• On May 17, 2013 by

    Propaganda

  • On February 9, 2013 by

    Dark Ecology

    Paul Kingsnorth from The Dark Mountain Project has written a bleak yet beautiful article about what I can only describe as post-environmental thinking

    I broadly agree with much he is saying. Decades of environmentalism and nothing has changed. The great narrative of Progress is too strong. From here all I can see is managed decline…geo-technological “fixes” that create other problems, more impoverishment of human life…Blade Runner crossed with Brave New World is a good call.

    Either that or some unexpected climate change positive feedback kicks in and we say good bye to the Anthropocene in a crazy short period of time.

    Read it here

  • On August 12, 2012 by

    Integrating Umbraco and ASP.NET MVC

    Scenario – you want to integrate a ASP.NET MVC application with Umbraco so that Umbraco handles all of the authentication and user management but the ASP.NET MVC app operates outside of the Umbraco framework.

    Essentially we want to be able to decorate our controller actions like this:

    [UmbracoAuthorize]
public ActionResult ActionThatRequireAuthentication()
{
    return View();
}

    and let Umbraco handle the authentication.

    Read more

  • On July 30, 2012 by

    Gentlemen Broncos!

  • On June 28, 2012 by

    Philosophy

    “Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions.”

    - Wittgenstein

  • On April 21, 2012 by

    CSS hover menu with touch device

    In an ideal world touch devices won’t be using a design with a hovering menu.  I’d like to live in that would but until then this is a quick hack to stop the initial touch “clicking” on the top level item in a typical <ul> menu with sub <ul>s.

    $(function() {
  // YMMV with this...
  var touchDevice = ("ontouchstart" in window);

  if (touchDevice) {

    function handleTouchEvent(event) {
      var noClick = !(this.noClick);
      this.noClick = noClick;
      this.focus();
    }

    function handleClickEvent(event) {
      if (this.noClick) {
        event.preventDefault();
      }
    }

    $('ul#menu &gt; li').each(function() {
      this.noClick = false;
      this.addEventListener('touchstart', handleTouchEvent, false);
      this.addEventListener('click', handleClickEvent, false);
    });

  }
});

  • On February 14, 2012 by

    It’s all in the reflexes

    Did Kurt Russell actually read the script for Big Trouble in Little China?

  • On January 15, 2012 by

    Handpainted artwork in Indian Ink

    Finally had chance to finish the e-commerce site I put together for Gina. It is written in PHP using Lemonstand, which I highly recommend.

    For lovely hand painted Guernsey artwork please take a look.

  • On January 8, 2012 by

    We are all atheists

    “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

    - Stephen Roberts

  • On December 13, 2011 by

    On beliefs

    “If people are committed to an unscientific position, no evidence or argument will shake them out of it. Whether they subscribe to AIDS denial, excessive fear of radiation, vaccine scaremongering, homeopathy or creationism, they tend to demand impossible standards of proof from their opponents but to accept any old rubbish that supports their beliefs.

    So if you are among those who reject the vast weight of scientific evidence for manmade climate change, I don’t expect this article to persuade you. Ask yourself what it would take to change your mind. If tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers, against a tiny handful supporting your position; basic physics, demonstrable in a lab; instrumental temperature records spanning 150 years and much else on these lines can’t sway you, what could?

    Conversely, which claims will you not accept? Do you believe that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human beings? That the hockey-stick graph of global temperatures is a fake? That global warming is a conspiracy cooked up between governments and scientists? If none of the science persuades you, but you accept these groundless claims, your belief is likely to be a religious one, by which I mean unamenable to refutation.”

    - George Monbiot

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