Proxy authentication to Oracle Database

Interesting post on proxy authentication.

OraTransplant - Wilfred van der Deijl » Using Proxy Authentication with SQLPlus

it took me few extra steps to test this.

• logged into ORACLE 10.2 db instance using sqlplus as dba and executed following sql statements.

1. CREATE USER proxy IDENTIFIED AS proxy;
2. GRANT CREATE SESSION TO proxy;
3. ALTER USER proxy GRANT CONNECT THROUGH scott;
   

• now login as scott[proxy]/tiger

as simple as that.

Podcast / Record live stream on Mac

Thanks to Roychayen for the Hit 96.7. It is a live malayalam music radio ideal for away-from-home mallus like me. The quality is wow and is 24 x 7. Now I like to play these audio from my car and other places where there is no Internet (as of today !!).

Way to go would be to record this live stream as MP3 or Ogg and cut onto CD / DVD. Live streams are typically of formats friendly with iTunes, QuickTime, VLC, Windows Media Player and so on. But none of these allow recording. One yucky way would be to loopback Audio Out to Mic In and record using Audacity; that is the hardware way;

The software (and ideal) way is to use SoundFlower which installs a 2ch and a 16ch audio in and out ports. Set System Preferences to use either of SoundFlower ports as default output and use Audacity (with Recording source as SoundFlower port selected above) to record the stream and may be after 3-4 hours stop recording and export the recoding as MP3 or Ogg from Audacity.


Same procedure could be followed to record from Skype or any audio source and publish it as Podcast.

What a miss

My Gadgets

• At home

Marantz 5200 Receiver/Amplifier
DigiTec HD8710 Set Top Box
Momitsu V880N DVD Player with DVI
BenQ PE7700 Widescreen Projector
Samsung 32" (LA32S71BX) LCD TV.
Apple Powerbook 12" - Mac OS X 10.4

AdiumX
Skype
VLC Video Player
Gimp
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Thunderbird

• In car

Parrot 3200 LS-COLOR Bluetooth handsfree

• At work

Apple MacBook Pro 17", 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD - Mac OS X 10.4 & Win XP on Parallels Desktop
Dell Optiplex GX260 - Ubuntu LTS 6.06
Dell Optiplex GX260 - Microsoft Vista Trial
Sun Sparc Ultra 10 - Sun Solaris 5.6
Sun Sparc Ultra 10 - Ubuntu Linux 6.10 (Edgy Eft)

Eclipse 3.2
Oracle Database 10.2
Oracle SQL Developer

• On me

Nokia 6280

How to schedule iSync on Mac ?

Now that I have a car with bluetooth handsfree, my mobile phone got its bluetooth always on (but NOT discoverable, for security reasons). Now it makes sense to schedule the iSync on my MacBook Pro to sync my Address Book and iCalendar with my phone automatically.

Initial thought was to use Mac's launchd as described at developer.apple.com but somehow I could not get it working :-(


So I got onto my unix comfort zone; so to use crond. There I have a script at ~/bin/iSync.scpt which contents as

tell application "iSync"
activate
synchronize
repeat
if not syncing then exit repeat
end repeat
quit
end tell
return input
end run

and a cron job added using "crontab -e" as below

#m h dom mon dow command
25 16 * * 1-5 osascript ~/bin/iSync.scpt

and seems to work just fine.

Is (novated) lease of a car that wise ???

I been thinking on our next car; a brand new semi-prestige car like Honda Accord and 2 year old prestige car like Audi A4 seems to cost quite same. If so, buying one of them on a fully maintained lease, which save on some tax, seems like a good idea. Any thoughts ?

Now that I have bought the car, an Audi A4 on the lease, I kind of understand how the system work. I think it is a wise thing to do, especially for those on higher tax bracket and drive to work thereby get max. benefit of Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT). With all tax and math, one would be paying only about 70% for the car. If the car is of good resale value, it can be bought back from lease company and sell on private sale and get onto another lease !!

How-to a tech report

Found this interesting post at edwardtufte.com

"State your message in one sentence. That is your title. Write one paragraph justifying the message. That is your abstract. Circle each phrase in the abstract that needs clarification or more context. Write a paragraph or two for each such phrase. That is the body of your report. Identify each sentence in the body that needs clarification and write a paragraph or two in the appendix. Include your contact information for readers who require further detail."

Hope my reports/articles get better from here !!

Just started tickling ..

It's been a while since I've been sleeping on this idea of b-l-o-g-g-i-n-g. Why ??? hmmm ... I guess during work and other times I come across few or more interestings tit/bits that may come handy for others. Some may be right and some may be wrong; the viewers to this blog may comment if there is another perspective/view to it.