Found this page http://www.themusicpage.com/ that streams a lot of different contests and performances from brass brand all over the world - seems to be a bit a heavy on the down-under side but a lot of great stuff can be found there.

For example recordings from the English Nationals that took place this weekend, with Grimethorpe as the winning band.

I’ve been checking out a very interesting subject for my current project; WCF contract (and services) versioning.

The support for this is so much better in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) than for mere web services, that going to WCF could be worth the effort based on that parameter alone.

Here are some good tutorials, best practices and intros to the subject:

• Service versioning from Microsoft
• Best Practices: Data Contract versioning, also Microsoft
• Short but good article on the subject by Das Blonde, aka That Indigo Girl, aka Michele Leroux Bustamante
• Forward-Compatible Data Contracts

Well, that should get you started to handling versioning of your WCF contracts and services.

Yesterday was the second job of my “modelling career”. You remember the first don’t you?

This time it was also for Avega and for a short interview in the annual report. Like the last time I felt really confused about wearing make-up and doing poses. This time was in the public also - at Stureplan downtown Stockholm. It was the same photographer - and he is great!

And, I have to say it don’t I, the pictures are sure to be great. It didn’t feel cheap at all ;). I’ll be sure to post some of them here as soon as I am allowed.

I am celebrating the Swedish midsummer at Hyppeln in the Gothenburg archipelago. It’s perfect place to rest after the hectic period I’ve had for a while.

The project took quite good form during the last part of the week. Feels quite good. At Hyppeln there are almost always some good photo opportunities. I hope to take some photos to post here after I’ve returned.

Happy midsummer to you all!

Oh yeah - this is the 401 th posting of this blog. Who knew?

As you might have notices the activity on the blog has been quite low for a couple of weeks. This has to do with loads of stuff piling up at work and a fully booked private calender.

The new project, that I am involved in at work, is really fun but also one of the most dazed I’ve been in. We are throwing ideas out the window every other hour. Last week I was in a design meeting from Monday morning at nine to Thursday afternoon at three. Also - as always in between these hectic meetings it’s quite hard to have thing to be busy with all the time. Confusing but very true - it will be a great project when we get the form for it (and we are well under way…)

Private - there have been things to do almost every day for the last three weeks...

Today I found a nice little tool from Google that helps readers of this blog to understand the content of it in a better way.

The tool “simply” translates the page, http://www.marcusoft.net/ in this case, into the language of your choice. Pretty cool!

I found it when my father told me that some of the nuances of the blog were lost in their translation of my page. Let’s see if Google with do a better job.

So here you go - http://www.marcusoft.net/ in 25 languages! All thanks to Google

Yeah - that’s right.. you’ll find the tool to the right, just below my links.

Yesterday we heard the first chuckle and laughter from Albert… It was a very special feeling - for the first time you could sense his voice, how he will sound when he talks. Also it was very moving to see him so happy. He couldn’t keep it in…

What made him laugh so, you might wonder? I told him to cough and tried to show him how. Apparently that was hilarious and he couldn’t stop to laugh.

I’ll try to catch it on picture the next time and upload it here. You’ll have to do with this picture in the mean time.

Normally I don’t like to laugh at misfortune but this is just to much. From what I understand this is from a beauty pageant in USA. You know, one part of the competition is to show off a talent. And this unfortunate girl was told (I presume) to play the trumpet and dance.

Said and done - this clip is now a legendary clip on YouTube with about 3 million views. Here you go:

I don’t even put it in the music-category as you might understand…

This guy, David Werden, has been around on the net for quite a while. But now he has expanded his site with a blog and some other great stuff.

If you want to really dive into euphonium stuff then this is the place to be. And I want to, sometime.

Following a tip from Robban I’ve been checking out the Web Service Factory tool from Microsofts Patterns and Practices gang.

Robban and I were discussing the use of Contract First design in an upcoming project and I was interested to see if there were any good tools out there.

Well as it turns out there are good tools… but the one that seemed to be most complete was the Web Service Factory (horrendous name, by the way…). Also for us Microsoft-coders the PoP-gang is well-known and often delivers with great quality.

I have now been checking it out and it is good. Here is some of the stuff I’ve been checking out

• The home of Web Service Factory (and the Codeplex home)
• Introduction
• A video showing off some features

I am not yet convinced that we will go this...