Monthly Archives: January 2010

Old Embroidery Reader update history

Programs

Trying to clean up the Embroidery Reader page a bit here… so I’m moving the previous version history stuff to posts. I suppose I could just remove it but I’m a pack rat.

Changes from 1.3.0-1.3.1:

  • Fixed color number 15 – was lilac, it’s now brown/brass. Thanks to Ryan Lovett and Robert Heel for reporting this one.

Changes from 1.2.2-1.3.0:

  • Changed code to use PEC section instead of PES data. It seems to be able to read all file types now. A big thanks goes to Michel Veerman for his help on this one.
  • Added an option in the settings to ‘filter’ stitches based on length. Some designs look much better with it, others end up missing parts.
  • Probably lots of small fixes, but I can’t think of them right now.

Changes from 1.2.1-1.2.2:

  • This version fixes a crash caused by saving empty values in the settings file. It is otherwise the same as the previous version. (1.2.1)

Changes from older versions:

  • Basic support for printing designs. Thanks to majorsnazz for the suggestion.
  • Ability to copy design images to the clipboard, so you can paste the image into any image editor.
  • A number of cosmetic bugfixes.
  • A simple icon. (I got tired of the default one)

Growing a KVM raw hard drive image file

linux, ,

I’m posting this as a reminder to myself the next time I need to make a raw KVM hard drive image bigger.

<disclaimer>
This worked for me – it may not for you. Make sure you have a backup of the image file before starting. I believe this will only work for raw type images… using it on qcow2, vmdk or any other type will probably cause a corrupted file. You have been warned…
</disclaimer>

You’ll need to know how big you want the final image to be in bytes. This command will grow the file to the size you want without actually allocating the full size.

dd if=/dev/zero of=file-to-grow.img bs=1 seek=(number of bytes - 1) count=1
Update, this command is more concise and does the same thing:
dd of=file-to-grow.img bs=1 seek=(number of bytes) count=0

You can also use shorthand values like 20G or 512M or 2T for number of bytes. Mind your abbreviations – dd sees G as 1024*1024*1024, but sees GB as 1000*1000*1000.

The file will then be allocated as the VM writes to it. You can check the allocated size of a file with ls -lsh. (the first column is the allocated size)
Note that this command does not expand the partition(s) or file system(s) on the hard drive image – you’ll need to use another tool like Gparted (available on the Ubuntu live CD) for this task.
You may need to use sudo in front of the command, depending on your setup.

Embroidery Reader gets a mention from Linus Torvalds

Programs

I guess I’m not the only one out there helping a loved one with an embroidery machine. According to Linus’ blog, his wife Tove received a Brother embroidery machine for Christmas and they went through the same thing I did trying to find decent software, or at least documentation, for PES files.
While Linus didn’t say he used it directly, he did gave a mention of Embroidery Reader and a link to my site. Sweet!