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How to output a list of installed programs on Windows with PowerShell

2015/01/12 Leave a comment

A vanilla script, but including all Win32_Product class properties – a quick search found only a very basic version how to do this in PowerShell:

# to write a installed program listing to a CSV file - just adapt the output dir below
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product |`
foreach{
$AssignmentType = $_.AssignmentType
$Caption = $_.Caption
$Description = $_.Description
$IdentifyingNumber = $_.IdentifyingNumber
$InstallDate = $_.InstallDate
$InstallDate2 = $_.InstallDate2
$InstallLocation = $_.InstallLocation
$InstallState = $_.InstallState
$HelpLink = $_.HelpLink
$HelpTelephone = $_.HelpTelephone
$InstallSource = $_.InstallSource
$Language = $_.Language
$LocalPackage = $_.LocalPackage
$Name = $_.Name
$PackageCache = $_.PackageCache
$PackageCode = $_.PackageCode
$PackageName = $_.PackageName
$ProductID = $_.ProductID
$RegOwner = $_.RegOwner
$RegCompany = $_.RegCompany
$SKUNumber = $_.SKUNumber
$Transforms = $_.Transforms
$URLInfoAbout = $_.URLInfoAbout
$URLUpdateInfo = $_.URLUpdateInfo
$Vendor = $_.Vendor
$WordCount = $_.WordCount
$Version = $_.Version

$Name | Select-Object `
@{n="AssignmentType";e={$AssignmentType}},
@{n="Caption";e={$Caption}},
@{n="Description";e={$Description}},
@{n="IdentifyingNumber";e={$IdentifyingNumber}},
@{n="InstallDate";e={$InstallDate}},
@{n="InstallDate2";e={$InstallDate2}},
@{n="InstallLocation";e={$InstallLocation}},
@{n="InstallState";e={$InstallState}},
@{n="HelpLink";e={$HelpLink}},
@{n="HelpTelephone";e={$HelpTelephone}},
@{n="InstallSource";e={$InstallSource}},
@{n="Language";e={$Language}},
@{n="LocalPackage";e={$LocalPackage}},
@{n="Name";e={$Name}},
@{n="PackageCache";e={$PackageCache}},
@{n="PackageCode";e={$PackageCode}},
@{n="PackageName";e={$PackageName}},
@{n="ProductID";e={$ProductID}},
@{n="RegOwner";e={$RegOwner}},
@{n="RegCompany";e={$RegCompany}},
@{n="SKUNumber";e={$SKUNumber}},
@{n="Transforms";e={$Transforms}},
@{n="URLInfoAbout";e={$URLInfoAbout}},
@{n="URLUpdateInfo";e={$URLUpdateInfo}},
@{n="Vendor";e={$Vendor}},
@{n="WordCount";e={$WordCount}},
@{n="Version";e={$Version}}
}| Export-Csv c:\temp\installed-programs.csv -NoTypeInformation

Output:

image

image

Categories: e-infrastructure, service-is-documenting, service-is-programming Tags: , , ,

Yet another couple of glitches solved in setting up Outlook 2013 with Gmail IMAP for GoogleApps

2014/12/19 Leave a comment
  1. I googled and followed this useful guide. However, a couple of glitches remained:
  2. Connection to Incoming mail server fails if you really just put your username:
    1. put instead of  username@companygoogledomain.com:
    2. image
  3. Test send of email message through outgoing server fails if you just followed instructions:
    1. image
    2. Click on button: “More” / tab: “Outgoing Server” / do check box “My outgoing server requires authentication ”  and log on (I now prefer to be explicit, after the initial mixup of usernames for incoming and outgoing), enter your full user@compgoogledomain.com and password. No need to enable SPA, though.
    3. image
  4. Viola  image Smile(and quousque tandem…, sigh Sad smile).
Categories: e-infrastructure, office-software Tags: , , ,

A little addendum about data types to the +N(“comment”) in-cell formula comment trick in Excel

2014/12/18 Leave a comment
    1. You are relying with this well-documented trick on the fact that addition of 0 will altering a numeric value.
    2. However, what is not mentioned: not all work in Excel involves the number data type.
      1. Try adding your comment or zero to a string data type, and you will get a #VALUE error.
      2. Boolean, however, works also, since – as you can see when you have Excel evaluate your formula – if  you try adding 0 to a Boolean data type, Excel casts the prior Boolean FALSE to 0 or TRUE to 1, and casts the result of your addition (of 0 = nothing) back to the same initial Boolean for further evaluation. excel-evaluate-fromula-w-n-comment boolean
      3. So just put your +N()-comments in those part of your formula that involve either number or Boolean data type, and avoid adding to strings, for example:

=IF(
    OR(
        ISBLANK(
            [Related issues]
        ),
        (            ISERR(
                FIND(
                    “#“,
                    [Related issues]
                )
            ) )
    ) +
    N(
        “do nothing if no related task in col:related issues“
    ),
    ““,
    IF(
        NOT(
            ISERR(
                FIND(
                    “,“,
                    [Related issues]
                )
            )
        ) +
        N(
            “do nothing if no 2nd value in col:related issues“
        ),
        CONCATENATE(
            MID(
                MID(
                    [Related issues],
                    FIND(
                        “,“,
                        [Related issues]
                    ) + 2,
                    LEN(
                        [Related issues]
                    ) –
                    FIND(
                        “,“,
                        [Related issues]
                    ) + 1 +
                    N(
                        “extracted the 2nd value from col:related issues“
                    )
                ),
                FIND(
                    “#“,
                    MID(
                        [Related issues],
                        FIND(
                            “,“,
                            [Related issues]
                        ) + 2,
                        LEN(
                            [Related issues]
                        ) –
                        FIND(
                            “,“,
                            [Related issues]
                        ) + 1
                    )
                ) + 1,
                4
            ) +
            N(
                “extracted the 4# of id of related issue“
            ),
            MID(
                MID(
                    [Relatedissues],
                    FIND(
                        “,“,
                        [Relatedissues]
                    ) + 2,
                    LEN(
                        [Relatedissues]
                    ) –
                    FIND(
                        “,“,
                        [Relatedissues]
                    ) + 1
                ),
                FIND(
                    “ “,
                    MID(
                        [Related issues],
                        FIND(
                            “,“,
                            [Related issues]
                        ) + 2,
                        LEN(
                            [Related issues]
                        ) –
                        FIND(
                            “,“,
                            [Related issues]
                        ) + 1
                    )
                ) + 1,
                2 +
                N(
                    “appended to or from to the 4# of id of related issue“
                )
            )
        ),
        ““
    )
)

    1. This splits, extracts and copies values from a none to multi-value column for better sortability: image
Categories: e-infrastructure, office-software Tags: , ,

Fun with .docx to .html transforms by means of HtmlConverter from PowerTools for Open XML

2014/12/15 Leave a comment
  1. The transform is FOSS and platform-independent:
    1. It neither requires Office nor Windows (The OpenXML SDK runs on Linux via Mono on the server.
    2. However, the most recent installment of Powertools for OpenXML, a high-level API to the OpenXML SDK, comes with a PowerShell interface (benefit: no Visual studio requirement).
  2. Valuable features of the transform,  among many other things, are:
    1. HtmlConverter is able to translate MS-Word styles into CSS (insofar needed – my code style has “No proofing” set, however, this cannot be implemented on the WWW), so the layout is preserved as designed, but w/o need for inline formatting:
        span.pt-StrongEmphasis-000052 {
            font-family: Calibri;
            font-size: 11pt;
            font-style: italic;
            font-weight: bold;
            margin: 0in;
            padding: 0in;
        }

        span.pt-lowCodeConsoleChar0 {
            color: #FFFFFF;
            background: #000000;
            font-family: Consolas;
            font-size: 10pt;
            font-weight: normal;
            margin: 0in;
            padding: 0in;
        }

     <h3 dir="ltr" class="pt-000040">
            <span class="pt-000041">2.2.1</span><span class="pt-000042"><span class="pt-000043"> </span></span><span class="pt-Heading2Char"><b>References</b></span>
          </h3>

          <p dir="ltr" class="pt-BodyText">
            <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000003"><br />
            ‎</span><span class="pt-000000"> </span>
          </p>

          <h1 dir="ltr" class="pt-000006">
            <span class="pt-000007"><b>3</b></span><span class="pt-000008"><b><span class="pt-000009"> </span></b></span><span class="pt-Heading1Char"><b>Introduction</b></span>
          </h1>

          <h2 dir="ltr" class="pt-000018">
            <span class="pt-000019">3.1</span><span class="pt-000020"><span class="pt-000021"> </span></span><span class="pt-Heading2Char"><b>Purpose of Document</b></span>
          </h2>
    1. There are many more options that I have not yet tried:
            SimplifyMarkupSettings simplifyMarkupSettings = new SimplifyMarkupSettings
            {
                RemoveComments = true,
                RemoveContentControls = true,
                RemoveEndAndFootNotes = true,
                RemoveFieldCodes = false,
                RemoveLastRenderedPageBreak = true,
                RemovePermissions = true,
                RemoveProof = true,
                RemoveRsidInfo = true,
                RemoveSmartTags = true,
                RemoveSoftHyphens = true,
                RemoveGoBackBookmark = true,
                ReplaceTabsWithSpaces = false,
            };
            MarkupSimplifier.SimplifyMarkup(wordDoc, simplifyMarkupSettings);

            FormattingAssemblerSettings formattingAssemblerSettings = new FormattingAssemblerSettings
            {
                RemoveStyleNamesFromParagraphAndRunProperties = false,
                ClearStyles = false,
                RestrictToSupportedLanguages = htmlConverterSettings.RestrictToSupportedLanguages,
                RestrictToSupportedNumberingFormats = htmlConverterSettings.RestrictToSupportedNumberingFormats,
                CreateHtmlConverterAnnotationAttributes = true,
                OrderElementsPerStandard = false,
                ListItemRetrieverSettings = new ListItemRetrieverSettings()
                {
                    ListItemTextImplementations = htmlConverterSettings.ListItemImplementations,
                },
            };
    1. One would really wish there was a way to get such HTML cleaned up automatically (ouch!):
               <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">M</span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">anaged requirements for system integration </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">of Center</span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006"> </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">software </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">with </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">iLearning</span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006"> and with content production and management (BPD). To mitigate lack of integration of $50k LMS software investment into departmental workflow</span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">,</span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006"> </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">developed </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">and documented </span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006">software to automate</span>
                <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000006"> creation of 4K+ user accounts p.a., 30K+ learning documents and 100K+ interactive content paths in LMS.</span>
    1. There are also much more serious conversion errors:
      1. MS-Word displays a plain text content control and a repeating section content control within a table, containing one Combobox and one plain text content control per row, perfectly: openxml-convert-docxtohtml-error-word
      2. Convert-DocxToHtml gobbles the content completely (and so does Google Docs Preview): openxml-convert-docxtohtml-error-html The underlying HTML has just a blank table under each heading: 
            <div class="pt-000001">
        <p dir="ltr" class="pt-qiCVHeading1">
          <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000002">Profile</span>
        </p>
      </div>
      <div align="left">
        <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" dir="ltr" class="pt-000003" />
      </div>
      <div class="pt-000001">
        <p dir="ltr" class="pt-qiCVHeading1">
          <span class="pt-DefaultParagraphFont-000002">Technologies</span>
        </p>
      </div>
      <div align="left">
        <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" dir="ltr" class="pt-000003" />
      </div>
      3. MS-Word shows:imageYet need to look in to the underlying XML to see whether the .docx is to blame for that…
      4. But HtmlConverter output in IE or Firefox: imageThe underlying HTML reveals that the css does not get applied in the right place:
 	<tr>
                <td class="pt-000079">
                  <p dir="ltr" class="pt-BodyTextSmall">
                    <span class="pt-BodyTextSmallChar-000081">AD</span>
                  </p>
                </td>
                <td colspan="2" class="pt-000079">
                  <p dir="ltr" class="pt-BodyTextSmall">
                    <span class="pt-BodyTextSmallChar-000081">Active Driector, Microsfot’s directory implementation.</span>
                  </p>
                </td>
              </tr>

              <tr>
                <td class="pt-000086">
                  <p dir="ltr" class="pt-BodyTextSmall">
                    <span class="pt-000085"> </span>
                  </p>
                </td>
                <td colspan="2" class="pt-000086">
                  <p dir="ltr" class="pt-BodyTextSmall">
                    <span class="pt-000085"> </span>
                  </p>
                </td>
              </tr>
  1. One could imagine MS-Word acting less strictly than OpenXML PowerTools:Convert-DocxToHtml, like a web-browser’s parser tolerates and displays bad HTML. However, not only would need to be justified how MS-Word can also serve as the originating HTML WYSIWYG editor. The OpenXML PowerTools:Get-OpenXmlValidationErrors for both of the above documents does not seem to find any OpenXML errors that could explain the bad conversion (other than dozens of Sch_UndeclaredAttribute errors (Version-related? Not sure how this could be) , there is only a Pkg_PartIsNotAllowed relating to a glossary).
  • Also yet to do:
    1. When (not always!) does my page title end up as empty? 
      <title></title>
    2. Defaults to doctype xhtml, not html(5).
  • Done:
      1. Pretty-printing. The HtmlConverter output defaults to all content (not css ) on 1 line (e.g. in the example from which above code is taken, 90000chars long). For human readability, and also possibly git tracking, pretty-printing would be better. Can be enforced like so (is there a better way? cannot see a user-configurable option for the SaveOptions enumeration):
    openXml\OxPt\OxPtCmdlets\OxPtHelper.cs:var htmlString = html.ToString(SaveOptions.None); // trp: requesting pretty-printing, was:html.ToString(SaveOptions.DisableFormatting);
Categories: e-infrastructure, service-is-documenting Tags: , , , , , ,

Can speech recognition tools be soundly applied for speaking practice in second language acquisition programs? Paper at SLRF 2014

2014/10/26 Leave a comment

For your convenience, I provide two versions of this presentation: the slide deck:

And a screencast of my presentation:

(Unfortunately, PowerPoint 2013 seems to have introduced a bug in alignment of narration and video. If they fix it, I will republish),

Categories: audience-is-teachers, conferences, e-languages, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, recording-software, Screencasts, Slideshows Tags: , ,

How to fix primary screen on Linux laptop not coming out of sleep

2014/10/17 Leave a comment
  1. Problem: My Debian (Jessie) Linux laptop has issues with juggling a secondary screen and sleeping at the same time. More specifically, it seems:
    1. It seems if you come out of sleep with a secondary screen connected, even if you put the laptop to sleep with “it” (o.k., not the same “it”, just spec-wise the equivalent FULL HD LCD screen on VGA – being able to easily move the laptop to work in multiple places is kind of the point of having one in the first place), the primary laptop screen seems to remain asleep completely. FN keys to switch primary and secondary screen on laptop have no effect.
    2. If you disconnect the secondary screen, Linux does fall back onto the primary screen, however, “forgets” to turn the backlight on. FN keys to up brightness have no effect
    3.   have not found a reliable way avoiding the issue  – maybe always disconnecting secondary screen before putting laptop to sleep? If you don’t want to have to do this, or forget, try to use this:
  2. Workaround:
    1. While I could get to the tty shell on secondary screen using CTRL+ALT+F1, but using xrandr --auto gave can't open display.
    2. However, try installing this utility which I found recommended in a different context:
      1. aptitude search xbacklight
      2. xbacklight               - simple utility to set the backlight level
      3. aptitude install xbacklight
      4. Switch to a non-elevated user (or else you’ll get: No protocol specified" , "Primary laptop", "Can't open display :0", Why can't I run GUI apps from 'root': "No protocol specified"? : " In Debian $XAUTHORITY is usually not set explicitly.", "xauth list xauth:  file /root/.Xauthority does not exist" ).
      5. Then issue: xbacklight -set 50 OR issue xbacklight -inc 50.
      6. Viola: “Fiat lux”…
      7. Sleep takes out your primary screen and you are not good at blind starting, finding and typing into your Konsole? Right-click on the desktop of your secondary scree, “Run command”, and issue the same command line.
      8. Thank you, xbacklight.
Categories: e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, os, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: , , , ,

How to export BMC Remedy data into Excel other than via copy-paste

2014/10/10 Leave a comment
  1. This question came up during consulting (Disclaimer: BMC provides non-customers only limited access to online documentation and trial software).
  2. BMC Remedy Action Request System 8.1  supports a wide variety of reports, including from a query builder, and editing of reports, using the free Eclipse data visualization and reporting plugin BIRT, and exports of reports in a wide variety of formats, including Excel ( you can find more on Exporting to Excel in these articles).
  3. BMC can also read excel and other data: “Data Management is a web-enabled dataload tool that enables you to import data into your system” (source) .
  4. BMC Remedy provides ODBC connectivity (note: read-only , so no round-tripping!). Applications that have been used with this feature include Access, Crystal Reports and Excel. In principal, querying an ODBC data source from Excel (2007 and up) works like this:
  5. On the Excel machine, install the BMC-provided ODBC driver into ODBCINST.INI (contains information about ODBC drivers available system-wide).
  6. Create an ODBC connection, save office data connection files as .odc  file for easy reuse.
  7. Query the Remedy database  using SQL from ribbon: ” Data” / section:”Get External Data”:”From other sources”/ menu item: “From Microsoft Query”, select the Remedy Database, clear “Use the Query Wizard”, log in, in “Microsoft Query” window, add Remedy data tables, then columns to display, then go to menu: “File”/ “Return Data to Microsoft Office Excel”.
  8. Some BMC-ODBC-driver-specific limitations are covered in BMC Remedy AR System ODBC considerations
  9. If the exact required functionality is not built in, BMC remedy also provides extension points for developing plugins. See Application development with BMC Remedy Developer Studio, which happens with  using BMC Remedy Developer Studio, a freely downloadable add-on which can be enabled by a vendor call. 
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, e-infrastructure, service-is-it-managing Tags:

We can nest controls in repeating content controls, including repeating content controls

2014/10/06 Leave a comment
  1. Just saying, since it seems not easy to find within web search results the ones that nest nesting….
  2. image
  3. image
  4. Have not tried accessing the results in OpenXML yet which will have to be done  via the control ID
    1. since repeating:  Repeating-Section-content-control-in-action
    2. does not autoincrement the titles and tags. image
Categories: animated-GIFs, e-infrastructure, service-is-documenting Tags: , ,