Dynamically change the window size on virtual box

I was working on this project where the task was to add some code for the test automation of the product. The whole system was on linux, so I had to prepare all the system on ubuntu. I set up an ubuntu instance on the virtualbox-4.3.12. The problem was that the size of the screen was static where it had scroll bars and so it was uncool. I also use virtualbox in my work with redhat as guest os, but there, the screen size of guest machine dynamically changes as I resize the virtual-box window.

So I thought, there must be some way to do this in ubuntu as well. I researched and found an amazingly simple solution. In the window where the guest OS is running, there is an option Devices->Install guest additions CD image. Click on the link and install the image in the guest os. Now restart it. That should do the work.

However in my case, the virtual box started to crash and could not open. I tried different things but it didnot work. Finally, I copied the .vdi file of the image to another location, and deleted all the references to the instances in the virtual box. Then I created another instances pointing to the same vdi file, and it worked properly.

Do enjoy virtualizing.

Tunneling | a trick

Sometimes in some environment, some of the websites may be restricted. There are lots of softwares eg. mcafee, which acts as a proxy of your network in your company network and restricts some category sites to be browsed.

What you could do is, you could tunnel the request to some remote machine and browse the contents from there. This will work if the proxy filtering is not applied in that network where the remote machine is located.

Steps

1. Open your putty, type the server where you want to connect

2. Click the “Tuenneling” link in Putty, select “Dynamic” as the option

3. Enter a port number in the port sectioin, and add. eg : 8080

4. Hit enter, enter username and password in the terminal. Connect to the machine

5. In the browser, set the proxy as “localhost:8080″

6. Browse and enjoy.

Text to audio

 Introduction
 One day while sitting and reading a story on my laptop, it occurred to me that how awesome it would be if instead of reading all the text word by word, the computer would read it for me. Even it could generate a audio file (eg:- story.wav ) so that I could transfer it on my mobile and hear it whenever I am free without having to open my Laptop. I could use the same Audio as a dialog for my animation project.
Solution
Well, obviously, the next step was to google, search learn try then again search. There were several interesting solutions. One of them is the command called

espeak

To read a file type,( cd to the directory )

espeak <filename>

The general and simple syntax of the command is

espeak -v <voice_tone_name> -s <speed_per_minute> -f <text_file_name> -w <wave_file_name_desired>

Open a terminal, and type in the command to see/hear the magic.
For command documentation and options

espeak -h

 You can see the list of voices with

espeak --voices

This command has proved to be a great fun to me and hope you will enjoy using it too.

Some of my experience about linux system

Linux is a great operating system, or say brand name of operating system. But for poor countries where people can't usually afford to buy an operating system, and the cost of band-width is also high, it is more difficult to use linux based operating system. The reason is that to install every software available, you need internet. Well here is a solution to that.