This weekend is the first and maybe the greatest competition in the brass band year. It’s the prestigious British Open.

My money is on Black Dyke who I think are playing marvelous at the moment, better than in many years. Also I like that they not cling to the brass band idiom but instead is going to a more modern and symphonic sound and approach.

If they win it will be the third time in a row for them. That feat has not been done in a lot of years, so that will be exciting in itself. I can just imagine how tagged they are…

Also there will be some great music, a brand new piece of Kenneth Downie. He is a great guy and a great composer writing lots of high quality music for every size and quality of band. We are right now playing a lot of his...

OK - I’ll make no fuzz about it. I am really excited about Scrum and what it can do. But now after two complete days with mr Scrum, Ken Schwaber, i am completely turned around. It was as closed to a religious wake-up as you will ever come without God.

I can’t imagine how development can be done with certainty, speed and most of all FUN - in any other way… Also I am a bit embarrassed about the way I’ve counted and tried to predict everything in advance - just half a year ago.

The big differences are also the easiest - things like that people can take care of them self, change will always (ALWAYS) occur.

So as long as I have a say in the question I will always conduct my projects as Scrum projects from now on. There is really no other way if you want...

The demo last Friday went like a charm. Of course the occasional demo-ghost showed itself but it was nothing some quick talking couldn’t handle.

I am still in wonder on how much you can get done by working with SCRUM. It all boils down to focus and sharing, in my opinion. The team gets to focus on the task at hand and the frequent sharing and communication makes every team member aware of her/his role and importance. From that some great result are achieved!

Tomorrow and the day after that I will take a SCRUM-master certification. Great to be on a course and it will also be great to have that certificate in the CV. Below is a picture of the place where the course takes place… Nice huh.

We’ll adding instrumentation to our application but we lack experience in the project. Google to the fore!

A quick search later and I found this good introduction to instrumentation for .NET 2.0. I haven’t read it all yet but it looks pretty extensive and to be written in a nice comprehensive manner.

Phew - the last week has real been something else…

We are closing in on a demo (tomorrow) for my project and as always that means wrapping things up. Which in turns means that you’ll have to tend to all the stuff that has been unattended for way to long.

Well, well - everything seems quite alright as it is now so I am not that worried. Fingers crossed.

Ooh - if this show came back on TV I would stay in the sofa the rest of my life….

Great music and very cheesy plot… and the actors has not progressed?

For about four days straight now we have been battling a classical, but hard programming problem; given two entity objects return a list of all the differences between the objects data. We solved the problem with reflection and some hard thinking. I am thinking about posting an article on how later.

It has been quite fun but the real lesson for me was pair programming! Try it if you haven’t. It is intense, I can say - but also very productive. Not as many errors and the code gets an immediate review that is priceless. While the “driver” writes the co-pilot have a chance to reflect on was is going on.

Also - it is lots of fun!

OK - here’s another one that can be useful on a rainy day…. It’s the dude in the middle that steals the show after about two minutes. Its worth to see the whole thing

I don’t say much about this….Enjoy

A friend and colleague (and current project member, actually) has created a game on the XNA platform. The game has been competing in various contests but is now nominated to .NET Awards, which is the arguable most prestigious award in the Microsoft community in Sweden.

The game is called Bullet Hell Tactics and is great fun. Please download a try out version and then vote, vote, vote for Jens (Team Shmup) and his game on the .NET Award site