I got to know about a cool tool for testing web services today. The web page that normally is created for you have the small disadvantage that you can’t invoke web services with complex types. Since most non-trivial web services use more types and string and int’s that is not very helpful.

This tool generates a GUI based on the WSDL that allows you to fill out the request object on and invoke the web services as it is expected to be called. You can even fill out headers, user name and password etc.

The only problem with is to find it. I’ve search all over the Internet for Web Service Studio but couldn’t find one single working link. The application was first created at GotDotNet but since that is no more the links to GotDotNet doesn’t work anymore. Also the version found at CodePlex is no good.

But now...

As we do at Marcusoft, our sister company Microsoft are serious enough to be able to laugh at ourselves. If now no one else does it I mean…:

http://preview.microsoft.com/video/videoDetails.aspx?video=5b0e3385-8f48-4dff-bf52-d8204285c0ff

I especially digged the programming face-off.

When we started to use the Conchango template for Team Foundation Server I immediately got a few questions about how the states flow for the different work items.

So - I know that you can get a kind of State diagram for work items but don’t know where to get it. Apparently it’s possible to see with the project template editor but I didn’t have that.

A short post in the Scrum for Team System forum later I got to know the answer. It’s possible to see via Team System Web Access. Here is how you do it:

• Open Team System Web Access
• Open a work item of the type you’re interested in (a sprint backlog item for example)
• In the tools-menu of the work item choose State Diagram (see picture)

Beware, though - those diagrams are not that easy to read / understand. But at least now...

Here is short test that at least I failed. Three times.

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Well … did you see it?

I have been quite frustrated with the Conchango Scrum TFS Template. And not so much because the template is no good - its just that I can’t get up and running to be able to validate if the template is any good. The reason for this is the lack of introduction documentation. There are some pages on their site, but it doesn’t show me any good ways on how to get started.

Now after my last post I’ve got a suggestion to mail the Conchango-guys and they actually got back to me pretty fast. And from them I got another lead to one of their forum (that you of course have to register to see, excuse my stupidity).

The post the pointed me to clarified a lot of stuff for me;

• the data showing in reports and burn downs is not online. It comes from a...

OK - this is actually the first time I ever find something like this on the net.

Top 10 reasons VB.NET is better than C#

This dude actually PREFER VB.NET over C#. He’s in for a bashing from about the whole level 4 (at least) at my customer…

Pretty lame list in my taste… There are at least 40 other things that i miss in VB.NET that exists in C#. And to stop a top ten list a #9 just confirms that this is squeezed out, just for the sake of it.

Well, well - he’ll probably grow up and learn to talk a adult language. Hopefully soon. Or he might stay on and play with Lego. ;)

OK - one of the new technologies that we are using in my really fun project is the Conchango Scrum template for TFS. This has already cause me to scream out loud so I will most certainly get back to it.

Let me get a couple of thing right first:

• I don’t think this is a good way of doing SCRUM. You miss a lot of the great interaction within the team when you need to do this kind of reporting.
• I think that the Conchango template is as good as it probably will get when you are forced to use tools like this. I do hope that it might even get slightly better…

So - now that my personal thoughts about this is out of the way - here is the problem I’ve encountered:

I have initiated a lot of Product Backlog...

I for the first time in my life downloaded a little tool, loved it and payed for it.

The name of the tool (and site is): All To MP3 Converter

This tool lets you convert different music formats from and to each other. This is as easy as to right click a file and choose convert. There is also a nice little GUI that does the same thing but lets you decide more details.

It opened up about 100 WMA-files that I could listen to since I am using [RockBox](http://www.rockbox.org/) on my H320 IRiver

Albert (or Abbe for short) is growing and in equal parts impressing and driving us mad.

This morning we’ve got the first ever laugh (a very short burst of hehehe) which was very rewarding. We’re not quite sure on what we did to make him laugh but he has been in a excellent mood all weekend, so we’ll keep trying sounds and sights and see if the laugh can be lured out of him again.

Above are some recent photos. I haven’t been able to catch a smile yet - but I am looking… watch this space

Steven Mead has premiered a new work for euphonium and symphony orchestra that seems to become a classic.

You can read about it here and also download it (1, 2 and 3 movements) and hear some contemporary euphonium playing at its best. I am humbled and will stay in my “neighbourhood” (Salvation Army music, Brass Band) for quite some time. It would be great fun to try something a bit easier with symphony orchestra…

Thank you Steven - very, very good indeed.