Martin Woodward

I've just posted the latest installment of Radio TFS.  I'm actually a show behind on editing so expect to see episode 6 up soon.  However, in episode 5 Paul, Mickey and I attempt to answer some of the common questions we hear people ask about Team System including:

• What is Team System?
• Which edition is right for me?
• Why can't I find Team Foundation Server on MSDN?
• What is Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition?
• Is VSTS 2005 compatible with TFS 2008?
• Why can't I see Team Foundation Server when I install Team Suite?
• What are my options for migrating from my old system(s) to TFS?
• Can I use TFS with VB6, .NET 1.1, Eclipse etc?
• What is a Team Project - how should it be scoped?
• I deleted a file locally, I do a "Get Latest" and TFS doesn't download it - why?

As well as the usual sprinkling of tangents along the way.

Click here for a direct link to this episode.

If you have any questions that you would like answered, or if you have any comments and feedback about the show then please contact us at radiotfs@gmail.com or visit the website at http://radiotfs.com for quick links to subscribe to the feed in iTunes, Zune etc.

I've just posted the fourth episode of Radio TFS.  In this episode Paul and Mickey talk about Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition while I ask dumb questions and go off on tangents.  Despite this, it is actually one of our better episodes to date.  So if you are interested and have a spare 35 minutes during a commute or something then please take a listen and let us know what you think.

Click here for a direct link to the show.

Don't forget to subscribe in iTunes, or subscribe in Zune if you have either of those applications installed.

I swear, one day I'll learn.  Despite having promised myself to steer clear of the initial release of any Windows version of iTunes because they are consistently broke in some pretty severe ways - I read this report on Engadget and decided to upgrade thinking that they may finally haved solved the issues I have been having.  (My main one being that I could consistently crash iTunes on any PC by downloading a podcast and pressing the "pause" button during the download).

However, iTunes 7.6 gave me a great new issue - iTunes wouldn't close.  Every time I tried to close it (by pressing the X button, or doing File, Close) it would freeze and start consuming as much of my CPU as possible - the only way to get rid of it was to kill the process in Task Manager.

Anyway - after a bit of playing, I eventually figured out that this was something wrong with how they are calling Bonjour.  iTunes has the ability to listen for other shared libraries and to share your own library - which is something I had enabled so that I could stream stuff off my laptop onto the Mac Mini and vice-versa.  It does this using Apple's Bonjour service.

On my system, the Bonjour service is installed under the catchy name of

"##Id_String1.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762##"

Very user friendly - I think I'll start using GUID's for all my user interfaces :-).  Anyway.  If I stop this service, I can close iTunes down happily.  It will even now let me go into the preferences in iTunes and disable sharing - something that was locking up iTunes 7.6 before (and what made me suspect the Bonjour integration).

Therefore - if you are having the same problems as me, right click on My Computer and select Manage.  Then go to Services and Applications, Services, select "##Id_String1.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762##" and press "Stop".  Then right click, select properties and change the Start-up type from "Automatic" to "Disabled".

This obviously removes the sharing capabilities - but at least it allows you to sync your iPod.  When I finally got iTunes 7.6 to actually work a little bit, I was unsurprised to see that they have still not fixed the bug with the download manager, so if you attempt to do anything to a downloading purchase, podcast or whatever then it will still crash iTunes and will consume most of the available CPU while downloading.  Sigh.

People go on about iPod + iTunes + Store being this all time great combination.  I'll admit that I love my iPod, and if/when one comes out with similar capabilities to the iPhone player I'll be buying it.  However, I don't think I'm being controversial here when I say that iTunes on Windows really sucks.

It's not just the fact that the interface is alien to the OS in which it is running, or the fact that the much vaunted coverflow is much less "scrolling like butter" more "scrolls like screeching fingernails on a chalkboard".  It's not even the fact that it is a highly intrusive install, requiring QuickTime and making it take over more default file types than it should.  It's just the fact that it is really buggy, has a habit of totally crashing (especially when I am trying to access the iTunes store), occasionally trashes it's own library xml file that it requires for some reason and is a complete resource hog.  The software sucks.

What is worse is that the initial release of an iTunes version *always* sucks.  This is a universal given.  Recently 7.3 was pushed out the door to enable the iPhone on June 29th.  On July 11th they released a new version 7.3.1 - the release notes? iTunes 7.3.1 fixes a minor problem with accessing the iTune library.  Well, at least they've hopefully fixed that one then.  But seriously - every time a new version of iTunes is released, a bug fix release follows shortly after for some pretty easy to spot regression.

I'm not just ranting because I'm hacked off at having to go through another install and then clean up (to fix all the defaults that QuickTime has taken over), or the fact that they repeated exhibit the same quality mistakes when releasing software.  It is the fact that you'd think the quality of iTunes on Windows would be really important to their overall business model.  You'd think that iTunes should be one huge billboard for them on their switching campaign?

I'm guessing that the iTunes team is a pretty small one at Apple.  I'm guessing the Windows team is possibly the poorer cousins of the rest of the development.  I wish they would spend a little bit more effort on their Windows releases.

Rant over.  I'm about to head over to Teamprise HQ this weekend involving plenty of flying time, hence why was so annoyed this morning when I found all my podcast subscriptions had been lost.  Sigh.

Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell about Source Control and Continuous Integration - this was recorded for DotNetRocks and the show is now available for you to enjoy.

As Eric has mentioned, I've been a fan of DNR for a while.  In fact, back in November 2004 when I used to burn the shows onto CD (in fact it was 2-CD's per episode back then), Carl mentioned that he was going to start making the show available as a "podcast" and it was because of this that I ended up purchasing my first iPod.

Having been a long time listener it was really interesting to see how well organised the recording sessions are, and also how well edited it is afterwards.  I've always thought that the PWOP podcasts have great sound quality, but only after being present during the actual recording do I understand all the tweaking that they do to take out fluffs / people overlapping when they talk etc (interupting people as they talk is a really annoying habit of mine).  Thanks again to Carl and Richard for having me on the show and to Eric for getting me invited - I hope that people find it moderately interesting.

Update: 17.15  Fixed now, nothing to see here.  Move along.

As of the time of writing, all the BBC Podcasts have broke.  Attempting to access the link gives a 404 error (reported as "The URL xxx could not be found on the server" in iTunes)  This is a bit of a bummer for me as I am about to get in my car and drive down to Dublin ready for the big Vista launch event tomorrow with Neil Armstrong - yes that one.

The problem is that the URL's that everyone is currently using are in the format:-

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/StationName/ProgramName/rss.xml

After a bit of playing, I discovered that I can access the feed from the following location (with the rmhttp bit removed):-

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/downloadtrial/StationName/ProgramName/rss.xml

However, all the links in the feed are broke, because they talk to the following URL's for file download:-

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/StationName/ProgramName/EpisodeName.mp3

Again, if you *really* want the content then you can remove the rmhttp bit of the URL and download it manually, i.e. the above would become:-

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/downloadtrial/StationName/ProgramName/EpisodeName.mp3

I dare say that Auntie is working on a fix, however it looks like I'll have to listen to back issues on the way down - getting the content sync with iTunes via a manual download is just too much work (another reason for me to switch MP3 players away from the iPod/iTunes paring, a move that I am strongly considering)

I've used my old iPod Mini nearly every day for 2 years (since I discovered Podcasting for the first time).  Tomorrow I have a rather long car journey ahead of me and I have been saving up a few episodes of .NET Rocks, Slacker Astronomy, In Business and a new episode of Today in Parliament for the trip.  However - when I tried to switch on my iPod for my evening walk last night it just wasn't playing.  I figured that the battery had finally given up the ghost after all those recharge cycles - while a little annoyed that I was going to have to go back to the radio for my long car journey, I wasn't that unhappy as it meant I now had an excuse to get a brand new iPod.

However, this morning I did a bit of digging around and eventually stumbled on the following tip from the Apple Site:-

Slide the Hold switch and check the screen.
If your iPod is frozen or won't turn on, connect your iPod to your computer, then press and hold the "Menu" and "Select" buttons simultaneously for 10 seconds to reset the iPod

Worked just fine for me, my iPod is now charging from the mains adapter and looks set to last me a while longer - however I think I might treat myself to a new MP3 player of some sort soon - but now I can take my time researching :-)

I recently did an interview for Port 25 (the website for Microsoft’s Open Source Lab).  If you would like to listen to the podcast then it is now available here.

The interview was recorded in a week when NTLM authentication was high on my mind (as you can tell).  However Ed has since done a fantastic job and led the work to implement the full NTLM stack based on details gleaned from the excellent book “Implementing CIFS, by Christopher R. Hertel”.  This book is not the “official” specification, but is very readable and is drawn from the work done by the Samba team.  As discussed in the podcast, one of the interesting things I learnt it that Microsoft’s Open Source Lab’s team have actually contributed some patches into the Samba group – which is a good thing.  Ed’s work has now been released in Version 1.1 of Teamprise – one of those new features that nobody will really notice, it *just works*.

Anyway, feel free to listen to the podcast.  While I have been a keen listener to podcasts since the beginning, this is the first time my voice has appeared in one (and I doubt I will make a habit of it).  However, hopefully you won’t find it as painful to listen to as I did.

Just been listening to an excellent programme from BBC Radio 4 - The X Factor. Not a story of wanabe pop stars, but a tale of what it is like to go into space and how the experience is about to open up to more normal people. It is presented by veteran astronaut Jeff Hoffman, who is now professor of astronautics at MIT. Sadly the programme is not available to download as an MP3, but you can listen to it through RealPlayer using the BBC's listen again service.

Scott Hanselman's Hanselminutes podcast continues with this weeks episode about Continuous Integration. Jamie Cansdale (the genius behind TestDriven.NET) has posted about the tool Scott was on the way to mentioning when Karl interrupted him.

Probably also worth mentioning, as Scott missed it in his list of source control systems, that the source control provided by Team Foundation Server in Visual Studio Team System is also supported. To see a full list of the Source Control systems supported by CC.NET then take a look at the Wiki.

As I have previously mentioned about three bazillion times, I'm at VSLive at the moment. Yesterday I sat in on a session where folks were being introduced to programmatic unit testing for the first time - it was great to watch the light bulbs go off in the collective heads of the 50 or so people in the audience as they realised what an amazing impact this would have in their organisation.

I'm probably late to the party, but I very rarely bother to update the firmware on my iPod. I'd heard the new iPod Updater (2005-06-26) contains support for podcasts but had not seen any details anywhere. I can confirm it is worth the effort if you listen to podcasts on your iPod.

The podcast support includes:-

• Viewing of shownotes (press select 3 times)


• Automatic bookmarking (remembers where you were if you play another song and come back)


• Enhanced display of "Extended podcasts" - the bookmarks show up within the progress bar and you can skip to the next bookmark - very handy for skipping that song or promo that doesn't interest you.


• Scrolling of show descriptions in the menu


• Display of date of podcast in the menu

Some downsides of Podcast support:-

• Cannot find a way to play all the episodes of one podcast, after finishing one it goes back to the main menu
• New podcasts do not show up in smart playlists. I had a playlist set up which was "Not Listened to in Last Week" which was very useful in automatically showing me what had been downloaded but not listened to yet. Would be good if they just included the feature within podcast support in iTunes to just update songs that had not been listened to yet (tracked by iTunes anyway)

Anyway, despite the downsides (which are annoying) the update is pretty sweet. You also have to update to iTunes 4.9 to take advantage of the podcast features.

I downloaded version 4.9 of iTunes today that contains support for Podcasts. Overall it seems ok, very easy to use but no support for Bittorrent which means I'll be sticking with nimiq for a while yet to keep up to date with DotNetRocks. For more information about this version, take a look at iPodLounge.

For more info about how to get your RSS feed integrated with the iTune Music Store (and iTunes specific tags), see http://phobos.apple.com/static/podcast_specifications.pdf.

UPDATE:Carl Franklin has just posted a comment to say that DotNetRocks has reverted back to standard download feeds to allow people to use iTunes as a client while the Bittorrent thing is sorted out.

Via Wired, there is now a WinAmp plugin that allows you to sync your iPod from WinAmp. Called mlipod, it also allows you to copy songs from your iPod back onto your computer - fantastic. Anyone know a plugin for WinAmp that downloads Podcasts?

According to Steve Gilmor, Apple's iTunes is to support enclosures in RSS feeds (podcasting). I have been looking for more details on this and have not found any yet so I could have mis-read the article but it would be a sensible move for Apple. Podcast's were the reason I bought an iPod and so the reason I had to install the iTunes software (which I don't particularly like BTW) and therefore the reason why I started looking at the iTunes music store. Hopefully the inroduction of a podcast client in iTunes will mean I get a podcatching setup that works reliably....

Update: The BBC have posted a story about the podcast support in iTunes. The BBC have also extended their podcast trial. I think that happened around the 19th May but I've been working late recently so not been posting.

A few people have asked me this recently, so this is the current list of podcasts that I subscribe to and enjoy on my daily commute.

.NET Rocks! - The internet audio talkshow for dotnet developers.
Slashdot Review - A daily review of items of interest on Slashdot read by a southern guy. This is one of my favourite podcasts and the production quality is spot on. The featured garage band at the end is sometimes a pleasure, and sometimes something I just fast forward (the power of podcasts!)
Daily Source Code - The "Podfather" Adam Curry talks about podcasting and stuff. Not sure why I find this entertaining but I do, I think I got hooked on the cow-bells.
Slacker Astronomy - Nice astronomy podcast. The script is really good and the subject matter just right, sadly the people that read it are a bit wooden but they do this for fun and get better every show.
Dr Karl podcast - Dr Karl's Tripple J phone in show because you just can't hear daytime scientific debate about farting on the BBC.
Gilmore Daily - A new addition to my podroll, so far so good.
In Business - Peter Day's great show from Radio 4.

I have been driven to desperation with iPodder, so thought I would go looking for another podcast client before I wrote my own. Looks like the guys at nimiq have beat me to it and done a great job! Don't think they will be able to open source it for a while as they seem to be using some closed source controls (such as Rebar). The software appears to work brilliantly (even with bittorrent feeds such as DotNotRocks and SlashDotReview)

Anyway, iPodder has now been removed from my system and I'm going to use nimiq for a while - let's hope they keep up the great work and possibly release the code in the future, it has a working C# implementation of a Bittorrent client that I would love to see.