Video Tutorial: How to install Windows on a Mac

I was recently contacted by a friend who was requesting help with installing Windows on his Mac, so I thought I’d make the video tutorial above to show others how to do it as well.

There are many tutorials on this topic. This particular method uses VirtualBox to install Windows XP on an Intel Mac.

This tutorial also assumes that you already have a disk image of Windows XP. The exact copy of Windows used in this tutorial was pirated from here. Downloading torrents is not within the scope of this tutorial.

Reasons I like this method

• It uses free and open source software for virtualization
• It doesn’t require you to dual boot like the Boot Camp method
• You don’t need a physical installation CD
• Windows XP requires less resources to run than Vista

Like all original content that I create, this video tutorial has been set free from any copyrights.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll try my best to answer them.

Video Tutorial Overview

1. Install VirtualBox.
2. Create a new virtual machine.
3. Install Windows.
4. Install Guest Additions.

License

To the extent possible under law, jorel314
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Video Tutorial: How to install Windows on a Mac.

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Polyphasic Sleep Study Reports

Most of my friends know I experiment with polyphasic sleep. Fortunately, one of them is in the sleep field and had access to a sleep clinic. He offered to do a sleep study on me, and I happily accepted.

So the plan was to do a monophasic sleep study first, then do another sleep study when I’m fully polyphasic to compare the two.

The local sleep clinic I went to specializes in sleep apnea. I was hooked up to an EEG, and I got to sleep in a room that resembled a nice hotel room. I had my trusty N85 with me to take a photo of all the wires I was connected to which you see in the photo above.

The results were given to me the next day, and it turned out I have sleep apnea! I did a little research, and it has been reported in some cases polyphasic sleep seemed to help with sleep apnea. Here’s an example of someone saying it helped (although there isn’t any data to go with it)…

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-sleepdisordr&tid=1814

Here’s what the sleep clinic owner said about polyphasic sleep and sleep apnea…

As for Polyphasic sleep and sleep apnea, you will continue to demonstrate sleep apnea whether you are monophasic or polyphasic. In fact, if you are polyphasic, you will no doubt have more REM sleep. During REM sleep, this is where the apneas would be more prominent. The good part of Polyphasic sleep is that your sleep periods are very brief.

Here are the actual reports from the sleep study. Please note, the owner of the sleep clinic requested to remain anonymous, so I took out any identifiable information.

- monophasic_polysomnogram-jorel314.pdf
- monophasic_sleep_analysis_report-jorel314.pdf

Like all the original content on my blog, these sleep study reports have been set free from any copyrights using the CC0 waiver.

I’ll be sure to publish my polyphasic sleep study reports when I’m done transitioning. I’m not sure if anyone has publicly published anything like this before, so hopefully someone will find all this useful.

Also, I’d like to give my sincerest gratitude to my helpful friend and to the extremely generous sleep clinic owner.

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Tutorial: How to Loop a YouTube Playlist

The video above is an example of a YouTube playlist that loops forever. It consists of 3 Jon Lajoie music videos that I never get tired of hearing. Here’s how you can have your very own looping YouTube playlist.

1. Login to YouTube. If you don’t have an account, get one here…
   http://www.youtube.com/signup
2. Go to a YouTube video that you like.
3. Click “Playlists” near the bottom of the video.
4. Make sure “[ New Playlist ]” is selected, then click “Add”.
5. Enter whatever you want for “Playlist Name” and “Description”, then click “Save Playlist Info”.
6. Go to another video that you want to add to the playlist you created and click “Playlists” again near the bottom of the video.
7. This time, make sure the name of your playlist you created earlier is selected, then click “Add”. Do this for anymore videos you want in the playlist.
8. When you’re done adding videos to the playlist, click your username at the top of the screen.
9. Click “Playlists” which is also near the top of the screen.
10. Find the name of the playlist you want to loop and click it.
11. Copy and paste the contents of “Playlist/URL (Permalink):” into the YouTube Playlist Looper at following link…
    http://ia331413.us.archive.org/3/items/YoutubePlaylistLooper/youtube_playlist_looper.html
12. After pasting the permalink into the YouTube Playlist Looper, click “submit”.
13. Your YouTube playlist should automatically start playing and start over when it reaches the end.
14. You also have the option to copy and paste the resulting code to loop your playlist on your own website.

Ta da! That’s it. Enjoy your infinite playlist.

If you are interested in how I created the YouTube Playlist Looper, read on.

First, I googled “loop youtube playlist”. The first page of results didn’t have any solutions I liked, but it did have a link to a blog post that gave me a clue on how I might be able to loop a YouTube playlist.

Here’s the blog post that mentions the 2 parameters “&loop=1″ and “&autoplay=1″ that I needed to add to a playlist’s embed code…

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/06/play-youtube-videos-in-loop.html

To get a playlist’s embed code, I had to hover over my username in YouTube, then click “Playlists”. Then, I had to click the playlist name that I wanted to loop. Where it says “Embed:”, is the code I had to add the two parameters to.

The rest is pretty self explanatory if you understand JavaScript and view the source code of the YouTube Playlist Looper. I just had to get a user to input the ID of the playlist they wanted looped. Then, I returned the code with the 2 parameters automatically appended to the embed code that YouTube provided.

I did have some trouble with the display after hitting “submit”, but a quick trip to the javascript IRC channel helped me find my answer (see below).

As with everything I create, the YouTube Playlist Looper has been set free from any copyrights using the CC0 waiver.

—

Correspondence with temp01

#javascript@irc.freenode.net (4/11/09)
[10:42pm] jorel314: hello…
[10:44pm] jorel314: anyone care to help a javascript noob?
[10:44pm] temp01: maybe.. if the noob asks a question
[10:45pm] jorel314: I created this form that lets you loop a youtube playlist.. i was wondering how to get the results on the same page as the form..
[10:45pm] jorel314: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/154234/youtube_playlist_looper.html
[10:46pm] jorel314: right now.. when I click submit.. the form disappears when the results show…
[10:46pm] temp01: firstChild.nodeValue = document.write .. lol
[10:47pm] jorel314: i’d like the results to appear on the same page…
[10:47pm] jorel314: be gentle.. it’s my first javascript program…
[10:47pm] temp01: sorry couldnt resist
[10:47pm] jorel314: i tried innerhtml..
[10:48pm] jorel314: but i don’t think that is part of DOM…
[10:49pm] temp01: jorel314: getElementById(‘results’).innerHTML = “<h1>PREVI….”
[10:50pm] jorel314: ok.. let me try that out..
[10:50pm] temp01: 99% of what you are using.. is not part of DOM
[10:51pm] temp01: i.e. standards-compliant
[10:51pm] jorel314: i was trying to get functionality first.. then fix it up to standards..
[10:54pm] jorel314: thanks temp01, it worked! http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/154234/youtube_playlist_looper_0.2.html

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CC0 Spotlight: Personal Genome Project

The Personal Genome Project (PGP) aims to publish the complete genomes and medical records of several volunteers, in order to enable research into personalized medicine.

They are publishing the data using the CC0 waiver which means it is free from copyright.

Here’s an example of some data available from the PGP…

http://www.personalgenomes.org/public/1.html

The Personal Genome Project was launched by George Church who is also one of the first volunteers. I had the opportunity to correspond with him recently for help on my Set Free project. (see below)

Also, here’s a great article about George and what the PGP can do for our future.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/stemcells/magazine/16-08/ff_church

Would I be able to make a clone of George with the data released by the PGP?

—

Correspondence with George Church

Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:20:27 -0700
From: Jorel Pi
Subject: Personal Genome Project Participant Genetic and Trait Dataset
To: George Church

Hi George,

I’m trying to add the Personal Genome Project Participant Genetic and Trait Dataset to a list of notable works whose copyrights were waived by its creator. The list can be viewed here.

http://setfree.wik.is/

I was wondering if you knew whose decision it was to use the CC0 waiver to release the copyright of the work and if you knew the date the waiver was implemented.

Any help would be great. Thanks!

Jorel

From: George Church
Date: Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 4:23 AM
Subject: RE: Personal Genome Project Participant Genetic and Trait Dataset
To: Jorel Pi
Cc: Jason Bobe

Jason Bobe and I made the decision. CC and PGP have been in discussions about CC0 for quite some time — See:

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13304

Thanks,
–George

Happy Pi Day!

Today is Pi Day. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I’d like to share the pi image that I created above.

The ascii art image is composed of the first 333 digits of π. I used the following to count the digits for me…
http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml

Like everything I create, the ascii pi has been set free from any copyrights by using the CC0 waiver. Feel free to use it however you please.

Here are various formats of the ascii pi that you can download from archive.org…
- ascii
- svg
- png

Here’s a way to recreate the ascii pi…

1. Get an image of pi from wikipedia…
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pi-symbol.svg
2. Use GIMP to convert the svg into a flattened png
3. Use the png with this ascii art generator….
   http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/
4. Copy and paste the result into a text editor
5. Replace the characters from the generator with the first 333 digits of pi…
   http://www.eveandersson.com/pi/digits/

You should now have an ascii pi image created from the first 333 digits of pi. You can copy and paste that into Inkscape to make a svg or png version.

—

- Set Free

Tutorial: How to make a Silent Ringtone

cc photo by Sara Petagna

—

Problem

I never answer calls from a number that I don’t know. If it’s important they’ll leave a message. I have this one caller that calls me everyday and never leaves a message. I’m thinking it’s an automated call. How do I prevent the caller from interrupting me on a daily basis?

—

A Solution

As I mentioned before, I have a Nokia N85 mobile phone. Either there isn’t a built in way to block calls from certain numbers, or I’m blind and just can’t find this feature. In any case, here’s a quick and dirty workaround.

I can easily assign ringtones for certain numbers. Therefore, a silent ringtone would prevent the unwanted call from bothering me.

Here’s the 1 second silent ringtone I created which is available to download from archive.org…

http://www.archive.org/download/SilentRingtone/silence.mp3

Like everything I create, the silent ringtone has been set free from any copyrights using the CC0 waiver.

If you don’t want to use the silent ringtone I created, here’s how to create it yourself using a Mac.

—

Overview

1. Install Audacity
2. Install LAME MP3 Encoder
3. Create Silence
4. Export Silent Audio File

—

1. Install Audacity

Audacity is an open source audio editing application. You can download it here…
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_mac

—

2. Install LAME MP3 Encoder

LAME MP3 Encoder lets us create mp3 files. You can download it here…
http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/

—

3. Create Silence

• In your Applications folder, open up Audacity.
• In Audacity’s menu, go to “Generate” > “Silence…”
• In the “Silence Generator” window, enter “000,001 seconds” and click “OK”

—

4. Export Silent Audio File

• In Audacity’s menu, go to “File” > “Export…”
• In the “Edit Metadata” window, click “OK”
• In the “Save As:” field, enter “silence.mp3″
• Choose a folder to save it in.
• In the “Format:” field, choose “MP3 Files” and click “Options…”
• For “Bit Rate Mode:”, choose “Constant”
• For “Quality”, choose “8 kbps”
• For “Channel Mode”, choose “Joint Stereo” and click “OK”
• Click “Save”
• An “Invalid sample rate” message should appear.
• For “Sample Rates”, choose “8000″ and click “OK”.

—

You should now have a silent mp3 that you can use as a ringtone for phones that support truetones.

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Goodbye public domain dedication. Hello CC0 waiver.

I just got tipped by Free Culture News that CC0 is now ready to use. I first heard about CC0 from Brian Rowe (see transcript below).

When someone uses CC0 for a work they created, they waive all copyright related to the work. You know when you see “Copyright © 2009 Company. All rights reserved.”? CC0 is the opposite of that, “No rights reserved.” Anyone can do anything with your work without giving you compensation or credit.

That sounds familiar. Isn’t that the same thing as dedicating your work to the public domain? What’s the difference?

As seen by my project “Set Free“, I’m on a quest to find great works whose creators consciously reject copyright on purpose. When searching through public domain works, I get a few results that I want and also several results that I don’t want. The public domain results that I don’t want are the works whose copyright simply expired.

CC0 will make finding the results I want easier since it only includes people who choose to waive copyright on purpose and excludes all works whose copyright just expired. Quoting Brian…

Having open content is good, but it is even better if people can find it to use.

When people start embracing CC0, I should be able to find many results by simply googling…

link:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/zero/1.0/

The search results lead to sites that link to the human readable CC0 waiver. Sites that have a link to the human readable CC0 waiver are likely to have works by creators who rejected copyright.

In conclusion, if you choose to reject copyright for your work, please consider using the CC0 waiver instead of the public domain dedication. A future where the majority of people choose to share their work openly is what I’m working towards. That reminds me of another good quote I came across from a blog that I frequent.

A utopia by choice is heaven. A utopia by force is hell.

- eksith

—

Conversation with Brian Rowe

Subject: Public Domain
————————

From: Jorel Pi
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 12:03 PM
To: Brian Rowe

Hi Brian,

Just came across your blog. Glad to see another blog under the public domain.

I’m in the process of creating a list of notable people who dedicated
works to the public domain. The beginnings of the list can be viewed
here:

http://setfree.wik.is/

Just wanted to ask if you knew anyone else off the top of your head
that can be added.

Researching this topic doesn’t yield many results, so I thought I’d
start asking people familiar with the subject.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Jorel

———-
From: Brian Rowe
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 8:17 PM
To: Jorel Pi

Hmmm that is a good question. I do not know of others using the public domain dedication. I am currently in Boston at the CC tech Summit, I will ask around and see if anyone knows an easy way to look that information up.

GL with the project,

-Brian

———-
From: Jorel Pi
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 8:34 PM
To: Brian Rowe

Thanks for your efforts Brian!

———-
From: Brian Rowe
Date: Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 1:59 PM
To: Jorel Pi

I talked to several people at CC and no one knew of a good resource for finding people using the PD dedication. The CC network is still in its early stages but may have options for search profiles later on. CC is also coming out with a new PD license, CC0 (CCZero). Good Luck on the project, I will keep in touch if I find a better way to find PD marked works. Having open content is good, but it is even better if people can find it to use.

Best,

Brian Rowe

———-
From: Jorel Pi
Date: Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 2:29 PM
To: Brian Rowe

Great to hear from you Brian. Thanks for the CC0 link. I haven’t
heard of it yet.