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August 2008 Entries

PowerShell – Base64 Encode/Decode a string


An easy way to convert data to/from base64 (or uuencode/uudecode, quoted-printable, url encode/url decode, JIS, Yenc, hex, or even creating md5 or sha1 hashes) is to use the NetCmdlets convert-data cmdlet. To encode:

PS C:\> convert-data -data "Hello, World!" -to base64

Data                                                             Size Format
----                                                             ---- ------
SGVsbG8sIFdvcmxkIQ==                                               20 base64

To decode:

PS C:\> convert-data -data $encoded.Data data -from base64

Data                                                             Size Format
----                                                             ---- ------
Hello, World!                                                      13 Plain

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posted @ Friday, August 29, 2008 1:24 PM | Feedback (0) |


TwitterMinder and Flickr->Twitter scripts


If you’re an RSSBus user who is using my Google Calendar –> Twitter or Flickr –> Twitter services, you might notice a minor change to both.  I changed Twitterminder so that tweets resulting from Google Calendar entries are prepended with “GCal: “.  I did the same thing with the Flickr->Twitter script, it will now prepend “Flickr: “.

Related: How to call these services from your own applications.
Related:  How I converted TwitterMinder into Flickr->Twitter by changing 4 lines of code.

posted @ Thursday, August 28, 2008 1:58 PM | Feedback (0) |


SUP – Simple Update Protocol for feed services


This is cool – FriendFeed created the SUP protocol (format) for web services that produce multiple feeds.  In order to reduce tons of frequent feed polling, services can offer one “SUP feed” that indicates what feeds on the service have been updated.

It works very simply.  Each RSS/Atom feed includes a link tag with that feeds SUP-ID (so each feed has its own SUP-ID) and the URL of the SUP feed.  The SUP feed contains a list of all the SUP-ID’s of feeds that have been updated.

posted @ Thursday, August 28, 2008 11:02 AM | Feedback (0) |


Amazon MP3 Customer Service


I’ve always had excellent service from Amazon, and Amazon MP3 is no different.  Last week I blogged about how I purchased the new Rehab album from Amazon MP3.  It turns out I accidently bought the censored version, which is annoying to me.  So given Amazon’s uniquely amazing customer service, I decided to email them and ask if I could download the explicit version of the album without having to re-purchase it.  No more than 2 hours later I had a response:  a refund is being issued for my mistaken purchase.  Wow.

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posted @ Wednesday, August 27, 2008 4:55 PM | Feedback (0) |


New PoshBoard Release


The latest from Antoine Habert is that PoshBoard 0.3 is out at codeplex.  He's posted release notes and a quickstart on his blog.

update: fixed links.

 

 

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posted @ Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:54 AM | Feedback (0) |


test-remotepath.ps1


One of the cmdlets I use most often in my scripts is test-path, which simply tells you whether or not a particular file or path exists.  Below is test-remotepath, which I use to tell me if a remote file or path exists.  This particular script uses get-ftp from NetCmdlets, but it could also just as easily be done with rexec, rshell, or even ssh (sexec).

## test-remotepath.ps1: Tests if a remote file/path exists 
## This script uses ftp to determine whether or not a remote file or path exists.

## This could also easily be done using the invoke-ssh or invoke-rexec, or invoke-rshell

## cmdlets. FTP authentication can also be done with PSCredentials (see other demos)

##

## Returns a boolean.

##

## usage: test-remotepath [-server] <string> [-user] <string> [-password] <string> [-path] <string>

##


param( [string] $server = "",
[string] $user,
[string] $password,
[string] $path )

($results = (get-ftp -server $server -user $user -password $password -path $path)) | out-null
if ($results -eq $null) { return $false }
else { return $true }

 

posted @ Monday, August 25, 2008 5:23 PM | Feedback (0) |


Good deal on the Amazon Kindle


My buddy James and me were discussing Amazon’s Kindle today at lunch.  To us, its such an appealing product, but the price is just too high.  But…I noticed today that if you sign up for the Amazon Rewards Visa Card you get $100 off - Amazon Kindle for only $259.

I didn’t click over and buy one yet, I’m going to think it over a bit instead.  I really want one…  Hmm.. Who  has one of these already and how much do you love it?

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posted @ Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:01 PM | Feedback (0) |


Dear RIAA (aka GrooveShark and Pandora Rock)


Dear RIAA,

Please address your thank-you note to Pandora Radio.  Pandora is where I was able to listen to a bunch of songs by Rehab, and where I then proceeded to purchase the Rehab album "Graffiti The World" (through Amazon MP3 of course, where I purchase all my DRM free music).  Matt Miller brought it to my attention that Pandora may be on the way out because our the members of the Copyright Royalty Board have their eyes wide shut (just to be a little bit overly dramatic, there is no doubt in my mind that they are receiving some sort of monetary “encouragement” from the RIAA).

RIAA: while you’re at it, address another thank-you to Grooveshark, who’s ass you should also be kissing. 

Fellow nerds, follow the Pandora blog and/or the Grooveshark blog.
Related:  don’t forget to contact Amazon about Audible DRM.

 

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posted @ Wednesday, August 20, 2008 2:57 PM | Feedback (0) |


IMAP backup service accepting beta testers


ImapBack:

ImapBack makes a complete copy of your emails, on any IMAP server, from Gmail to Google Apps, to your own custom IMAP server located anywhere in the world! These backups can be stored on another IMAP server, on our servers, or on your local hard drive. You can schedule any interval of backups (Daily, Hourly, Weekly, Monthly) as well as creating a backup on-demand.

On a related note, if you need an easy way to view and control IMAP access control, check out my IMAP ACL Manager application.

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posted @ Monday, August 18, 2008 4:44 PM | Feedback (0) |


Lost Phonebook – dot com


No, lostphonebook.com doesn’t exist.  But I was thinking of buying it, and putting up a little mock “lost” flyer, complaining that I have lost my phonebook.  The flyer would ask that if you have found a “lost” phonebook in your driveway or yard, that you simply return it to its owner.

Then of course, I would proceed to offer my address by asking you for your zip code, and what type of phonebook you found.  The website would look for the closet phonebook publisher (ie, AT&T publishes “The Real Yellow Pages”) to your zip code and provide directions to that location, asking you to simply deposit said phonebook in their driveway or yard.

I would love nothing more than to see the front of the AT&T Raleigh offices littered with so many useless phonebooks that workers couldn’t even get through the front door.

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posted @ Monday, August 18, 2008 4:42 PM | Feedback (0) |


Pandora Radio


My friend Julie told me about Pandora Radio a while back, but I never got around to checking it out.  Well, I finally did today, and she is right about it.  Its awesome!  Pandora allows you to custom make your own radio station, playing the music you request and other music similar to it.  You can also share your station, and listen to the shared stations of other members and friends.  In my case, just what the doctor ordered for a Sunday morning of background music while doing some chores around house.

posted @ Sunday, August 17, 2008 9:53 AM | Feedback (3) |


High level nerdiness


If you’re reading this (and you’re not just one of my friends or acquaintances who is stalking me), you know you’ve done it.  Yep, you know you have.  You’ve spoken to someone or written to someone in various computer languages.  It just happened here at /n software in an IM conversation between two of my co-workers, James and Tom.  James is trying to get a group of people together to see the Pink Floyd Experience.  James IM’d Tom in RSBScript (For you nerds that don’t know, RSBScript is an xml-based language used to help create and consume web services with RSSBus):

<rsb:equals attr="Tom.isGoingToFloyd" value="true">
   <rsb:else>
     <rsb:unset item="Tom" />
   </rsb:else>
</rsb:equals>

Translated into C#, this says:

if (Tom.IsGoingToFloyd()) 
{
}
else {
    Tom.Dispose();
}

Only a true nerd could appreciate something like this, so naturally I laughed.  :)

The first example of this extremely nerdy yet all too common act I can think of was a silly one that my friend Todd signed in my yearbook in high school (yep, we were nerds then too).  Todd and I we were in AP Computer Science together, where Pascal (no, not even turbo pascal, the use of which actually lost me points on my final project!) was taught.  Before you read this, know that me, Todd, and Luther used to all be best friends.  Todd and Dana were a bit of an item, me and Aimee were dating, and Rose was this strange girl who seemed to be obsessed with Todd, and poor Luther had no women in sight.  Here’s what Todd wrote (warning: do not read unless you are prepared for some serious high level nerdiness):


Lance; {Crackers is what we used to call you }

program TheEndOfTheYear (var Dana, Aimee:Babes; Lance, Stodd:Studs);

type funtype:char;

var Luther:needsagirl;

begin

{ //ok, this part was random stuff that Todd wrote, which I'll skip }

Girls:=0;
Luther:=Girls;
Joy := plenty;
Todd + Lance := Joy;
repeat
    Kiss(Lance, Aimee);
    Kiss(Todd, Dana);
until (Death or ExtremeHappiness);
for Counter := head to toe do
    LoveYourWoman;
while Rose = Alive do
    HitAndKick(manytimes);
end.

Yes, I am aware of the nerdiness level.  No, I am not ashamed.  Pascal Lance out.  (:P Tom)

 

posted @ Friday, August 15, 2008 5:25 PM | Feedback (2) |


PowerScripting Podcast – Scripting Contest!


Updatedeadline pushed back (another week?) for the scripting contest.

In case you missed it, the guys over at the PowerScripting Podcast are hosting a scripting contest.  Hurry though, the deadline is Sunday!  They’re giving away free licenses of NetCmdlets and PrimalScript 2007.

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posted @ Friday, August 15, 2008 11:04 AM | Feedback (0) |


Why is configuring Net-snmp so painful?


This incomplete tutorial gets a person started, but then bails on the second half of the process of configuring actual users.  Instead it points you to the man page, which is basically useless and conflicts with directions mentioned in the snmp.conf man page!  Ugh!

This page is a little bit better, it helps me get an authNoPriv user up and going.

From there, I was able to add my authPriv users too:

  1. As described in the first tutorial mentioned above, run snmpconf –g basic_setup and then copy over the conf file.
  2. net-snmp-config –create-snmpv3-user –a “auth_password” –X DES -x “des_password” desuser
  3. net-snmp-config –create-snmpv3-user –a “auth_password” –X AES –x “aes_password” aesuser
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posted @ Wednesday, August 13, 2008 3:20 PM | Feedback (0) |


NetCmdlets Invoke-Telnet?! And other PowerShell madness.


On last week’s PowerScripting Podcast, Jonathan Walz and Hal Rottenberg interview /n software’s Eric Madariaga about NetCmdlets and PowerShellToys (PowerShellASP).

My favorite part was when Hal was shocked to hear that a telnet cmdlet was added to the v2 beta.  Hahaha.  I completely agree – who uses telnet anymore?  But that was actually the biggest request we got from people who were using v1 of NetCmdlets!  We already had cmdlets for executing commands over ssh…but people really wanted telnet.  This shows you how many sys admins are still using this older means of working remotely.  Jonathan was under the impression that telnet isn’t included on Vista – he’s correct that it is not installed by default, but you can install it from the Windows Features Control Panel tool.

Hal asked Eric how the PowerShell server managed the keys that are used for its SSH authentication.  The answer is that it doesn’t.  The PowerShell server only supports user/password authentication, not public key authentication.  If the demand is there, public key authentication can be added pretty easily (we already have this technology implemented in our IP*Works! SSH developer toolkit). With PowerShell Server, you point it to a Windows user group that is allowed to authenticate, and when you connect to it you use that user/password.  I’ve been meaning to do a blog post comparing remoting through WinRM (what PowerShell 2 uses) with remoting through the NetCmdlets PowerShell Server, but I haven’t gotten around to it.  Long story short?  PowerShell Server is SIMPLE.

Eric mentioned the fact that Sapien has integrated PowerShellASP support into PrimalScript, which is awesome.  PrimalScript is a fabulous editor.

Also mentioned in the interview: 

  • PoshBoard, which is an awesome PowerShell dashboard that Hal told me about a while ago.  The developer, Antoine Habert, contacted me about integrating PowerShellASP with it.  Lots of really cool potential here.
  • On the NetCmdlets road-map: SharePoint cmdlets, EC2 and SimpleDb cmdlets, BizTalk cmdlets, Shipping (FedEx, UPS, USPS) cmdlets.
  • Free hobbyist license of NetCmdlets.
  • The famous PowerShell stickers.  There’s a “PowerShell Driven” Flickr group where you can upload a picture of your car (or laptop, or whatever else) sporting your new PowerShell sticker!
  • /n software doesn’t have a NetCmdlets blog.  At least not an official one.  :)

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posted @ Monday, August 11, 2008 4:57 PM | Feedback (0) |