Dealing with Microsoft PowersHell

Why, one may wonder, would I be delving into something that ubiquitous Microsoft decides unabashedly to call PowersHell? To start with, and in full disclosure, they capitalize it as PowerShell, a new and improved version of the command line interface that we old timers sometimes still call the DOS prompt. But why would I use this, when the Gooey does so much? It has to do with too many cameras and too many memory chips. You see, I just went on vacation, a two week, 3,550 mile drive to Yellowstone, the Tetons, and many places in between. I brought home over 4,000 snapshots and video clips taken with 4 cameras. Why would anyone need 4 cameras? Well, I have a SuperZoom 12Mp, and a pocket camera (the SD1100 that we've raved about), and my new Droid. That's three? Well, I also got a back-up SD1100, that I've also rigged up with my first to use as a stereo camera. So with three of the four cameras all of the same brand, and so many pictures, eventually the 8 character file names (the first four of which are fixed in 3 cameras at "IMG_") began to overlap. And when I filled up a memory chip, each camera decided to reset to IMG_0001, so I have many overlaps in the lower numbers. Very clumsy. Also it is hard to match up the images from the left and right cameras (each eye stored in its own folder) without looking at each enlarged, and the Windows Photo Viewer doesn't let me look at two files from different folders side-by-side. So I decided to rename all the images to use longer names, and decided to use the picture date and time to rename them. My former XP machine had use a nice re-namer that would do this. But now I have Win7, and the old Win95 app won't run. But I keep in mind that "Every O/S Sucks" So I Googled for a new renamer that could handle the task, and stumbled on to this post: Rename multiple files as “Modified Date/Time” using cmd or Powershell. Yee, I thought, Haw! Why install another utility when the O/S does it for me. But it can't be done with the old command line. One has to figure out how to use the new, powerful, dangerous PowerShell. I could have just used the code snippet in the Super User post linked above. But I wanted to, a) Know how it works, and b) Do it a little differently. So once I returned, I did some reading, and playing. But after a minimum of profanity, I got it working on a test folder, and then ran my new script on all my files. Now I can tell at a glance when each picture was taken, and therefore easily glean the where and why. Just for a laff, here's a bit about the code name Microsoft used while developing this new shell:

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Dangerously relaxing song

How could a song be dangerous? Here's is what this newspaper article has to say:

It slows your breathing and reduces brain activity to such an extent that "Weightless," written by Manchester band Marconi Union, is said to be the 'most relaxing song ever'. The eight-minute track is so effective at inducing sleep, motorists have now been warned they should not listen to it whilst driving.

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Art and the subversion of money-values

I am extremely fortunate to be in a city (St. Louis) where a group of dedicated civic leaders arranged for the opening of a new public charter school for the arts opened last year. It is called Grand Center Arts Academy; it has three grade levels this year--sixth through eighth grades--and it will add one grade level each year, eventually including grades six through twelve. How unusual and wonderful that one can find such a publicly-funded arts oasis at a time when so many schools are cutting their arts classes in order to concentrate on "essentials." In the September/October 2011 edition of Orion Magazine, Jay Griffiths is tired of defending the arts. Why defend them any longer, when you can use the topic of public funding of the arts to slash at the deep rotten core of the belief that money is the measure of all things? Here's an excerpt from what Griffiths has to say in his excellent short article, titled "The Exile of the Arts" (This article does not appear to be available online at this time).

Disregarding art's transcendent value, modern states ask the arts to justify themselves in commercial terms, money the only measure to calculate a simile, to price the melody of a violin, and to calibrate the value of transformation. A phoenix must write its own cost-benefit analysis. While art tells multiple stories, knows the plural values of beauty, dream, and meaning, money tells a monstrosity. Money should never be the judge of art, but its servant: funding it, supporting it, aiding it. Perhaps one of the reasons for the hostility against the arts today is precisely that they are implacable witnesses against this terrible lie of our times: that money is the measure of all. Art refutes this lie, disentangles "money" from "values," and argues with its deepest authority that there is another sky, intimate and boundless, open to all, where the poet can tow a star across the liquid river of night, like a child with a toy boat on a string.

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