Under The Stairs

A Quiet Word to the Chinese Comment Spammer

2010-07-13T09:59:00Z

Hi. Thanks for all your comments, especially all those that contain URLs to adult sites. I appreciate how you follow up nearly every post to this blog with more comment spam. You will notice that none of the comments actually get published – that Read More......(read more)

PowerShell Needs a New Approved Verb

2010-07-12T17:26:00Z

I’ve been playing around a bit with the System.Speech namespace, in particular the System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer class. This class allows you go get the Speech Synthesis engine speak for you. On my workstation, I have just one voice, called Read More......(read more)

PowerShell and XML Element Attributes

2010-07-02T18:41:00Z

I’ve been playing a bit this week with XML and PowerShell. As you no doubt know, PowerShell has first class XML support built in. To see more about that, see Tobias’s Ebook Chapter on XML and PowerShell . My task this week was to work with attributes Read More......(read more)

They Called Their Web Site WHAT????

2010-06-30T18:07:00Z

Those nice folks at Angel Internet Press sent me a copy of new book: Slurls – They Called Their Website WHAT?! ” which has been keeping me amused. A slurl is made up term – joining ‘slur’ and ‘url’. A slurl is a web site URL that can be read in Read More......(read more)

Network Monitor V3.4 Ships

2010-06-30T17:21:00Z

Microsoft has just shipped a new version of Network Monitor, one of my favourite network tools. The new version has a slew of new features. MS has reworked the capturing engine to capture on faster networks without losing frames. The parser logic Read More......(read more)

PowerShell Plus 3.5 Beta

2010-06-20T07:24:00Z

I use PowerShell Plus pretty much all the time for the development of PowerShell scripts. I have it on both my desktop workstation and my laptop, and I regularly demonstrate it in my classroom teaching. Those nice folks at Idera have just released the Read More......(read more)

Another Free PowerShell Book

2010-06-19T07:08:00Z

I see the Swiss MS IT Pro Team (i.e. Frank Koch) are at it again, this time with another Free PowerShell Book. The latest book is entitled Administrative Tasks Using Windows PowerShell. And it’s now available in English (along with a copy of the first Read More......(read more)

PowerShell Script Provider

2010-06-18T06:42:00Z

Just when you think we’ve seen all that the (awesome) PowerShell community can do, along comes another cool development. The latest coolness comes from Oisin Grehan in the form of a PowerShell Script provider. This is a tool, which you can download from Read More......(read more)

Signing PowerShell Scripts – A Gotcha with ISE!

2010-06-17T13:08:00Z

In some enterprise environments, signing PowerShell scripts and setting an execution policy to only run signed scripts is a useful control mechanism. It can avoid less skilled admins ‘fixing’ a script almost correctly and can avoid untested scripts from Read More......(read more)

Communications Server ‘14’ Powershell Blog Up And Running

2010-06-10T14:33:00Z

The Communications Server ‘14’ team have put up a CS and Powershell blog. You can read it at http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/ . It’s early days, as CS14 was finally revealed to the world (with no NDA!) here in New Orelans TechEd North America. Speaking Read More......(read more)

Training and the Cloud

2010-06-04T17:26:00Z

I’ve been having some discussions with a client about the impact of cloud computing on the IT training business, particularly IT Professional training. If you believe the hype, cloud computing will take all the problems of running your IT suite and make Read More......(read more)

SQLIse – A PowerShell SQL Server Query Tool

2010-06-04T12:07:00Z

I am doing some work at the moment building SQL PowerShell training for an upcoming PowerShell MasterClass . In my searching, I came across a small project being done by Chad Miller, called SQLIse. As Chad describes in his blog, SQLISE is an ISE add-on Read More......(read more)

PowerShell Admin Module – A Follow Up

2010-06-02T08:16:00Z

in a recent blog article I wrote about a new Codeplex project called PowerShell Admin Modules , being developed by super-star MVP Richard Siddaway. I noted two small things I’d noticed about the module. Well today, Richard wrote to say he’d fixed Get Read More......(read more)

The PowerShell Guy Has Returned

2010-06-01T11:13:00Z

Marc, aka The PowerShell Guy is back. In his blog (now back on air), Marc recounts a tale that is all too familiar to many of us: IT problems combined with the demands of a real life. But thanks to those very nice folks over at OrcsWeb, Marc’s site and Read More......(read more)

Another Reason Why PowerShell Matters

2010-05-31T17:38:00Z

I’ve just been reading an interesting blog article in Peeters Online about fixing a DCOM issue that affects some machines. The issue results in Error Log entries with DCOM Event 10005 – Service can not be started. At least one common cause of this is Read More......(read more)