Archive for May, 2007
How to: Didgeridoo
by admin on May.30, 2007, under Uncategorized
According to Wikipedia:
“The didgeridoo (or didjeridu) is a wind instrument of the Indigenous Australians of northern Australia. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or “drone pipe”.”
I will share with you how to make one of these awesome, fun to play instruments in this blog. First you will need these materials:
- A length of PVC (the white tubing) that is 2 to 2 1/2 inches in diameter and no shorter than 3 feet.
- Beeswax: about 3 6×6″ sheets should be enough.
- Paint: whichever colors you would like. Preferable acrylic paint but spray paint works too.
- Sandpaper: fine grit.
- A tapered glass bottle such as this one:

- A heat gun, camp fire, or propane torch.
Take your tube and heat the bottom end until it is soft and push it down on the bottle to form the bell.
Twist and bend your Didg to look however you want, but use caution, be absolutely sure to do it outside! PVC releases toxic fumes when heated, and bad things could happen to your lungs if you inhale too much of the vapors.
Heat the beeswax to the point that it is soft and pliable and form the mouth piece on the top end. Form it something like this:
How to: Install Windows XP in VMware Player
by admin on May.29, 2007, under Linux
This tutorial will show you how to install Windows XP Professional Edition on VMware’s free VMPlayer in Ubuntu.
We will use the following applications:
- VMware Player
- Wine
- Qemu
- GnomeBaker
- Cabextract
First you will need to install vmware player. So in terminal type:
- sudo apt-get install vmware-player
And you will need wine. The easiest way I have gotten this working is through the add+remove applications menu in ubuntu.
Alternatively you can run this command:
- sudo apt-get install wine
Now you can download my 2G virtual disk file or create your own with Qemu.
Make sure you keep all the files you create or download during this tutorial in your current working directory. Which by default will be your home folder in terminal.
If you want a larger disk you will need to download Qemu. And install it via Wine. (Just run the .exe in Ubuntu)
After installing Qemu you will need to create your virtual disk with the following command:
- wine “c:\Program Files\Qemu\qemu-img.exe” create -f vmdk WindowsXPPro.vmdk 20G Formating ‘WindowsXPPro.vmdk’, fmt=vmdk, size=20971520 kB
For different sizes replace ‘20G’ with your desired size and change “size=x kB” to the proper size in kB I have a table below for some common sizes:
- 2G 2097152 kB
- 4G 4194304 kB
- 8G 8388608 kB
- 12G 12582903 kB
- 16G 16777216 kB
- 20G 20971520 kB
- 40G 41943040 kB
- 80G 83886080 kB
The math for converting from GB to kB is
- xGB*1048576=xkB
Now install GnomeBaker (if it isn’t already installed)
- sudo apt-get install gnomebaker
With your Windows XP CD in your drive; Run gnomebaker and select “Copy Data CD” and tick the “Create ISO only” box. I named my iso “winxppro.iso”

Now for some reason the boot sector of the xp install disk will not be in the iso, so we will need to download the xp boot floppies from Microsoft.
And save it to your home directory or current working directory.
In order for VMware to use the boot floppies we need to extract them with cabextract.
- sudo apt-get install cabextract
- cabextract WinXP_EN_PRO_BF.EXE -d ./
You will end up with these files from the exe:
If you want you can delete makeboot.exe and makebt32.exe, they are useless for us.
Now download my configuration file for vmware.
Run the .vmx file with vmware player.
Now comes the crazy part.
When the xp boot menu asks for floppy 2 you will need unmount the floppy by clicking on the “floppy” button on the top menu in vmware player, delete or move the file named “cdboot1.img” and rename cdboot2.img to cdboot1.img. Then remount it by clicking the same “floppy” button. And so on for each floppy it asks for during the install.
Now the windows xp install might fail to move a file called “plugin.ocx” its useless, disregard it and skip the file.
Ikea to open doors in Utah today
by admin on May.23, 2007, under Uncategorized

One of the world’s most popular furniture retailers is opening its doors in Utah this morning. I can’t wait to get my hands on a new desk. I think I’ll wait a few weeks before I brave the droves of Mormon housewives looking to get a deal on the triple-decker bunk beds.
Despite the fact that I’ll have to build it to enjoy it, I am looking forward to my [galant desk] with the over-the-side [summera computer holder]
Link to Ikea home page [link]
Gmail ups attachment size to 20MB
by admin on May.22, 2007, under Uncategorized

The boys and girls at google have doubled the maximum attachment size to 20MB. But watch out, your Yahoo! friends may not get your big attachments until Yahoo ups their attachment acceptance size. I have a feeling it won’t take long.




