Lee Holmes

If you’ve ever wanted to extract tables from a web page in PowerShell, the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Once you’ve invoked the cmdlet, the ‘ParsedHtml’ property gives you access to the Internet Explorer DOM of that page. From there, you can get elements by tag name (“TABLE”), ID, and more.

One neat application of this technique is to automatically parse data out of tables on the web …

You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a useful way to think about human needs and the priority in which we tend to fulfill them. Somebody dealing with a physiological crisis such as lack of food and water is unlikely to improve their situation much by focusing on self-actualization issues like finding opportunities for their artistic expression. When thinking about an …

tl;dr summary: Create an Outlook rule to “delay outgoing mail by <5> minutes”, “unless body contains: е”, where the character used for the body exclusion comes from typing ALT+1077.

“When it comes to email, it seems that I always do my best proof reading immediately after I press the Send button.”

Perhaps you’ve been in the situation before, where you immediately regret sending an email in anger. Or realize after a …

I recently had the misfortune of having my relatively unused NatureBright SunTouch Plus break down:

It’s a “Light Therapy” box that is very popular on Amazon, but a recurring problem among the disappointed reviews seems to be that it turns on, but then just immediately clicks and then turns off again. My lamp was out of warranty, so I decided to look into whether it was possible to fix it myself. One …

If you’re looking for a way to position an object in an exact spot in Autodesk 123D Design, you might have stumbled on forum topics like:

The last meaningful response was:

It doesn’t appear to have been added yet. Or it has been newly added, and the usability leaves something to be desired. In any case, it’s not as easy as you might think, but here’s a technique that works in version 1.6.41: …

One of the features we’re working on in the latest version of PowerShell is the ability to define custom classes.

If you’ve ever used a PSCustomObject or a Hashtable in a script for storing related data, you’ll probably find classes to be a useful addition to your scripting toolkit.

$point = @{ X = 0; Y = 0 }
$point.X = 10
$point.Y = 20

While PSCustomObjects and Hashtables let you group related data, what if you want …

In a recent post, I blogged some data based on an uptime monitor I put together when I started having problems with my (then) web hosting platform.

Here’s how it works.

The first step is a script, Test-Uri. This essentially runs the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet and captures the important details: Time, Uri, Status Code, Status Description, Response Length (so you can detect drastic content changes or incomplete responses), …

In 2010, I posted about my woes with WebHost4Life (which I’m shocked is still around.) I looked around for another host, and ended up going with Arvixe. I’ve been happy with them ever since.

In the comments, Sebastian wrote:

Sebastián Cañizares writes:

Arvixe is the same problem … they say “We are currently facing network issues across at least one of our facilities The packet loss is disrupting service” and …

If you’ve ever tried to pull hard on thin rope (maybe to tighten slack in a line), you’ve probably wrapped the rope around your hand and felt it dig in as it constricted around your fingers.

Here’s a knot that solves the problem – I call it the Handle Hitch. I couldn’t find it anywhere else – if you’ve heard of it and it has a name, I’d love to know.

With slippery rope (i.e.: paracord), it isn’t suitable for massive …

Download – Gregg Shorthand Keyboard:

ShorthandKeyboard.exe, 720kb.
ShorthandKeyboard.ahk (AutoHotkey script source, 19kb)

If you’ve got an interest in languages, writing, and computers – you may have stumbled into the crazy world of Shorthand and stenography. Pitman, Gregg, Teeline, and others.

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Pitman shorthand isn’t very practical in modern society because it relies heavily on thick vs. thin …