Microsoft Channel9 Addon for Kodi

To add to the my list of hobby projects, I created a fork of an addon for Kodi that provides browsing of videos on Microsoft Channel9. This was my first attempt at a Kodi addon, and really my first time working with writing python. I started out by just reading over the original code and tweaking it a bit because some things were not working. Then I started following the pattern that existed and implementing new features, like being able to browse Channel9 authors, and Channel9 events.

Once I got these features in place, I started doing some real refactoring of the original code base. There was a ton of code that was duplicated in multiple places. I spent a few hours of the day really rewriting the entire addon. As the project stands right now, it is basically a complete rewrite of the original addon.

The project is on Github and building on AppVeyor.

Download the latest Release

Simplify standing up an IE Virtual Machine with PSIEVM

Over the weekend I was bored and decided to start a project to automate the process of standing up an IE VM with powershell. I would like to introduce PSIEVM. A powershell module that allows you to stand up an IE VM in VirtualBox (other hosts coming in the future) in one line.

PS> Get-IEVM –OS Win7 –IEVersion 9

That is the simplest form of the command.

Installation

To install, download from the github project releases page and extract to $env:USERPROFILE\WindowsPowerShell\Modules. Then to use it just import it

PS> Import-Module psievm
PS> Get-IEVM –OS Win7 –IEVersion 10 –AlternateVMLocation "G:\VMs\" –VMRootPath "G:\VMs\"

 

The parameters for Get-IEVM:

Name	Required	Type	Default
OS	YES	String	[Empty]
The OS to use: WinXP, WindowsXP, Windows XP, XP WinVista, WindowsVista, Windows Vista, Vista Win7, Windows7, Windows 7, 7 Win8, Windows8, Windows 8, 8 Win8.1, Windows8.1, Windows 8.1, 8.1 Win10, Windows10, Windows 10, 10
IEVersion	YES	String	[Empty]
The version of IE. This is dependant on the version of Windows (See the table below). 6 7 8 9 10 11 Edge
Shares	NO	String[]	[Empty]
These are the paths to add as a share in the VM through the VMHost. May not be fully supported in all VMHosts.
AlternateVMLocation	NO	String	[Empty]
By default the VM images will be downloaded from Microsoft, but if you have the images downloaded already, you can use this to tell the script where to get them. This can be a URL, Network Share, or a local path. The images need to follow the following pattern: IE: IE<IEVersion>.Win<OSVersion>.For.Windows.<VMHost>.zip Edge: Microsoft%20Edge.Win10.For.Windows.<VMHost>.zip
VMHost	NO	String	VirtualBox
The VM Host to use. Only VirtualBox is currently supported but here is the full list that will be supported (and maybe others). VirtualBox HyperV Vagrent VPC VMWare
IgnoreInvalidMD5	NO	Boolean	$False
After the zip image is downloaded, the file MD5 hash is validated. If you use your own images, you will want to set this to $True.
VMRootPath	NO	String	$PWD
This is the path to download the zip image to and create the VM image folder where the VM will reside. By default it will use the Current Working Directory.

OS / IEVersion

This is the version of the OS that you want hosted and the version of IE you want with it. Here are the supported values:

	IE 6	IE 7	IE 8	IE 9	IE 10	IE 11	MS Edge	Requires 64-bit Emulation
XP	X		X
Vista		X
Win7			X	X	X	X
Win8					X
Win8.1						X		X
Win10							X	X

Download PSIEVM