As a background, I’ve been having a “ghost in the machine” on and off with my motorcycle for a few years. It’ll start idling more roughly, run hotter than usual, give less power than usual, and have these significant non-linear jumps in engine noise / effort at around 7k RPM. I bought the bike at a shop that has since closed, and for a long time it was under warranty. One time I brought it in, and they replaced some jet seals (or something like that), because it was a common issue with the model (2007 Yamaha YZF600R).

The biggest scripting event of the year is getting close to wrapping up - Scripting Games 2012! There have been a ton of great challenges, a ton of great competitors, and a ton of great commentary. As one of the guest commentators, I was asked to write a script to monitor uptime on servers in the environment. To make this as efficient as possible, the solution leveraged WMI jobs to process 32 computers at a time.

If you own a Makerbot Replicator, you might have seen some of the amazing colours they offer: http://store.makerbot.com/plastic/1-75mm-filament.html. Unfortunately, trying to get a full colour palette (13 colours in stock) means having so much plastic you’ll never get through it all. Makerbot tried offering rainbow colour packs before, but they are now no longer for sale. I suggested it again via email, but it sounds like they’re pretty slammed with making Replicators :) Here’s the idea:

Sometimes, you stumble on a blog that is so chock full of information that you revel in its every word. And then you realize their archive goes back 5 years! I’ve read a bunch of great posts on Nate Lawson’s awesome security blog, and decided that I wanted to read it beginning to end. If you are the owner of said WordPress blog, the solution is easy – use WordPress’ built-in Export feature.

We were talking about a very cool astrological date on the internal PowerShell mailing list recently. In celebration of this event, Josh Rowe made this brilliant comment. See if you can figure out what it does :) clear;$00=(0..1250|%{9608}),(0..7645|%{9617})|%{$_};(-10..29)| %{$OO='';$O0=$_;-10..64|%{$0O=$_;$OO+=[char]($00[$0O*$0O-48*$0O+ 1720+4*$O0*$O0-96*$O0],@($00[$0O*$0O-52*$0O+1644+4*$O0*$O0-88* $O0],9617,9617)[(0,1)[($0O-lt28)]+($O0-gt12)])[(0,1)[$0O-gt24]* ($O0-lt14)]};$OO};0..573892165|%{$OO=@((($OO+0)*4*$_*$_/(4*$_* $_-1)),1d)[$_-lt1];write-progress ":-)"($OO*2)} I suppose that’s not really fair. Here it is in all of its syntax-highlighted glory: clear;$00=(0..1250|%{9608}),(0..7645|%{9617})|%{$_};(-10..29)| %{$OO='';$O0=$_;-10..64|%{$0O=$_;$OO+=[char]($00[$0O*$0O-48*$0O+ 1720+4*$O0*$O0-96*$O0],@($00[$0O*$0O-52*$0O+1644+4*$O0*$O0-88* $O0],9617,9617)[(0,1)[($0O-lt28)]+($O0-gt12)])[(0,1)[$0O-gt24]* ($O0-lt14)]};$OO};0..573892165|%{$OO=@((($OO+0)*4*$_*$_/(4*$_* $_-1)),1d)[$_-lt1];write-progress ":-)"($OO*2)}

There have been a handful of useful posts recently giving reviews across the spectrum of PowerShell books. I always love reading these posts, as they let you compare and contrast the whole range of quality and approaches. When reading reviews that focus only on a single book, it’s sometimes hard to calibrate – does the reviewer get this excited about blank reams of paper? Slag Shakespeare for his typos? My favourite is Richard Siddaway’s summary, freshly updated today: http://richardspowershellblog.

As I was going through some things, I realized that I have a handful of author copies of my PowerShell Cookbook remaining. There are several of the first edition, several of the second edition, and several of the pocket references. After thinking about what to do with them, I hereby announce the PowerShell Pay-it-Forward Award. If you would like a free signed copy of any of these books, I have a simple request.

When we last left off, we discussed hash codes - a small unique identifier for an item based on its properties or features. There are many different ways to calculate unique identifiers for items. These different ways are called Hash Algorithms. Each serves a different purpose, but some popular ones right now are are MD5, SHA1, and SHA256. Why so many? The reason is security. Our last post finished with the question:

On Tuesday of last week, Ubisoft released Rocksmith: an XBOX / PS3 / PC guitar game with a twist. You play a real guitar. You learn the real notes. Your fingers hurt just like every great guitarist before you. For some context, guitar has been part of my life for a long time – although my proficiency with it has waxed and waned (currently waning). I made the most progress with classical guitar, but ran into a cliff of frustration when songs started calling for notes out of the basic first few positions.

Shay Levy, one of PowerShell’s great MVPs, has been crafting sweet PowerShell desktop backgrounds for years now. One thing I’ve always loved is that they seem to carry a message. His first wallpaper was a screaming crowd. In my head, they are people chanting for the power of PowerShell, or the IT rock star that saved the deployment. It’s been my background since he posted it, and has graced many a conference presentation.