Blog posts from 2010
LoveFilm API
Fun with the LOVEFiLM API
I recently signed up to the LOVEFiLM DVD and Blu-Ray rental service. But the developer in me also noticed they have a development API - and here I take a look at what you can do using it. . More »
Manipulating Querystrings in Csharp and .NET
A small library to help parse and manipulate querystring paramaters in C#
If you're an ASP.NET developer then sooner or later you will come across an occasion when you want to manipulate or parse values from the current request's querystring. To make this easier I developed a very small C# library that enables developers to easily manipulate the querystring collection. It has useful methods to add, remove, replace, count and parse values. . More »
Eating Animals
Jonothan Safran Foer’s latest book
My thoughts about Jonothan Safran Foer’s thought-provoking book, 'Eating Animals', in which he takes a philosophical look at the debate around the ethics of eating meat. . More »
OAuth with Twitter API in C# and .NET
How to use OAuth authorisation when consuming the Twitter API from C#
In this blog post I guide you through the trials and tribulations you have to go through to use OAuth authorisation when consuming the Twitter API in C# and .NET. I show you how you can use the free Hammock for REST C# library to abstract away the REST calls to the API . To top it off I also include a full working library I developed to make the whole authentication process much simpler - this comes with an example website and Visual Studio solution that you can download and use. . More »
The Tarnished Generation
Or why we delude ourselves that the English are good at football
We seem to labour under a delusion in this country that our national football team, England, are good at kicking the leather sphere around. This is despite not winning or even featured prominently in a major competition for nearly 45 years. But who really are our so-called Golden Generation and why do we have so much faith in them? . More »
Umbraco XML Sitemap
Creating an XML (Google) Sitemap for Umbraco using LinqToXml
In this post I want to show you how to automatically generate an XML (Google) sitemap for an Umbraco CMS site. The code uses the Umbraco API, LinqToXml and a generic .ashx hander to do this in one small file. . More »
New Website Launched
It's been a long time coming
Today I finally get around to updating my website. But being a web developer by trade I can't just add a bit of new content and make a few design changes. Oh no. That's just too easy. Instead I have to re-write the whole damned thing from scratch in a completely different technology... Here's the low-down. . More »
Keeping Things Compact
Optimising your CSS and JavaScript files
This post looks at free online tools that can help compact and optimise your CSS style-sheets and JavaScript files. This will ensure your website loads quickly and will also keep your code concise and fast. . More »
Subtitles
Don't let the world of foreign language TV and film pass you by
In this post I praise the hidden world of foreign-language cinema and TV that we rarely experience in the English speaker world. I also wonder why we see so few sub-titled drams on British TV. . More »
Fair Votes Now
Why we desperately need electoral reform in the UK
Playing around with the BBC Election Seat Calculator for the 2010 UK general election further convinced me what an un-fair and un-democratic system "first past the post" really is. This is why we need electoral reform to provide "fair votes" for everyone. . More »
