This was just a little Sunday project inspired by the number of strikes we’ve been having and the isitchristmas.com website. Isthereastrike.co.uk lists organisations that have been experiences strikes and then has a simple yes/no page for each one.

As the site is very simple it was also a nice test bed for a few things I’ve been learning about lately. It runs on ASP.NET MVC (it may be the simplest MVC site ever), has an Entity Framework data model keeping track of the strikes and has a Dynamic Data admin section.

There is a small unit test for the project using xUnit and I’m going to try using an IOC container to allow me to test the data filtering. It’s overkill, but a good way to learn.

Perhaps people will even find it useful, but I’m really hoping that all the strikes (particularly Leeds Bin Strike) will be sorted out soon.

Light Night in Leeds is a great event and I'm really looking forward to this year. Partly because I'm a little bit involved, but also because some of my friends are doing really exciting stuff there this year. The talented Andy Sykes (aka ‘Hexjibber' for some reason) will be using FriiSpray at Ha Ha Bar to create audience generated animations that will get shown on the Big Screen in Millennium Square. I will be there helping him set up FriiSpray Virtual Graffiti and if possible taking most of the credit for all his hard work. We're going to be inviting passers by to paint using a virtual spray can on to the window of Ha Ha Bar and Andy is going to take their creations and bring them to life on the big screen. It's going to be a lot of fun, so please come down and see us.

Another project that I will be going to see is Pyramid of Art's sound web. I was involved in their project last year, but I managed to miss it being exhibited at last year's Light Night. I arrived just as they were closing the doors. So I'm hoping to sneak away from Andy (if he lets me) to go and see what they've done this year. It was created by the young people in the Pyramid of Arts Youth Group and will hopefully be as big a success as what they did last year.

Something I'm not involved in, but is happening at my office at Old Broadcasting House is something to do with electric pets. Got no idea what it is, but it sounds like fun and I will be checking it out.

Something I'm going to miss on the night is the work by my Jam Jar Collective colleagues Dave and Stuart at Temple Mill. Viewings of their light sculpture have completely sold out on the night. It's running through the week so I'm hoping I can catch it on another night.

There's literally another 100 things going on, so there's no chance of seeing everything, but it's going to be a fun night.

I love Brighton and I loved dConstruct last year when I came for the first time. So it was hugely exciting to get an unexpected email inviting the Jam Jar Collective to come and show off FriiSpray. The Jam Jar Collective are a group of geeks and artists interested in making interactive stuff and FriiSpray is an interactive graffiti wall that we made. The rest of them couldn't make it down, so my good friend Dave is helping me instead.

I always like to see behind the scenes, but when I arrived today with my suitcase full of projectors and laptops all the doors at the Brighton Dome were locked. Luckily I saw Jeremy Keith walking past carrying some bits of stage and he was kind enough to let me in. Everything seemed fairly calm inside and like they were pretty much ready for the activities of tomorrow. I set FriiSpray up between the O'Reilly book stand and a collection of Microsoft Surface tables. I really wanted to have a play on surface but they were doing a windows update.

I went to the pre party for a little bit, but I had an SQL problem on my mind (now sorted). Plus I really want to add some new features to FriiSpray for tomorrow, although it's getting late now. Anyway, really can't wait till tomorrow. Should be a fantastic day.

When I started blogging I wrote my own blogging engine as a way to improve my ASP.NET skills. It was a nice project, but as other blogging engines became more advanced I didn't have time to keep up. So I've wanted to move my blog to another engine for a while. There really is no point in reinventing the wheel and I have more exciting projects now.

I heard about Oxite while I was looking into ASP.NET MVC. MVC is way of structuring applications and has been around for ages, but ASP.NET MVC is a new thing and a thing that I'm quite excited about. Oxite started life as an MVC example and isn't a polished product yet. However, I thought it would be an excellent way to become more familiar with .NET MVC.

It didn't quite meet my needs out of the box. In particular I didn't want my old URLs to break. So I've hacked it about a bit and in the process learnt a lot about MVC. I'm slightly dreading the planned update to Oxite though as the modifications I've made will probably get in the way, but I'm sure the updates will be worth it. I was surprised and pleased when one of the Oxite developers got in touch via twitter to check if I liked Oxite and to offer any help if I needed it. I did end up needing it and he was very helpful, so big thanks go to Erik Porter.

I'm due to start my first .NET MVC project in two weeks and playing about with Oxite has been a big help.