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...

I have thrown together a small application for generating index cards from a Excel-based backlog list. This is very handy when you do sprint planning meetings. A printed index card is easier to move around on a withe board than a row in Excel.

The ScrumIndexCardCreator reads an Excel-file and lets the user select one or more to print. Its not very fancy but it still get the work done. To the right you’ll find some screenshots of it.

Anyone interested in it can contact me marcus,hammarberg (a) avega se

Another demo, another day! The demo yesterday went very well and more important the people that attended the demo was please and the project is running well.

I am most impressed with the output that SCRUM gives… We have been coding for three weeks now and actually have something useful to show to the customer. They understood that this was only a part, but a full part, of the final product.

More so - the team members seems to enjoy themselves in the project and we have great “flow” right now. It the project-heaven I always heard about… I hope I don’t have to experience the counterpart of it…

Today is the first Sprint Demo for our project… We have cover quite a distance during the project so far so I am very proud to show this to the customer and to lift up the achievements of the project members.

Still there is always the risk of the dreaded demo-ghost - but I pray for it to keep away today. I also have a brand new shirt on… that have to count for something.

After just one sprint I can warmly recommend SCRUM to anyone who hasn’t tried it. It WILL get you so much more productive, with greater focus and the ability to react to changes. All these three has been major factors for our success so far.

So, I humbly list myself after those who witness of the greatness of SCRUM. As a colleague of mine said “If you want quality - it’s the only way to...