I am a movie buff and prefer downloading my movies rather than watching online. I am also particular about downloading only .avi files, as they are the most common and usually have the best prints.

Off late, I’ve been trying to do all my computer related work in Ubuntu, trying to avoid Windows to the possible extent, including watching movies. VLC is what I use on Windows, because of its ability to play a wide range of formats and ease of use. As VLC has a Linux version too, I decided to stick with it in Ubuntu as well.

Problem:

All my movies of the .avi format do play in VLC with excellent video quality but without an audio output. To fix this issue, all that was required was a simple change in the output module of the audio settings.

To open VLC Media Player:

Applications -> Sound & Video -> VLC media player

Note: In my case, the audio output module was set to default, which I think is the reason for lack of audio playback. Make sure you have also plugin for vlc installed before changing the settings.

To install Alsa plugin for VLC:

At the terminal: sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-alsa

Change the settings:

Once you have VLC opened, go to Settings -> Preferences

Expland the audio section of the settings and you’ll find three sub-sections Filters, Output modules and Visualizations.

Output Modules is what we are concerned with. Click this section and make sure the Advanced Options checkbox is selected in the bottom right of the Preferences window.

Fix it:

Change the audio output module (if set to default) to ALSA audio output. Save the settings, close VLC and restart the application. And that’s it, pretty simple huh…

 
Here’s a basic and simple video tutorial on using the clip analysis tool of ArcToolbox in ArcGIS Desktop 9.2. The tutorial even works for previous versions of ArcGIS.

via http://www.vtorial.com

 
Oracle 10g Express Edition is one of the best ways to learn Oracle SQL and the ‘Oracle Architecture’ without much consumption of your system resources and space unlike an Enterprise Edition.

Installing Express Edition in Linux is fast and easy unlike that in Windows.Guess, that is what makes Linux so efficient and robust.

First download the debian package from Oracle after accepting the license agreement. If you would be using Oracle 10g XE on your personal computer or laptop, you should go about downloading the Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Universal) debian package (*.deb).

When the download is complete, open a terminal window and issue the command:
sudo dpkg -i oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.0_i386.deb

Once the installation is done, it is required to configure the XE server by issuing the command: sudo /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

During configuration, you are prompted to enter information for the following:
1. A valid HTTP port for the Oracle XE graphical user interface/database homepage (default port is 8080)
2. A valid port for the Oracle database listener (default is 1521)
3. Password for the administrative accounts sys and sysdba and
4. If you want the database to start automatically at system start-up

With appropriate responses for the above prompts, the configuration is complete and you have a fully functioning ORDBMS on your system.

Working on Oracle is fun, when you key in queries at the command line rather than using a graphical user interface. You can access the SQL Command Line interface from Applications -> Oracle Database 10g Express Edition -> Run SQL Command Line.

There’s yet another way to access the SQL command line, which is from the terminal session. To fire up an SQL session from the terminal window, you have to set up a few environment variables in the /etc/bash.bashrc file. Add the following lines at the end of the file:

<span style="font-size:100%;">ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server<br />PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin<br />export ORACLE_HOME<br />export ORACLE_SID=XE<br />export PATH</span><br />
Save the file, fire up a terminal session and issue the command sqlplus which will prompt for a database user name and password, which should give a SQL prompt on successful login.

As a superuser, you can start, stop, restart and check status of the Oracle XE service from the CLI using:
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe {start|stop|restart|forcereload|configure|status|enable|disable}

To check the version of SQL*Plus: sqlplus -V
For help on usage: sqlplus -H

To view a list of features that are enabled and disabled in the express edition, use select * from v$option order by parameter;

Please drop in a comment, if there is any ambiguity in the procedure described above.

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