Chicken Fahita Timeline

7:05PM Start

7:11PM Table Clear

7:18PM Sanitized

7:26PM Veggies Cut

7:33PM Spices Mixed

7.53PM Chicken Done

8:16PM Done, Done

Hope to be faster next time,
Waim

PowerShell access to Public Members of Internal Classes

This came up, does PowerShell show public members of internal classes?

Yes we do, here’s proof.

Add-Type @”
    public class Top
    {
        internal class Inside
        {
            public string Hi() { return “Hi”; }
        }
       
        public static object GetInside()
        {
            return new Inside();
        }
    }
“@
[Top]::GetInside().Hi()
Hi

Hi is returned as the result of a public method on an internal class.

Privately public,
Waim Blue

True Love

I went to a soccer game today, Chelsea vs Seattle Sounders. I went wearing a Chelsea jersey, Chelsea jacket, with Chelsea friends.

On the outside, I was a Chelsea fan, inside I was still confused.

The game starts, and I’m hesitant to cheers for Sounders, I kind of do, but not really.

Chelsea scores a goal.

My heart is broken. I’m not, I cant be happy seeing the goal. It’s painful, and I knew from there my true love was Sounders. I cheered them all out.

They lost, 2-0. I would be happier supporting Chelsea. They sucked too, missing out on so many chances. What a disappointment. But regardless of the result, Sounders is my true love.

And this time, I was sure of it.

Kick it to me,
Waim Green

Reducing my 500 email inbox the PowerShell way

I use my inbox, as a todo list, inspired by GTD, but there is no way I can figure out what to do, if I have 500 items. I want to cut it down, get rid of the junk, file the references in the right places, group related ones into projects, and mark out high-pri stuff.

I think PowerShell can help me here. It can help me figure out, what exactly is in my inbox, where are they coming from, and show me views which are more actionable.

For example, I should be able see all the emails sent from a machine, as opposed to a person. There probably junk. Also, I should be able to filter out discussion aliases, and those could be junk. Team mail, mail from peers and managers probably belong in one bucket, and personal stuff in another.

I got some links to try out
– http://grinding-it-out.blogspot.com/2008/04/little-powershell-fun.html
– http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/archive/2007/01/25/using-powershell-for-outlook-automation.aspx

I start with
PS C:\Users\ibrar> $inbox.Items.Count
531
Ouch.

Ok, who are my top senders
function Get-TopSenders($emailList) {
    $emailList.Items | group SenderName | sort count
}
Get-TopSenders -emailList $inbox

Here are a few,
   15 Osama ..
   18 James ..
   30 Jon ..
   32 Ibrahim ..
   36 Lucio  ..
   68 Refaat ..

200 out of 531, which is a good place to start

Next I did, find me all external (non-microsoft) mail
@($inbox.Items) | ?{$_.SenderEmailType -eq ‘SMTP’} | select SenderName,Subject
It gives me 42 mails. Microsoft mail would have the type ‘EX’

Next, I have my list of things I can filter on, general keywords, like OOF

That’s about as far as PowerShell would get me
I ran out of ideas, and AD is not working well for me. It would be nice if I could just go, “Which sender doesn’t have a last name”? (Machine senders)

I’m at zero inbox, but with a lot of manual filtering. Sigh. 40 Items in my ‘basket’ (should be called inbox, hurm), 16 project folders, and a full calendar for 1 week, hopefully I will reach true zero by EOD Friday

Thinking about it, I should also add rules based on receiver. Am I the only receiver, was it sent to a DL, etc.

Faking Zero for now,
Waim Brown

Music Video is Ready on Youtube

I’m really happy about this

I did all of the editing. I know, I should of let the kids do it, but I didnt have enough time.

Its very cool how scenes you didnt anticipate come out very nice. I had very limited footage, and it wasnt easy to fill up all the minutes of the song.

Before I finished though, I did run it through the kids. They gave me a good idea for extra scenes, and we added that. I showed them editing, but I have better plans for teaching editing later.

For now, its nice to see the kids happy with the video, ready to show it off to friends and more

I’d like to dedicated the video effort to Asma, primary motivator. Note, I didnt choose the song, the kids did

Enjoy the show,
Waim Brown

Movie Day Three

O.K. Today was a tiring one. Wait, isn’t today a weekday? Yes, the kids are too cute, too demanding for me to only see them on weekends.

Today, I failed.

I gave into my exhaustion. I made everyone do exactly what I told them to, and I didn’t give a real chance for the kids to make their own decisions.

My excuse was, day 3, they should hold onto the camera. I was kind of surprised, the kids weren’t that excited. They still prefer to act in cool parts rather than hold the camera. Taking the shots must be a geek thing.

I went over the list of scenes we haven’t done, and there were quite a lot. Many didn’t seem as funny or cool as the ones we have covered.

An idea kind of sprung out of no where.

We used tape, and a fire place to make it look like two kids were in jail. It was suppose to be a quick scene. Show some crying, or loneliness.

But we put on the song in the background, and the kids sang to it. While they were singing, I gave them some acting directions, like, pretend to fight. It’s kind of cool. I think we can use the prison as a back drop throughout the entire clip.

I tried to replicate what we did in the prison, by going to the park, and doing it there.

Fail. Kids rule in the park. I have no business telling them what to do there.

I got some scenes, ripping out a heart, and random clips that I can cut and paste, like bike skills, on swings, playing music in the park, etc.

One other thing I tried to do was get the kids to direct. More or less, give the camera man (a kid) the power to command the actors. It kind of works ok, the director is interested in doing it, and tries to get them to act, but the fake-director-kid cant effectively command the other kids. This is something I want to train them more on.

How do you train a kid to direct? What tips can I give? Can I make it a game? How do get them to compete?

Directing Directors,
Waim Brown

Movie Day Three

O.K. Today was a tiring one. Wait, isn’t today a weekday? Yes, the kids are too cute, too demanding for me to only see them on weekends.

Today, I failed.

I gave into my exhaustion. I made everyone do exactly what I told them to, and I didn’t give a real chance for the kids to make their own decisions.

My excuse was, day 3, they should hold onto the camera. I was kind of surprised, the kids weren’t that excited. They still prefer to act in cool parts rather than hold the camera. Taking the shots must be a geek thing.

I went over the list of scenes we haven’t done, and there were quite a lot. Many didn’t seem as funny or cool as the ones we have covered.

An idea kind of sprung out of no where.

We used tape, and a fire place to make it look like two kids were in jail. It was suppose to be a quick scene. Show some crying, or loneliness.

But we put on the song in the background, and the kids sang to it. While they were singing, I gave them some acting directions, like, pretend to fight. It’s kind of cool. I think we can use the prison as a back drop throughout the entire clip.

I tried to replicate what we did in the prison, by going to the park, and doing it there.

Fail. Kids rule in the park. I have no business telling them what to do there.

I got some scenes, ripping out a heart, and random clips that I can cut and paste, like bike skills, on swings, playing music in the park, etc.

One other thing I tried to do was get the kids to direct. More or less, give the camera man (a kid) the power to command the actors. It kind of works ok, the director is interested in doing it, and tries to get them to act, but the fake-director-kid cant effectively command the other kids. This is something I want to train them more on.

How do you train a kid to direct? What tips can I give? Can I make it a game? How do get them to compete?

Directing Directors,

Waim Brown

Day 2: Music Videos

Julianna gets an awesome ida, lets make a music video. To me, thats 3 activities. One is from the lyrics, break it down to slots, then act it out. Hurm, that part is like 2 activities itself, shot planning and acting.

Second game, I’ll get the kids to use the camera. Here I will be an evil dictator, anyone who talks on the set, or appears on the set, will not get a chance to use it. Hehe, evil grin. Camera will be a pep talk about, lighting, keeping still, focus, panning, lots of fun. They’ve been asking for it, I think they are ready.

Third activity, will be editing, put all the pieces together, get the timing right, and put it together. One thing kind of slack, is that we only have 1 camera, and editing is boring on one camera

We played game one today. Lots of fun, lots of pain. Lots of me screeming, get out of the set, no talking, kids come here. I nearly lost my voice. Dealing with kids, you always need to be in high energy. Ayman merajuk/sulking for a but, very uncooperative, but once he saw how much fun we had, he joined back in. That was a good sign.

The music video we want to make is “Beautiful girls” by Sean Kingston. Like before, we got a list of 10ish songs, and had a vote. Ayman printed the lyrics, and I went over the lines in the lyrics, and asked, “how would we act this?”

We came up with 15ish sets,

1. Get hit by a ball
2. Run into a wall
3. Run into a bicycle
4. Drool
5. Guy drawing hot girl
6. Shot to the head
7. Fall off building
8. Knife to the heart
9. Swing
10. Picnic, steal the heart, eat it
11. Brain and squish
12. Shopping
13. Tell you what to do
14. Couch, watch movie, star wars, popcorn, chips
15. Police, victim, arrested, handcuffs
16. Beep comic
17. Goodbye, meet me at the mall

Note, we have 5 guys, and no girls, to do a song about beautiful girls, so planning a shot is tough

We got through about 1 to 7. It took three hours to film 1 minute, with 6 scenes. Also we repeated each scene around 3 times, with different actors and had and 1 watermelon break

Finally, we sat together and looked through the footage, lots of laughs. We voted on the acting for each scene. That was fun!! They were invested in choosing the funniest and best scene, a I feel that they’ll be invested in acting their best, and doing an awesome camera shooting job.

I did some encoding and editing in front of them, so they can see a bit of movie maker, early intro. I imported the sounds, and put the best clips together.

The loved it!!! The one minute was hilarious!! Showed it to their mom and grandmother. They all wanted to upload it to youtube, I’m divided between putting it on youtube, and waiting for it to finish before putting it up

I feel like Julianna wants to have more creative influence over the show; She’s got these ideas. But being the director makes me, well, there can only be one director. Ideas dont go through unless the kids come up with it, or they agree to it, or I sneak it in. Phew, I’m glad I dont have to deal with me as the director. And I’m glad she gets it, and doesn’t try to push her ideas around. Sorry.

Long day, lots done, lots of fun. Hopefully not too much fun, and the kids learn something.

Screaming Director,
Waim Brown

Teaching Kids How to Make a Movie

Wow, I’m going to outdo myself

I know nothing about movie making, but I think it would be super cool if children picked it up, children I care about. What stories would they tell? What impact would they make? Should be fun.

They have a whole summer vacation to try it out. I’ve picked up 2 books, and a new camcorder, and we’re ready to go.

I have NO idea where to start. Please help.

Iskandar’s like, just take shots, they put it together into a story afterwords. Kids are creative, but when you ask them to do “anything” they cant. Julianna is pushing me to give more direction and structure. Easy, IF I knew what I was doing.

We’re starting small with movie charades. Made a list of movies they knew, 20 movies, it’s harder to get than I thought. Each boy is given 2 movies (random), acts out three scenes, its recorded, edited, put together, and shown.

Kids have to guess what movie it is, what scene it came from, lots of fun, lots of bad acting, bad ideas. We talked about sets, we talked about drama, we talked about having two people instead of one in the scene, talked about costumes and make up. An excellent conversation to start it off.

Movies came down to

• Spiderman 3 (take off venom, act cool in restaurant, pole fight)
• Garfield (run into car, kick off dog, something?)
• Simpson (Spider pig, dump trash from truck, motorcycle)
• Kungfu Panda (Chopstick fight, fight/fall off stairs, fight dummy)
• Harry Potter (Dragon egg, run from spider, invisible blanket)
• 300 (kick into pit, die form arrow, wolf fight)

We can copy MP4 (HD) from camcorder. Pazera is a wrapper over ffmpeg converts MP4 to mpg, http://download.cnet.com/Pazera-Free-MP4-to-AVI-Converter/3000-2194_4-10784027.html. Windows Movie Maker works great to extract it out into clips

So,

My plan is to come p with 10 games, where they try out acting, making a set, editing, special effects, writing, directing, etc.

I need ideas here. Lots of them, good or bad

Play all 10 games, repeat some of them, then come up with a movie title, and start.

Again, any “game movie” ideas out there?

Back to reading text books,
Uneducated teacher,
Waim Brown

Owning System Files

Takeown + ICACLS, gives me the right combo to delete system files

takeown /F C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell /R
ICACLS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell /grant REDMOND\ibrar:F /T
#rd /s/q C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell

Come to think of it, no one outside of the PowerShell team will ever need to do this…

Enjoy,
Ibrahim

Tracking Twitter Botyness using PowerShell

Urgh…

I get all these fake bots following me, and like urgh…

Well, my theory is, anyone who follows more than 1000 people must be a bot, and PowerShell could be hacked together to help me find that list.

Its looking good,

$wc = new-object System.Net.Webclient
$wc.Credentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential “waim”,”MY_PASSWORD_TRY_IT”
$followers = [xml]$wc.DownloadString(“http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.xml?screen_name=waim”)

$friends = [xml]$wc.DownloadString(“http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml?screen_name=waim”)
$friends = $friends.users.user | select -ExpandProperty screen_name

$followers | select screen_name, @{Expression={[int]($_.friends_count)};Name=”Count”},@{Expression={“http://twitter.com/$($_.screen_name)”};Name=”Link”} | sort count | ft -AutoSize

What I did was find my friends list, find my followers list, then find all the followers who are not my friends.

Then, I sort them by number of people they follow

screen_name     Count Link
———–     —– —-
abdrahman82        12 http://twitter.com/abdrahman82
OnlineAlarmClck    38 http://twitter.com/OnlineAlarmClck
madelenej          47 http://twitter.com/madelenej
RedmondHV         152 http://twitter.com/RedmondHV
alexandair        178 http://twitter.com/alexandair
ebgreen           195 http://twitter.com/ebgreen
DrRez             690 http://twitter.com/DrRez
Jerejak           799 http://twitter.com/Jerejak
twirex            912 http://twitter.com/twirex
PaulPetterson    1050 http://twitter.com/PaulPetterson
danphilpott      1211 http://twitter.com/danphilpott
NocturnalJungle  1438 http://twitter.com/NocturnalJungle
SpencerFerguson  1809 http://twitter.com/SpencerFerguson
visiblenet       2001 http://twitter.com/visiblenet
Deskcretary      4668 http://twitter.com/Deskcretary
E_Stampede      15051 http://twitter.com/E_Stampede

Nice list.

The first guy is amy brother in law who is drowned out by the spam bots. Its nice to see him there, so I can add him as a friend

500+ seems to be a threshold, everyone after that is a BOT

alexandair        178 http://twitter.com/alexandair
ebgreen           195 http://twitter.com/ebgreen

Are powershell peeps. They follow a lot, but they also have a lot of followers. A delta might be a better judge of Botyness. Like that word, lets use it in the title

I still havent updated the script to block all the bots. Maybe later, at least now I know who are enemy

If you hear this, you are the resistance,

Waim Brown