PowerShell Amusements: Automated Speech

While setting up a lab environment today I had some time to kill and thought I would check out more recent methods for speech automation from within PowerShell. Some of the interesting aspects involved in this script are:

Get-Random - Used to select random members from the object
ArrayList object type - Used to allow the removal of array members

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if ($VerbosePreferenceOrig.length -eq 0) {$VerbosePreferenceOrig = $VerbosePreference;} $VerbosePreference = "Continue"; Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech $Speech = New-Object -TypeName System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer $Speech.Volume = 100; #create temp copies to work with $Voices = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList; $Words = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList;   #fill the arrays which will be static Foreach ($Item in $Speech.GetInstalledVoices().VoiceInfo.Name) {     $Idx = $Voices.Add($Item); } $Idx = $Words.Add("Hello, welcome to PowerShell 4.0 Part 1"); $Idx = $Words.Add("Did you know PowerShell rocks!"); $Idx = $Words.Add("What you are hearing, is written in PowerShell"); $Idx = $Words.Add("We are going to have some fun this week"); $Idx = $Words.Add("With dot net we can do a great deal"); $Idx = $Words.Add("Don't worry, use Get-Help");   #create temp copies to work with $TmpVoices = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList; $TmpWords = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList;   #fill the temporary arrays foreach ($item in $Voices) {$Idx = $TmpVoices.Add($item);} foreach ($item in $Words) {$Idx = $TmpWords.Add($item);}   For ($loop=0; $loop -lt 10; $loop++) {     Write-Verbose "Starting loop $loop";     #make sure we don't completely empty the arrays     if ($TmpVoices.Count -le 0) {foreach ($item in $Voices) {$Idx = $TmpVoices.Add($item);};}     if ($TmpWords.Count -le 0) {foreach ($item in $Words) {$Idx = $TmpWords.Add($item);};}     #randomly get the voice and words to say     $Voice = Get-Random -InputObject $TmpVoices;     $Word = Get-Random -InputObject $TmpWords;     #remove these from the selection for less repetition (     $TmpVoices.Remove($Voice);     $TmpWords.Remove($Word);     Write-Verbose "Voice: $($Voice)";     Write-Verbose "Words: $($Word)";     $Speech.SelectVoice($Voice);     $Speech.Speak($Word);     Start-Sleep -Seconds 3; } Write-Host "Script Done!";   $VerbosePreference = $VerbosePreferenceOrig;

Accidental feature discovery... RDP client

Today I accidentally stumbled across a feature of the latest RDP client (6.3.9600.16384).... typically when using multiple monitors (laptop + DVI monitor) I end up with different resolutions between the monitors and so when I establish a RDP session in full screen it defaults to my main monitor (laptop), so if i wanted it to be full screen on the 2nd monitor I would have to manually set the resolution before connecting.

Well today when I connected in full screen on my main monitor (laptop) I thought "oh well i will live with a smaller window on my 2nd screen" and dragged the RDP window to the 2nd screen which snaps to a smaller window. Then I hit the maximise button to return it to the resolution I connected in and to my amazement it went full screen. And just to prove this was changing resolutions on me I dragged it back to the main monitor and maximised it, and then again to my 2nd monitor.

So it would seem the RDP client is finally able to adjust the resolutions in full screen mode. I had hoped this wasn't far away with the "smart sizing" feature that was introduced a little while ago.