Did you know that Microsoft in partnership with Black Marble are hosting developer events in Leeds and Bradford, West Yorkshire.

I've been to the last 3 events hosted by Black Marble in association with Microsoft, which were on the subjects of (latest first):

• SQL 2008 (afternoon) - in the evening was a compressed re-run of Mix UK.
• What's news in VS 2008, WPF, WCF, WF & CardSpace
• Ajax and ASP.net 3.0

Well, I wanted to say a big thank you to all the staff at Black Marble for hosting these events, and to the Microsoft evangelists for presenting at these events.

The best appreciation I can show is by linking to each of these companies, people (via their blogs) or forthcoming events:

Microsoft UK staff:

• Daniel Moth
• Mike Taulty
• Martin Parry
• Mike Ormond

Black Marble who host the MSDN events, also have there own very knowledgeable speakers who provide feedback at:

• Black Marble Bloggers

If you are interested in attending the next events visit MSDN event in the North (Bradford / Leeds - Tong)

Microsoft have release Visual Studio 2008 early (wow, is this a first).

Also available are the team editions and Team Foundation server of the professional, Team and Express edition is now available.

A 90 day free trial for non-MSDN subscribers is available at VS2008 trial 

For more information review Scott Guthrie's blog article - Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released - ScottGu's Blog

Enjoy and experience the new features of Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow, CardSpace, , Silverlight, Ajax Extensions and many many more new features.

Again, for details of what is included within VS2008 see ScottGu's Blog.

Well, I dragged it out, and my lawnmower was just about cutting the grass but taking me forever, so what did I do.

Was really lucky and found a local company to fix it Power Equipment Repairs for lawn mowers in Yorkshire, what a job they done.  I cut my neighbors grass just for fun when it was returned and was so impressed, I even cut my own once more before the session ended.  Lets just hope my grass does not grow too much over the winter, but with these new blades I'm know it wont be an issue.