PINE A64 is not only a computer, it is a super affordable 64-bit high performance expandable single board computer (SBC). Whether you are an IT professional, electronics hobbyist, student, teacher, hacker, inventor, or just someone who wants to have more flexibility to increase their productivity at work, the PINE A64 is a computer board made for…
Continue ReadingGroup Policy Online Search Tool
This “Cloud App” allows you to search through the thousands of settings available through Group Policy. To use it: 1. Go to http://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/ 2. Slowly type in your search term for example: default printer Please note: Type slowly, your choice may self populate. 3. Press enter and wait for a couple of seconds for the…
Continue ReadingImport full-size pictures from Picasa Web Albums into iPhoto
Picasa Web Albums have RSS feeds which can be subscribed to directly in iPhoto. The feed downloads the high-resolution pictures (with EXIF data) to iPhoto, where they can be organized into events, albums, etc. Follow these steps to import an entire Picasa gallery into iPhoto on your Mac: Go to the specific gallery on…
Continue ReadingMac OS X Login Language
Recently I was asked to change my friend’s system language from Chinese to English. Changing the language in account was not the problem but the log-in screen language was a bit of a challenge. In Terminal: sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Language\ Chooser.app/Contents/MacOS/Language\ Chooser The same language window that comes up during installation will appear, select the new language,…
Continue ReadingPowerShell: Finding Built-In Cmdlets
In times where cmdlets can originate from all kinds of modules, it sometimes becomes important to find out which cmdlets are truly built into PowerShell and which represent external dependencies. One way of getting a list of built-in cmdlets is to temporarily open another runspace and enumerate its internal cmdlet list: $ps = [PowerShell]::Create() $ps.Runspace.RunspaceConfiguration.Cmdlets…
Continue ReadingPowerShell: Finding Object Properties
Sometimes, you know the information you are after is present in some object property, but there are so many properties that it is a hassle to search for the one that holds the information. In cases like this, you can convert the object to text lines, and then use Select-String to find the line (and…
Continue ReadingPowerShell: Finding IP Address
There are various ways to determine the IP address that is assigned to your machine. Here is a rather unusual approach that uses text operators to filter the information out of the results provided by ipconfig.exe. This is not the most solid way of getting to an IP address. It is, however, an interesting brain…
Continue ReadingPowerShell: Preserving Special Characters in Excel-generated CSV files
When you save Excel spreadsheets to a CSV file, special characters get lost. That’s because Excel is saving the CSV file using very simple ANSI encoding. The following line re-encodes the CSV file and uses UTF8 encoding, making special characters readable for Import-CSV: $Path = “c:\somepathtocsv.csv” (Get-Content $Path) | Set-Content $Path -Encoding UTF8
Continue ReadingPowerShell: Find Open Files
To find open files on a remote system, use openfiles.exe and convert the results to rich objects. Here is a sample (replace “comp1” with the name of a remote computer you have access permissions): PS> openfiles /Query /S comp1 /FO CSV /V | ConvertFrom-Csv | Out-GridView
Continue ReadingPowerShell: Creating Custom Objects
If you want to create your own custom objects, for example, to enable your functions to return rich objects, you can always use Select-Object like this: PS> $newobject = ‘dummy’ | Select-Object -Property Name, ID, Address Then, you can fill in the properties and use the object: PS> $newobject = ‘dummy’ | Select-Object -Property Name,…
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