As part of my on-going experiments to see what pieces of personal electronics can be put through a washing machine on 40C wash, I can confirm the headset off my Nokia phone has survived.

Yesterday I upgraded our production 2012.2 TFS server to update 3. All seemed to go OK and it completed with no errors, it was so much easier now that the update supports the use of SQL 2012 Availability Groups within the update process, no need to remove the DBs from the availability group prior to the update. …

We use a VSTO based Word template to make sure all our documents have the same styling and are suitably reformatted for shipping to clients e.g revision comments removed, contents pages up to date etc. Normally we will create a new document using this template from our SharePoint server and all is OK. However sometimes …

As you may have seen from my recent tweets, I was fortunate enough to attend //Build again this year in lovely San Francisco. In what appears to be an emerging tradition, conference attendees received not one, but two Windows 8 tablets: A 128Gb Microsoft Surface Pro with Type Cover, and an Acer Iconia W3 with keyboard …

Problem So when you have a task in TFS under My Work that you are actively working on and want to check in some changes but the task is not complete. It defaults to Resolved. Which if you make a quick mistake and don't set it to associate using the drop down (Fig1) removing the hours remaining value (Scrum Template) …

Really pleased to say I have been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio ALM. It great to be involved with such as activity community as the ALM crowd, can’t wait for the next summit in November.

The next DDDNorth event is to be held at Sunderland University on the 12th October. Session submission has now opened so why not get your session proposal in?

The way most big conferences manage to virtually live stream everything is very impressive. I started watching the stream of yesterdays Microsoft Build keynote on the office’s big projection screen with everyone else at Black Marble. I have always said the best way to enjoy a keynote is on the comfy sofa with a beer at …

After last nights release of new TFS and Visual Studio bits at the Build conference I spent this morning upgrading my demo VMs. Firstly I upgraded to TFS 2012.3 and then snapshotting before going onto 2013 Preview. So by changing snapshot I can now demo either version. In both cases the upgrade process was as expected, …

The Black Marble team is out at Build this week in San Francisco, having a great time and learning all there is to know about Windows 8.1 and other key Microsoft announcements. Follow the team on Twitter for updates, and check out our Facebook Album! If you want to follow it live, check out Channel 9.