I was wrestling with a sticky PowerShell problem the other day and while turning it over in my head I stared at my wall.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any inspiration.
But I also realised it’s a pretty good snapshot of my level of nerdiness.
PowerShell: A Logging Function
Often you need to record what a script does to a file. You can easily get something going with Start-Transcript but sometimes you want to control what is written with a bit more granularity.
So here’s a function I tend to re-use in my scripts. It takes text output and writes it both to a text log file and to the Verbose output stream. Continue reading “PowerShell: A Logging Function”
Only Slightly Less Cool Than In Snowcrash: The HTC Vive
I got a Vive. A real, working Virtual Reality system. That makes it officially The Future (hover-boards / flying cars / utopian government notwithstanding).
I’ve been using it for a bit over a week and here are my my thoughts.
(Spoiler: It’s awesome) Continue reading “Only Slightly Less Cool Than In Snowcrash: The HTC Vive”
XCOM 2: Legendary Ironman Guide / Tips
After many restarts and dismal failures I did it ; Legendary Ironman XCOM 2 complete!
It’s a lot of fun; you always feel you’re close to death (at least at the beginning of the game) and the tension really gives you that “against all odds” vibe. I’ve collated some tips to help you retain some sanity when you start Operation Gatecrasher for the tenth time.
I’ve written a similar guide for Long War 2, here.
Also here’s a guide for War of the Chosen (the latest XCOM2 expansion).
PowerShell: Setting Exchange Send-As Permissions without Using the Add-ADPermission cmdlet
The Send-As permission for objects in Exchange is set on the AD object (rather than the mailbox itself). Normally, the weapon of choice is the Add-ADPermission cmdlet but interestingly that cmdlet is only available if you have some serious Exchange permissions; Organization Management. What you’re doing though requires fairly low-level AD permissions; you’re just modifying some attributes on an object. So I did some investigation and came up with a function to set Send-As permissions without using Add-ADPermission. Continue reading “PowerShell: Setting Exchange Send-As Permissions without Using the Add-ADPermission cmdlet”
PowerShell: Querying, Formatting and Exporting Tags on Picture Files
One of the many Sisyphean tasks my wife performs is keeping the all the metadata tags of our digital photographs up to date. She meticulously keeps tabs on the tags she’s used but with the sheer number of photos, new photos being added and the children starting to take photos too it’s a pretty time-consuming task.
So; what she needs is a list of all the tags used on each picture file (including ones missing with tags) in an easily sortable format.
Being the caring husband that I am I started spending some time solving that problem with PowerShell.
Of course, she might have been happier with me doing all the ironing for a week so she can focus fully on sorting the pictures out but this is a) more efficient and b) a solution that she can re-use (teach a woman to (photograph) fish etc) and so is a better use of our time.
At least, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Continue reading “PowerShell: Querying, Formatting and Exporting Tags on Picture Files”
PowerShell: Synchronizing a Folder (and Sub-Folders) Part 5
I’ve made some more changes to the syncing script. The first was some corrections about how it deals with paths with ‘odd’ symbols in them (like “[“) and the second was to properly output objects listing all the changes its made (for logging or further processing).
Update : I’ve revisited this script a few times with new additions and modifications.The latest full version of the script is here. That post also includes links covering the other revisions to the script.
Continue reading “PowerShell: Synchronizing a Folder (and Sub-Folders) Part 5”
Nostalgia Time: Greatest Gaming Moments, Part 2
Following on from Part 1, here’s some more of my best gaming memories. Continue reading “Nostalgia Time: Greatest Gaming Moments, Part 2”
PowerShell: A Function Template
“Stuff that saves time” is a pretty good credo for PowerShell. With that in mind, if you’re going to write lots of functions a template can both save you a bit of typing and remind you about important bits to include.
Here’s mine, with a few comments afterwards.
PowerShell: Moving SMTP Proxy Addresses to a New Mailbox
I do a lot of work with Exchange and Exchange Online (Office 365). A common task is to move proxy SMTP addresses from one mailbox to another. And commonly run tasks must get scripted.
It’s an obscure English by-law.
More detail below.
Continue reading “PowerShell: Moving SMTP Proxy Addresses to a New Mailbox”
Herring's Fishbait 