Yesterday we had a coffee with two of our best friends that are becoming parents in a few days… Really exciting and it made me ponder for a while; How is it that when you met some parents and children it makes you feel like you never want to get children of your own and others have the quite opposite effect. The first group of parents you all know - it’s the ones walking three baby carries on a line, taking forever to order in McDonald’s and still needs to go there on rush hour and meeting for a mum-coffee (6 mums also) in the small coffeeshop on the corner and still demanding the room at the far end, children running around. The other group is like my friends; the children is a wonderful enrichment to their life but the don’t become hardcore-parents from the same day they knew they...

For the first time BBC has included a complete listening of a winning performance on the show Listen to the band… It’s Grimethorpe playing the Les Francs Juges by Berlioz in arrangement of Frank Wright. Great stuff and i always enjoy hearing the cheering at the end of a great performance. Listen for your self This is also a good example on how hard some of the “easy” pieces is. Since the standard required to win on a “easy” piece will go up every mistake will count and that in itself will maybe create more nervousity … Well - this is a great performance.

This might be an obvious thing for some but i have missed its full potential for a while. And thank You Stefan for pointing it out to me. There is a new feature in Visual Studio 2005 called Solution Folders. These are only a structure-thing and does not effect the namespace or naming of the things in it. The primary use for Solution Folders was probably to hold things common for the whole solution, like snk-files, build-scripts etc. But another very nice feature is the ability to structure projects within the solution. Say that You have a number of projects (see top picutres to the left). Often You will only be in one project at the time and also they can be quite hard to get an overview of. So by simply introducing some solution folders i’ve got an ordered view of my projects, in the calling order of the...

Ran into an old “friend” compiler error… This error - actual warning, but if you like i have “all errors as warnings” this will stop you in your steps - will occur in Visual Studio 2005 when you point to a snk-file from the AssemblyInfo-file. Since this was the way to refer to snk-files in VS2003 this will probably happen to you on your first try. There are a lot of people that has written how to solve this, for example http://davidkean.net/archive/2005/08/25/1162.aspx The solution is to point to the key-file from the properties of the project. However this has to be done by editing the projectfile in a text editor. The article above gives instructions on how to do that. ” To do this, following these instructions: Open the project file (.csproj for C# or .vbproj for VB) in a text editor Look for the <AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile> attribute within the first...

Got a new CD this weekend, Paul Anka - Rock Swings. This is so good! And Mr Anka sings great - i can’t believe his over 70 years old. On the CD he (or someone) has put together some hits from the Rock and Pop world from the last two decades and turned them into Big Band pieces. They are all executed in a way that make you feel that this is the way the song was supposed to sound. I love it. I realize that some people probably would knock me out for saying so but i really like this. This is one of those recordings that could (and would) have been destroyed if it wasn’t so great musicians, great arrangements etc. Songs like “Jump”, van Halen and “Smells like a teen spirit”, Nivrana would probably make some fans cry… Also mr Anka is a very funny name in...

Today it’s the day before a holiday in Sweden. That means that most people either don’t work at all or that they work half the day. But …. you’ve guessed it. As a consultant those rules don’t apply. We don’t work half days which i think is a good think - but what i don’t think is a good thing is to be left all alone in the office. I am struggling to keep the tempo up. Above

This week i found out that i good friend of mine is dying in cancer. He has battled one form of cancer during the spring and summer - and actually won over it. So in late august i spoke to him and there were no signs of the cancer. A real miracle if you ask me, because he wasn’t given any good chances. But all of a sudden, a week ago, the cancer came back - this time in the brain and in a place where nothing can be done. Cancer really is a terrible decease - it seems to be able to hunt you down even after you think that you have beaten it. In a way it becomes more than a decease, it’s almost as something with a mind of it’s own. I didn’t think i could feel hatred for a decease but i do. I am angry...

Today, and most of all yesterday was the first snowstorm of the winter in the Stockholm-area. Every, i’m saying every, year we miss this. First the trains is stopped by falling leafs and then, what do you know, snow? Here in Sweden? How can it happen? people not being able to get home, all busses in the Stockholm area stopped etc) but then again we knew about this storm for about 2 weeks. Maybe if the busses have had winter tires on, or all other vehicles for tonight). Anyway, this gets us each year and i am not expecting any co-workers until 10 o’clock today.

Read a great article about performance in ASP.NET applications. However what really caught my eye was the sidebar about performance myths. Read it here. Some of those were new to me and some old, which but i have so many times tried to explain to customers (such the one about different speed on VB.NET and C#-code). So nice to have a place to point to…

Today Avega, the company who i work for, has fixed some problems so we finally can use the fat Outlook client! YEES! Fat client rules!