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At the XP Club last night I was pointed at a web site that contains a very strange guide to Ruby ”Why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby”. This is one of strangest language books I have read in a while, probably since “Mr Bunny’s Guide to Active X”, which was described in its own blurb… “This is the first technology book by Carlton Egremont III, author of numerous lengthy grocery lists (unpublished), one or two letters to his mom (unsent), and a doodle on page 117 of the Rochester Public Library’s copy of Moby Dick (overdue). Mr. Bunny’s Guide to ActiveX makes a lovely gift for the nerd who has everything, and is perfect for propping up uneven table legs. For the high-tech parent there is simply no better antidote to yet another bedtime reading of “The Velveteen Rabbit” or the “OLE 2 Programmer’s Reference”. Just like Carlton, you and your children will come to believe in a talking bunny, a befuddled farmer, and a technology called ActiveX. “ ...

I am not a fan of blog posts that are just a repeat of an announcement on other blogs, but in this case I think it is worth noting that the TFS October 2008 Release of the Power Toys are out. The power toys are always interesting but the point of note here is the new shell integration for TFS. This means you can check in/out from Windows Explorer, thus in effect making it far easier to integrate third party products with TFS, like Dreamweaver or Expression Blend (OK not third party but has no TFS integration until version 3). ...

Next weeks meeting is at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds as usual at 7pm. It is going to be group discussion sort of session, the subjects being: Daniel Drozdzewski is going to present the future of the computing (based on the article read in recent New Scientist about processors built on logic gates utilising the chaos phenomenon) plus moderated conversation about design in software projects plus the usual gossip from the industry. ...

Whist at PDC and the VBug conference I have heard a a good deal of chat over the future of paying for conferences and user groups. This is in the light of all the PDC sessions being available on Channel9 in under 24 hours and that the content at the Vbug conference is also available at free events like DDD. The question boils down to can a person or company justify paying a good few thousand Pounds, Euro or Dollars to fly half way round the world when they could see the same content at home? In my previous post on the PDC I suggested it was worth it for the networking, and I still think this is so. However, I have heard an interesting slant on this from more than one person; this is go to the city were the conference is but not to the actual conference; just taking in the parties and maybe watching content via the Internet where available. ...

Since we added the new themes to our community server we have not been getting any updates on the Blogs control panel as to the number of times a post has been viewed (but the aggregate views via RSS are incremented OK) After a bit of digging it seems that we missing the IncrementViewCount flag on the in the post.aspx file. It should be as shown below. <CSBlog:WeblogPostData Property=“FormattedBody” runat=“server” IncrementViewCount=“true” /> ...

You can find the slides for my Vbug sessions on the [Black Marble web site](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference Papers). I hope those you attended found it useful.

I am down in Reading for the VBug conference where I am speaking on TFS tomorrow. Whilst in the bar chatting to Roy Osherove from Typemock, the keynote speaker for the conference, he asked if I had looked at the Sharepoint patterns and practices document that details using Typemock Isolator for unit testing in Sharepoint. On a first look it seems very interesting; as usual at this point I just wonder how I missed the announcement of this document last month! Is is just me or does everyone struggle to keep up with the the blogs and site you should read? ...

Robert blogged about the new beta release of the patterns & practices Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance document. I have had a chance to do a quick read now and I have to say I am impressed. If nothing else it gives great comparative look at waterfall and agile methods for delivery, and a review of many types of acceptance testing. As with many of the p&p documents it is not exhaustive in what it covers, but what it does give is an excellent and detailed starting point for you to make the decisions that are right for your project. It does not give all the answers just most of the right questions. ...

So back home now after a reasonable journey back from LA all things considered; so I have had a bit of time to reflect, was the PDC good? Well I think I enjoyed my previous PDC in 2005 more, your first time always sticks in your memory. I think that this might be due to the fact that at the 2005 PDC LINQ was announced and it was a real left field thing, nobody seemed to see it coming. Due to the prior announcements (leaks) there was nothing that was not expected at this years PDC. ...

While I was at the PDC I missed the announcement that the release candidate for Database Edition was made, I was not following blogs too much. You can find all the download links for the RTM at Gert Drapers Blog, you can also see his PDC session where he made the announcement. Why did I miss the session you might ask? well I was in Agile development with Team System session – some big improvement in Office integration with TFS ...