One aspect of software development (scripting included) that burns every single developer is developing for an international audience. The most common cause of problems come from incorrect handling of dates and numbers, but there are many more. I first cut my teeth on the topic when working on Encarta Online, via bugs teaching me the hard way! After that, I took some time to read the excellent documentation on MSDN that describes many of the intricacies: Developing World-Ready Applications, and especially Best Practices for Developing World-Ready Applications.
I got a question today with an interesting request – “How do I ensure that only one user can access a machine via PowerShell Remoting at a time?” We do have direct functionality to limit multiple sessions, but it that limit applies to sessions by the same user - see: MaxShellsPerUser for full detail about that setting. If you are doing some sort of self-service portal where everybody shares the same local username / password, MaxShellsPerUser is one way to solve the problem.
One of the things that’s always unsettled me a bit in a big organization is keeping yourself informed about changes that you care about, even when those changes never end up making it through the grape vine. For example: Promotions. Of course you want to congratulate them! Transfers. Finding out that a team has moved to another manager, but no “re-org” mail to let you know. Leaving the company. Finding out that a co-worker has left the company or division.
Last week, a co-worker mentioned a event being offered again by WMRRA (Washington Motorcycle Road Racing Association) – the “Taste of Racing”. For $20, you get to bring your bike on the track for 20 minutes. A handful of control riders take you through some familiarity laps (and keep things under control during the ride.) But then it’s just you and wide-open road. You know those days when you get an on-ramp all to yourself and smile?
If you’re interested in Morse Code as a hobby or just as a neat lo-fi communication mechanism, Morser will let you use your regular keyboard as a Morse keyer into any Windows application.
Every once in a while, we look to the PowerShell community for feedback on possible design directions on PowerShell. We’ve been exploring the integration of PowerShell and HTML5, and would love to get your feedback on a proof-of-concept. This prototype uses the System.Net.WebClient class to “bootstrap” itself, and from there, awesomenes ensues. From a PowerShell prompt, run the following command: iex (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString(“http://bit.ly/e0Mw9w") If you like this, we’ve crowd-sourced some other PowerShell investigations in the past, as well:
For the next couple of posts, we’ll be talking about an important facet of computer security – hashing, hash codes, and especially what makes “cryptographically strong” hashes special. If you’re a developer or scripter and things stop making sense – let me know. It’s my fault, not yours. One common problem in software is the desire to determine if two things (i.e.: files, documents, passwords) are the same or different without having to compare those things verbatim.
The PowerShell community lost a great member last night. Carrying out one of his final wishes, his family posted this on Twitter last night: We are sad to tell you, Andy “the most passionate Powersheller” passed away on 12th Jan 2011, and wanted us to say goodbye to you all. Andy http://twitter.com/AndyTearle/status/25414783826141184 Rest in peace, Andy.
I recently had a friend ask me how to set up a website. They wanted more than a blog – something to post their artwork on, put up a gallery, and perhaps sell some things. There are a couple of options – it just depends on how ambitious you are! At the most basic level, here are some free options: Create a Google Site at http://sites.google.com. They’ve got a bunch of templates – here’s a default one that I created just to see what it’s like: https://sites.
When is the last time you gave the gift of appreciation? I don’t mean “Thank You” as the social lubricant. I mean a thoughtful expression of exactly what somebody has done, and the impact it had on you. One of my favourite work habits is expressing this simple act of ‘Thank You’. Not always to the person themselves – but to their manager. Aside: At work, I send ‘Thank You’s to the person directly, and CC their manager.