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Post · August 3, 2024

How I manage my dotfiles

I'd like to share how I manage my dotfiles. Are you familiar with dotfiles? According to the Arch Linux wiki: [dotfiles are] user-specific application...

Post · April 26, 2013

Applied PowerShell Presentation

I've begun presenting again with some frequency. My topic of choice, unsurprisingly, is PowerShell. I had presented on PowerShell quite a bit back in 2009, but...

Post · February 5, 2013

Easy Date Math with PowerShell

Date math is hard... at least for me. My brain has trouble thinking in terms of dates. I probably overanalyze things, but if you say something like "let's meet...

Post · April 10, 2012

Code review of randomness

Last week, prior to a weekly meeting, one of my team members had the idea to take a few minutes before the meeting to review some code. We already do code...

Post · May 31, 2011

Fun with binary!

I know what you're thinking... "did he just say 'binary data'? Like, 1's and 0's?" Well, yes, yes I did. If you're like me, the last time you actively had to...

Post · February 5, 2010

Quickly get the command line arguments from processes with Powershell

I'm sure I'm the only person in the world who ever wants to know what the command line arguments for running processes is, but in the remote chance that...

Post · July 12, 2009

Haven't heard about PowerShell yet? And you'll be in the Little Rock area this week, too???

If you seriously still haven't heard or used PowerShell yet, come to my Little Rock DNUG presentation on the topic on Monday, July 13. Or, if you're busy...

Post · June 12, 2009

Find-String.ps1 - ack for PowerShell

Never heard of ack? Well, by ack's admission, it is "better than grep." That's up to you to decide, but it does make searching code easier than grep. As a...

Post · May 12, 2009

Finding stuff quickly (or searching through code effectively)

UPDATE - I ended up posting my version of the Find-String script on GitHub. Check out the latest Find-String news at GitHub. --- I blogged a while back about...

Post · March 31, 2009

Quickly Extract Files with PowerShell

This is just a quick post to share a very simple PowerShell script I wrote to extract files from a compressed file (zip, 7z, whatever). When downloading...

Post · January 26, 2009

Finding the right exception to throw

If you've been writing .NET applications for a while, you're likely aware that you're not supposed to just throw Exception. Instead, if you're dealing with a...

Post · December 31, 2008

PowerShell ISE Themes!

Last week, the PowerShell team released PowerShell v2 CTP3. And, of course, there was much rejoicing. I've got quite a bit I'd like to blog about regarding...

Post · October 11, 2008

Simple PowerShell script to generate thumbnails

I was working with a lot of images for a website today and I needed to quickly create thumbnails for each one. I did a quick Google search on PowerShell and...

Post · September 30, 2008

Slides and notes from MNUG talk

I promised the slides, notes and links from my Memphis .NET User Group talk, so here they are... and wow, they haven't really changed much from when I gave the...

Post · September 9, 2008

PowerShell FSDNUG Presentation with Slides and Notes

Tonight, I presented on PowerShell to the Fort Smith .NET User Group. It was my first presentation/speech since college! Fortunately, it seems to have gone...

Post · September 5, 2008

Speaking at FSDNUG on PowerShell

I didn't expect to add a Speaking category to my blog just yet, but... well, here it is, my premiere Speaking post. I'll be presenting on PowerShell to the...

Post · May 7, 2008

Reflection by example with Powershell

A coworker swung by a few days ago to ask some questions about using Reflection. I learn really well by example so I decided to use Powershell to show using...

Post · April 24, 2008

Powershell script to print diff output in color

Here is a simple script I wrote which was inspired by this post on terminal color highlighting and by ColorDiff that does essentially the same thing. Here is a...

Post · November 6, 2007

Graphical PowerShell in the new CTP of PowerShell 2.0

I didn't expect to see this in the next version of PowerShell - very cool. It definitely still needs some work, but I like the start. The syntax highlighting...

Post · November 2, 2007

Am I a CTP junkie or a Beta junkie?

I'm finding myself wondering if I'm a beta junkie or a CTP junkie. Why? Because Jeffrey Snover announced that there will be a CTP release of PowerShell 2.0...

Post · June 28, 2007

A simple function to get a WebClient (with proxy) in PowerShell

I was browsing around a few days ago and came across a link to a blog post on the SAPIEN website about searching live.com from PowerShell. Sounds cool, I...

Post · June 21, 2007

Powershell Stickers! Yay!

/n software has a promotion going right now where you can get a free Powershell sticker from them. I haven't been so excited about stickers since elementary...

Post · January 11, 2007

More PowerShell automation and unrelated updates

A recent post by Lee Holmes on breaking your writer's (blogger's?) block is prompting this post. I recently finished reading Steve McConnell's book, Code...

Post · December 28, 2006

PowerShell script to calculate file hashes

UPDATE NUMBER 2: Kevin commented about a flaw in my script wherein it would keep files open until the PowerShell process was closed - a scenario I should've...

Post · November 29, 2006

Easily open the results from Select-String

A few weeks ago I posted a way to use PowerShell to find in files. This is just an extension of that post to show how you might open the results of your find...

Post · November 6, 2006

Find in files with PowerShell

I haven't posted anything on PowerShell in a while so here's something that's useful. Or, if you like things a little more abbreviated, try this: Select-String...

Post · September 8, 2006

Simple tip to change your PowerShell Script Execution Policy in Vista

Having trouble changing your PowerShell Script Execution Policy in Vista because of access problems? This whole limited user thing will take some time to get...

Post · July 26, 2006

PowerShell in Color!

Recently, I've been experimenting with different console colors in PowerShell, primarily because the light gray on black is sort of boring (lame excuse, I...

Post · July 13, 2006

Customize your command prompt!

Yesterday, I downloaded the Developer Productivity Tools video from the Wrox website that Scott Hanselman did for one of his presentations with a user group....

Post · June 30, 2006

Why aren't you subscribed to the PowerShell blog?

I don't like repeating myself, but I need to again: if you're not subscribed to the PowerShell blog, then why in the world not?!? The PowerShell team has been...

Post · June 22, 2006

Another PowerShell tip...

I can't help myself, PowerShell is great and I keep finding useful things to do with it. Most of what I've been finding is easily accomplished in other ways,...

Post · June 21, 2006

Why I love PowerShell part... I don't know...

Check out this snippet: Awesome! Recursively removing files!

Post · June 7, 2006

PowerShell IDE (the first IDE to use a ribbon?)

Most of you probably are already aware of this little development, but there is a freeware IDE for PowerShell development (Scott beat me to the post...). It...

Post · May 5, 2006

Setting up VS2005 environment in PowerShell

Many thanks to Robert W. Anderson for this solution. In his post VS2005 PowerShell Prompt, Robert details how to create your PowerShell profile script which...

Post · April 26, 2006

PowerShell RC1 released!

Never heard of PowerShell you say? I hadn't either, at least until today. That's because it used to be called Monad. Microsoft released the RC1 of PowerShell...