ze blog of simon

2nd Mar, 2006, 12:18pm

SQL*Plus

Here is a list of some of the most frequently used SQL*Plus commands:
• ACCEPT – Get input from the user
• DEFINE – Declare a variable (short: DEF)
• DESCRIBE – Lists the attributes of tables and other objects (short: DESC)
• EDIT – Places you in an editor so you can edit a SQL command (short: ED)
• EXIT or QUIT – Disconnect from the database and terminate SQL*Plus
• GET – Retrieves a SQL file and places it into the SQL buffer
• HOST – Issue an operating system command (short: !)
• LIST – Displays the last command executed/ command in the SQL buffer (short: L)
• PROMPT – Display a text string on the screen. Eg prompt Hello World!!!
• RUN – List and Run the command stored in the SQL buffer (short: /)
• SAVE – Saves command in the SQL buffer to a file. Eg “save x” will create a script file called x.sql
• SET – Modify the SQL*Plus environment eg. SET PAGESIZE 23
• SHOW – Show environment settings (short: SHO). Eg SHOW ALL, SHO PAGESIZE etc.
• SPOOL – Send output to a file. Eg “spool x” will save STDOUT to a file called x.lst
• START – Run a SQL script file (short: @)

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28th Sep, 2005, 10:14am

Radio 4 to mp3

My wife asked me to see if I could get a copy of a BBC Radio 4 program into MP3 for her boss, the program was on the freedom of information act, called A Right to Know, you can listen to it here. The BBC make most of there radio content available under “Listen Again”, where you can stream it using Real Player, so I don’t feel too bad about ripping it.

There are plenty of Windows & MacOS apps to do this kind of thing, but I run Debian Linux, so here’s what I did:

Get the contents of the RAM file, this is usually just a RTSP URL, do a wget or something similar, then pass the rtsp url to mplayer:
mplayer rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/tue2002.ra -ao pcm:file=right_to_know.wav -vc dummy -vo null
Now that you have a wav of the show, you really want to convert to something a bit more compact, like mp3:
lame -m m right_to_know.wav right_to_know.mp3 –tt “Right to Know” –ta “Michael Crick, BBC Radio 4″

the “-m m” says create a mono MP3, which should be more compact & perfectly adequate for spoken word.

Thanks to http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050130184054216

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26th Sep, 2005, 9:00am

Sun Opteron boxes

C|Net have a good interview with Andy Bechtolsheim Bechtolsheim’s machine dreams

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13th Sep, 2005, 8:11pm

3Ware fun

I’m building an offsite digital vault, so that my current employers can stream all our backups to this box which will be based about 100 miles from our current office. Here’s some notes on what will be required to get Debian Sarge up and running on Supermicro H8DAR Opteron mobo with a pair of 3Ware 9000 SATA cards. (we’re using a 16 disk, 3u box from PCI Case, which is a great box, but with hind sight, our mobo suppliers, Boston, do a rather nice 3u 16 disk dual opteron box with 3Ware cards, all for abou 300ukp more that we bought the parts, a much better solution..)

Anyways, getting Debian Sarge on this box might be tricky, so I’ve been doing some reading & prep work:

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7th Sep, 2005, 1:42pm

The Future of Mobility is Linux

I try to keep a close eye on mobile phone technology, I’ve been invoved in some projects where phones & the GPRS network have been used for some very interesting applications, Russel Beattie has an interesting article on how Linux is now or is going to be the platform of choice, here. He also has a neat phrase “Linux is inexpensive, has no strategy tax (like Microsoft)”. Love it.

Browsing through the rest of Russel’s notes, he has pod2mob, which looks interesting, but seems to be US centric, i.e. doesn’t like my UK mobile number