It's been a long time since I last posted.  I've been busy with a mix of presentations, work and life, such as:

• Helping Kalido ship version 8 release 2 of their two core products, the Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse and the Kalido Master Data Manager. 
• Speaking at the Microsoft UK Architect Council and Architect Forum about Services on the Microsoft Platform today.  You can find the slides on the Connected Systems Architect forum page.
• Presenting to the London .NET User Group on Programming Indigo.
• Facilitating a 'park bench panel' on Smart Client vs Web Development at the Microsoft UK MSDN Roadshow in London.
• Doing plenty of behind-the-scenes or out-in-the-community work with local User Groups.

Some technical topics that have been taking my time:

• We set up CruiseControl.NET in my team at Kalido.  This just rocks.  It monitors source safe for checkins, checks the code out, runs a Nant script (these are great: you can compile the code using a solution file (instead of hassling with the vbc.exe or csc.exe directly) to build the code, then it runs our NUnit tests as well as providing coverage reporting with NCover and even duplicate code checking using Simian.  It all comes together with a tray icon that monitors what's happening on our build server and lets the whole team know if a build fails.  Tracking down the reason for failure is easy since there's a central web page that pulls together the log file from all of the tools (including comments from the source safe checkin box - finally, an easy way to see these comments!).  It's so exciting I'm rambling even while blogging about it.  The key point for me was that it only took one developer a couple of days to set up, even with no previous experience of any of these tools.
• Schema design.  I'm working on a new WSDL interface and have been playing around with various strategies to build the interface most efficiently and effectively.  More on that in future posts.
• Consolas.  Like Scott Hanselman, I love this font.  I've embarrassed myself my gushing about this to colleagues who are less aesthetically inclined than I am.  It's a mono spaced font, which is part of the Longhorn font set, especially designed for reading code on screen.  I've also set it up as the Windows Console Font as well.

I've also been enjoying time with my daughter who's now walking, starting to 'talk' and generally just getting into trouble (I spent last Saturday morning in the accident and emergency section of the local hospital after a walking accident.  The doctor said 'ah, we always see a lot of head injuries from kids who've just learnt to walk').