It is getting to that conference time of year again; I can’t believe the PDC is only 3 weeks away, then VBug the next week and DDD7 just after that. A bit closer to home there are some free events coming up this month: XPClub - October Meeting: "Agile Narrative" by Nick McKenna, Wednesday, 8th October, 7pm …

I posted about the problems of using Blend with source control, specifically TFS. Well the next version of TFS Power tools gives a partial answer. They are to include Windows Shell Extensions so at least the check-in/out process can be managed would having another application open other than an explorer windows. Well …

As we move into the SOA world workflows will become more common and so the need to test them will increase. If we take the most simplistic view these are a sets if statements and loops so should be amenable to automated testing and TDD. However you have to careful how you try to do this, it is too easy to forget that …

The one major thing that I did not like with my Dell Mini was the fact it had installed XP Home. My main grip with this was the fact my main user account had to be an admin user, and I could not login as a user called administrator unless in safe mode. So I decided to do an in place upgrade to XP Professional (which …

WOW, I was expecting this in a few weeks but Microsoft have just announced that .NET 4.0 will include new versions of WCF and WF , with new stateful and conversational services and significantly improved designers. The new version of WF includes a 10 times performance increase , new flow control models including a …

Two weeks ago I was delighted to be at ReMix in Brighton. On the last day I was asked to be a Judge in the finals of Speaker Idol. The speakers did a great job in entertaining and informing the attendees , taking there own valuable time at the conference to share more information with others. One chap presented on RGB …

Colour me impressed. I managed well over four hours’ battery life today and found the Mini 9 a joy to use. I have encountered a snag, however, and it wasn’t one that I expected. You see, I’m now sitting on the 21:30 train from London Kings Cross to Wakefield after having been in the big smoke for a day of meetings. I …

I posted on the problems I had had mocking out an SMTP server, well I have moved on a bit. As I said in the update note in the last post, I had given up on nDumbster and moved over to LumiSoft's freeware mail server. The Lumisoft server is a far better starting point as it is a 'real' server that supports all the major …

It was announced overnight by Microsoft that the Database Professional SKU for Visual Studio will be made available to all people who have a licensed copy of Team Developer. This is great news as it addresses the problem of where to put the expensive copy of DataDude (which I think has been a barrier to it's uptake), …

I’m down in London tomorrow, and rather than lug my laptop on the train I’ve borrowed Richard’s shiny new Mini 9. Overall, I’m quite impressed with it. I’m still not sure about the keyboard, even after a couple of hours typing away – the keys are small and some of them are smaller still, which makes typing an …