It was my first time in a suite at the stadium and even though I had already considered the stadium here in Port Elizabeth world class, the hospitality in the suites really took that to the next level. The actual suite itself is well furnished and modern including the advantage of a TV for replays otherwise absent from live games, there was a 3 course meal on offer (As well as a separate meal for closer to the end of the game), loads of snacks and the friendly bar staff were always happy to assist with liquid refreshments. The seats themselves were considerably more comfortable than the normal stadium seats, with cushioned leather and we had a great view of the game from quite close to the corner flag.

The game itself started off fairly worryingly with the Netherlands conceding an easy goal straight down the middle of their defence, but this single mistake in the first half must have resulted in quite a team talk at half time as they came back a different side and much to the joy of most of the people around us took the game away from the Brazilians in the second half to seal an incredible comeback.

After the game we were allowed to enjoy the hospitality for a while longer followed by being driven back to the Boardwalk where some of us went to the newly opened Cubana for dinner and the Ghana (They were cheated) game. Still the Semi Finals to go, but a Germany vs Netherlands Final on Sunday would be something special.

Thanks again Microsoft (And Lindi)!

After that we left for the stadium and in all honesty I was a bit underwhelmed after seeing both the PE and JHB stadiums. It’s still a good stadium, but the others put it to shame. There was a lot more English support as expected, but there were people flying the German flag dotted around. The first half alone lived up to all the hype and being able to see the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney and even Beckham, albeit on the bench, was a real honour. The Germans played well and deserved the win, but something has to be done about TV based verification of close call decisions as realistically the English (not even taking into account the times they hit the bar) could have brought themselves back to 2-2 within a few minutes and that would have changed the game completely.

After the game we were picked up just outside the stadium and were back at the guest house not even 20 minutes later which was awesome once more. This was followed by drinks around a raging fire, braai with some of the best steak I have had in some time and hitting the sack early before driving back to PE.

This game was poised to be a cracker, with both teams needing a win to be 100% sure of going through. Both sides had great chances and Ghana really played well again some dicey defence at times. In all honesty I would say that they had the better chances, but just failed to convert (As has been the case with other African teams this tournament). In the end the single goal that separated the teams was scored in the second half and we had an awesome view from close to the corner flag. As the full time whistle was blown news of the incredible Australian victory over Serbia came through meaning that both Germany and Ghana would go through, making Ghana the only African country to make it through to the second round.

It was however an awesome game to watch, great atmosphere and Soccer City is without a doubt one of the more impressive, modern man made things I have seen in a while. It was also my first trip on a train in South Africa in years, maybe even ever and it is definitely the way to go for the Soccer City/Ellis Park Games. Park at Park Station, 15/20 minute train ride right into the stadium basically. What a pleasure. Great organisation.

From the colour of the clothes and flags, there definitely seemed to be a lot more Portugal support and the stadium erupted when Christiano Ronaldo ran out onto the pitch. I don’t agree with his man of the match award (I suppose someone had to get it), but his turn and shoot early in the game that rattled the bar was quite awesome to see. Both sides had some good chances, but Ivory Coast definitely had the best of them thanks to some great attacking football and skills. The score was still 0-0 and Drogba came on with 20 minutes or so to spare with a huge welcome from the supporters. Unfortunately even with him on the scoreline remained unchanged, but it was a hard fought and great game to watch in the group of death. Ivory Coast flew their flag high for the African countries and they are a side to keep an eye on in this tournament.

Looking forward to the next few games!

The atmosphere was awesome and everyone really got into the vibe for the World Cup as a whole and of course Bafana Bafana who were playing their first game against Mexico. Haven’t seen such unity since the World Cup Rugby was here. We were unlucky not to clinch a 2-1 winner, but overall the 1-1 draw was probably a fair reflection of the game and an incredible start to the tournament.

The full version has now been released and some of the highlights include...

• Entity Framework (v1 & v4) support
• NHibernate support (hbm.xml mappings & FluentNHibernate mappings)
• Linq to SQL support
• Allows both Model first and Database first development, or a mixture of both
• .NET 4.0 support
• Model views
• Grouping of project elements
• Linq-based project search
• Value Type (DDD) support
• Multiple Database types in single project
• XML based project file
• Integrated template editor
• Relational Model Data management
• Flexible attribute declaration for code generation, no more buddy classes needed
• Fine-grained project validation
• Update / Create DDL SQL scripts
• Fast Text-DSL based Quick mode
• Powerful text-DSL based Quick Model functionality
• Per target framework extensible settings framework

xmlns:v14='http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/visio/2009/7/extension'

...to...

xmlns:v14='http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/visio/2010/extension'

...on the first line and it then opens in RTM fine. Only tried this on a few files, but so far seems to work fine.

"An error (269) occurred during the action Open File.

Visio cannot open the XML file. The file was saved from a pre-release version of Visio and contains pre-release namespace URIs."

Presumably there is someway of modifying the file to change/update URIs manually, but luckily I had Beta still running on another machine which could still open the file, saved it as a Drawing (.vsd) and am now able to open, resave it etc.

UPDATE - 27/05/2010 - Manual modification of these files seems to work fine as per this post.