:set hlsearch incsearch
hlsearch tells Vim to highlight all matches in a file when you perform a search, and incsearch tells Vim to highlight the next match while you're still typing out your search pattern.

Yes, please. Mucho gusto.

Sometimes it surprises me how much of VIm I don't [know to] use, but still believe VIm's my best text editing option. Though, honestly, I think we could argue those two options should be on by default at this point.

This post brought to you by my forgetting again that you have to escape the plus sign to use it in a regexp in VIm.

/sigh

Labels: noteToSelf, vim

Had some trouble viewing executables (listed in a dark blue) in my PuTTY sessions after calling ye olde "list Alf" (ls -alF) because of the black background, and did some hunting. The first link, below, had one alternative, but it was the comment below that really hit the goldmine.

Site: http://arcanesanctum.net/2012/11/17/a-better-terminal-color-theme-for-putty/
Comment: http://arcanesanctum.net/2012/11/17/a-better-terminal-color-theme-for-putty/#comment-42807

The site linked from the comment was in Russian, but colors know no language (or something linke that). And Google translated what was there, which wasn't too earth-shattering.

Anyhow, those are some nice themes:
http://putty.org.ru/themes/index.html

I ended up going with Desert, at least for now, as it's something completely different. Actually, the background is just a lightened up black (from pitch in the default to a very dark grey) and the standard text is still white (perhaps even brighter than stock), but executables are now bright green, and extremely easy to read. ;^)

http://putty.org.ru/themes/desert.html

Edit 20161107: And just in case that site goes down, here are the values:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\Desert]
"Colour0"="255,255,255"
"Colour1"="255,215,0"
"Colour2"="51,51,51"
"Colour3"="51,51,51"
"Colour4"="0,255,0"
"Colour5"="255,255,255"
"Colour6"="77,77,77"
"Colour7"="85,85,85"
"Colour8"="255,43,43"
"Colour9"="255,85,85"
"Colour10"="152,251,152"
"Colour11"="85,255,85"
"Colour12"="240,230,140"
"Colour13"="255,255,85"
"Colour14"="205,133,63"
"Colour15"="135,206,255"
"Colour16"="255,222,173"
"Colour17"="255,85,255"
"Colour18"="255,160,160"
"Colour19"="255,215,0"
"Colour20"="245,222,179"
"Colour21"="255,255,255"

You put all of that information into a .reg file, double-click, accept the warning, and you have a Session type in PuTTY for "Desert".

So note that you'll have to push over any info you want there. That is, this is a new session with only the colors set. Everything else is blank/new.

Or, if you want to be brave and change an existing session, you change the last value in the first line. That is, from ...Desert to...

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\Default%20Settings]

Now your defaults are Desert. That's a little more adventurous, but I just tried it, and my Default Settings have that beautiful theme's values now. Thank heavens.

Neat!

Labels: putty, style

Somebody replied to ​a comment I made back in 2012, and I came back for a look. Forty-three upticks! Who knew? Probably my most up-something-ed contribution to StackOverflow, and, since they weren't upvotes that fire off a notification, I had no idea.

Quick rant: I do hate when people copy answers and comments exactly, however -- see the guy from this year saying essentially the same thing I did in his comment tacked onto the question itself. I mean, it's not a lost rep thing in this case, so I can't really complain, but when that happens with answers (not just my own), it drives me crazy. I think my flags are both for folks that are rep farming by copying [much] earlier answers.

Anyhow, glad to know I've helped 43+ people squish their git commits. That's kinda neat. ;^)

Labels: git, stackoverflow

Just so that I'll remember when setting up another box, it looks like you only need to include VMware.VimAutomation.Core in Snapins/Modules (File >>> PowerShell Libraries) to run PowerCLI commands in PowerGUI.

And that ends today's episode of "Notes to my Future Self."

Labels: powershell

/rant ;^)

Labels: OpenPop, xamarin

Labels: fail, stackoverflow

If I need to shut down Windows PowerShell or to reboot my computer, how can I continue to access the same process objects? I use the Export-Clixml cmdlet.
..
The command itself is simplicity and elegance personified. To obtain all the process information, I use the Get-Process cmdlet (gps is an alias), and I pipe the results to the Export-Clixml cmdlet. I provide the Export-Clixml cmdlet with a path to store the resultant XML file. This command is shown here:

gps | Export-Clixml c:\fso\gps.xml

The resultant XML file is an actual XML file and is therefore viewable in an XML viewer...

To import the XML for use on my computer, I use the Import-CliXML cmdlet. It only needs the path to the XML file. I can store the resultant process objects in a variable for ease of processing.

Labels: noteToSelf, powershell

"Remember that nice young designer who worked at a big company — the one who wasn't invited to strategy meetings? By the time work got to him, the decisions were set down to the smallest details and all he did was execute. He wasn't designing. He was executing on someone else's design."

The company doesn't have to be big.​

I do like that the very next thing in the post is an admission that this designer needs to be more assertive, but assertive isn't always the best career move if you're not confident enough to move on after encountering deaf ears, so I usually understand when new hires don't rock the boat -- for a while. But the Mule blog is right -- you should move on if you're not allowed to do your job. And if you know of someone who isn't being allowed to work, you as a coworker should feel responsible for helping make the space for them to do it. Be active. Culture change starts with you, etc etc. And if it doesn't or can't, *you're* in the wrong spot too.

Anyhow, sidelined there. Designers do get dumped on. Researching what the customer says they want, even coming up with general concepts that could become great features, doesn't make you a designer.

Labels: design

http://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/2011/09/list-and-disconnect-vcenter-sessions.html​

... though it was still accepting comments, well, heck, three days ago. Must be work's network rules (though the error is coming from their server, so who knows??).

Anyhow, just for the sake of posterity, here's what I *would've* said about that not-quite-finished script...

<blockquote>$SessionMgr = Get-View $DefaultViserver.ExtensionData.Client.ServiceContent.SessionManager</blockquote>

This isn't great, as if your connection has dropped but $DefaultViserver hasn't cleared out, it'll throw an error. Or, probably more likely, if <q>$DefaultViserver -eq $null</q> because you <i>did</i> bother disconnecting, you'll get, "The property 'ExtensionData' cannot be found on this object. Verify that the property exists," from the same line.

So there's certainly an assumption in this function that you have an active connection when this function is called. Since we're implicitly encouraging folks not to leave connections open, that's not always even the preferred case.

Probably easy enough to handle with <q>$DefaultViserver -eq $null</q> and a throw-catch, as those are possibilities I'd expect this sort of function to catch. Right? ;^)

Labels: powershell

I can’t help but think of something I said to my brother a few years ago: If you don’t own a piece of the company you work for, you’re always getting screwed. It doesn’t matter if you’re a senior VP making 30 Million a year. You’re still getting a sucker’s share of the overall take.

Labels: business, funding

What’s the issue with too much funding? Here are four key drawbacks:  

Pitfall 1: Solving every problem with non-scalable hacks

Labels: business, funding

I think the quick upshot is that, if you want what's promised by ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName, you need to roll it on your own.

See this, from said Don Jones:

Another option is to add an -InputObject parameter that accepts, ByValue, the exact object type being output by your first cmdlet. That way, it should bind without coercion. You'd KNOW you were getting that whole object, so you could grab the appropriate property internally. Make that part of a separate parameter set so that folks can do one or the other, but not both.

This is essentially how a lot of built-in cmdlets, like Stop-Service and Stop-Process, work.

Interesting discussion at that thread over whether the coercion is a bug (apparently not) and if that intended behavior is a good idea (not necessarily).

Labels: powershell

ARGH.  I thought online disk space was getting cheaper. Is SourceForge really still growing so fast it needs not just misleading ads on its download pages, but trust-compromising installers as well?

Anyhow, at Jotti, two hits from the FileZilla server installer:

2014-12-10 PUA.Spyware.XPCSpyPro​

2014-12-10 Win32/InstallCore.TM potentially unwanted

Not sure how bad that is, but I'm looking for another installer at this point.

Labels: filezilla, hats of money, OSS

Labels: powershell

function A {    
    Param([scriptblock]$functionToCall)    
    Write-Host "I'm calling $($functionToCall.Invoke(4))"
}

function B($x) {
    Write-Output "Function B with $x"
}

function C {
    Param($x)
    write-Output "Function C with $x"
}

PS> A -functionToCall $function:B
I'm calling Function B with 4

Labels: noteToSelf, powershell