Pinglist :: Command Line Tool

Ah the command line, wonderfully powerful and often so cryptic it bends your mind like a pretzel…

But we geeks love to use it none the less.

Pinglist is a little handy tool I whipped up a few days ago.

One of the hard things to do on the command line which should dead simple is to ping a list of machines and return if they are up or down.

Well with Pinglist you can!

Its really an extension of the traditional Windows “ping” command that is used by every single tech across the globe.

What it does is looks in the specified directory for a nominated text file name and outputs a CSV sheet with the discovered results.

Pinglist syntax looks like this:

To break it down further:

pinglist is of course the name of the tool

input is the name of the .txt file you want to query without .txt  - this file should list of machines (one machine name per line)

output is the name of the .csv you wish to output

When you are running the tool its output will look as below:

And the CSV Output looks like:

Raw CSV:

CSV in Excel:

So if you like what you see, grab a copy here…

Click here to Download Pinglist 0.25b

(File Size: 188kb)

DeskSpace: 3D Virtual Desktop

Here is a little piece of software that I’ve found that is awesome, its not free but if you are constantly being over shadowed by your Linux buddies and your still a Windows user then its a must.

DeskSpace gives you an awesome looking 3D desktop space switcher similar to the way Compiz-Fusion does for the multitude of Linux flavors (eg Ubuntu).

At $25 US its not too pricey for some cool bling for your desktop, and if you are going to stick out with Windows then this might just give you the edge you are looking for!

System Requirements:

• Windows XP, Windows XP x64, Windows Vista, or Windows Vista x64.
• 800 Mhz CPU.
• 256 MB RAM.
• 16 MB DirectX 8.1 compatible video card *

* Minimum ATI Radeon 7200 or nVidia GeForce 2 required. Video cards based on the nVidia TNT2, ATI Rage Pro/128, and Intel Extreme chipsets may work, but are not supported.

Otaku Software – Products > DeskSpace: 3D Virtual Desktop.