Desktop Apps
Ubuntu – No Audio When Playing Videos
I recently tried to play a video on Ubuntu 10.04, but got no audio because of missing a Windows Media Audio codec. My video player tried to automatically find a suitable plugin and failed. So here’s how I fixed it by hand. Step One: Update mplayer The version of mplayer that comes with Ubuntu is behind the times. But that’s easy to fix. $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/mplayer $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get upgrade mplayer Bam. Done. Also why not install smplayer while you’re at it—has a much better interface in my opinion. *Note:* If you prefer to use something else like vlc then upgrading may not be necessary. Check the documentation for your preferred movie player to see about its WMA support. Step Two: Discover the ...
0 Comment | Posted in Desktop Apps,Ubuntu,blog,desktop computing
July 07, 2010
Word 2007 Blank Pages Between Chapters
While working on a documentation project for a client we ran into a unique problem. According to good technical writing practices, you always want chapters to start on an odd page. This puts new chapters on the right-hand page of a bound book. You also want to ensure that any preceding blank page is not 100% blank, most standards dictate at least a footer with a page number and possibly a header with the title of the prior chapter (old school methods were to put a "This page intentionally left blank." message on the preceding blank page, which is one of my favorite all time ironies). After digging around for hours (OK, maybe 10 minutes) I found the solution to this blank page problem. It turns out that when you are forcing pages to start on an odd page # for things ...
0 Comment | Posted in Desktop Apps,Word,blog
June 22, 2010
Logon To Your Linux Box Using SSH Keys
I've been recently working with AWS EC2 instances and have found that the SSH keys that they require for secure login practices actually have some nice benefits. For one thing, once I've generated a keyfile that uniquely identifies me on my local PC, I can use that keyfile to quickly and easily login to any server without having to remember passwords and login credentials. Having to get in and out of over a dozen different servers every week, and nearly 100 different servers over the course of a year, the use of key sharing certainly has the potential to save a lot of keystrokes. In a nutshell, here is the pieces that make it work: Create a unique fingerprint on your local machine Initalize the SSH environment for your user login on the remote environment Store that fingerprint in the SSH environment on the remote system Once you have completed these steps, you will be ...
0 Comment | Posted in Cloud Computing,Desktop Apps,SSH,Security,Tips & Tricks,blog
November 12, 2009
PuTTY Window Name Trick
We're working with Amazon EC2 instances on a regular basis these days and my current preferred method of connecting to the command line is via PuTTY. It is a fairly simple program that gets the job done (though I prefer SecureCRT for a more robust terminal app). However, the Amazon host names are setup to be the internal DNS name for the server. This is usually something useful like domU-11-22-33-44-A1-ST-ea-ks-au-ce-ha-ha. While the hostname itself is not usually a problem, nor is the fact that PuTTY sets the default window title to the hostname, it gets to be confusing when you have more than 2 terminal windows open and are flipping between them on a regular basis. I often found myself on server A when I thought I was on server B. Luckily PuTTY lets you name the windows, or so I thought. In your session creation window you can go ...
0 Comment | Posted in Desktop Apps,blog
November 10, 2009
Microsoft .Net Framework
Cyber Sprocket and the .Net Framework Many of the Cyber Sprocket desktop applications require the Microsoft .Net Framework. Older windows computers do NOT have the .Net Framework installed. All new windows programs that access the Internet will require the .Net Framework, and thus it is a component of newer Windows operating systems. If you are running an older PC and have Windows updates enabled you most likely have the .Net Framework. New XP, Vista and Windows 7 computers come with the .Net Framework by default. If you are not sure if you have the .Net Framework installed you can skip this step and just begin the program installation, it will tell you if you need to install the .Net Framework during the setup process. The .Net Framework has several versions, the minimum version required for most Cyber Sprocket applications is version 1.1. We recommend installing version 2.0. What Is The .Net Framework? The Microsoft ...
0 Comment | Posted in Desktop Apps,Tips & Tricks,blog
December 15, 2008
