European sounds

My favorite radio show - the Listen to the Band - show from the BBC Radio 2 has done a retrospective show of the European.

A great part of the show is spent with focus on the Goteborg Brass Band. Some great playing and a very nice (and clarifying interview with Clare Farr). Thank you!

I am so proud to have been a part of that band and that great history that now is finished.

And finally; again thank you Bengt!

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Melbourne Staff Band

Got a tip from a friend about this marvelous appearance from the Melbourne Staff Band of the Salvation Army. I really the idea of using the band as more than just a concert outfit… Just think what could be done surrounding a story or a sketch. I’ll have to do something about that I think…

Well here you go in the right order:

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Load-event of UserControls in design mode

Ran into another problem just now…

If you have code in the Load-event of a Windows user control, it will fire when the user control is shown in Visual Studio at design-time. This can be troublesome if the code doesn’t compile or needs some runtime-only variables.

However all Windows forms controls (forms, user controls etc.) inherits from ComponentModel which in turn has a property that’s called DesignMode. This property is true when the Component (control in our case) is shown in design-mode in Visual Studio.

Beware for this special case though

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Long running debug-sessions in Visual Studio 2005

I think I finally found a solution to a very annoying problem. As always the solution (once found) was almost trivial…

Here’s the problem; in many modern system architectures there are at least one web service involved, sometimes more than one that call each other in sequence. When such a system is debugged in Visual Studio it now-a-days works very fine.

But… if you have a long running debugging session (like, for example, yesterday when I demonstrated some features for my team) the debugging fails all of a sudden with a time-problem. The error description doesn’t point you to anything good either.

I think i finally found a solution to a very annoying problem. As always the solution (once found) was almost trivial…

However - some colleagues of mine showed me the possibility to start several projects at once when debugging. Right-click the solution in Visual Studio 2005 and choose...

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End of an era

The Göteborg Brass band is no more… This is not news for the band and many of the fans, including me, but it feels weird and very sad.

I must say that I fully understand the reasoning behind the decision and that it’s probably the right thing to do - but still it so sad…

For me personally the band has been something of my idols (and almost legends) for a long, long time. Then, in 2005, I got to play with the band myself. I still remember the day in the office - doing cartwheels and scream (like many other days, I hear some people say :)). That also was the start of 2 fantastic years with the band. Very very hectic with many travel hours to rehearsals and lots of time away on tours.

I wouldn’t change a thing! It was so great, so many memories surface;...

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VSTS bug... or is it?

In my current project we are using Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) which i mostly like. But there have been some confusion and frustration concerning the Source Control part of it.

Let me already here say that this might (indications of this exists) be a misunderstanding of the concepts from my part. But I was very confused to find that when a file is checked out it doesn’t automatically get the latest version of the file down to my disc. In my book this is the essence of how Source Control systems works.

More confusion arose when I found out that this is by design… and that you can’t turn it off. I think this is very strange. When a do a Check Out I of course want the latest version of the file.

However it turns out that this confuses my team at lot and we have...

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Ooh - those sweet zombies (?)

Found this great video on UTube…

Again, it amazes me how much time people have on their hands. I mean this is fun and all that but just think if this time was put into something useful… Worlds could change.

For example - just think if they all played euphonium… changing of worlds, my friends… changing of worlds

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European - in retrospect

So my tip failed miserably but I was tipping with my heart. From this link you can find the full result and see the Willebroek won. Again - the second year running.

From the live result service of 4BarsRest I understood that the playing from all the bands was exceptional. I’ve also spoken to some bandsmen in the Gothenburg band and know that they was very pleased with their playing. How the judges missed that I don’t know - but you never do.

I still think GBB made and excellent job and really went out with a bang. This is the last we will ever hear from GBB. What a way to end an era of high level brass band playing - a tour (playing with Black Dyke) a CD recording (I’m looking forward to it) and then the Europeans.

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Phew...

I’ve just ended a long period with lots of stuff on the agenda. Since April 10th i’ve had at least on “extra” thing to think about each day. It’s been some presentations, funerals, talks at work or just practices with band.

But yesterday I did the last of this long row of items. Feels really good and tonight will be laid back to say the least… Some practice and then a movie I think.

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