Well… I think I’ve recovered.  Went to Twickenham to watch England Vs the All Blacks on Saturday and it’s amazing how watching a rugby game can make your legs go all wobbly and blur your vision….for two days!!!  Thanks to Craig for getting the tickets and we were doubly privileged to be in the company of Ben Cohen’s jeans (Craig has some of his cast off's). 

If there is a down side to the whole thing it’s that I missed a 4-0 victory for Northampton Town Vs Bristol Rovers.  Bet they don’t repeat that again this season although apparently the result flattered them.

 

Met with a couple of chaps from Microsoft today at work for an architecture discussion and it was quite refreshing.  Firstly the architecture we were thinking of for our new project they pretty much agreed with and explained that the new Web service enhancements WSE3 is the mechanism we should be looking towards for our inter application communication.

1. It’s standards based.
2. It fully compatible with microsoft’s upcoming Communication Foundation.
3. It offers 3 security mechanisms (credentials, digital signing & encryption).
4. It can optimise sending large amounts of data using the Message Optimisation Transmission Mechanism MTOM.

I feel quite excited moving forward towards this as I always felt we needed a web service based model but was unsure how effective it would be and how we could use it to pass documents around in a secure manner.  I think we’ve now found the answer just need to get down and do it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've started using a new workstation at work.  Not sure what spec it is I think it's actually powered by the fusion of minute particles of matter and anti matter.  By exposing matter to anti matter extreme power is generated and thats probably why my legs are getting warm under the desk where the case lives.  If you are wondering where the hell that statement came from, I've been reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

It takes a while to get used to the new speed and I am convinced it's that fast that it is doing things before I actually click on them.  Take today for example I got some spam email that I wasn't at all interested in and in it was a link to pictures of Rachel Stevens in the nude.  Before I knew what was happening it was launching the web site and I am sure I hadn't even clicked on it.  I studied the site for about half an hour and I couldn't work out how it had happened.  It fact I could work out much at all after that.

Then of course I get home back on my trusty machine and it's so slow in comparison that I actually took the sides of the case off to check if the hamster had died in it's wheel.  After the clouds of dust had settled I decided it all looked ok, wound it up a few more turns and continued to use it.  Of course it's not helping that I've now got Visual Studio 2005 on my machine which has more features and makes it easier to do most tasks which is a good job really because now it's taking the computer twice as long to do the same thing that it used to in the 2003 version.

Well it's gone midnight again and I am going to the gym tomorrow even if it kills me, actually I shouldn't joke about that really the way my body is feeling at the moment.

Well here is a summary of my weekend....

Sold a car - bought a watch

Ate too much - drank too little

Finished Half life 2 - Started Halo (pc version)

 

Now I'm going to do something constructive and put Visual Studio 2005 on my machine at home.  Did I say constructive, with my poor old PC that could be considered destructive,  Hey but Xmas is coming and I have been writing letters to Santa regarding that new Alienware PC.  I do believe I do I do I do....

 

Well It all went pear shaped again.  3  server rebuilds and we still could not create projects.  I've been on the forums on the Microsoft site and somebody posted some usefull information regarding checks I could perform.  I tried their suggestions on my VPC and I could actually create Team Projects.  So using this information I think we are going to have another try tomorrow on the server proper. 

If I ever get this cracked I'm going to write a step by step guide.  The sort of thing I wish I could get my hands on now. 

We've just had privacy glass fitted to our Disco.  My friend Timbo struck a deal with a company over Peterborough to have both our cars done.  Totally pointless but it looks good.  Within an hour of having it done Coral had opened the window, luckily that didn't damage it as you are not supposed to do it for a couple of days, and the dog has scratched it a little, (what do you do with the pair of them)

Had the car checked over the other day at a Land Rover specialist garage and they give it the OK so that cheered me up a bit, I still think it's pulling to the left a bit though but I may try switching the tyres to see if that makes a difference.  Overall I'm pretty pleased with it just paranoid that all the electonic toys inside may pack up.

WARNING: Don't read this if you are feeling a bit sensitive.

 

Saturday morning we awoke to the sounds of our son calling that the kitten was stuck.  Suzanne has been had rearing some kittens and on this morning one of them had managed to get itself trapped under one of the chairs.  To make matters worse the chair had somehow trapped it and squeezed all the life out of it. 
It still brings a chill to me now and it makes you wonder that sometimes in life some people/animals are just lucky.  We had 3 kittens in the house and this one was the runt of the litter.  Half the size of the others it had already gone through a period of loosing all it's fur.  there is no doubt that in the wild it probably would not have survived and only the intervention of humans had kept it alive.  Suzanne will often rear baby animals and I always try and distance myself because I don't like getting attached to them just in case something happens to them.  With these pesky kittens I had just started coming around to them and that made it all the more sadder.  If there are any positives to take out of something as grim as this then it's given the children the experience of loss without it affecting them in any long term way.  My daughter Coral(7) carried it around for a while afterwards and I think she was convinced it would just wake up and you felt that she just wasn't understanding what had happened.
If there is a kitty heavan then I'm sure scraggy will be having a whale of a time.  I will help myself to another splash of 15yr old Malt and say here's to you scraggy, you weren't with us very long but in that short time you touched all our hearts. 

Another change to Team Foundation server since Beta 2.  If you want to hook up your Visual Studio IDE to a Team Foundation Server now you have to install the extra Client stub that is located on the Server disk. 

This is a change from Beta 2 where the client bits were installed as part of the Visual Studio Installation.  What is slightly confusing is that the Visual Studio disk is actually called Team Suite but in fact offers no server connectivity.  I have been assured that it's OK to install the beta 3 foundation client on the same machine as Release Candidate Visual Studio.

Tomorrw we shall see..watch this space. 

Well that was lucky.  I was just about to create a new project in the team Foundation server and I noticed this blog posting.  http://blogs.msdn.com/ejarvi/archive/2005/09/27/474483.aspx

As he says he cannot comment if this will still be the case when the product ships proper but I'm glad I saw it as it warns that even if you are a member of the administrators group on foundation server because a project has to create a sharepoint site and a reporting services site it will error when trying to create a new project.

Here goes then.  What the blog above doesn't tell you is how to actually do all of this stuff.  Make sure you are logged in with admin privelledges and browse to http://LocalHost.
Then Site Settings >> Manage Users  Here we can add ourself to the admins group.
One thing I did notice is that the email was not set up as it didn't send alerts as I added users.
I havn't been able to set this up this far it still failed.  Never mind moving on.
Reporting services security on my box is at http://localhost/reports/Pages/Folder.aspx then go to Site Settings.  In there configure site wide security and add your account to admins role.
Hopefully that should be it now and I can create team Projects.....we shall see   

 

 

I thought I'd installed it all but I was wrong.  Installing it at work and re-reading the documentation it appears if you want the automated build functionality you have to install this sepearately.  It makes sense really as you can run this on it's own machine.

The installation for this is on the cd in the bb folder.

As usual just run setup....watch this space for configuration options now that I have it installed in a real environment.

 

I must add at this point that the installation, although complex if starting with a bare machine, is a lot more reliable than previus versions.  I know I've only done it on prettly clean machines but let's be honest here, who would consider installing this baby on a machine that hasn't been cleaned up.  So well done the the Team System guys, I wonder what they use to build their installer I could cetainly do with something this powerful to do VSTO solution installer......don't get me started!!!!!!  

I've just changed back, converted, reverted, switched whatever you want to call it.  For quite a while now I've been using Firefox as my default browser but now I finally have caved in and reverted back to IE as my default.

Why? well I'm fed up of poorly constructed sites just not standardising and maiking it so I am maintaining two sets of favourites.  Also the productivity gains I used to have using Firefox as not as obvious now as IE had tabbed browsing with the MSN Add-In.  One thing I will miss is the ability to open multiple windows in seperate tabs witha a single click but to be honest I found recently that I wasn't using this much.  Of course there is a security consideration which although not really relevant at home is something I need to consider while I am at work.  I do have quite a free reighn on my work machine and I wouldn't want to alter this, so as more and more vulnerabilities in Firefox get exposed and it has overtaken IE in the security holes stakes it's another reason to jump back.

So now on to the real reason.  Well I have seen IE7 and I like what I see.  Nuff said...full report when I get my hands on it.  Let me just say it will help make yer Mums machine more secure.

I don't want to diss Firefox and I'm not saying I won't go back. but for now I'm going to go back and ready myself for IE7.

Anybody considering browser hopping may want to read this article.

 

TOP TIP:  If youve got the new MSN toolbar then tabbed browing can be accessed either via the right click menu or alternatively Alt+Click the left button.

 

 

The only one down side to the whole thing, I had to sit in with the Rushden fans as I went with my mate Stu.  With 2.5 thousand Cobblers fans chanting I felt like hiding in my coat.  Still good game and we are now 6th.

Bring on Darlington on Saturday......

I should now have a server ready to receive Team Foundation Server.  I kick off the installation and following the initial loading I am left with a warning that certain criteria have still not been met.  What could it be now I wonder.  I review the notes and guess what.

Processor not fast enough.

Not enough available disk space.

Not enough physical memory.

Well story of my life really.  One other warning was about SQL server not listening on TCP/IP.  What was interesting was the name of the tool used to configure this.  The “Surface Area Configuration Tool”.  Where did they get that name from.  I stumbled my way through it and enabled remote TCP/IP listening.

As these are only warnings I’ll continue.

Next I need to enter the account I nominated to run the services.  The setup should elevate the permissions of this account as required.

Next I have to decide if I want TF Alerts.  As I am only playing no I don’t.

Then the installer goes off and does it’s thing.  Time for a cup of tea I think.

It all went on Ok then about 10 seconds after the final dialog I got an error crop up and the debug dialog appear.  I have No idea what this was for so I am moving on to install the client application.

Another system check and this then goes on to install itself.

All goes on OK so next job is to have a play with it.  

On Thursday we are going to install it at work because we have found out that there will be a data migration/upgrade path open to us when it gets released some time in 2006 so we ae keen to start using it.  I'll keep you posted how we get on installing it on a proper server machine.

 

 

Techie Blog Geek Factor 8/10

I’m just about to install Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server release candidate, or September CTP, or Beta 3 I don’t know what it’s called I’m lost on the number of beta’s and the names they call them so let’s for arguments sake name it after the wife, first thing in the morning RC1.

Team Foundation server is the back end behind the new Team System toolset and if you don’t know what that is then toddle on over to http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/

First I need a donor server so again I use my base Windows Server 2003 image as my start point.  Sorry if you hadn’t guessed hardware is a premium at my house so I’m using Virtual PC.  Don’t know what that is head over to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

You’ll need to give it as much memory as possible as the recommended for a single server setup is 1GB.

Ok so I have my server. the first thing I now need is an Active Directory setup.  Start >> Run >> DCPROMO …. only joking I’m not going to explain how to set this up.  Again point yourselves over to if you don’t know how to do this. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/technologies/directory/activedirectory/stepbystep/domcntrl.mspx

Ok now we have a domain controller at something like “myloveden.com” what’s next? 

Well there is a very comprehensive installation guide on the CD for Team Foundation Server so I’m not going to go into details but a rough overview should help anybody thinking about doing this.  the latest setup guide should also be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=40042

The first decision you have to make is if you are going to keep it all on one server or split the load.  In a production environment it’s not a problem to split off the SQL Server.  As I said before resources are a problem at my den so it’s all on one box I’m afraid.  It’s only a test setup after all.

The server needs to be patched to service pack 1 before we go any further.

Next you need 3 nominated user accounts or 3 new ones.  A setup account, a services account and a reporting services account.  The account that’s going to be used for setup needs to be a member of the local Admins group.

Next we need to install IIS and enable ASP.Net.  Do not install Frontpage extensions as these are incompatible with Sharepoint services which we will install later.  By the way I forgot to mention you are going to need your Windows Server 2003 disk to hand.

It may be worth a quick check at this point to see if there any Windows update components waiting to go on.  By the time I got to this stage there was a whole load of patches waiting so I took the opportunity to put these on and of course another reboot.

OK SQL Server 2005 next, either Standard or Enterprise edition.  This could be a problem for me as I’ve only got developer edition with my disk pack.  I’m going to put this on and then run the foundation server setup wizard as the first step checks the system for pre-requisite components.

Answer all the questions and if you need help on any of these review the Team Foundation installation guide on the CD. 

SQL serve r has itself a whole host of components to install including the >net Framework version 2.0.  It is important that all the components you install are all built upon the same version of the Framework as incompatibilities will cause you problems. 

SQL Server now installed I’m going to fire off the team Foundation setup now so that it searches for pre-reqs.  Hopefully it should only find Sharepoint…..and it did so we can add SQL developer edition to the list of SQL servers that are compatible.  Obviously you wouldn’t do this in a production environment but you don’t need me to tell you that.

Install Sharepoint with service pack 1.  You can download this sicker from the MS site http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/sharepoint/wss.mspx   

Make sure you select Server Farm on the “type of Installation” page of the wizard.  Don’t plough ahead like I did and install it in local mode and spend 2 hours trying to remove it so I could re-install.  If you have installed in local mode you must remove the MSDE database that is installed also to trigger it to prompt for remote Mode.  After ‘successful’ installation the Configure page should appear.  Do not do anything at this stage as the Foundation Server setup will deal with this.

Ok that’s it for now I now have a system prepped and ready for the Foundation Server to be installed.  The trouble is now I am at work and the setup disk is with me but the VPC is at home.  So tonight the saga will continue (after the Rushden V Northampton football game) and hopefully I will have it installed and ready to play with.