VirtualBox: Resizing Disks

 I once found myself needing to increase the size of a virtualbox disk. To that end, I found this guide helpful. Hence, making a note here:

Quick Tips:

1. This will only work on Dynamically Allocated Disks. It will NOT work on fixed disks.

2. Put .\ in front of the command vboxmanage.exe

Sample Command:

.\vboxmanage.exe modifymedium "C:\Users\David\VirtualBox VMs\Ubuntu2019\VirtSSD.vhd" --resize 30999

Udacity

Udacity has very good, colorful introduction videos to concepts that I've found to be generally hard to break into. I've only skimmed the surface thus far, but I'm very impressed by their introduction Machine learning and Big Data. Incredibly impressed in fact; its some of the best learning tutorials I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot considering my regarded experience with Coursera, New Think Tank, Head First, and CodeAcademy.

Each segment is broken into 60 second chunks on average in an delightful manner by instructors who seem happy to explain things. It invokes the feeling of being guided by your awesome, friendly teacher from the 5th grade all over again. You know, the really fun, effective Mary Poppins-like grade school teacher one who made you feel emotionally swell while intellectually improved at the same time. After each chunk you feel like you've earned a gold star, a cookie, and a short nap to relax. :D

It feels conversational as they challenge you to think about problems as you go in a Dora the Explorer type of manner. By breaking things into chunks, they really make the learning feel like a grade-school conversation.

I'm confident even a child could quickly become a coder if first introduced to via Udacity. Tied in my mind only with the Head First book series. Last but not least, they promise that when the training is complete, cake will be served!

Bonus! :D

~Code Crunch Corner~

Coursera

I like Coursera, though my recent experience with one of its courses leaves me feeling a bit mum. It offers some awesome free courses for you to review on a wide variety of topics; "on demand" courses that hold no grading pressure that you can take at your leisure from economics, to cooking classes, and of course, programming.

They also have plenty of (amazingly affordable) certifications "signature tracks" as they call it as premium content; whereas for every 4 week graded course you complete, you get a "mini-certification" (from what I can best tell) called a "Verified Certificate." Collect them all for a particular track and you can declare yourself fully certified with "Specialized Certificate."

However, like all courses, once you enroll, the pacing of a signature course can move too fast for you to keep up. Luckily they have a flexible and full refund policy that's easy and executable at anytime prior to final deadlines. Alternatively you can refund for a voucher instead; redirecting the voucher to another course, or simply to retake a withdrawn course at another time.

Quizzes are graded by staff, and peer based for a final project; you must help with the evaluations or it will affect your grade. Personally I always feel slightly irritated about grading penalties, but at least late submittal by a day or so won't break you. On most things. No, where I feel most choleric is the lack of partial credit on peer evaluations. Due on Sunday at 11:59, I once did three out of the required four evaluations, and then forgot about it until Monday at 2:00 am. Being a hard deadline, my saved peer evaluation work was apparently blocked off and wouldn't count at all, lowering my overall grade by 20%. Luckily, I was still able to receive a certificate, but the frustration of possibly needing to retake a course over this issue greatly bothered me all the same.

I also found the webcam requirement to be plagued with technical "iffy-ness" and unreliable for my desktop PC. It doesn't seem to register all makes and models perfectly, yet they require that you take a picture prior to every submission of your work.

Nonetheless, I still like Coursera and value it as a resource. Overall given that the courses are hosted by different universities and staff, the true quality of a course appears to be dependent on the instructor who is teaching it. I'll continue to dive further into Coursera based on specific impressions of specific courses that I take. But again, I can definitely endorse Coursera overall.

~Code Crunch Corner~

Featured Web Series: Derek Banas

As yours truly has been been a bit busy grinding the old development stone as of late. For today's tutoring tip, allow me to simply feature the YouTube Channel of Derek Banas.

Amongst the more clear YouTube tutors, under him, you'll find a variety of tutorials and reviews covering concepts from the beginner to the advanced. Don't be afraid to check this guy out.

Since I've been on the topic of OOP basics, allow me to get the introduction started by featuring his first video on this.




Methinks to make it a regular feature to share those who prove clear in their content. Follow me for me for more to come.

Keep code crunching out there.  

~David Noble Morris~

*Got recommendations of your own? Don't forget to comment below and share!