powershell on a mac

Powershell on a Mac

tl;dr – Microsoft open sourced Powershell. Source, installable packages, and instructions for installing it or building the repository are on Github.

In case you missed it, Microsoft has open sourced its Powershell “super” shell. Right now it’s an alpha release, with all that that implies. And for those who care about such things, it’s released with the MIT open source license, not GNU. You can either grab the sources via git and built it yourself or you can download pre-built installation binaries. I chose to the pre-built Mac installation package to quickly get something up and running. I don’t have a lot to add to the conversation at this point as I’m certainly no Powershell guru. But from what little I do know about Powershell, it all appears to work on my Mac. In the example shown here I’m running Powershell in iTerm2, a better alternative to Apple’s Terminal. Perhaps future releases will be able to create a shell without this intermediate step; it would be nice.

Since upgrading to Windows 10 it’s a tiny bit ironic that I’ve been spending a lot more time in Powershell than I have in prior versions of Windows. What probably pushed me towards Powershell was my eventual dissatisfaction with the Windows Linux Subsystem and its inclusion of bash. I am not a bash fan, and find little to like with any of the other Unix-like shells (csh, tcsh, ksh, zsh, etc, etc). I’ve used all those other shells because that’s all you’ve got. I haven’t gotten excited about a shell since my days of using 4Dos on MSDOS and OS/2. I personally would like a common powerful shell environment across all my various operating systems, but somehow bash and its ilk are not it for me. Since source and instructions for building the repository are available, I’m toying with the idea of building Powershell on Arch Linux ARM for the Raspberry Pi. More to come on that, perhaps…

it’s still too expensive

Olympus OM-D E-M1

I like to keep abreast of what’s current in photography. That’s one reason I read websites such as The Phoblographer. Not only do I get to view vicariously the latest in equipment, but I also get to see excellent photographer by photographers young and old. The design of the site is also very easy on my eyes as well. So there’s a lot to keep my interest and to keep me coming back repeatedly.

But that doesn’t mean I find everything to my satisfaction. The Phoblographer will on a regular basis write-up articles with the phrase “cheap photo” in the title. The article is about equipment from various manufacturers that has been discounted, usually around $100 to $200, sometimes more, sometimes less. The problem is that a camera that is seriously expensive that’s $200 off is still seriously expensive. An excellent example of this is the Olympus OM-D E-M1. Today, on their website, they’ve announced that the camera is $200 off its regular selling price of $1,099, or $899. It’s a great camera and I’m an Olympus user myself. But $899 isn’t, practically speaking, any less expensive than $1,o99.

I’ve always compared prices of items to one another in order to determine if it’s practical or not. For example, for what I’d spend on the E-M1 on sale, I just spent on a pair of new cherry vanities with tops and sinks. I’m at that point in my life that, after having lived in my first and only house since 1985, I feel it’s time to fix the place up and replace all the really worn items, such as the bathroom vanities and sinks. And there are (lots of) other projects around the house needing to be fixed/replaced. This isn’t my wife speaking through me, this is me looking around and realizing I need to paint, wallpaper, and in general make the house look a lot better after having lived here over 30 years. And the original kitchen cabinets are something atrocious that absolutely needs to be replaced…

The price of current equipment is off the charts. So high that it’s insane to keep buying more, even more insane just to keep replacing for marginal improvements. I’ve known this for quite some time, and tried to use that to motivate me to purchase on the trailing edge of the tech, picking up heavily discounted gear. But I can’t even justify that any more. Recently I’ve used my camera gear less and less, partially because of my work, and partially because I’ve lost the desire. I now carry just one camera and one lens, the E-M10 and the 12-40mm PRO. That’s all I truly need, if even that much. So I carry around just that camera, and keep my money in my pocket to put towards something more practical, like the house. And when that’s done, then on to something else equally practical. Just no more camera gear.