I’ve finally got around to work a bit more with our build script, which we are running on top of Team System. I’ve once coded a build script based on other products (CruiseControl.net, NUnit etc.) so i hoped and thought that this wouldn’t differ to much. However sometimes your hopes gets fulfilled and sometimes… well, you’ll see.

Firstly building build scripts for Team Systems are more like responding to events that gets fired by the Team System build engine, than writing the flow yourself. Which events get fired and which order they fire in can be found here.

Also - the start of building build scripts with Team System is a wizard, which is nice but all that it’s really doing is generating the stub for the MSBuild-script-file for you. If you want to tweak it (and you want) you’ll have to code in the “scary” MSBuild/XML-language.

And finally...

This is really fun and maybe useful also: http://www.midomi.com

What the site does is that it allows you to sing or hum a part of a song and then it finds the song for you. But wait, there is more; when you find the song you can also hear how others has … interpret the song.

This will be so fun in a few months when there are loads and loads of songs.

Speaking of nerds I found a new functionality in .NET 2.0, well to me anyway; String.IsNullOrEmpty.

And of course an ongoing religious discussion (and here) about it’s use and superiority to other ways of validating empty strings.

Aah - so nerdy and so important…

I have to warn all non-programming nerds for this one. Made me laugh out loud…

http://www.tlc-systems.com/babbage.htm

The next project will definitively be programmed in Babbage…

Thank you Pål, for making my morning

Oh - how i love to be right…

A few months back I was very upset about the ban of mobiles-phones on the subway and buses in Stockholm.

In that post I also wrote that we would laugh (“No really, I promise. For a while the subway had banned mobile phones…”) about that a year from then… Today we took the first step to the laughs since SL has revoked the prohibition.

It surely was one of the dumbest… no I think you get what I mean

In our project we have had great problems when debugging web services in Visual Studio. For about half of the the request on of two exceptions has been thrown:

• System.Net.WebException: The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad Request.
• System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: The underlying connection was closed

After some looking into I found a solution and it was (as ever) quite easy. You simply have to set credentials on the web service as follows:

Dim m_wsService
m_wsSystemName.SystemNameService = New wsSystemName.SystemNameService
m_wsService.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials
m_wsService.PreAuthenticate = True

I have not observed this problem in C# so I presume that it is VB.NET related… or I might just be bad.

I have under the last days trying to get our build script to work….

What we are trying to do is simple enough, but I can’t understand how to use the build mechanism in Team System to do what I want… We want to do the following:

• Compile all projects
• Update some config-files
• Run VSTS-tests
• Publish a ClickOnce-application and deploy it to a “latest version” folder
• Generate documentation

It’s the ClickOnce-part that’s not working and I’ve got an confirmation from Microsoft that what we want to do not is supported by default in VSTS. You need some third part products.

I think I am a solution in the tracks but there is still some things left. I’ll post a solution when (if???) I find it.

In my research so far I have had great use of the following resources:

• http://blogs.vertigosoftware.com/teamsystem/default.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/gautamg/archive/2006/01/04/509146.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/echarran/archive/2006/08/09/693284.aspx

The Göteborg Brass Band is terminated (as it’s said on the web) and it’s now very interesting to follow the different members on their way to other band.

Top of the list must be that Patrik Randefalk is the new solo euphonium of the world-famous Eikanger-Bjørsvik band in Norway. This band is one of the best bands in the movement if you ask me and I am sure that Patrik will contribute to their continued successes. Good luck Patrik. Looking forward to hearing the band with the low brass led by you!

Windcorp Brass Band has signed several bandsmen from GBB already. In all honesty the band is made up from former GBB players from the outset so that is all in the same mindset. With these new players they will be very hard to beat. Also it will be very interesting to hear the band. I sure...

I have dived into Team System and more specific the build process. It’s quite hard to take in, I think, especially since the documentation is quite … economical.

But I hope that the question marks I have will be straighten out in a couple of days. We will get assistance from a MS-guy who is coming here.

I the mean time I have found, got and compiled some links that can, hopefully contain some useful documentation stuff that I missed when i started off:

• Microsoft own description and more here
• A list of all events that you can “override” for Team System in the msbuild project file
• The order of which the events are fired
• How to create a manifest-file with msbuild
• How to do a ClickOnce-deployment from the msbuild-script

The big thing to find out right now is how to incorporate...

Went to a wedding for a friend of mine this weekend. The wedding itself was very nice with some wonderful music, both the bride and groom are great musicians. Andreas had composed the entry march and arranged some other pieces. Then the program contained two lovely singers.

I also got the opportunity and honor to play for the happy couple, You raise me up. I had a wonderful accompaniment from the piano and it all went very well.

The evening and party afterwards was very nice indeed. I have to confess that sometimes weddings can get a bit long and … well to be frank boring. But this was very nice. As always some interesting details about the couple was revealed.

As for the rest of the weekend we spent it with the young part of the “in-law” relatives. Very nice - I am so fortunate to have such nice...