Precision Computing

I got forwarded an addictive interactive sequencer yesterday (http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix) and was immediately hooked.

Ibrahim just posted something to the PowerShell blog about how to create tied variables in PowerShell.

We’ve started working on the next edition of the PowerShell Cookbook, and one obvious goal is to improve on the first version.

Once in awhile, you need to do brain surgery on files locked by the system.

I’ve long wondered exactly how few coins you need in your pocket in order to perfectly round out any bill.

Vladimir Averkin recently wrote a series of posts that show how to export code with syntax highlighting into HTML and RTF formats.

We frequently get questions asking, “Where can I get a PowerShell script encoder so I can write secure scripts like the Visual Basic Script Encoder?”

The WinDbg module lets you script and automate WinDbg sessions from PowerShell.

In version 1 of PowerShell, it was possible to access Win32 APIs in one of two ways: by generating a dynamic assembly on the fly (you wouldn’t really do this for one-off calls, but would probably do it in a script that makes it easier to invoke Win32 APIs…

One thing that sometimes comes as a surprise (most recently as a comment on the PowerShell blog) is that DateTime casts are always parsed in the en-US DateTime format: Casting to a DateTime object doesn’t respect the current culture of the thread.

When it comes to personal finance, research and reading sometimes can’t answer all of your questions.

The Outlook team has a tradition of putting calendar diagrams in their OOF messages to try and help clarify the date ranges.

Once you get passionate enough about PowerShell to start looking for swag, you know you have a problem.

Once you’ve been using PowerShell for awhile, it’s natural to want to spread the word.

A question came up on an internal discussion list today about how to let a cmdlet support both simple and detailed views.

One of the biggest accomplishments in getting your private pilot’s license is the “Solo Long Cross-Country.”

One bit of feedback we frequently get is that PowerShell’s learning curve has some steeper bumps than we would like.

One tension that sometimes arises in the PowerShell community is between the hard-core developers, and hair-on-fire administrators.

Pain is Temporary … Quitting lasts Forever.

Once problem that often arises when trying to manage machines is when the management layer itself is the thing you need to diagnose.

If you have a PowerShell script that you are calling from cmd.exe, you might run into the following error: Write-Host : The OS handle’s position is not what FileStream expected.

Once in awhile, we get questions about the best practice for PowerShell’s execution policy when it is included as part of a standard desktop image.

Last night, I flew my first half-hour as Pilot in Command of N8756C, a 1977 Piper Warrior.

One question that comes up fairly often when dealing with (or writing!)

After what seems like an eternity, I finally got to start my official flight training.

Once in awhile, you’ll see a PowerShell screenshot that is still black and boring like the traditional cmd.exe prompt.

If you’re testing your PowerShell scripts (manually or automatically,) one of the first questions you’ll end up asking yourself is, “did I test enough?”

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about learning to fly.

A few years ago, we experimented with a “Live” version of Get-ChildItem that retrieved elegant textual context-based advertisements from the internet as you used PowerShell.

BgShell is a proof of concept PowerShell host that explores the idea of PowerShell as a background Macro program.

[Download: http://www.leeholmes.com/projects/SyntaxHighlight/Start-Colourizer.zip] In our most recent CTP, we exposed PowerShell’s parsing and tokenizing API for the great benefit of ISVs and hobbyists alike.

When O’Reilly put up the overview page for the Windows PowerShell Cookbook, the sample chapter was originally “Looping and Flow Control.”

A question recently came up asking why the -eq operator doesn’t work for two different (but equal) SecureStrings.

I’m not particularly a drum fan, but this is an amazing feat of skill and technology.

The ACoupleOfAdmins blog recently posted a book review of the PowerShell Cookbook (and were kind enough to also write an Amazon Review.)

A question came up on the newsgroup recently about why Exchange changes PowerShell’s execution policy from “Restricted” to “RemoteSigned.”

Here’s a nice light-hearted video if you need a laugh :) Video: William laughing

Since we just released a CTP of PowerShell V2, I thought I’d share a handy little script to demonstrate one of the new APIs we introduced: Show-ColorizedContent.ps1.

Scott Hanselman and I recently chatted about using PowerShell for a bit of log analysis.

Update 8/16/2010: The much expanded second edition is now available.

When you’ve got to deal with as much information as everybody in a large company does, most people write Inbox rules to redirect DLs to their own sub-folders.

A few weeks ago, Design News ran an engineering-centric article on the DIY Cat Feeder that entertained my cats while I was on vacation last year.

Jeffrey McManus recently wrote about database queries with PowerShell – a small script that lets you query a SQL data store.

The question came up on the newsgroup a few days ago on how to work with INI files from PowerShell.

While eagerly awaiting PowerShell’s upcoming remoting functionality, many people turn to Sysinternals’ PsExec tool to build their own version.

This has come up twice in as many days… how do you remove certificates from the certificate store in PowerShell?

A discussion came up recently in an internal mailing list about the difference between Cmdlets and Functions.

I learned of an evil SQL escape sequence today, in the context of a data migration script.

A question recently came in asking, “How do you invoke a generic method on a non-generic class in PowerShell?”

For some reason, a surprisingly common (albeit half-joking) remark about PowerShell is that it hasn’t “arrived” until you can write obfuscated one-liners like you do in C or Perl.