Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 100

This is what was behind the camera... As the chalet is hanging on the mountainside there is a huge vertical drop just outside these windows. The view is spectacular and not for people that get vertigo. You can see the whole of Meribel and you feel like you are sitting in a bird's nest.

Photography wise this is the shot I'm least happy with because it doesn't have the same level of colour saturation as the others (I tried but it ended up looking fake). Also, in this series I used quite a severe vignette to focus attention on the centre of frame which gives them a bit of a 70's feel (especially with the decor).

This is the set complete. I hope you like them. There are a couple more in my Meribel 2008 set which I won't blog about. Next time I'll post some architectural shots taken whilst photowalking around Bournemouth.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 1/6 second, f/4, ISO 100

As I mentioned yesterday, the chalet we stayed in was rather unique - built hanging on to the mountainside. The entrance is at the top of the building (behind the chimney in the picture). The precarious landing and steps are not child friendly either. The living space is at the level you see here with rooms on the floors below. The fireplace dominates the room and, as the steps to the right of it indicate, has a sunken seating area in front. The really spectacular feature is behind the camera - tomorrows shot.

I've done a fair bit of processing with all these pictures as the light was truly awful for photography - dull and grey. The chalet itself was quite dark under these conditions and any shot with a window in instantly blows out the highlights. All the internal chalet shots are a blend of multiple exposures taken from a single RAW file.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/4 second, f/22, ISO 100

It's been a couple of weeks since we got back from skiing but things have been hectic with the wedding planning so I haven't had much time to process the pictures. I didn't take many because a bulky SLR is not the best thing to carry if you might take a tumble on the slopes. There are more in Claire's photostream.

This one was taken from our chalet. You will see from the next few in the series that it was rather unique and had some specatcular views.

First I read this and now I read that... Then laughed my socks off at how blatant a PR tool the Google Blog is. C'mon guys at least allow comments and make it a conversation.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 0.6 second (BKT), f/22, ISO 100

Since the sky was so dramatic this afternoon, Claire and I took a walk down to the beach to watch the sun go down. This shot is actually an HDR composite of three bracketed images.

I've messed around in Photoshop a little but only to bring it back to what is was like in reality. The only think that still irks me is that the horizon is in the middle but it had to be in order to make the stick in the foreground lay on a 1/3 line.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/125 second, f/8, ISO 200

This is the second shot from Prestbury and one that has a lot of memory for me as I grew up in this village. This is one of those views you remember but has changed subtly from childhood - the 20 zone signs, the roundabout and road markings, the shops on the left and right are selling different stuff.

I'd love to find a photo from 30 years ago because I suspect the only constant, apart from the buildings themselves, is that the Legh Arms is still a pub.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/60 second, f/8, ISO 200

This is one of a series based taken last April in Prestbury. Again I've reprocessed the image but this time to more of an ideal than how it actually was. You can see the difference between this and the original.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-f/4.5 USM lens - 1/80 second, f/9, ISO 100

The second of two reprocessed shots taken in Egypt this year. The reprocessing really was just to bring it back to how it was in reality.

This was at the other end of the day with the sun disappearing over the mountains behind Sharm-el-Sheikh airport. As the sun dropped out of sight you get these rays of light in the clouds due to the difference in angle.

Canon Digital Ixus 500, 1/400 second, f/2.8

This photo was hastily snapped just before we dived on Jackson Reef. It's about 5am in the morning; the early start was so we could see the sharks that are around this early.

This is one of a collection I've re-processed with Photoshop.

I dug a bit deeper on the unanswered questions and with some help from the sales team...

What is the availability of TFS for Volume License Customers?

This month, sometime. The full MSDN versions are already available so check your VL web site for keys regularly.

What TFS licenses are required for the sync tools e.g. TFS Migration and Sync Toolkit?

The answer to this one is "it depends"... The main point to be aware of is what users are doing. I am not a licensing expert and if in doubt you should probably speak to one but as I understand things, Microsoft changed the licensing model a little in TFS 2008 so that we allow an unlimited number of users in your company to create any work item, query for work items they have created and view or update any work item they have created all without a CAL.

So if those users are only using the external systems for the same purpose then they don't need a CAL. If, however, they are querying, viewing or updating any (i.e. other people's) work items in the remote system (that are synchronised to TFS) then a CAL is needed for every user doing these activities.

So in terms of a scenario... You have a dev team working with TFS but they send their product to a QA department who use Mercury Test Director. The contents of the Test Director database are synchronised with TFS. The QA department has lots of people working in it but they boil down into two types of user:

• The first type are testing the product and entering bugs. They also look at the status of their bugs and when the status changes to fixed they retest and close the bug.
• The second type also test the product and raise bugs but they also need to see bugs raised by other testers (e.g. they are in a lead role).

In this scenario, the first set of users do not require a CAL but the second do. It's quite easy for someone in the first category to fall into the second though e.g. if anyone in the first set is to be assigned a bug to close that they did not create then they also need a CAL.

There is also another kind of license, an external connector which may seem to be perfect in this scenario but it it not valid to allow people within your own organisation access to TFS.

What is the support situation for TFS running on VMware?

I can't find any definitive information on this but with other products  it's always been "best effort" support. What that means is that whilst PSS will try to help solve an issue on VMware they can't guarantee they'll get anywhere and may ask you to reproduce the issue without VMware in the picture. Also, the normal escalation paths and QFE process doesn't apply so it's very probable that any bug you might find that only occurs under VMware will not get fixed.

I spent quite a bit of time answering some customer questions on TFS today so it would be a shame not to share the answers.

What options are the for migrating from Subversion to TFS?

Currently there is a proposed feature for the TFS Migration and Sync Toolkit but no work has taken place on it - you can vote on the feature to increase its priority.

Alternatively, I found a couple of 3rd party tools from ComponentSoftware and Kyrosoft that claim to do the job at but I don't personally know anyone who has used them successfully.

What is the availability of TFS for Volume License Customers?

I'm still trying to find an answer to this one although I see it is possible to install the trial version and at a later date just re-apply your VL key without having to reinstall. See Brian Harry's blog for more details.

What TFS licenses are required for the sync tools e.g. TFS Migration and Sync Toolkit?

I'm still looking for an answer on this one.

What is the support situation for TFS running on VMWare?

I'm still looking for an answer on this one.

Can you create sub-folders in the team query areas of the Team Explorer?

Currently not possible. The two closest options are to either prepend a common string to query names to ensure they sort together or copy them to your favourites folder and organise them there.

How can you define different check-in policies depending on which folder path you are checking into?

This functionality isn't available out of the box but the TFS Power Tools have a "Custom Path Policy" which works with existing Team Foundation Server check-in policies. It provides a mechanism that lets you specify the source control path or paths upon which a particular policy acts. This initiates a scenario where you can enforce a different sets of rules for different source control folders. For example, one folder can have more stringent code analysis policy rules applied than another folder.

How do you configure an e-mail to be automatically sent on policy override?

You have a couple of routes for this but they all end up doing the same thing - subscribing to a TFS event. One of my colleagues wrote a piece on this a while ago. You can read it at Darren's blog.

Alternatively others have already gone to the trouble of coding it up. The first tool is probably the best (and more powerful), the second just a simple tool for managers

• http://www.codeplex.com/tfseventsubscription
• http://members.chello.nl/m.dekunst/SubScribeToPolicyViolation.zip

Can builds be restricted to security groups?

Yes,  the permissions you need to look at are:

• Administer a build (allows users to create new build types)
• Check-in (allows the user to check-in the build scripts)
• Start a build (allows the user to run a build)

There is a more complete description at IT Architect.

I've been having a quick look at Google's Open Social... They really need to get better documentation so I'm not exactly sure about the fine detail. There are a few bits on developing widgets but nothing at all on hosting them which is a big chunk to be missing in my opinion. Maybe they are holding off publishing to stop a proliferation of social sites popping up and competing with their "launch partners"?

Some other random thoughts:

• You need to implement your widgets as Google gadgets
• All the samples are based on Orkut so it's not clear if a Google account is required - if it is then that's bad
• There doesn't seem to be any sort of download available, probably as the JavaScript is hosted by the Google gadget system

They have been quite clever calling it "Open" Social instead of "Google" Social but it still sounds like a lock-in to the Google gadget system.

The API is really about building widgets to host in existing social web sites - in all not that exciting. What I would prefer to see is a system that allows me to access my social data from anywhere in applications I write - e.g. my blog, Outlook and my phone...

[Edit: having read around a little, Dare Obasanjo says much the same thing but slightly more coherently.]