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.

Steven Johnson gave a talk at d-Construct 2008 on the Urban Web. This is my summary of what was said, and the bits I found most interesting.

He told us a fascinating story of the Cholera Epidemic in London and how one outbreak, a map visualisation and combined local knowledge helped them figure out that contaminated water was the cause of the disease. It was a brief summary of his book 'The Ghost Map'. He then went on to talk about how the web, combined with geographical data could bring us all closer to our communities and local knowledge.

He mentioned Tufte, who I've heard people talk about before and meant to read up on. Edward Tufte wrote some books on data visualisation and was described by The New York Times as "the da Vinci of Data".

There's so much information on the web including a growing number of blogs, micro-blogs and photo sharing. It's produced by companies and individuals, but he suggests that the most relevant stuff, is the stuff that's close to us physically. He's created a site called Outside In, that brings you 'hyper-local' news; a fancy and probably made up term that means stuff really close to you (i.e. half a mile from your house). He showed a really nice example of how it alerted him to a van burning in a nearby street, almost as it happened and even sent him photos that people had uploaded. The site has also allowed him to find the 'blogiest neighbourhood' in America, although I can't remember which one it was.

He talked about thinking beyond restaurants when it comes to the geographical web. This really resonated with me and has given me a lot to think about.

Photo credit to: Natalie Downe.

When I do a piece of design that involves typography I spend ages choosing the right font. The font that will endow the work with the right feeling and the font that is most similar to the one I've got pictured in my head.

This normally takes ages, but I've written a Font Picker program in Flash to help me do it. It shows you a sample of your chosen text displayed using all the fonts on your computer. You can then whittle down this list by removing unsuitable fonts.

The best thing is that this works straight from your browser and still displays the fonts that are on your computer. I've also made a version you can download and install if you have a PC or a Mac.

Picking the right font still takes ages, but hopefully you'll find this tool helpful in visualizing the typefaces you're considering.

You can use this fantastic tool here

• Font Picker

But how does it work?

In Flash ActionScript 3.0 there is a very useful function called:

Font.enumerateFonts

This allowed me to get a list of all the fonts on the computer running the flash program and display any text I wanted using them.

I've also used Adobe AIR to make a desktop version of this program. I've got some planned extra features for that version, including tagging for fonts and possibly some export features. The great thing about Adobe AIR is that it really was very easy indeed to take my web based Flash App and make it an AIR application.

My last project has been my most high profile since I went freelance. So, I'm excited to announce that it went live this week. The website in question is the new Oxfam International site.

I was working with Fortune Cookie, DGF Solutions and the web team at Oxfam. I was responsible for implementing Fortune Cookie's designs using Drupal and PHP. I worked with the Oxfam team to move a huge amount of content from their old site to the new site. I also gave training to the Oxfam editors on how to use their new Drupal Site.

It was a very challenging project, particularly making it multilingual. I think we really pushed what Drupal can do to make a site with a lot of features. It was great to be involved on such a great project and I think the final site is excellent. I really hope people enjoy it.