This day we had a successful demo of our ongoing effort to create a great application for our current client BICS. No crashes at all (is that a good demo?) so we were quite happy afterwards. The client itself was very content about the results we already achieved during the last iteration (we're using SCRUM like methodology for this particular project).

Most of the times a consultancy company gathers several of its employees and let them create a custom made application. This project's a more unique approach for me: 4 developers with different backgrounds from different companies and it works out well. Very well actually. There's a good motivation in the team, we also did some Saturday work recently, and there's also a good atmosphere around. It's great to be a part in such a team.

And for now, up to the next deadline of December 21st.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening I and several colleagues attended the MSDN evening about Visual Studio 2008. It was most of the time an introduction of the possibilities of the new IDE and there was a whole lot of talk about the enhancements to the C# language. Not that I mind because that's also my language of choice. Especially the principle of extension methods look great and very interesting. Too bad however that the new enhancements of VB.NET weren't shown as that's also a language that's used very often. My current project (winforms, .NET 2.0, NHibernate, SQL Server 2005) also is created with VB.NET.

Most of the stuff that they showed, enhancements for web developers, great integration of tools for CSS that I already used with Expression Web, I already knew off. The thing that I didn't saw before is the cool VSTO ribbon designer. No more crafting with custom xml files anymore, just design. Cool. I guess several of my colleagues, that are mainly using VSTO, were glad when they saw this.

Afterwards we all had a drink and it was nice to see some familiar faces again that I haven't seen for a long time. One of the reasons why I like to go to these evenings/events is the social aspect. According to some people I'm a walking Facebook application myself.

Grz, Kris.

Actually I wasn't expecting this one for a couple of weeks but I just read on the blog of Scott Guthrie that they just released it.

Something else I'm waiting for is Visual Source Safe for Visual Studio 2008 so I can install it locally on my new dev machine. Unfortunately it's been delayed for a couple of weeks.

Grz, Kris.

Just found out about this site, http://www.pnpguidance.net/. Seemed interesting and I justed wanted to share the goods.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening I started the installer but it really got stuck. Bummer. But luckily there's a thriving forum to ask questions. The answer I got was to first install the .NET 3.5 framework first which can be found on the DVD under the WCU folder.

If you should also get into trouble while installing, I really hope not, you can also try out this approach.

Grz, Kris.

Several months ago I purchased an iPod nano (former version) and all of a sudden today it just hung. I have no indication what caused it. Luckily a collegue of mine had the same problem about a year ago with his iPod (classic). The resolution, which also worked out for me to my satisfaction, is to follow this procedure:

• Lock the iPod (Hold button on top)
• Unlock the iPod
• Simultaneous press the Menu and center button for about 5-10 seconds
• The iPod reboots

Grz, Kris.

Another nice give away from Microsoft: Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit.

Grz, Kris.

on

• ASP.NET 3.5
• LINQ

Lots to learn, not enough free time unfortunately.

Grz, Kris.

Just signed in to MSDN subscriptions and apparently the Beta 2 after Visual Studio 2008 dissapeared. I know what I'll be downloading evening.

Grz, Kris.

Yep, you read that right: Windows Live Writer is out of beta. I've been using it for quite a while, since the betas, and found it a decent blog writer. One thing though was that it was a bit tough to include source code. Luckily it's possible to create plugins. One of those plugins is created by one of my VISUG collegues Christoph to insert, you guessed correctly, source code. You can download SyntaxColor4Writer here.

Grz, Kris.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to buy these 2 books at Amazon. They arrived today by mail though the initial mail from Amazon stated that the expected date of arrival would probably be December 4th. Luckily for me they came sooner.

and

I didn't had much time to read in them and since it's the first time that I bought a book from Manning or Sitepoint I'll get to get used to their style I guess. Now I have something new to read on the train after finishing the 5th book in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy of five of The Hitch Hiker's guide to galaxy. Talking about the train: I spend nowadays more than 3 hours per day for getting to my work and back. I hope my next project's nearer and has something to do with ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX, Silverlight, ...

Grz, Kris.