A few days ago I got the regular ‘there is a new version of seesmic’ message. So I pressed update and got the less than helpful message After a quick search on the web I found the log files are in C:Users[username]DocumentsSeesmicSeesmic Desktop 2Logs, why that cannot be listed on the error dialog I don’t know!. Unfortunately there was nothing obvious in the log, just a list of plug-ins it loaded. So I went back and tried the upgrade again, reading the release notes (I know a strange idea) and noticed that it mentioned a specific version of Silverlight. A quick check of this showed I was not up to date, so I went to http://www.microsoftr.com/silverlight and ran the installer, which updated my install (I would have expected Windows Update to have done this). ...

Just spent an interesting hour trying to connect a Netgear WG111v2 USB WiFi Dongle to Netgear (Sky Branded) DG834GT router. They are both from the same manufacturer so you would they would work together! This router was setup with its default Sky settings so WiFi was setup as WPA. I installed the WG111 onto an XP laptop installed the newly downloaded V 5.1.1308 (26 Dec 2007) drivers and tried to connect. The router was spotted without problems and I was prompted to enter my WPA password, which was printed onto the bottom of the router (I had logged in to router via the web admin console to check this was correct). After what seemed like a long delay I was left not corrected to the router, but with no obvious error. ...

February’s Agile Yorkshire is on the 8th. The session will be given by Gojko Adzic on ’Long term value of acceptance tests’ I have seen Gojko speak at a number of events, including Agile Yorkshire, he is always an engaging speaker so well worth the effort to attend. I know I am going to give it a go, but have been really struggling to make Agile Yorkshire as Tuesday nights are a bit busy of late. My diary is just too full! ...

I was busy for the few minutes that the DDD9 registration was open, so did not manage to get on the attendee list, but I have been try to keep an eye on that is going on at Twitter. The good news is that there are more DDD events on the way DDD Belfast - March 2011 DDD Scotland - May 7th 2011 Session submissions are open for Scotland, I have submitted on writing custom build activities for TFS 2010. It is great experience presenting and attending at these events, I really recommend you give both a try. ...

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterdays Black Marble event ‘Enabling agile development with cool tools’, both Gary Short’s and my sessions seemed well received. I was asked if my slides would be available anywhere, well the answer is no. The reason for this is that my session was mostly demo driven, so the slides just set the scene. After a bit of thought, a quick blog post seems a better option; so this post covers the same basic points as the session. If you are interested in any of the products I would urge you to download them and give them a go. Many are free and all have at least a free fully functional evaluation edition. ...

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterdays Black Marble event ‘Enabling agile development with cool tools’, both Gary Short’s and my sessions seemed well received. I was asked if my slides would be available anywhere, well the answer is no. The reason for this is that my session was mostly demo driven, so the slides just set the scene. After a bit of thought, a quick blog post seems a better option; so this post covers the same basic points as the session. If you are interested in any of the products I would urge you to download them and give them a go. Many are free and all have at least a free fully functional evaluation edition. ...

After much delay I have at last got our internal Lab Management running on ‘real’ hardware as opposed to it’s initial home on a demo rig PC. We have just been too busy to find the time to reconfigure and redeploy our own kit! You know how it is ‘a plumber’s house is full of drippy taps’. That said I of course still want more hardware, as soon as you start to build up test environments you eat Hyper-V server resources very quickly; memory seems to be my most pressing current limitation on how much I can run at the same time. ...

I have spent today preparing my presentation and demos for the Black Marble event next week [Enabling Agile Development with Cool Tools](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Enabling Agile Development with Cool Tools). I will be presenting with Gary Short of DevExpress. He is going to be talking about refactoring under the intriguing title ‘How to Eat an Elephant’. My session will be on the tools to aid the project management side of the ALM process. Specifically the tools available for TFS 2010 both those ‘out the box’ and from third party vendors. I only have a hour slot, so I have had to be selective as there are may ‘cool tools’ to choose from. So after some thought I have chosen ...

Whist trying to make use of a custom build activity I got the error TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition Tfsdemo1Candy: Cannot create unknown type ‘{clr-namespace:TfsBuildExtensions.Activities.CodeQuality;assembly=TfsBuildExtensions.Activities.StyleCop}StyleCop’ This occurred when the TFS 2010 build controller tried to parse the build process .XAML at the start of the build process. A check of all the logs gave no other information other than this error message, nothing else appeared to have occurred. ...

I asked the question a while ago if I should buy a Kindle? I still think that new books are too expensive, but as there are loads of out of copyright books available for the platform so I did not hesitate to download the Windows Phone 7 Kindle app today. You never know when you need something to read and what could be better to dip into than a bit of Sherlock Holmes? ...