I haven't posted anything for awhile due to being busy with my ecommerce project. Recently, I have just started to deploy the project up onto Windows Azure for testing. I had held back deploying until I could deploy on SQL Azure more easily. Previously, you could only execute commands to SQL Azure via a query window and you had to create tables manually via a new query. The good news is, there's ... [More]

AreYouFollowingMeToo? is a simple twitter app that gets a list of twitter users who you are following who aren't following you back. I have decided to release the code for this app under a MIT License.The app supports deployment on Windows Azure. This decision was based on the fact that it was brought to my attention that there was another site that is providing the same functionality. Also, I ha... [More]

LINQ to SQL is a neat way to do your SQL queries under ASP .NET. It is so good that I have used it until a stage where I cannot remember my T-SQLs. But then that probably is just me, my memory isn't very kind to me. However, one of the problems with LINQ is that it is not very flexible when you want to have the option of creating queries on the fly. This is especially true in situations where you ... [More]

I've just created a twitter app on Windows Azure that allows you to get a list of people who you are following but are not following you. I call this, finding out who your true friends are. :) But it should also be helpful to control your Twitter ratio so that you don't look like another marketer or spammer. The app is up at http://ruf.cloudapp.net. I have not tested it with a large follower bas... [More]

I had a quick look into the Twitter API today. It turns out it was quite easy to get started and to quickly develop a twitter application. Resources The main Twitter API documentation page is located at http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation. There are two .NET twitter clients available tweetsharp, http://code.google.com/p/tweetsharp/ twitterizer, http://code.google.com/p/twit... [More]

On the lighter side of things, here are some of my favourites from xkcd.com.   ---- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- -- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

I'm currently in the process of designing a web application. While writing up the specification, I kept wondering how I was going to design the user interface without resorting to the use of a pencil and eraser. Seriously, what kind of software developer uses a pencil and eraser these days. It's probably been about 10 years since I've last laid eyes on an eraser. It was then that I came across tw... [More]

The following describes my experience trying to get raya running on Windows Azure based on the July 2009 CTP of Windows Azure. Task List Add Blob support to allow uploaded photos to be stored in Azure Blobs Add support for Azure Storage Tables to replace all SQL database operations   Just 2 easy tasks... 2 easy and loooong tasks. Luckily the SDK abstracts away some of the nitty gritt... [More]

Prerequisites ASP .NET 3.5 ASP .NET MVC, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=140768&clcid=0x409 Your favourite versioning tool, eg. Tortoise SVN, http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ Access to MS SQL database or SQL database express Windows Azure SDK (if you want to run on Windows Azure)   You then need to create a folder on your drive somewhere containing the folders pesta ... [More]

Sadly to say, I have only now come across this wonderful book, Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction. But as they say, better now than never. The above book is highly recommended to those who are interested in improving the way that they write code and to reduce the headaches associated with code maintenance. The key points mentioned by this book are Software construct... [More]