Typemock Isolator 6.2 released–now with TFS2010 build support

Typemock have recently released a new version of Isolator, 6.2. As well as the usual fixes and enhancements you would expect, this is the first version to support TFS 2010 team build out the box. Prior to this release Typemock supported MSBuild based TFS builds (2005/2008) but not the Windows Workflow based version in TFS 2010. The issue was that in TFS 2010 builds it was possible for build steps to run in parallel, maybe on different build agent PCs, so you could not guarantee that Typemock Isolator was intercepting the correct threads....

November 21, 2011 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Black Marble at the Abbey Dash in Leeds

We got a good turn out of Black Marble staff at this years Age UK Abbey Dash 10K in Leeds. We were amongst over 8000 runners who turned out for a cool and foggy Yorkshire Sunday morning run. We had a handicap race amongst ourselves, using a wisdom of crowds poll to estimate everyone target time. This was won by Steve Spencer our Development Director. He beat his target by 20 minutes....

November 21, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

More experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD

In my post experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD I said I thought the reason my Windows 7 Media Center was hanging at the “TV signal configuration” step was down to using mixed tuner cards. Well my second PCTV nanoStick T2.arrived yesterday so I was able to try the same process with a pair of identical USB T2 tuners. Guess what? I got the same problem! However, being USB devices it mean I could test the tuners on my laptop, a Lenovo W520 (Core i7, 16Gb, Windows 7)....

November 19, 2011 · 4 min · Richard Fennell

Access denied when running a command with InvokeProcess in a TFS team build

When you are trying to run a command line tool via the InvokeProcess activity in a TFS 2010 Team build you might see the somewhat confusing ‘Access denied’ error. There appears to be no more detail in the log. I have found that this is usually down to a type on the filename property of the activity. It should be set to something like “c:my toolstool.exe” but is actually set to...

November 18, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Black Marble events for the remainder of 2011 and into 2012

Whilst I have been on holiday Black Marble have announced some new events and this time they are not just in the UK, we have a couple in our new Dublin office location. The programme up to new year is: 17 Nov 2011 (Holiday Inn Leeds/Bradford) Am - [Delivering High Impact WebSites with SharePoint](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Delivering High Impact WebSites with SharePoint) SharePoint 2010 creates a dynamic and striking internet experience for your users....

November 14, 2011 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD

[Update: Also so More experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD] I have used a Windows Media Center as my only means to watch TV for about 5 years; upgrading over the years from XP to Vista and onto Windows 7. ![Picture of Windows Media Center](http://res1.windows.microsoft.com/resbox/en/Windows 7/main/9b3f877b-eaad-494e-a4ab-938576edf074_60.jpg “Picture of Windows Media Center”) I am a completely hooked on the ease of use, especially if you just want a means to watch and record Freeview (the UK free to air terrestrial service)....

November 14, 2011 · 5 min · Richard Fennell

No error detail when using VMPrep

When using VMPrep to setup a VM for use in a Lab Management system I got the error cross at the bottom of the dialog Not too much help, usually there is a link to the log file or a message. If you look in the log file in c:user[name]AppdataRoamingLMInstaller.txt you see that the path to the Patches folder is invalid. This is fixed by editing the VMPrepToolVMPrepToolLibraryApplications.XML file and correcting the path (which I had made a typo in)

October 26, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Speaking at a Black Marble event on TFS on Azure

I will be speaking at a [Black Marble event on the 30th November on the new TFS vNext announcements for TFS on Azure](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=TFS for the small team – hosted in the cloud). Though this event is target as hosted TFS, I will be doing demos of the new web based UI for agile project management in TFS that is common across all VNext versions. Hope to see you there

October 21, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Using Nuget and TFS Build 2010

At one of our recent events I was asked if I had any experience using Nuget within a TFS 2010 build. At the time I had not, but I thought it worth a look. For those of you who don’t know Nuget is a package manager that provides a developer with a way to manage assembly references in a project for assemblies that are not within their solution. It is most commonly used to manage external commonly used assemblies such a nHibernate or JQuery but you can also use it manage your own internal shared libraries....

October 17, 2011 · 4 min · Richard Fennell

You can still sign up for DDDNorth tomorrow

Registration is still open for tomorrow’s event so if your weekend has just become free why not come along?

October 7, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell