding its annual event (known as WWDC), and its keynote will start at the same time that MSFT’s keynote at E3. Coincidence? :)

Enjoy!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

WP7 NOT BOOTING? FIRST CHECK YOUR DATA CABLE

[ If you deem this article as helpful, please consider buying my game "Just Survive!" on the Appstore for only 99 cents:

=> http://itunes.apple.com/app/just-survive/id424392950 ]

A couple of weeks ago I had pressed and held the start button of my WP7 device to find that it had fallen in a sort of neverending booting loop.

As soon as the device started and the first screen appeared showing the initial info/stats, it automatically rebooted for ever.

Since I wasn’t able to hard reset it, my first thought was “Oh gosh, it’s bricked!”.

I then noticed that the batery level was closed to zero, so I grabbed the USB data cable and plugged it into my desktop PC. No luck! After a couple of minutes the battery was still at zero level …

… as a desperate move I connected it to the AC power, directly. Still no luck! My thought then was “Drained Battery?”.

So I searched on the Internet for similar cases and I found that many reported faulty USB cables. “Could it be so?” …

Well, it turned out to be the case, at least for my device. After buying a new USB data cable, the device started to recharge the battery. And when it reached a charge level of 7% percent, it successfully booted!

So, if you happen to suffer from a similar situation, don’t panic! Go and buy a new USB data cable and try again.

Hope this help,
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

“LONG TIME NO SEE”

For the last few months I have been immersed in a code rush to get my first commercial game published on iTunes’ App Store. And finally, I’m proud to say that it made it into the market!

http://itunes.apple.com/app/just-survive/id424392950

The name says a lot about the game: Just Survive!

I had originally started working on it on 1998 and published it on the web during 1999. At that time there was just one enemy and scores were saved locally. The game didn’t get noticed but many people because everything was much different from the globalization we are experiencing now, but I remember having received an email message from someone who wrote something like:

Nice game. I have been playing it for 45 minutes and I want to know how much longer I have to play it to get to the first boss; btw, highscores aren’t been saved on your server …

That message helped me to decide –a few years after- whether to jump into the indie Industry. And today, here I am …

The game has gone through lots of modifications since then, 90% of them happening during 2010/2011, so I can now say the you’ll get to fight many types of enemies, more than one boss and there’s global leaderboards!

Here’s the trailer on Youtube:

Just Survive! First Trailer

This is one of the four games I have in production for different platforms, so in the following months expect some news about them.

Hope you like it … and buy it!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.