I have been using Blogger for many years now on my own server. It has got to the point where I don't find the features of blogger fit in with my needs as a blogging platform so I am moving to Wordpress.

I am keeping all the content here on this site and I may still update it from now and then.

The new blog will still be more broadly focused against all aspects of the development of software not just c#.  The new blog can be found at the following URL: http://www.kinlan.co.uk/blog/

On the 17th of April I will be doing a talk at the Liverpool Users of .Net User group about Domain Specific Language Tools and T4 templates.

The general flow of the talk will be:

1. A brief overview of Domain Specific Languages.
2. What are the Microsoft DSL Tools and examples of toolkits in use
1. What the Microsoft DSL Tools are not
3. Where they can be used and how they can help developers and end-users.
4. And a step-by-step guide of the creation of a DSL Tool (hopefully this can be workshop based).

If you would like to attend it is being held at AIMES (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/venue/123846/) the event information can be found on upcomming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454169/

I will make the slides available if anyone wants to look at them.  All I have to do is work out what to say!

If you know of any good tools implemented using the DSL Toolkit, let me know and I will include them in the talk.

I am just about to release some Business Listing search software.  It is called Topicala Business (http://www.topicala.com/business/). If you are the owner of a UK business you have to opportunity to claim your listing and add a description of your line of business, a list of services you offer and contact information such as a URL, Address and telephone numbers for free.

Topicala Business is Unique in that it also searches the web for you so that you can find out what your customers and competitors are saying about your business.

If you know your company number you can visit your page by typing in the follow www.topicala.com/business/{companyNumber}.  Alternatively, you can perform search on the business name from either the main page (http://www.topicala.com/business/ ) or by using a direct query string request. For example, Topicala Ltd can be found using the URL http://www.topicala.com/business/topicala or http://www.topicala.com/business/06512461

The information is pulled from Companies House (http://www.companies-house.gov.uk) and is licenced under Crown Copyright.

I am still in the process of loading business information but there are already 169106 companies listed.  Granted, only the registered addresses are available.  But as more companies use the site, the more information that will be available.

Anyway, give it a try, claim your business and edit your listings so that potential customers can find your business.  All the Business Listings are submitted to Google, so you can promote your listings how you like to give your company information a boost on the search engines.

I will be adding more features as I go, but I am very interested in any comments you have or any features you would like to see.

I am now on twitter.

Twit me. My username is PaulKinlan http://www.twitter.com/PaulKinlan

A few .Net developers have gotten together in Liverpool to form a User Group where we can discuss everything .Net.

We have a web page with a rather snappy URL (http://www.usersof.net/), so if you are in the area and are interested in .Net why not join the Google group http://groups.google.co.uk/group/liverpoolusersofdotnet and come to meetings if you want(The next one is April the 17th 2008 - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454169/).  The more the merrier.

I have created the "Know your Privacy" application on Facebook.

This application is designed to give you insight into how the data in your profile is available to Third Party applications.

Key pieces of your Facebook profile are available to external applications, this information could be used for purposes that harm you.

The application can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/knowyourprivacy/

Please let me know what you think of the application and if it helps you understand the privacy aspects of letting 3rd Party applications into your Facebook profile.

Disclaimer

This application is for your informational purposes only. This application in no way suggests that the applications that you have installed in your profile are in anyway using your data for purposes other than those set out by their privacy statements.

The advice given by this application is common sense and in no way represents the opinions of my employer's past, present and future. The information is not guaranteed to be correct, and the author cannot be held responsible. If you require accurate information contact your local authorities. Informational Links are at the end of this application.

If you believe you have been a victim of identity theft contact the police and your banks immediately.

Identity Theft Information

If you would like more information about Identity theft, please contact your local authorities, police, credit reference agencies and banks.

Links

• Home Office - Identity Theft
• Home office - Who can help
• Wikipedia - Information about Identity theft
• CIFAS
• Experian
• Equifax
• Call Credit

I have added the Topicala (www.topicala.com/) application in to Facebook (www.facebook.com). 

If you add this application you will be able to search the Internet with directly leaving Facebook.

The application can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/topicala/

The application was really simple to develop and doesn't require that you pass any personal details to Topicala.

Let me know what you think.  I appreciate all feedback.

I have never been a fan of directly passing IDataRecords, or IDataReaders for that matter, about the place to get simple field values out.

Therefore, with the introduction of C# 3.0 and Extension Methods, I thought it would be cool to write (and share) a simple implementation of some code that I use to convert the IDataRecord Field data to an Dictionary<string, object> object.

namespace Kinlan.Data.Extensions
{
    public static class DataExtensions
    {
        public static Dictionary<string, object> FieldsToDictionary(this IDataRecord dataRecord)
        {
            Dictionary<string, object> fieldBag = new Dictionary<string, object>(dataRecord.FieldCount);

            if (dataRecord != null)
            {               
                for (int fieldIdx = 0; fieldIdx < dataRecord.FieldCount; fieldIdx++)
                {
                    string name = dataRecord.GetName(fieldIdx);
                    object value = dataRecord[fieldIdx];
                    fieldBag.Add(name, value);
                }
            }

            return fieldBag;
        }
    }
}

It is quite simple really and nothing too complex.

A place where it can be used it Windows Workflow.  If you are injecting parameters into your Workflow instance you need to pass a Dictionary<string, object> in, well now you can (if you desired) simply convert a IDataReader/IDataRecord object into with the following simple piece of code:

WorkflowInstance instance = runtime.CreateWorkflow(typeof(_WorkflowClass_), dataReaderInstance.FieldsToDictionary());

This code should be used sparingly, for instance if you wanted a very high performance access to the field data, you might as well stay on the IDataRecord.

I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I have created a usable [although beta] release of a generic Microformat parser for .Net.  I don't know of any other frameworks that easily allow you to find Microformats in an html/XML stream that are specifically built for .Net, so I believe that this project is a first (and hopefully a de-facto choice in time to come).

The project can be found on Codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/microformat.  The current release is Iteration 3.

The parser is stream based and uses an application configuration (see below for an example) to define the how the parser should parse the html/XML stream.  This flexible configuration means that if a spec changes for a Microformat or a new one is introduced then no code needs to be changed in the framework to let users of the framework see the changed data.

<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="MicroformatsSection" type="Microformats.ConfigurationSections.MicroformatConfigSection, Microformat.net"/>
  </configSections>
  <MicroformatsSection>
    <Microformats>
      <Microformat type="rel-tag" rootType="rel" root="tag" dataType="System.Uri" />
      <Microformat type="hCard" rootType="class" root="vcard" dataType="System.String">
        <Fields>
          <Field name="fn" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="url" dataType="System.Uri" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="email" dataType="System.Uri" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="adr" dataType="Microformat" plurality="Singular"/>
        </Fields>
      </Microformat>
      <Microformat type="adr" rootType="class" root="adr" dataType="System.String">
        <Fields>
          <Field name="post-office-box" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="extended-address" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="street-address" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="locality" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="region" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="postal-code" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
          <Field name="country-name" dataType="System.String" plurality="Singular"/>
        </Fields>
      </Microformat>
    </Microformats>
  </MicroformatsSection>

The above configuration says that the following Microformats are to be searched for: rel-tag, hCard and adr.  Each Microformat configuration can also be nested (see the hCard spec that allows an adr to be nested inside itself).  This saves on duplicating configuration information.  (Unfortunately a circular reference in the configuration can be defined and plurality of elements is not implemented.  This will be fixed soon).  Currently in this configuration not all of the hCard spec is defined (this was done for simplicity of me showing you how the config works), obviously this means that any parts of a Microformat that you are not interested in you won't see in the output of the framework.

The code that follows shows how easy it is to use this framework:

using (TextReader ms = new StringReader(@"<html><body><div class=""vcard author"">
 <a class=""url fn"" href=""http://www.kinlan.co.uk/"">Paul Kinlan</a>
 <a class=""email"" href=""mailto:paul.kinlan@gmail.com"">paul.kinlan@gmail.com</a>
 <div class=""adr"">
  <span class=""locality"">Liverpool</span>,<span class=""region"">Merseyside</span>
 </div>
</div>
</div><a href=""http://test.com/test"" rel=""tag"">Test Tag</a></body></html>"))
            {
                using (Microformats.Readers.MicroformatReader mr = new Microformats.Readers.MicroformatReader(ms))
                {
                    Microformat m = null;
                    while(( m = mr.Read()) != null)
                    {
                        Console.Out.Write("Found Microformat: " + m.Name + ". Machine Value:" + m.MachineValue + "\n");

                        foreach (IField f in m.Fields)
                        {
                            Console.Out.WriteLine("\t" + f.Name + ": " + f.MachineValue);
                        }
                    }
                    
                }
            }

The first line, simply converts makes a TextReader object that can be used to pass into the MicroformatReader object.  Once the stream has been presented to the framework, then it is as simple as calling mr.Read to iterate to across all the valid Microformats in the document.  The Read() method returns fully constructed Microformat objects that can be examined and used directly in your programs.

I still have a lot of work to do, however it appears (to me at least) to be quite flexible.  I would greatly appreciate any comments and feedback and if you use the framework I would love to hear about it.  If anyone is interested in joining the project let me know.