Posts

I have been trying to track down a performance problem today on an ASP.NET MVC. It all turned out to be down to an incorrect connection string in a nLog.config file for logging to a SQL DB. As soon as I commented out the Db target for nLog my login to the web site was virtually instant as opposed to taking 30 seconds (what i assume is a SQL timeout) I had suspected a problem with the logged as I was not seeing anything in DebugView, but it all took a while to track down as i did not seem to get any logging output. ...

It seems that the EPG problem with Media Center has been fixed by Microsoft. The are publishing the EPG data again, so we don’t have to rely on the 7 day guide embedded within the TV signal. It is interesting to see the happy MCE users coming out the wood work on The Register’s comments section. We MCE users might not be too numerous, but the people who use it really seem to like it. However, after reading the comments I should have a look at XBMC too as it now has PVR features. Though it does look a bit more complex too setup! ...

Signal Strength Since upgrading my Media Center PC to Windows 8, on the same hardware, I have seen that it seems to perform better that on Windows 7. However some channels seem to be dropping out, the usual digital pixilation or a message saying no signal (but often with some audio). As I had not changed any hardware I though this strange, but I have always seemed to have a borderline signal strength even though I can see my local terrestrial transmitter, it is about 15 miles away in direct line of sight. After a bit of reading on the subject I found that my signal booster may be the issue, amplifying the noise and not the signal (seems you should only use masthead amps for digital). This was a hangover from my old flat with an awful signal. Once this was removed from the system my problems appear to have gone away. However, as I did not see the issue all the time I will wait a while before declaring it a complete success. ...

With TFS lab management you can build environments from stored VM and VM templates stored in an SCVMM library or from VMs running on a Hyper-V host within your lab infrastructure. This second form is what used to be called composing an environment in TFS 2010. Recently when I tried to compose an environment I had a problem. After selecting the running VM inside the new environment wizard I got the red star that shows an error in the machine properties ...

December’s Agile Yorkshire, on the Tuesday, 11 December 2012, will be Lightening Talks covering a range of agile topics and be held at a new venue The Round Foundry Media Centre. Submissions for Lightening Talks are still arriving so the precise agenda may change but proposed topics included: Visual agile assessment for improvement Continuous Integration Agile Interviewing Difficult conversations Time management Refactoring using the Mikado Method PowerShell Agile testing Burn up charts Multi-team, multiple kanban board problems. For more details and registration see the event site ...

Updated 4th December 2012 – Roku setup I have been a happy user of Windows Media Center since (even) XP. I have found it reasonably stable and more importantly it has a nice user interface compared to most pvr/set-top boxes I have owned. So as my Windows 7 based system has been stable for just over a year (since a move to HD tuners prompted by a motherboard failure) I thought it high time to destabilise it with an upgrade to Windows 8. What actually prompted this was Robert had upgraded his Media Center which is also based on similar Acer Revo (Intel Atom) hardware to mine and he had found the general performance much improved. The Atom CPU is only just up to the job, but I do like the Revo as it is a nice low wattage package for Media Center ...

For those who attended Black Marble’s event today I mentioned there was an upcoming TFS and Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. Well I was out of date whilst talking, it had already been released overnight. See Brian Harry’s blog for details and Grant Holiday’s blogs for a nice explanation of the download options.

It was bound to happen in the end, the wrong environment got deleted on our TFS Lab Management instance. The usual selection of rushing, minor mistakes, misunderstandings and not reading the final dialog properly and BANG you get that sinking feeling as you see the wrong set of VMs being deleted. Well this happened yesterday, so was there anything that can be done? Luckily the answer is yes, if you are quick. ...

A common problem with getting software developed is the needing to get everyone aiming for the same goal. This too often gets lost in the development process; the real goal of the business is not communicated to the development team. It maybe that the goal professed by the business is not the one they even really want, but their current viewpoint obscures the true goal. In this new book from Gojko Adzic provides a excellent introduction to Impact Mapping as a tool to help address this problem. It describes using workshops and simple graphical tools as a way to tackle this problem of keeping an eye on the true goal. These are tools to use well before starting down the user story/ALM path to make sure the goal of your project is sound, known and measurable. ...

Another good turn out this year for the Age UK Abbey Dash 10K in Leeds. Over 9000 runners this year, certainly seemed much busier than previous years. Again Black Marble had staff members running. As with last year we did a wisdom of crowds based handicap race for the impressive Black Marble trophy (we all estimate each others expected times, the winner is who beats mean estimate the most). This year there was a tie to the second between Jon and Becky, who are as we speak negotiating over trophy sharing for the next year. ...