PowerShell Resources or How I Learned to Love the Command Line Again

The other day a friend was showing off some tricks he learned about PowerShell. PowerShell is a new command ling shell and scripting language from Microsoft.

When I start learning a new tool I like to create a small reference library of resources. The following list is a mixture of websites, blogs and blog postings that I have found useful or interesting.

• Windows PowerShell
• Windows PowerShell Blog
• The PowerShell Information Centre
• Scripting with Windows PowerShell
• PowerShell Quick Reference & Graphical Help File(chm)
• The PowerShell Guy
• PowerShell Secure Remoting
• TechEd Webcast Available – PowerShell: The Future of Server Administration
• Free Powershell book and other Powershell info
• PowerShell CMDLET Visual Studio 2005 Item Template
• Microsoft Command Line Standard
• PowerShell: how to unit test your cmdlet
• Asynchronously execute PowerShell scripts from C#

Some thougths on paying off the mortgage early

Over at the website Get Rich Slowly the is a posting entitled 'Ask the Readers: Is It Better to Invest or to Prepay a Mortgage?'. The article has tickled my brain. The posting has multiple quotes from different finical gurus layout support for their view on paying off the mortgage early. Right now in my finical life Dave Ramey's advice makes a lot of sense to me.

There are several finical and tax benefits to a mortgage, most along the lines of the value of the house increases over time. The issue at hand suggests we need to look closely at few basic areas: How soon to retirement? What are your post retirement plans? How fast the value of the house is increase in comparision to the mortgage rate? What opportunities are we lossing out on when paying off the mortgage at an accelrated pace? The answer to these questions should lead a person to an acceptable answer.

I personally feel that it is better to get your finical house in order before you tackle the issue of paying off the house. I also think that paying off the mortgage should be near the end of your personal finical plan.

Free Technical Books

Update 2007.05.06
Learning Perl the Hard Way
Free On-line Linux Technical Books and Tutorials
Threading in C#
XNA Book
Asterisk: The Future of Telephony



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General Progamming

• Programming Languages by Scott F. Smith
• The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond
• How To Design Programs: An Introduction To Programming and Computing by Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flat, and Shriram Khrisnamurti
• How To Think Like A Computer Scientist: Learning with C++ by Allen B. Downey, Paul Bui, Jonah Cohen and Charles Harrison
• Programming from the Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett
• Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Creating and Consuming Web Services
• XML Programming: Web Applications and Web Services With JSP and ASP
• COM and .NET Interoperability
• The Software Development Book by Mark Watson

C/C++

• C Programming Tutorial (K&R version 4) by Mark Burgess
• C++ Programming by Sharam Hekmat
• How To Think Like A Computer Scientist: Learning with C++ by Allen B. Downey, Paul Bui, Jonah Cohen and Charles Harrison
• Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming Using C++ by Peter Müller
• Style Guides for C and C++ compiler by Christopher M. Lott
• C++ A Dialog Programming with the C++ Standard Library
• An Introduction to GCC for the GNU Compilers gcc and g++

C#

• Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in C# by Bruno R. Preiss
• Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop

VB / VB.NET

• Programming VB .NET: A Guide For Experienced Programmers

Java

• Processing XML with Java by Elliotte Rusty Harold
• Introduction To Programming With Java by David J. Eck
• Introduction to Computer Science using Java by Bradley Kjell
• Inside The Java Virtual Machine, 2nd Edition by Bill Venners
• Data Structures and Algorithms With Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java by Bruno R. Preiss
• Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines, Second Edition by Java Look & Feel Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Python

• Learn to Program Using Python by Alan Gauld
• Dive Into Python: Python for experienced programmers

LISP/Scheme

• Common LISP - An Interactive Approach by Stuart C. Shapiro
• The Scheme Programming Language, Third Edition by R. Kent Dybvig
• Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition by Guy L. Steele
• Practical Common Lisp
• On Lisp

Unix/Linux

• The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond
• Linux Newbie Administrator Guide by Stan, Peter and Marie Klimas
• The Linux Cookbook - Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use by Michael Stutz
• Everyday Linux by Kathy Miles and Ethan Metsger
• UNIX Text Processing (UTP) by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly (and the staff of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.)
• Linux Kernel in a Nutshell
• Advanced Linux Programming

General Computing

• A Short Introduction to Operating Systems by Mark Burgess
• Wirth's compiler book freely available
• PLANET ZIKRI has a huge list online books
  Loads of Programming Tutorials
• Programming ebooks
• Computer-Books.us

O'Reilly's CD Bookshelf

• Mirror 1
• Mirror 2

Perl

• Teach Yourself Perl 5 in 21 days by David Till
• Writing Perl Modules for CPAN

PHP

• Practical PHP Programming
• A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0

Ruby

• Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book

Mathematics

• Online Mathematics Textbooks
• Abramowitz and Stegun: Handbook of Mathematical Functions

Squeezing more out of GMail

The gang over at makeusof.com has a post entitled 'Gmail Craze: 30 + Tools and Hacks for Gmail.' There are some great customization and productivity tools and hacks in the posting. The tool 'GMail Manager' has saved me time. I am able to manage multiple GMail accounts quickly.

2nd Annual St. Louis Code Camp

Brain Button announced the '2nd Annual St. Louis Code Camp' on his blog. Please visit www.stlcodecamp.org for more information and to register.

Ways to Reduce Eye Strain at Your Computer

The "Lighting Blog" has a posting of "22 Ways to Reduce Eye Strain at Your Computer."

After reading the article there are some changes I will be making at home and work. Several of the items I all ready do, like keeping the monitor at arms length. There are some other environmental changes I will need to make, like adding an additional lamp or two and reducing the overhead lights. I think I will also change the font and font size on my computers.

Collection of University Podcasts

Found this collection of podcasts from several different Universities. I am always looking to increase my knowledge into various areas. Since I play podcasts back at two times normal speed, listening to lectures are fairly painless.

Open Culture: University Podcast Collection