Interesting post from Ben Hall on the role of the tester, something I have posted on in the past. As Ben asks what are other people views?

I have got into reading books off my HTC smart phone using the Microsoft Reader. It means you always have a book with you (as well as a web browser, blog writer, phone etc…..) The problem has been getting books in a suitable format, yes I know that you can buy electronic books but there are so many out of copyright classic’s I have not read yet. You can download many from Project Gutenberg (and convert them to the right format using the add-in for Word) so why buy newer ones? ...

Thanks to everyone who attended my session on DataDude in Edinburgh yesterday. I hope you found it useful. For those based in Yorkshire I will be doing the same session for the local SQL user group on the 16th July. The slides I used yesterday were virtually identical to the ones I used at SQLBits II and can be found on our server. The only major change was a bit about yesterdays announcement of the GDR release that I wrote on the train up after watching the Channel9 video - but Gert’s blog is a better source information for this. ...

Typical I am giving a session on VS2008 DataDude tomorrow and Microsoft go and release a new version! See Gert Drapers blog for the full details or Channel 9 for a video which I will be watch in the train tomorrow I guess.

I am speaking at the Scottish SQL user group on Wednesday about VS2008 for DB Professionals. Hope to see you there.

There has been a good deal of discussion on Blogs and Forums as to if there is a need for a developer edition of Sharepoint (WSS3.0) so you can develop against it under Vista. Historically your options were: Run W2K3 on your client PC - licensing issues and maybe drivers if using a laptop Do all development in a VPC (or VMware) - is be a bit slow. Now some people argue the separation between client and server this causes is good - and it is a strong argument. However I want to get the best performance out of my development PC, so a WSS3.0 on Vista would be really useful to me. I know it won’t address all my development issues (I will still need a VPC from time to time) but it will do 90% of my day to day work and run at least 50% faster than a VPC. ...

I forgot to say in the last post the thing I noticed most about Spain - the quality of the roads and the courtesy of the drivers. Both excellent. As a cyclist in the UK I am used to pot-holes and being cut up all the time. None of this is Spain, drivers seem happy to wait for cycles and overtake safely giving loads of room. All this on super smooth roads. ...

I have had a week off on holiday at a triathlon club training camp (some holiday some might say, 26 hours of training sessions in 6 days). We were staying at Idle Breaks just outside Malaga. A location which I cannot recommend highly enough, great location, facilities, food and owners. However, I have to say you do get some strange looks as you get ready for a swim in the Mediterranean. ...

Yesterday we had the first drop of the VS2008 SP1 Beta, well there is also one for TFS2008. As with the main VS2008 service pack there are loads of fixes and some new features. Support for Windows Server 2008. Support for SQL Server Codename Katmai CTP6. The Add to Source Control dialogs have been improved to be easier to use and more scalable. Drag & Drop from Windows Explorer to add to Source Control. Support for Version control operations on files not in bound solutions. Right-click access to set Working Folder/Cloak of folders from within Source Control Explorer. Check in date/time column in Source Control Explorer. Editable path field for the Source Control Explorer. Email work items and queries to someone. A new API to download files to a stream. Links to Team System Web Access pages from notifications. Improvements to the number of projects per server. Performance and scale improvements. Improvements to the VSS converter to make it much more robust. Support for creating Team Projects from the command line. Given my experiences with the VS2008 Beta I think I will be waiting for the real release before I put this near our main systems. As with any system critical beta only play with them in a sandbox! ...

14 May UPDATE - Due t illness the speaker cannot make it , so this session is being rescheduled to next month. Check the XP Club site for what is on in its place Remember tomorrow is monthly meeting of the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds. The session is by Chris Mills a developer relations manager for development for the Opera Browser.