Like many developers, I contribute to open source projects at home – usually to scratch an itch, learn something new or just to contribute to something I love using myself. However, I work for the open source .NET Foundation which means I have a dream job of getting paid to work on open source.
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If you want to work with your local Git repositories in some .NET code then LibGit2Sharp is your friend. It’s the open source library used by the Visual Studio Tools for Git and gives you a very idiomatic way to talk to Git from C# or VB.NET.
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[](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470943327/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=woodweb03-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0470943327)I’ve always wanted to write a technical book and when I started getting involved in Team Foundation Server I thought that this technology area might be my chance.
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\\\\A couple of weeks ago I was in Antwerp for a partner event and I also had the pleasure of meeting with a few customers from the Belgium and Luxembourg region.
Continue ReadingTonight I’ll be giving a talk on Team Foundation Build for NW-MTUG at the University of Ulster’s Magee Campus. The event starts at 6.30pm – if you are around it would be great to see you there.
Continue ReadingOn Thursday 20th May, I have the privilege of speaking at the Test Manager Forum in Dublin. I’ll update this post after the event with links to the slides, other resources and any other links that might come up that I end up promising to share to the audience.
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[](http://www.codeplex.com/) People using CodePlex can download Visual Studio Team Explorer to access a CodePlex hosted TFS instance free of charge, but what if you want to be a project team member and access the code from Eclipse or a non-windows machine?
Continue ReadingThis morning I got an email from HR congratulating me on completing my three month probationary period at Microsoft. I hadn’t realised I had a probation period (in fact I’m pretty sure I don’t, but as I passed I’m not going to rock the boat).
Continue ReadingThat is the question that I am frequently asked by folks looking at the impact of Team Foundation Build moving to Windows Workflow 4.0 from MSBuild as the master build orchestration language in the TFS 2010 release. In general I would always think carefully about re-writing everything in WF 4.
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Four years ago this month, I joined a small start-up being created called Teamprise after reading about it on Eric Sink's blog. Our mission was to bring the benefits of application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Team Foundation Server to everyone.
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[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/VirtualizedAeroGoodness_C4A5/fusion3_2.png) On Tuesday, VMware announced the latest in their product lines, VMware Fusion 3 and Workstation 7. While I have been a fan of VMware Fusion on the Mac for a while – this latest version is fantastic.
Continue ReadingI've been an avid Windows Live Writer user since the early days, and for many years I've used Moveable Type for my personal blog. The reason I went with Moveable Type was initially because that was what some of the other blogs that I read where using.
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If bunnies are just a little bit too cute and fluffy for you, then you might be interested in a little side project that reader Terry Humphries just got in touch with me about.
Continue ReadingOver the weekend we published a new Radio TFS episode. This month we chatted with Tommy Norman about his real world experiences using using Team Foundation Server in agile software development projects.
Continue Reading[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/06/22/funny-pictures-minion-return-wif-cheezburger/)Anyone who works in an office with other programmers will know the joys of trying to get a group together to go to lunch. The phrase "like herding cats" is often used.
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My friend and fellow Team System MVP, Neno Loje, has been on a blogging frenzy this year. Recently he has published a handy Visual Studio template if you do a lot of playing with Team Foundation Server API calls (as I do), or if you are trying to play with an TFS API example that you have found on the net but are...
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[](http://url.ie/11q9) Today is the first day of the new year in the office and so it is time for me to do the dance that I always do after Auld Lang Syne, and that is the Annual Year Planner Shuffle. This morning I threw away the 2008 year planner, moved the 2009 one up and printed out a new 2010 sheer.
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[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/Windows7onMSIWind_9736/windwin7m3_2.jpg) For the record, I like Windows Vista. However, for those of us who remember the Vista beta program and even early days of running Windows Vista it wasn't always fun - largely due to the driver support but there were plenty of bugs...
Continue Reading[](http://www.codeplex.com/MigrationSyncToolkit) In a recent episode of .NET Rocks, we got talking about migrating to TFS and taking your SCM history with you. If you really wanted to go through the pain of doing this then the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit project on CodePlex is a good starting point to...
Continue Reading[](http://blogs.msdn.com/gertd/) Over on Radio TFS we've just published a special episode on the Database Edition of Team System with the man himself, Gert Drapers. In the show Gert brings us up to speed on how the product got started, where it is now and where it is going in the future.
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To celebrate my 5 year anniversary of blogging, I gave this site a long overdue refresh over the weekend. While I've been publishing stuff on the Woodwardweb.com domain since 1999, that was initially just putting pages up with notepad and Dreamweaver.
Continue Reading[](http://www.thomsonreuters.com/) I am proud to announce that Microsoft have just published a joint case study with us on the success Thomson Reuters have had using Team Foundation Server in a mixed development shop.
Continue Reading[](http://www.dddireland.com/) Developer Developer Developer is coming to the beautiful west of Ireland in May with GAMTUG hosting the event on Saturday May 3rd. If you are in or around Ireland at that time then I would encourage you sign up.
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So, at the risk of starting one of those annoying meme's, I've kinda had this conversation with a few folks before and people of my age always seem to enjoy it so here goes. My first computers. #### My First Computer The computer I first learnt to code on was a Commodore Vic-20.
Continue ReadingIf you are customizing a team build, then there are only two things you need to know to get you started. The rest you can (mostly) figure out from there. Your build is defined in a file called TFSBuild.proj for your particular Team Build Type. You probably figured that bit out already.
Continue ReadingAs I've mentioned before - keyword expansion is a feature that many SCM tools have, but TFS does not. Buck Hodges has just published an excellent post on why this is the case and talks about some of the approaches that people have tried to get around this. Definitely worth a read.
Continue ReadingThis took me a while to figure out, so I am writing down here to help me remember later. It may also be useful if you are playing with Gmail at all (BTW, the spam filtering on Gmail is very good).
Continue ReadingIf the recent announcements about Silverlight have your interest and you can get to Dublin on June 7th this year then I would urge you to take a look at this years Irish community conference IMTC.
Continue ReadingI wasn't at SD West this year, however I'd heard that Brian Harry was going to be doing an interesting keynote. Jack Vaughan has recently published some of his "take-aways" from Brian's presentation and it certainly looks like there was some good stuff in it. My favorite quote is:- “In version 1.
Continue ReadingMickey Gousset has posted details of the new Team System training courses from Notion Solutions. What I think is very excited about this offering is that it is a proper "remote learning" initiative.
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Yesterday we made version 2.1 of Teamprise publicly available. If you've previously installed Teamprise, then I recommend that you upgrade to this version as it includes a number of bug-fixes that while not critical are definitely useful. People who purchased a Teamprise Client Suite for Version 1 or 2.
Continue ReadingToday, I received a fancy new Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter 8000 mouse courtesy of Microsoft. This is a Bluetooth enabled mouse with some useful extra buttons for slide advance and a built in laser pointer when presenting. It is a nice mobile mouse that, while not without flaws, I would still recommend.
Continue ReadingI'm getting really excited about the next CTP for the next release of Visual Studio (Codenamed Orcas). Not only will previews of some great new features in Team Foundation Server be coming along, Scott Guthrie just announced a bunch of changes to the web designer editor in Visual Studio.
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Dave Glover has held onto the title of world's smallest Team Foundation Server instance since August 2006. However, I have a confession to make. On Tuesday I was doing an MSDN webcast demonstrating the Teamprise plug-in.
Continue ReadingEvery source control system I have worked with until recently supported keyword expansion. My code comment blocks have always tended to be something like (in Java):- /\\ Description.
Continue ReadingJamie Cansdale (the brains behind the must-have Visual Studio Extension TestDriven.NET) has set up a charity auction in aid of the charity Wells for Zoë and its work in Malawi. What's better is that he's convinced many of the other must-have .Net development tools folks to donate some licenses into the pot as well.
Continue Reading[](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0471919306?ie=UTF8&tag=woodwardwebcom&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0471919306)I was very excited to read that "Professional Team Foundation Server" is available in the shops just in time for Christmas.
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[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/VistaRTMonIntelMacMini_B4B1/startupdisk6.png) Just as a follow up to my previous post, I was having trouble switching back into Mac OS X once booted into Vista. As part of the Boot Camp process, Apple allow you to burn a CD containing the Windows XP Drivers and Utilities.
Continue ReadingThanks to all the people who came along to the Developer Track of todays conference in Galway. It was great to see such a mix of people with different experience of .NET and Team System in General - but also nice to see some Java folks.
Continue ReadingSo, this isn't exactly original material - but I was having a chat with somebody today who I consider very knowledgeable about Visual Studio Team System and they were not aware of these so hopefully re-posting some will help more people discover them.
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/TheMissingMergeContextMenu_13EDC/merge_options3.png) I'm currently busy with the merge functionality in Teamprise Version 2.
Continue ReadingI use VMWare a lot. As we work on a cross-platform client to Team Foundation Server, I not only need to test our client on many operating systems, I also run Team Foundation Server in VMWare to talk to test our client against. Teamprise Explorer and the Eclipse plug-in use SWT for the UI Layer.
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I know it only seems like a few moments have past since we released version 1.1 onto the unsuspecting public, but today we opened the doors a little on Version 2.0 as we start our 2.0 Preview Program.
Continue ReadingLately a shocking thing has happened. People have started reading my blog. While this probably isn’t surprising to you (the reader) it is highly surprising to me (the author). I started blogging as a way to make it easier for me to find stuff in Google.
Continue ReadingI 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).
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/blog/teamprise2.png)[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/blog/teamprise2.png)In a few hours, I’ll be getting on a flight to TechEd 2006 in Boston. If you are coming along then make sure to stop by the Teamprise booth and get a preview of Teamprise 2.0.
Continue ReadingTonight I spoke at the Cork INDA group. Despite the excellent weather outside loads of people turned up and sat in on a talk on Source Control, which shows true dedication (especially from the folks standing at the back).
Continue ReadingThanks to everyone that came along to my talk in Belfast last night. It was great to catch up with some old friends and good fun to stand up in front of my home crowd. As promised, here is the copy of the slide deck as a zipped PowerPoint File (2.
Continue ReadingI am giving a talk tonight. As usual, I'm busy avoiding preparing for it. It is a rare day now-a-days that I put on a shirt and smart trousers but as I'm meeting folks I've never met before in a city I've never been to, I thought I'd better make an effort.
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I have a lovely Dell Precision M70 as my main development machine. It's a notebook so is great for when I am travelling around and has more than enough grunt to handle a few VMWare images running at once for cross-platform demos etc.
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Usually, I am very good at the 24 hour clock. It comes from a childhood of setting the VCR because my parents just could never figure it out. However I turned up for my 9.30 flight this evening, only to find I had read my tickets wrong and it was actually 19.30.
Continue ReadingJames Manning has posted a suggestion for a powertoy to enable you to paste the contents on your clipboard into a work item as an attachment. Personally, I think this would be awesome, in conjunction with the standard windows Print Screen, or something more powerful like OneNote or WinSnap – it would make adding...
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/blog/vsts_google_toolbar.jpg)Well, having tried new new beta of Google Toolbar I just had to try implementing my own toolbar button. Here is one that will give you the top previous posts from folks around the VSTS blogosphere.
Continue ReadingSky+ has been the saviour of our television viewing since it arrived shortly after my son did (not a coincidence). For those non-UK citizens reading this blog Sky+ similar to the Tivo but more locked down as it comes from the main satellite TV company here.
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I woke up this morning to find the Release Candidate version of Team Foundation Server in my MSDN Subscriber downloads site. Who-hoo! I am currently downloading it while reading the Beta 3 (refresh) to RC upgrade procedures.
Continue ReadingIf I were clever like Eric Sink or Bill Caputo, I'd be able to turn that catchy title in to a witty and insightful post about the software industry. But sadly for you, I'm not and (as witnessed in this blog) my writing skills are pretty awful.
Continue Reading[](/images/blog/geomap.html)Well, despite the massive load that Google Analytics took, they have done me proud and are now happily tracking the data from 3 of the sites I look after that I'm most interested in. This blog, VSTSPlugins and VSTSEclipse.
Continue ReadingI colleague of mine, Mike Cooper, just pointed me towards the "Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming". Hopefully not because he thinks I need to heed the advice - but it is always good to think about your own behaviour when revewing and pairing.
Continue ReadingAs you've probably discovered by now, Google has launched Google Reader - a web based RSS reader with all the fancy AJAX lovliness you'd expect. So far, I'm a little dissapointed.
Continue ReadingJust a quick sample to see if I can put stuff into IE's clipboard. Click here;>) to copy "Hello World!" into the clipboard. Obviously, if I can put stuff in the clipboard, I can see what you happend to leave in it as well... Uses the window.clipboardData method.
Continue ReadingI'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.
Continue ReadingBill Caputo has posted an interesting article discussing inheritance in C#, especially when using interfaces. I learned about OO while learning how to write Java, so I still struggle with the fact that methods in C# are not virtual by default.
Continue ReadingAt the risk of prompting someone to ask for them, Dan Fernandez has posted a neat stored procedure utility that inspects your sprocs and can give you come basic code metrics on them as well. If any managers are reading, just remember that code metrics are not a direct measure of productivity.
Continue ReadingIf you have ever tried interoperability between an MS environment and any of the others you are likely to have tripped over NTLM authentication before now. Obviously there is no RFC for this one, but Eric Glass has an excellent explanation of NTLM that was gathered by reading public available information and a bit of...
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Just reading Ben's blog. He has been playing with 2D Fractal Terrains (as you do). Seeing the landscape Ben generated instantly brought back so many memories. A school friend of mine, called Robert Parsons, used a similar algorithm to generate 2D landscapes that look just like Ben's.
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[](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321245660/woodwardwebcom)One of my friends recently gave me "Effective C#" by Bill Wagner. I just wanted to do a quick post to say what an excellent book this is.
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Broker - John Grisham" date: 2005-02-01T22:11:22.000Z post thumb images: "/images/post/2005/02/2005-the-broker-john-grisham.jpg" #author author: "Martin Woodward" description description: "temp_placeholder" Taxonomies categories: ["technology", "books", "gadgets", "web", "podcast"] tags: ["blog", "archive"] type:...
Continue ReadingRecently discovered these excellent UML 2.0 Stencils and Templates for Visio by Pavel Hruby. While I am still waiting for my ideal UML drawing tool, I keep coming back to Visio.
Continue ReadingThe Register have published the results of an important benchmark test - what is the best free rucksack. No matter how boring the presentation, everyones eyes always light up when the contents of the marketing cupboard are raided.
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[](http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/products/mobile/tablet_pcs/stylistic_st5010.html)Just got my hands on a new Fujitsu ST5010 Tablet PC for a demo and I really enjoyed working with it. I have been wanting to use a tablet PC in anger for a while now as the idea of the form-factor is one that I liked.
Continue ReadingDoing a big peice of UI design again at the moment. While avoiding writing documentation, found a couple of books that are pretty good, however the titles will certainly not help improve my wife's opinion of my job. First up with have Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman.
Continue ReadingEver wanted to connect your toaster to the internet, turn a skyscraper into a giant display, add a web server to your filter coffee machine or make a furby say things that will severely disturb the kids - then have a read of Hardware Hacking Projects _for Geeks_ by Scott Fullam.
Continue ReadingBBC Four recently broadcast an interesting documentary Tetris: From Russia With Love which was a very interesting account of the battles behind this simple but addictive game set against the backdrop of Cold War tensions. Rupert Murdoch's access into the Russian political system is also highlighted.
Continue ReadingI've won a laptop!! Amazing, never really won anything before (unless you count 1st prize in a fancy dress competition dressed as Worzel Gummage). All thanks to those every generous people at Intel Developer Services. Will post more details as soon as it arrives.
Continue Reading[](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007102860/woodwardwebcom) Got given this fantastic book by my wife. It is a very interesting account of the trade in ice from America to rest of the world.
Continue ReadingThe new version on the Core J2EE patterns book is now online as part of the updated java.sun.com site.
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Involved in different sections of this site that is very complex, with many legacy system interfaces and high transaction numbers. There were so many good people involved in this project that I can take no credit for any one part. I never did get the airplane to fly while waiting for the ticket booking screen...
Continue ReadingDemonstration of the CONTENTEDITABLE attribute that was introduced in IE 5.5 Show Example.
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