What is easiest way to remove all special characters from string using Powershell?
Of course regex, but here you can see how it works:
[System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::Replace($Text,"[^1-9a-zA-Z_]"," ");
For example
PS C:\Users\Martin> [System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::Replace("I got cool
n1ck%/\/\name($7&","[^1-9a-zA-Z_]"," ");
I got cool n1ck name
I am replacing special characters with space, however of course you can use whatever you want – typically “_”
+- 1 month ago Grooveshark was down (this site allows you to search&play music online and I like it a lot)… I posted about it – and what is interesting, I was not angry at all, but it made my day because instead of anonymous message like “Under construction” or “Sorry” they had really funny message (see original post).
Today Grooveshark is down again and I am not mad at them, because again I received very funny message :)
Reminds me of Google Doogle – that’s the logo at main page…
Good luck with those pickles :)
BTW am I the only one that is using his blog posts as “Post-it”? :)
Anyway, here comes quick tip. If you are using Access Suite Console (management console for Citrix products), maybe you noticed that it is loading extremely slow. I meant EXTREMELY.
Fix is pretty easy in fact – all you need to do is to disable certificate revocation check.
There are two ways how you can change it.
1.) Set following registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WinTrust\Trust Providers\Software Publishing]
"State"=dword:00023e00
2.) Or use Internet Explorer:
Internet Explorer --> Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced --> Security: Uncheck "Check for publishers certificate revocation"
All credits go to my colleague Carsten Wallner.
Hi,
as promised yesterday, you can find my presentation about cloud computing here. Soon I would like to wrote also series of blog posts about cloud computing, you can have a look at ppt meanwhile:
Quite interesting project… You enter any search term you are interested in and three columns will appear.
Each one of them represents one of major search players: Bing, Google and Yahoo. Trick is that you don’t see names :) So you just vote which one was most useful for you and then names appears.
Surprisingly, Bing is doing pretty well – most of the time it returned best results. Surprise, surprise, I want to use this site for a moment and see which one suits me best.
Only shame is that currently you don’t see results :(
Some douche is gaming the system, I've removed the ability to see the results until I sort this out. Meanwhile you can still have fun playing with blind search. Feel free to blame the douche for ruining it for everybody. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t take this a scientific whats-e-ma-jing, it's just a bit of observational fun.
Well, thank you “douche” :(
Hey guys,
if you are reading my blog, you maybe noticed that I am sometimes writing about deployment, sometimes about Powershell, sometimes about Windows 7… So maybe you are curious what I do for living :)
I work for consultancy company called Login Consultants and I would like to share with you what we are doing and how do we work. As mentioned, we are consultancy company and we focus mostly on deployment and especially on SBC. Below you can find really quick overview of our technologies.
I am sorry if it feels like advertisement, but trust me – it’s not :) Today I just really felt that what we are doing deserves some propagation and I haven’t spoke about it yet.
Solution4
Solution4 (or S4) is our flagship. Have you ever dreamed of product that could combine software delivery solution (like SCCM\Altiris\Unicenter…) with security or user environment management (like AppSense\PowerFuse…)?
Well, we cannot give you that – but instead of product we can give you framework :) You can ask what is the difference and answer is pretty simple. Have you EVER encountered ideal product? I haven’t. Difference between product and framework is that framework is unleashing YOUR potential and you can build solution that fits into your needs.
Ok, technically it means that complete S4 is build using XML and Powershell. GUI is XML-driven and you can easily extend it or completely change it. You can add brand new functionality if you want to. It’s similar as if we would give you source code – only difference is that framework (scripting framework) is designed to allow normal administrator to make such changes without need to study documentation and APIs for months.
Of course our framework is already preconfigured and supports tons of functionality – from deployment of MSI, through logon scripts, mapping of drives to more custom functionality like automated management of XenApp servers or Terminal Services farm. So you will get working solution out of the box and you can choose – either use it as it is or modify it in any way you want.
Below screenshot was taken from my colleague Henk Hofs, sorry Henk, I didn’t have any other screenshot ;)
Another advantage of S4 is that it is designed for integration – you can combine it with any other product you want like SCCM\Altiris\AppSense and just use functionality you want. For example you can use SCCM to deploy applications and then S4 for user environment management or security. I really love it – it’s solution that only depends on your fantasy :) Credits goes to Dennis Damen who is main architect behind S4.
S4Matic
Ok, now it’s turn for my child :) Imagine when you came to company as consultant – usually it’s really painful to get new AD account, email and everything you need… Would you believe that you could get everything setup before you will arrive to your new office? And roll it back once you leave this customer?
Or another (real life) example, would you believe me if I would tell you that I can dynamically rebuild your complete XenApp farm without any downtime needed? Oh, and btw, without any special configuration?
Or that I can dynamically provision servers for your virtual platform (be it XenServer, VMWare or Hyper-V) based on your requirements?
S4Matic is workflow framework used to automate technical processes. Same as S4 applies here – it is FRAMEWORK build on Powershell and XML files, therefore you can change it in any way you want to. Numerous technologies are supported – from XenApp through SCCM to Microsoft Virtual Server. There are numerous advantages – S4M doesn’t require any clients, doesn’t require any infrastructure except one server (that doesn’t need to be delegated), can be installed within minutes and of course is fully extendable.
One day (soon) I will write article about S4Matic and go into details.
VSI
VSI is project by Henk&Mark. Idea is pretty simple, but really brilliant. How many times have you argued with your colleague\boss whether it makes sense to switch your Terminal Servers\Citrix Servers\VDI to virtual servers? Or to switch to 64 bit? Or to tweak and tune some settings to increase performance? And how many times did you run into conflict – each one of you were sure that he is right?
Well, I don’t like such theoretical discussions – it’s very hard to prove who is right. VSI takes care of this – it will simulate users and calculate performance. So you can easily compare whatever you want and just see which result is best for you.
Interesting project based on VSI is Virtual Reality Check.
Project Virtual Reality Check (VRC) is a joint venture of Log•in Consultants and PQR, who have researched the optimal configuration for the different available hypervisors (hardware virtualization layers). The project arises from the growing demand for a founded advice on how to virtualise Terminal Server and Virtual Desktop (VDI) workloads. Through a number of researches, Log•in Consultants and PQR show you the scaling possibilities for Terminal Server environments as well as Virtual Desktops.
To simplify it – VSI is set of white papers where you can compare performance of different hypervisors with different configuration. Simple, yet effective.
Interested? Let me know in comments section ;)
Dr. Funkenstein notified me recently about fact that Johnny Chung Lee is currently working for Microsoft.
For those of you that don’t know that name, Johnny is very famous for his innovative ways how we worked with Wii. Johnny recently graduated with PhD in Human-Computer Interaction.
HCI is really cool if you are interested in new ways how to communicate with your computer, as example what it covers you can watch below video:
Because Natal is gaming project, you can be interested in previous work of Johnny. Have a look at below video – you can see how Wii could work (and it was NOT designed to do so ;)):
Doesn’t it look truly 3D? :) Sure it does. Having a look at Johnny’s blog, you can find following:
If you've been wondering why my project blog has been pretty quiet, I can finally say it is because I have been helping Xbox with Project Natal.
I am starting to be really, really excited about Natal :)
Well, everyone is excited and I am not surprised – project Natal looks very, VERY interesting :)
For those of you that have no clue what we are talking about, check below video:
As you hopefully noticed, I try to blog here about technologies or tips and tricks that are not very famous or I try to post new information.
Project Natal is no difference for me :) So for those of you that are looking forward to any news, here are my wild guesses :)
1.) notice that project Natal is using RGB camera. Doesn’t that ring a bell? Simply have a look at older Microsoft project called Touchless (demo included). Using RGB differentiation between players (even if they swap places) could be easily done
2.) when you want to monitor what Microsoft plans, it’s important to check companies that are acquired. 3DV (Israel) company was sold to Microsoft recently. And if you have a look at below video, maybe you can notice some similarities with project Natal :)
Anyway, important information is that Microsoft hired technology, however not people from 3DV company. Therefore this will be (probably) only subset of Natal – bad news is that it means that technology is interesting, however not ready for release yet :( If you would ask me, I would expect it to be released before Christmas 2010, but it’s really just a wild guess.
Martin
Maybe you noticed I am really interested in XP Mode (or RAIL) – I think it’s really cool and if it will be easy to use (and I can write utility that will help us), I think it will be really really cool…
Today I tried test to run remote application from my laptop on my desktop – and it worked :)
As you can see, I tried Windows Media Player and played movie over RDP – and it worked flawlessly :)
I would like to create utility that will generate RAIL configuration automatically – if you want to try RDP yourself now, you will need follow steps described here and then create modified .RDP file.
