Windows 2008 Powershell... on WindowsNetworking.com.

Nice to see more press for my favorite shell, but... the example commands in this article all use WMI. That's powerful but not the whole Powershell story. What about the drive providers? What about browsing and updating the registry? What about Get-Process and Get-Service? What about the .Net integration? I was disappointed with this article; it could have been so much more.

They do mention at the end that Powershell is more than a Windows Server 2008 feature. It is also available on XP, Vista, and Windows 2003. It really is more than a WMI wrapper and well worth your time to learn.

I work better if I pause and stretch every 15 minutes or so. Here is how I use Powershell to help me remember:

while (([int]([datetime]::now).timeofday.totalminutes) % 15 -ne 0) { sleep 59} ; relax

My relax function wakes Merlin up and sends him scooting across the screen. So I get an audible and visual alarm every 15 minutes.

#what's playing?
$iTunes = New-Object -comObject iTunes.Application
$iTunes.CurrentTrack | select Name, AlbumArtist, Genre, Time

$iTunes.Mute = $true $iTunes.Mute = $false

$iTunes.Stop() $iTunes.Play() $iTunes.Pause() # toggle play/pause $iTunes.PlayPause()

$iTunes.NextTrack() $iTunes.PreviousTrack()

Now I just need Powershell talking with my Arduino and I can have my iTunes remote.

see also: How to Wake Up with Powershell.

...wonder what those ConvertFile methods do...