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Safely Testing Functions from Scripts

I recently saw a post by Jakub Jares on testing self-contained scripts with Pester [http://jakubjares.com/2019/06/09/2019-07-testing-whole-scripts/]. He suggests, essentially, hijacking the call to any functions, dot-sourcing the script, and then removing the hijack (an alias, in this case). We do something similar at work to

Getting Started with Badgy

So, I bought a Badgy [https://github.com/sqfmi/badgy]! It seemed like something interesting and fun, vaguely related to my previous projects converting old Kindle screens into low-power ToDo lists, and I'd have something amusing to take to at least one convention and geek out about. I had a

Lazy Random Password Generation in PowerShell

So, good passwords are pretty fashionable these days - with an eye towards the ever-relevant XKCD. [https://xkcd.com/936/] Sometimes you just want a short method to generate a random string, with some control over which characters are used. Here's a method I use when I need to do

Sunday Ride with EP

I had a lovely ride with my friend Elaine today, though we got a bit lost. Seems like Strava crashed at some point, as Elaine tracked us as having gone 45 miles, not ~42.

Bottles of Beer

function Write-BottlesOfBeer { param( [int]$bottles = 99 ) $b='bottles of beer' $w='on the wall' $n='no more' $bottles..1 | %{ "$_ $b $w, $_ $b.`r".Replace('bottles',"bottle$(if($_ -gt 1){'s'})") "Take one down and pass it around, $(if(($_-1) -ge 1){$_-1} else {$n}) $b $w.`r".Replace('bottles',"bottle$

Amazon Echo - CuSteam Skill

After a few days tussling with the out of date walkthroughs Amazon provide for developing Alexa Skills, I was happy to get this working: ...now I've just got to get something useful to other people working.

Export-HashTable

After seeing this amazing thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/52xv55/what_were_you_surprised_that_powershell_could_do/] , I had a quick think about the problem mentioned here [https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/52xv55/what_were_you_surprised_that_powershell_could_do/d7ookpe] . > I wanted

Vulfpeck Live!

Holy heck, these guys are simply amazing. Here's their bandcamp [https://vulfpeck.bandcamp.com/]. Their albums are great, but their live performances are just... something else. I saw them live on Saturday 17th, at the Brooklyn Bowl at the Millenium Dome (O2 something?), and it was absolutely wonderful. I've been

SysInternals Updater

I was just running a delightful batch script written by Jason Faulkner [http://www.howtogeek.com/50356/batch-script-to-auto-update-sysinternals-tools/] to update my SysInternals tools directory. It was taking forever! At least 2 seconds per tool (regardless of state), and a huge chunk of time to download the current tool list. It

Google Chrome allows Tab-by-Tab muting

Was just going to re-enable NPAPI plugins in Chrome, and I found this: Now that's cool! Slightly weirdly, I love exploring the about:flags page in Chrome (Canary, or otherwise) and finding things in various stages of development - and I always loved the functionality that allowed you to see

Active Directory - Storing Bitlocker Recovery Info

A recent quick project was to enable storage of Bitlocker recovery data within Active Directory, instead of our moderately secure encrypted drive of text-files. This is actually a really easy process (assuming you only have Windows 7 / 2008R2 and up on the domain), only needing to make a few adjustments

Sunday Bike-Ride (08/06/14)

Nice ride! Managed to miss my Dad at Gransden, Orwell, and Barrington, but otherwise lovely. Also to note: The Royal Oak in Barrington stops serving drinks at 15:00. What the what!?

Streaming - Payday 2

Watch live video from Jinoxide on TwitchTV [http://www.twitch.tv/jinoxide] I've been playing plenty of Payday 2 with the Playstuff [http://www.playstuff.net] gang recently - it's in vogue, after some great updates, publicity and trailers. Anyway, I thought I'd stream some of it. I'd recommend watching

Watch_Dogs - _Role Model

I've quite enjoying Watch_Dogs, playing it a little every few nights - it's not the new best thing since sliced bread, but it's quite interesting. I'm slightly disappointed by a lot of things in it - punishing damage in gunfights mixed with little to no downsides to anything relating

Dark Horse (Carltron Remix)

Wow. That's awesome.

DJ Konsky - Hottest Hits of 2013

DJ Konsky's Hottest Hits Of 2013 Mashup [http://vimeo.com/80533660] from Brett W. [http://vimeo.com/user23057946] on Vimeo [https://vimeo.com]. Quite good fun. Some recent controversy about some-guy-I-can't-remember trying to pass the video off as his own.

Sunday Bike-Ride (18/05/14)

Thanks to Fergus for putting up with me - turns out, I'm awful at hills. I had a lot of fun, though, and was convinced of the necessity of cycling gear. I was going to get one of the r/Cycling [http://cycling.reddit.com] jerseys, but shipping is half

Weight, what?

Weight = Some To this end, do I really need a wi-fi enabled weighing scale? This simple-looking device will apparently do interesting things like "recognise me", and "weigh me", and "wirelessly upload my current weight and fat/body ratio to the vast pool of data known as the internet". It does

PoSH Fun

I was browsing r/Powershell [http://powershell.reddit.com] (as you do), and noticed a chap complaining about the test at the end of a course, where he was asked to > Create a directory named "newdir" in every empty directory whose name is longer than 8 characters recursively. His code

Soundcloud

Mashups, mixes, and more - Soundcloud hosts a bizarre amount of great music, and pops up in a lot of the places I go searching for streamable tracks at odd times. My account on Soundcloud is Jinoxide [https://soundcloud.com/jinoxide], and I occassionally reshare or like stuff - here's

What So Not - Touched

Part something of a couple of posts designed to test out these themes that I'm trialling. Here's a quite nice piece of chilled-out ambient music. It's quite nice and relaxing - I found it under a bookmark I made a month or so ago, browsing on Soundcloud - it's actually