The Fog of Consulting

I am sitting on the sixth floor of the Rydges South Park hotel in Adelaide, on the corner of South Terrace and two other roads. I’ve been brought to Adelaide by a consulting engagement where the client would like me to perform a code and architecture review of an application that they recently released.

As I look out over the South Park my view is obscured by the fog which is kind of like consulting because you don’t really know until you get there what your day is going to look like or how you are going to help the client tackle the problems that they present to you.

TFS Now has been announced!

Well, it has been done. I finally put the first post up on the TFS Now blog announcing, well, TFS Now, a hosted TFS service offered by Readify. Keep an eye on the blog (feed) as we reveal the features of the service over the coming weeks and months.

Farewell Trackballs

I’ve been a long time track ball user. In fact I hate using mice, especially ones with cables, or ones with low batteries that never seem to work so well. Unfortunately I lost my last trackball at Tech.Ed 2005 on the Gold Coast and haven’t been able to find a replacement.

It was a Microsoft Trackball and my hopes of getting it replaced were dashed when I went to the Microsoft Company Store in Seattle earlier this year, and they no longer stocked them. That means that the sole remaining provider of trackballs in the market is Logitech.

Unfortunately the precise shape of the trackball matters and I’m not comfortable enough with any of the current Logitech designs to invest the money.

This general apathy for the current trackball designs, and my need to have a pointing device I can use to easily drive presentations drove me to purchase the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 (gotta love those product names).

So far I’ve been generally impressed with the device, it is fairly accurate for a mouse. The real test is how well it works during a presentation as I stomp around the stage (I tend to walk around a little bit - maybe I should use a Wii controller as a pointer :P).

Fixing Team Project Creation issues after TFS migration.

For the last two hours I’ve been battling with a side effect from a Team Project migration. I actually did a hardware and domain move in one go (not really documented) and its been a bit hairy.

The main issue I came across was after I had everything setup I couldn’t create a new team project because it failed whilst trying to create the portal site.

Of course, because I was in undocumented territory I was making do with what the TFS team provided. In their instructions they say that you need to hook up the STS_Content_TFS database, however in my installation it was already there (because I am doing a 2 in 1 move presumably). Anyway, I decided not to delete and re-add it, and I simply went on to the next step after confirming that the settings they requested were the same.

Well it turns out that in the process of adding the STS_Content_TFS database it does some processing around correctly hooking up the sites for URL mapping (this is what I observed anyway).

I ended up going in and removing the content database setup and redoing it and suddenly everything started working. Phew!

Now I just need to decide whether I want to recommend this approach to the client. While everything moved across the implications of a domain move on a running development team are pretty serious I feel.

Who needs and iPhone? (dot-com)

Aaron Saikovski sent this link around the internal mailing list yesterday. It is for a site called “whoneedsandiphone.com” and the about page tells the story of someone who likes the iPhone interface but really wants that on their Windows Mobile device.

As a Windows Mobile device user, I am happy with the power of the device and all its capabilities (3G etc), however the UI does need some work. It is going to be interesting to see where this project goes, but, perhaps more importantly where Microsoft takes their mobile platform in the future!

Who is going to the Tech.Ed Influencer Party?

Jeff Wharton has asked me to help getting the word out to MVP’s and MCT’s who happen to be attending Tech.Ed 2007 (Australian Edition) about an”Influencer Party“.

I am, and its not just because I’m a self obsessed ego-maniac. I’m looking forward to catching up with some of the usual suspects who I only ever get to see once a year - should be good!

If you are up for it, head on over to Wardy IT to register.

Robert Scobe reads feeds the same way I do.

I watched this video up on the Google Reader blog where they were talking to Robert Scoble about how he uses Google Reader to process all the feeds that he does each day. We pretty much work the same way in that regard, I find that I have too much to read and not enough time so I need to skim through and tag the things that I am interested in.

Today I just cut over to using Google Reader to see how it works out or me, until now I was using Bloglines which is good but it is just too slow with the number of feeds that I have, and now that I am back on high speed Internet most of the time I can afford to use more bytes on the wire (not a cost thing, a time thing once again).

So far the experience has been pretty good and I am sure that long time users like Darren Neimke are going to give me a bit of a ribbing when they see that I have finally cut over to using it.

What am I going to do in the next 6 months to be a better developer?

Looks like I just got tagged by Daniel Moth. The meme that is being spread is about what I am going to do over the next 6 months to be a better developer. Hrm, interesting.

I must admit that I’ve been struggling to find a new passion over the past twelve months. The work that I’ve been doing with Team Foundation Server has been pretty much all consuming.

As I’ve started to surface from this self imposed exile to “tools land” I’m finding that my thoughts are turning to the users of the software that we create as I try to understand their motivations and how we can design software that meets their needs.

In my next six months as a developer I am going to keep up to date on the latest around of Microsoft developer technologies but I am going to change how I apply them such that the maximum benefit can be realised for the end users. In other words I’m going to be less concerned with architectural purity and more concerned with listening to the people that matter most!

So - who am I going to tag:

• Paul Stovell
• Daniel Crowley-Wilson
• Omar Besiso
• Ducas Francis

You’re it!

JasJar Review

Paul Glavich, world renowned author has also happens to have a JasJar like me. He has posted up a review, and while I acknowledge some of the short comings I find that the good stuff is more important to me so I’ll stay with this kind of form factor.

The Ultimate will probably be my next device, specifically the 7150.

DEV316: Build Server Virtualisation

I was reading this post by Jeff Wharton about the launch of the CommNet site for Tech.Ed 2007 down here in Australia. To be honest I am feeling a little bit guilty because Dave Glover asked for my presentation abstract ages ago and I didn’t send it to him. Anyway, here it is.

Abstract

The DEV316 session is all about getting the most out of your Team Foundation Server investment with a special focus on build and deployment automation with a virtualisation twist. In this session Mitch will show how to use the following tools together:

• Team Foundation Server
• Team Build
• Virtual Server
• TFS Integrator
• TFS Deployer
• TFS Build Virtualiser
• TFS Build Progression Guardian

This session is a must for build masters who need to manage complex build requirements and who are constrained by how much computer resources they can throw at the problem.