Microsoft has just released a game-development studio which looks very nice. And finally even I has do some game-development. A real cool feature (except the real easy programming model) is that the games that you create can be run on Xbox 360. This will be a cool way to introduce programming for young people or just highlight some concepts in traditional (i.e. “boring” programming) via gaming. I know I’ll try anyway. Here is the link http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/default.aspx. Thanks Håkan for the tip

Last week was a real burnout, of a start for this year. Something booked for each day last week, which is to much, for me anyway. And yesterday me and Elin was in charge of the meeting at our Salvation army corps. That was a lot of stuff to hold in your head and to plan - i will never complain on a officer again. They have a lot of things to plan just for each Sunday. We also felt a great uncertainty the days before the meeting also. If that is something they go through each week i hope they know how to cope with it. Anyway - that week is over now and a much more normal week has started. And it starts with us going to Sturebadet for some Spa tonight. This is a “cheerer-uper” i got from Avega this autumn for some presentations and other stuff...

Just started to do some serious development with Windows Forms in Visual Studio 2005. A bug showed it’s ugly face. Here is how it goes: In your windows application project you create some usercontrols. They appear in the toolbox for you to use in all your forms. Everbody is happy! But when you put your windows applilcation project into a solution folder this doesn’t work anymore… This is confirmed by Microsoft and not corrected with Visual Studio 2005 SP1. There are some suggestions for workarounds and the one that i tried was to add toolbox items by referencing the output of my windows application. But then i got another problem, a warning something like: “The type [usercontrol] in ‘[my output]’ conflicts with the imported type [usercontrol] in ‘[my output]’” So - the solution to this problem was to suppress this warning (0436) in the application configuration (Properties->Build-tab->Errors and warnings). It’s...

Got a great tip yesterday about Salvo Audio yesterday. What a site! It contains tons of Salvation Army Brass band music, free as it seems! So if you ever wondered how it sounds, or if you are looking for <span id=”SPELLING_ERROR_0” classCD’s that is hard to find - take a look here. Great tip, Andreas! And keep a lookout for the Vasa Band (of Sweden) we try to upload some stuff there.

Yesterday was really intense! A complete day chasing a bug through the code and around servers. Felt so good to find it after about 7 hours of searching for me and a colleague. When we ran around the servers and checked configurations i found a dialog box in IIS 6.0 that i never saw before. I realize that this probably is embarrassing to yield but i do it anyway. There is a possibility to see and change the values of the web.config file from IIS in a much nicer GUI than the usual “Visual” Notepad. You can also change a lot of other configurations from this dialog. Right click your site or virtual directory and do Properties Choose the ASP.NET-tab Choose Edit-configuration Now the web.config for your application is opened and displayed (fancy that!), with possibility change the values. This is a much nicer presentation of all the values in...

Yesterday we finally had a long awaited meeting with the FutureForce for the Vasa Corps, my Salvation Army Church. I am so privilliged to be part of that group. They are some very nice and clever people and great things really happen when we get togheter. Like yesterday i thought i knew what was going to come out of the meeting but in the end something completely different but still very good came out instead. That felt so good - just think if i had known what we should decided before the meeting. That would have been so boring.

I caught this home video on the AFV-show a few days ago. From what i can understand the dog thinks it’s being attacked… by it’s own leg. Hilarious - just think how many times this have happened.

Today is the first “real” day of the year here in Sweden. A lot of public holidays and weekends is to an end and to be frankly it’s quite nice. Now it is back to normal with all people in the office and no more half days. I good old Marcus-style the first week is quite hectic also with engagements all days of the week, save Friday. Most of them (all when i think of it) will be fun and good to do. So - i hope that you also will have a good start on the new year!

I am just reading a great article which talks about how to use Scrum in a real project situation. It’s an really interesting and fun article. However I am not yet convinced - it seems to be a lot of “that is not so important”, “approximately” and “document if you think that you need it”. I still miss the use case, the technical specifications and the system architecture. Maybe if i read to the end i will be converted. With that said; the methodology contains some very interesting concepts and ideas, and i will most certainly incorporate elements already now.

Had great fun with this program at New Years Eve http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastar/ If you have songs you want to karaoke but UltraStar doesn’t support them you can easily (kinda :)) be created. Follow these instructions. I must confess that i have had some preconceived thoughts about singing karaoke - but i stand corrected. It’s really funny! Will be a standard-item on parties at my house from now on.