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.

This isn't a very exciting post, but it took me ages to figure it out, so I wanted to write it down somewhere.

I wanted to use a one line ImageMagick command to:

• Take four pictures
• Resize, centre and crop them to be square thumbnails
• Arrange them in a 2 by 2 grid

Here is the command for ImageMagick on Windows:

convert -size 300x300 xc:transparent
-page 150x150 ( "image1.jpg" -gravity center -resize 150x150^^ -extent 150x150 )
-page 150x150 ( "image2.jpg" -gravity center -resize 150x150^^ -extent 150x150 -repage +0+150 )
-page 150x150 ( "image3.jpg" -gravity center -resize 150x150^^ -extent 150x150 -repage +150+0 )
-page 150x150 ( "image4.jpg" -gravity center -resize 150x150^^ -extent 150x150 -repage +150+150 )
-flatten composition.jpg

This all needs to be on one line. If you're using Linux ^^ should be ^ and brackets need to be escaped with a backslash.

You also need to be using at least ImageMagick version 6.3.8-2.

Firstly I'd like to introduce The Jam Jar Collective. I started working with Dave Lynch and Stuart Childs on FriiSpray and it sparked so many new ideas that we decided we wanted to do more stuff together. When you create things together you need a collective name, so we became the Jam Jar Collective.

When you've got a name, it turns out you also need business cards, so that people won't forget your name after you've met them. I get really excited about playing with the idea of business cards to make them a bit different and more memorable. I came up with the idea of using real jars of jam. Dave then insisted that we should make our own jam as this would be more personal.

Jam making turned into a bit of an adventure in itself, which I may write about one day. Till then, it's enough to know that so far everyone loves our new business jars.

I've been working on an exciting project recently with the wonderful Deb Urbanwide Bassett. We launched recently, but I've been too busy to blog about it. The idea started when my back started to hurt. I'd gone freelance and was using my laptop far more than I ever had before. I was using it at client offices, at home and at the coworking space in Old Broadcasting House. Using my laptop so much was making my back hurt.

The great thing about working in a coworking space, rather than working by yourself is that you can complain discuss the issues you're having. It turned out that my back laptap issues were quite common and several people had laptop stands to make using a laptop more comfortable. I met Deb at Geek Up, but got chatting to her at Old Broadcasting House. She had a really nice portable laptop stand, but it didn't work with my laptop and was really expensive. I looked around for a laptop stand that would be portable and wasn't expensive, but I couldn't find one. So, inspired by Deb I made my own out of the cardboard box my laptop had been delivered in. I was really pleased with it and I had a laptop stand that was portable and worked even better than I thought it would. My problem was solved.

Deb liked my laptop stand so much that she wanted one herself. We talked about it and thought we'd have a go at making more and selling them. We got really excited about the idea. I love the feeling when you feel inspired by an idea and all the possibilities. Then the actual work began. Well it did for Deb. I did all the fun jobs like designing the logo and drawing diagrams. Deb did all the hard work like finding a manufacturer and sorting out the online ordering. We also had a lot of fun together making and testing new prototypes that improved on my original design.

This has been a side project alongside our freelance work, so it's taken us a while to get here. We've learnt loads while we've been doing this and it's been a lot of fun. It's nice to be making a physical product, it's a change from my normal digital projects. There's still lots to learn and lots to do. Like learning how to export stuff. It should be easy, but it seems really complicated. I made the product website very quickly; we just wanted to get things rolling. So improving the website is one of the things high on our to do list.

You can see our cardboard laptop stand at www.cardboardlaptopstand.co.uk. We hope you like it, and if you need a strong, light, portable laptop stand then I'd recommend you buy one.