The following is a PowerShell script that I wrote to change the Power Plans on my laptop. The script checks which plan I’m currently using, either “Power saver” or “High performance”, and switches to using the other one. I find this functionality helpful, as I can simply create a single shortcut on the desktop (or wherever) that can be executed to instantly change the power plan, without bothering to go through menus. Plus, it’s an excuse to play around with PowerShell.

Code after the jump.

function GetGuidsOfPowerSchemes
{
	param(
		[ref]$highPerformanceSchemeGuid,
		[ref]$powerSaverSchemeGuid,
		$powercfgOutput)

	$powerSchemeGuidString = "Power Scheme GUID: "
	$highPerformanceString = "(High Performance)"
	$powerSaverString = "(Power saver)"
	$highPerformanceSchemeGuid.Value = $null
	$powerSaverSchemeGuid.Value = $null

	foreach($config in $powercfgOutput)
	{
		$configsString = New-Object
			-TypeName "System.String"
			-ArgumentList "$config"
		if (
			$configsString.IndexOf(
				$powerSchemeGuidString,
				[System.StringComparison]::OrdinalIgnoreCase)
			-eq 0)
		{
			$guid = New-Object
				-TypeName "System.Guid"
				-ArgumentList (
					$configsString.Substring(
						$powerSchemeGuidString.Length,
						36))
			if (
				$configsString.IndexOf(
					$highPerformanceString,
					[System.StringComparison]::OrdinalIgnoreCase)
				-gt 0)
			{
				$highPerformanceSchemeGuid.Value = $guid
			}
			elseif (
				$configsString.IndexOf(
					$powerSaverString,
					[System.StringComparison]::OrdinalIgnoreCase)
				-gt 0)
			{
				$powerSaverSchemeGuid.Value = $guid
			}
		}
	}
}

$garbage = [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Text")

$highPerformanceSchemeGuid = $null
$powerSaverSchemeGuid = $null
$configsList = powercfg -list
GetGuidsOfPowerSchemes
	-powercfgOutput $configsList
	-highPerformanceSchemeGuid ([ref]$highPerformanceSchemeGuid)
	-powerSaverSchemeGuid ([ref]$powerSaverSchemeGuid)

$highPerformanceSchemeActiveGuid = $null
$powerSaverSchemeActiveGuid = $null
$configsList = powercfg -getactivescheme
GetGuidsOfPowerSchemes
	-powercfgOutput $configsList
	-highPerformanceSchemeGuid ([ref]$highPerformanceSchemeActiveGuid)
	-powerSaverSchemeGuid ([ref]$powerSaverSchemeActiveGuid)

Write-Host "Active schemes"
if ($highPerformanceSchemeActiveGuid -ne $null
	-and $powerSaverSchemeGuid -ne $null)
{
	Write-Host "High power, setting to low"
	$garbage = powercfg -setactive $powerSaverSchemeGuid
}
elseif ($powerSaverSchemeActiveGuid -ne $null
	-and $highPerformanceSchemeGuid -ne $null)
{
	Write-Host "Low power, setting to high"
	$garbage = powercfg -setactive $highPerformanceSchemeGuid
}
elseif ($highPerformanceSchemeGuid -ne $null)
{
	Write-Host "Power setting not determined, setting to high"
	$garbage = powercfg -setactive $highPerformanceSchemeGuid
}
else
{
	Write-Host "Unable to determine current setting and cannot find high setting"
}

All the real work is done by an application called powercfg. The script just gets the available power schemes, checks which scheme is now active and sets the other scheme (identified by GUIDs) to be the active one. Pretty straightforward stuff, but still required me to “parse” the input. Of course, a regex would have worked better, but that’s yet another thing I need to learn.

The following is a PowerShell script that will delete SharePoint items in a specific list that match the passed-in query. I ended up writing this at work to delete a lot of items from a list (1 million, to be exact).

Code is after the jump.

The problem is that SharePoint does not expose this functionality anywhere. So I write the script to query for the items, delete all the returned items, query again (paging issues), delete again and keep going until no more items are found. For paging, make sure to get no more than about 2,000 items, otherwise queries aren’t performant and you may even get exceptions thrown.

# Delete an item from the announcements list by using a CAML query

param(
    [string] $web = $(throw "The parameter web is required"),
    [string] $list = $(throw "The parameter list is required"),
    [string] $caml = $(throw "The parameter caml is required"),</code>
    [int] $rowLimit = 1000,
    [switch] $whatif = $true
)

[System.reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")
$spsite = New-Object -TypeName "Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite" -ArgumentList $web
$spweb = $spsite.OpenWeb()
$splist = $spweb.Lists[$list]

$query=new-object -TypeName "Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQuery"
$query.Query = $caml
$query.RowLimit = $rowLimit

$col = $null
do
{
    $col=$splist.GetItems($query)

    Write-Host ("Items returned = [" + $col.Count + "]")

    $col | % {
        Write-Host ("Found item with ID = [" + $_.ID + "] and title = [" + $_.Title + "]")
        if (!$whatif)
        {
            Write-Host ("Deleting item with ID = " + $_.ID)
            $_.Delete()
        }
    }

    $query.ListItemCollectionPosition = $col.ListItemCollectionPosition
}
while ($col.ListItemCollectionPosition -ne $null)

$spweb.Dispose()
$spsite.Dispose()

Sample usage:

DeleteSPItemsWithCaml.ps1
 -web http://test06/sites/english
 -list "Pages"
 -whatIf:$true
 -caml "<Where><Contains><FieldRef Name=`"Title`" /><Value Type=`"Text`">Test</Value></Contains></Where>"

This will list out, but not delete, all the items in the Pages list on my test box/site where the Title field contains “Test”. Notice that quotes are escaped with the ` symbol.

DeleteSPItemsWithCaml.ps1
 -web http://test06/sites/english
 -list "Other Content"
 -whatIf:$false
 -rowLimit 10
 -caml "<Where><Contains><FieldRef Name=`"Title`" /><Value Type=`"Text`">Category1</Value></Contains></Where>"

This will delete all matching items. The difference is that now the whatIf parameter is false, so this is not a “test”. Also, I’ve changed the rowLimit parameter, which results in each query getting 10 items at a time.

I use the whatIf parameter in practically all my scripts, and set it to a default of true, so that I can test out the script without screwing anything up. In this case, it’s particularly important.

A final note on the script: when running it against our huge list of a million items, we noticed incredibly slow perf. One of my coworkers found a solution, though: sort the results so you’re deleting the largest items first. Here’s a sample query for that. The relevant CAML is highlighted.

  <Where>
    <Lt>
      <FieldRef Name="StartTime" />
      <Value Type="DateTime">2009-11-18T12:24:59Z</Value>
    </Lt>
  </Where>
  <OrderBy>
    <FieldRef Name="JobSize" Ascending="FALSE" />
  </OrderBy>

But it’s damn good. And the name is half the reason I keep ordering it.

So, I think there might be a problem with my laptop’s battery meter:

EDIT: And about 3 minutes after posting up this image, my laptop died, due to a dead battery.

Same as last year, the days/weeks leading up to the NaNoWriMo event are once again entirely devoid of blog posts. That’s because any spare time I may have had in the the two or three weeks leading up November were mainly taken up by plotting. Same as last year, I’m working on a sci-fi story. This time, though, it’s based on a short story I wrote during the summer. It’s the same underlying concept/problem, but completely different set of characters (one of whom is named after a friend’s newborn kid) and a different resolution.

As opposed to last year, when I spent a lot of time on the concept behind the story and no time at all on actually plotting out the flow, this year I’ve jotted down the summaries of all the scenes, ahead of time. So now all I have to do is allot the required number of days per scene (about 2.5) and the story feels like it’s writing itself. It’s a much less stressful and more enjoyable NaNo experience than last year’s. And hey, I’m already at 10,000 words. I missed a day last week due to excessive alcohol intake (Trivia Tuesday, you understand) but aside from that I’ve been writing regularly, every day, about 1.6 thousand words, the required amount for me to coast through November and have 50 thousand words by December.

Speaking of alcohol intake, I’m considering not having less booze than normal, as I’ve found that writing while intoxicated just doesn’t cut it for me. At that point, I’d rather be listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or playing GTA: IV. Not exactly a good writing atmosphere.

And speaking of music (yes, this post is taking on a very tangential motif, but what the hell do I care?!), I’ve recently discovered Led Zeppelin and I gotta say: shit, I’ve been missing out! “Ramble On” is one of the best songs I have ever heard. Period. (Have you noticed that it starts out kinda like The Guess Who’s “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature”? It’s weird, but I constantly think I’m going to hear “no sugar tonight” just as the song breaks into obvious Led Zeppelin.)

Sadly, I don’t expect to be writing much here until way after NaNo is over. This post itself is being written in between lunch and watching “Back to the Future: Part 2″. After that, probably going to head out to a coffee shop to get the day’s allotment of sci-fi written up.

Rockstar’s second episodic download for GTA: IV is coming in just two long weeks, and I anticipate this to be the best experience, probably outdoing The Lost and most certainly the original. This episodic brings with it the content which was, unfortunately, missing from GTA:IV. Coming back is the glitz of Vice City, the super-weapons of San Andreas, the all-purpose tank (re-imagined as a SWAT Tank, or APC), a larger variety of helicopters (including one based on the AH-6 Little Bird from Vice) and the parachutes for those dearly-missed BASE-jumping exercises.

And, if that’s not all, we will now be able to experience Liberty City from yet another perspective. Niko was an OK character, certainly nothing stellar and sometimes just an asshole. Johnny was great, someone I could really enjoy playing as, but his was a dark world. Luis, the protagonist of the new game, will be the body-guard and assistant of the titular character, Anthony “Gay Tony” Prince. Seems like we’ll now be able to experience Liberty from a different vantage point. Some places, a tough biker or an immigrant mobster just can’t get into (at least, not without a fire-fight or an invite from double-crossing politicians).

I’ve hit a semi-boring patch of photos with the NY-NY and MGM casino photos. Nothing interesting to process/post. At least, that’s the reason I’m giving for only uploading 5 photos (and only 1 public photo!). Below is the fish tank from the Rainforest Cafe at the MGM.

In a bit of related news, a few hours ago I got an email from an online guide that is apparently considering using one of my photos on their site. The site is free, I’ll get no money for this, and all I heard is that my photo is being short-listed, but it’s still something. I’ll post here, obviously, if my photo gets picked.

—

Currently listening to: Jethro Tull

I’m too tired today. And, frankly, the photos I took of NY-NY were just boring, so I wasn’t in the mood to process too many of them. Did upload a few, then skipped ahead to the MGM lion exhibit photos. Those turned out a bit better. Below is an example.

More of the Flickr project to motivate me. Managed to upload 10 more Vegas photos (8 public) to Flickr. This one wasn’t too bad.