THE AVENGERS: AN EPIC FILM !!!

Lately, I haven´t got enough time left to take a break … not even to post something on my blog. But I think this one really deserves it!

I have been a superheroe comic-book collector since I can remember who has changed throughout the years from regulars to graphic novels.

As a huge reader of Marvel’s, I was expecting The Avengers movie with scrambled feelings since not all the previous movies that drove us to this one have been that great, imvho of course.

The first Ironman movie was incredible, the second one was (almost) ok. Captain America´s wasn´t that great but got the job done. Ditto for Thor. And Hulk has been trying to find the place it deserves on the big screen with mixed results.

For those in the US that are waiting for its opening night, let me tell you that it is really safe to go to the theather with your expectations high since you won’t get dissapointed. In fact, I believe the movie will surpass your expectations!

No pictures and videos that you have found on the Internet will prepare you for you are going to enjoy. Except for the 3D fxs –that were only ok for me, the film delivers everything you can expect from a superheroe movie that well that you don’t see actors playing the roles but the characters themselves. And the latter in film with several potential lead roles is a hugh task that luckily, for the film, ended superb.

The storyline is balanced. All characters have their due time. Action and FX are present only when and where needed. And humour touches are smart and welcome.

Again, you won’t be paying attention to the actors since you will buy that the ones you are watching on screen are the heores and villains themselves. Btw, hats off to Mark Ruffalo who had some challenge before him –specially, after the second Hulk movie- and played, imho, the Bruce Banner I always wanted to see. And as for the Hulk, … well … you will have to wait and see ‘cause I don’t want to spoil anything!

[SPOILER]
One more thing, stay on your seats when the movie finishes for a final scene where you will know The Being behind Loki´s strike on earth (and yeap, it was the one I was expecting for years!). This will open the door for future movies and hopefully, if the Avengers was Epic, the one that shows off this creature in its full potential will be for sure also epic but in a cosmic scale!
[/SPOILER]

To wrap it up, The Avengers is one of the best superheroe movies ever that deserves a place on the blu-ray shelves of any collector once it gets out. What is more, it raises the bar high for the TDKR … gloves off!

Here’s the link to an excellent (translated) review for the film.

Enjoy the movie, guys!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

BOOK REVIEW: XNA 4 GAME DEVELOPMENT BY EXAMPLE (VB)

Last month, a new book about XNA 4 hit the shelves worldwide:

His author, Kurt Jaegers, is the creator of a well known site that covers lots of XNA material: XnaResources.

The book is based on its C# sibling –from same author, and I personally deem it as a great introduction to XNA 4.0 for devs that use Visual Basic as their primary language.

Targeting beginners, the author introduces useful concepts and techniques applicable to both, game development per se and XNA 4.0, through four games:

• A puzzler,
• A space shooter,
• A multi-axis shoot 'em up, and
• A jump-and-run platformer.

All code presented in the book is fully explained by the Author on a clear and simple way, what makes each chapter easy to follow.

So if you are a Visual Basic geek that want to enter the word of XNA, then this is your chance to take your first steps!

You can buy a print and or digital copy of the book either from Pack Publishing or Amazon.

If you are intertested in getting a free digital copy of it –provided by Packt Publishing, then write a comment on this page stating why you deserve the copy and the person that gives imo the best comment gets it!

My two cents …
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

RESIZING AN EXISTING HDD IMAGE IN VIRTUALBOX

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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.