My Blog Posts
Blog... Short for weblog. Blogs originally had a purpose when the few people who had them actually had exciting and informative things to say. These blogs still exist and are pretty enjoyable to read. However, the advent of cheap hosting and drag and drop website builders has changed this once meaningful application into self importance, allowing everyday boring people like me to write about their lives, industry and interest. Welcome to my Blog!
YorkshireTechy WebsIte and Digital Tips for Your Small Business! - Week #1
Every week I’m sharing practical insights from over 25 years in the industry... actionable, straight‑talking tips to help you improve your website, boost trust, and turn more visitors into customers.
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Essential Password Security for Small Businesses... How to Protect Yourself, Your Data, and Your Reputation
For many small businesses, cybersecurity feels like something only big companies need to worry about. But the reality is very different. Small businesses are now one of the most common targets for cyber‑attacks. Not because they’re high‑value, but because they’re easier to breach.
And the number one entry point for attackers? Weak or reused passwords.
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The Best Go High Level Updates of 2025 for Small Businesses
2025 has been a massive year for Go High Level. As someone who uses GHL to support some of my clients, along with FreedomKit.ai and FunnelsCake, I wanted to write this blog to appreciate how it has grown as we head into 2026
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What's changing with LinkedIn in 2026 and what you need to do to be seen!
If you run a small business and your LinkedIn posts suddenly aren’t going as far as they used to, you’re not alone. Over the last year, reach has dropped for almost everyone... in some cases by nearly half.
And no, you’re not doing anything “wrong.”
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Gmail changes that every email marketer needs to know about!
Gmail has rolled out some massive inbox updates that have the potential to cause some major issues. If you're still blasting out generic emails to your entire list three times a week, it's likely that you're about to have a rough time. Read on!
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Be Where Your Competitors Aren't - The Blue Ocean Strategy of Bing for UK Small Businesses
In business strategy, there's a concept called "blue ocean" - finding uncontested market space where competition is irrelevant. While everyone battles in the "red ocean" of Google, Bing represents a blue ocean opportunity that most UK businesses are completely ignoring.
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Please Understand that AIs' like ChatGPT are just not good at maths
I’ve seen a few posts lately where people are frustrated with ChatGPT or other AI chatbots giving strange (and often wrong) answers to basic maths questions like checking if a list of expenses adds up.
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Bridlington Google Digital Garage 2025 - Great Day
I’ve been to three Google Digital Garage events before, all of them in York, and I’ve always found them super useful. It’s a great way to catch up on the latest tips and advice that Google is sharing with small businesses. So when I saw they were running an all-day session in Bridlington, with the bonus of a seaside escape, I signed up straight away!
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Chat GPT-5: Maybe Not Quite the Game-Changer We Were Told It Would Be
ChatGPT-5 launched last week (August 7th), and we've been told recently that this new update will be a game changer, I've been testing it since launch and here are my thoughts.
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The Hidden Dangers of Relying Solely on Facebook or Instagram for Your Small Business
In the digital age, many small businesses lean heavily on social media platforms like Facebook for marketing, customer engagement, and community building. While convenient and seemingly cost-effective, depending exclusively on a Facebook page carries considerable risk, especially when you don’t own a website.
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Instagram Content is Now Showing Up on Google - It's Time to care About Your Keywords
On June 10th 2025, Instagram introduced a change that most people won’t notice straight away - but it has huge implications if you use social media to market your business.
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IDARN JULY TECH NETWORKING EVENT - BARNSLEY
It's the start of July, and as usual, there are lots of networking events at the beginning of the month. I saw this event in Barnsley, a place I have rarely visited, which was networking plus 5 tech talks.
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Digital Marketers and YouTubers Are Excited About This New 'SEO Magic Fix'... But Should You Jump On Board?
The internet's always buzzing with new stuff. And lately, there's been talk about something called an LLM.txt file. Yoast, which is that popular SEO service that most 'SEO professionals' use, created this magic file.
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WordPress Websites for Small Businesses... Here’s What To Consider.
Lots of small businesses that need a new website or are looking for a fresh design choose WordPress, and with good reason. It’s estimated that nearly half of small businesses in the UK use WordPress. Marketing materials often emphasise the fact that it’s free, easy to use, offers thousands of plugins to meet business needs, and can have you up and running in a matter of hours.
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Is Search Dead?
As a technical SEO specialist, I often see posts online or have conversations with people who say things like:
“ChatGPT and Perplexity are killing Google. Nobody uses search engines anymore, so why bother optimising for them?”
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What small business can learn from M&S
Marks & Spencer has faced its fair share of challenges over the years, but nothing quite like this. The retail giant, known for its British heritage and commitment to quality has found itself at the mercy of cybercriminals last month in a ransomware attack that sent shockwaves through its operations.
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Security starts at the source (code)
There's a lot of talk surrounding security right now. Mainly because some high street names such as Co-op, M&S and Harrods have been attacked
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There's a hard truth about SEO
The Truth is an obvious one that many business owners don't want to face...
The truth is, if you put less effort into SEO than your competitors do, THEY WILL BEAT YOU in the search rankings!
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Is your slow website causing you problems?
Google hates slow websites and will rank you lower than your competitor if you don't take heed of this warning!
You know how annoying it is when a website you want to look at takes ages to load?
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DDD North Conference - February 2025
As I always say, anybody who knows me or has read my blog previously knows that I love the DDD conferences. They happen in a number of places in the country, the DDDNorth conference this year was held last week in Hull as it has been for the last few years and I love it because It's a totally free conference, has great speakers, great food and you get to hang out with like-minded tech people.
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Does Attention to detail not exist any more? Caffè Nero Email Marketing Error
Someone made a boo boo as we would have said a few years ago.
This is an email from Caffe Nero that I woke up to!
Personally, I am a stickler for checking, checking and double checking, especially when it comes to sending emails... Unlike a website, once an email is out there, it's out there, you can't change it.
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Is Your Website Living in the Past?
Today is the 15th of January 2025, halfway through the first month so we can morally and correctly ask... "How quickly is this year going?!" 😉 to everyone we meet. The year is moving on but is your website living in the past?
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Stop arguing about languages and just build!
I see so many posts and discussions on social media about how C++ is better than C# and Rust is faster than Java, or Javascript is... Well, the devil's 👹 own language (I must stop making those posts 😉) But why does it matter?
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Why do People Say "You Only Live Once" When it's Not True?
The phrase "YOLO" has become a popular mantra for teenagers and young adults, often used to justify taking risks and living life to the fullest. But the mantra is completely wrong, you LIVE every day...
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It’s Now Time to do Some News Years SEO Housekeeping
You’re back from the holiday season, It's out with the old, and in with the new. And that means it’s time to do some News Years SEO Housekeeping on your site…
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Sorry, But You won't get rich quick with AI
I see it all the time on here and social media... How you can use AI to make your fortune without doing hardly anything...
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The Implosion of WordPress
If you're a fan of the biggest CMS in the world, you must be feeling a little queasy about your choice right now. Cracks are starting to show under the management of WordPress, WPEngine and Wordpress.org...
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8 Things Men Do When They Feel Like a Failure and How to Turn It Around
Men often feel like they have become a failure when they see the world around them seemingly bathing in prosperity when they aren’t, or if there is a marriage or family break up… Or most commonly, after losing a job. Something I am battling within my own life at the moment.
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User Interfaces Are Like Jokes: If You Have to Explain Them, You’ve Failed
Like most people nowadays, I visit my fair share of websites every day… Big businesses generally do a good job, sure there are times that they fail miserably but when that happens, the world calls them out!
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Plenty of Traffic to Your Website, But Not Many Sales? 4 Reasons Why...
Is this familiar to you? Google Analytics tells you that you’re getting lots of traffic, but you’re not getting lots of sales?
One of the most frustrating things for any business owner is to see that their website is getting a lot of traffic, but they’re not getting very many sales or conversions. If this is happening to you, don’t worry – you’re not alone. In fact, it’s a problem that I see all too common!
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Gamification... Just because you can, doesn't mean you should!
Gamification is a proven marketing tool that companies love because it makes customer interactions fun and engaging. After all, Who can resist a challenge?
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BBC Weather Glitch - Are We Really Going to be Blown Away by the Strongest Hurricane Ever?
Batten Down the Hatches!
According to the BBC weather app, the whole of the UK will suffer from Hurricane winds of nearly 15000mph for the next two days, that's nearly 70 times worse than the strongest hurricane ever recorded!
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Dark Patterns. Online Tricks Designed to Confuse
You've probably encountered a "dark pattern." These are sneaky design tricks that make you do something you didn't intend. Imagine a website that makes it super hard to cancel a subscription. Or one that hides extra costs until the very end. These are dark patterns. They're like sneaky sales tactics, but online.
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Todays Global Tech Meltdown: Crowdstrike Update Gone Wrong!
These things seem to be getting all too common, some globally installed software breaks and takes down half the world!
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16th July 2024 - Google Digital Garage Training Day in York
The City of York Council has an initiative to assist small to medium businesses, especially in the digital arena. This week, they teamed up with Google for the second year running to provide a digital skills training day in the heart of the city.
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Celebrating Wisdom and Resilience: A 90th Birthday Reflection
This weekend, I had the privilege of attending a truly remarkable birthday celebration – the 90th birthday of a woman who inspires us as a family every day... The family grandma!
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DotNet York - Build Advanced AI Solutions with Semantic Kernel with Bill Ayers
There hasn't been an in-person event of the DotNet York meetup group for a while, but last night was an exception and possibly the start of regular get-togethers.
The talk was about Building AI solutions with Semantic Kernel by the fantastic Bill Ayers.
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Abandoning Security and Accessibility to Save Money Is Like Stopping the Clock to Save Time
In the fast-paced world, websites and applications serve as the face of businesses, connecting them to their customers. However, some organisations make a critical mistake: they cut corners on security and accessibility to save costs. This decision is akin to stopping the clock to save time - counterproductive and ultimately harmful.
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Time vs. Money: The Project Leader's Struggle
Ever feel like there just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done? That's the life of a tech lead or project manager, my friend. Deadlines are tight, resources are limited, and you're constantly juggling. And then there's the boss, that's not you... That's not your clients... That's not your line manager? Time is the real boss here.
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Hiring by Numbers - A Tale of Job Application Rejection
My inbox is starting to resemble a graveyard of rejection emails. Each one feels like a tiny papercut, a nagging reminder that I haven't landed a job yet and time is running out. But you know what? I know I'm a rocket waiting to explode in the right role. I just need someone to see the benefits of my experience and light the fuse!
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Umbraco Basics – More Fun With Redirects Non www to www
This is another post in my Umbraco Basics series. This post will tackle how to create a redirect changing domain.com to www.domain.com in Umbraco 9+
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Apple Redefines AI... And not just by calling it "Apple Intelligence"
Apple has just made some big announcements regarding its forthcoming series of operating systems, every year it upgrades the OS on all of its devices adding lots of features that we'll ultimately end up using every day. Mostly these features have been numerous, small but useful. Nothing groundbreaking.
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Umbraco Basics – Simple Permanent or 301 Redirects
Umbraco is the leading .net c# content management system, and this is another post in my Umbraco Basics series. This post will tackle how to create a permanent redirect simply in Umbraco 9+
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Design Meets Tech - Seminar Day in Hull - 25th May 2024
Over the weekend I attended the Design Meets Tech Seminar day of talks, hosted by Hull Frontend
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What's Your Leadership Style?
One of the delights of being "Open To Work" is that you get to chat with lots of "Recruitment Specialists", and having to answer the same questions over and again...
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I Am Really Cool!
Most of you know I'm currently looking for a new position, and I thought I'd give myself a lift by finding out what people think of me, and in particular, did they think I was cool?!?! I didn't want to ask people outright on here because... Well, how vain is that!?!
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Stay clear of using the F-Word in business!
Yesterday morning, I spent some time with local business people when I attended a Business over Breakfast networking event. One of the interesting things I learned was the inherent hatred for that F-Word!
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Drowning in Spam: The Unsubscribe Experiment
Have you ever checked your email only to be greeted by an avalanche of unwanted messages? Stupid question, of course you have. My inbox has always been a digital landfill overflowing with spam...
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If your website isn't showing on Google at all then this may be why
We all know that if we can get our website high in the rankings on Google, then that is our holy grail. It's simply the best online marketing we can do without lots of recurring costs.
Throughout the years I have had many potential clients and friends come to me saying that their website isn't appearing anywhere on the search engines. Usually there's no problem, it just takes time and patience...
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Microsoft Edge on iOS Now Converts Your WebSites to Dark Mode and How You Can Stop It
I have preferred to use Microsoft Edge ever since it was rebuilt using Chromium (essentially making it the same as Google Chrome). Not only do I use Edge on my Mac, but it's my preferred choice on Windows, my iPhone and iPad also. And all was good... Until that is, the iOS app updated to the latest version.
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Umbraco Basics - GUID vs. Content ID
Umbraco is the leading .net c# content management system, and for good reason. It’s friendly to use, and friendly on developers too.
I will be creating a series of blog posts in the coming weeks addressing issues that a new developer to Umbraco may be confused about. In this post, I will tackle the somewhat simple question of whether it is best to use GUID or Content ID when referencing content.
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A Day at DDDNorth Developers Conference in Hull - November 2022
It has to be said, the Developer Developer Developer conferences in the UK are highlights of my year, you get to spend the day listening to interesting talks, meed like minded tech people and have some great food! This weekend was DDDNorth in Hull and as always, was a great day!
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Hashtag Hatred?
New Platforms such as Threads and Bluesky are Bucking the Trend and Signalling a Shift in Social Media
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How to Convince Your Boss or Client to Make Their Site Accessible
This weekend I was at a talk about accessibility where a member of the audience asked how they could convince their boss that they should make their website accessible. He didn't get the answer he wanted!
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DDD East Midlands - October 2023
Anybody who knows me or has read my blog previously knows that I love the DDD conferences. The latest one was this weekend. It's a totally free conference, has great speakers, great food and you get to hang out with like-minded tech people.
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How Does the Instagram Algorithm Work?
Do you ever wonder how Instagram decides what to show you? In a rare hint of transparency, Adam Mosseri, the big boss of Instagram, explained how the app's magic works and how you can have some control over it.
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Why Don't You Have a Website?
Recently I've seen a strange trend of companies without a website. It seems that a growing number of small businesses rely on Facebook pages instead of having their own websites. This may seem convenient and cost-effective, but it limits your online presence and potential customers.
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18th May 2023 - Google Digital Garage Training Day in York
One great thing about living and working in York is that the city of York Council has an initiative to assist small to medium businesses, especially in the digital arena. Last week, as part of this, they teamed up with Google to provide a digital skills training day in the heart of the city
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Time For a Refresh?
Does anybody else give their server a name?
I've had my own personal dev server for years, it chugs along running Windows Server 2016, which of course is around 7 years old now!
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Who is Your Perfect Client? And How do you Find Them?
This is a question that I've been asking myself lately as I explore new opportunities. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to find another job but want to put my skills to good use to provide myself with a second income during these times when the cost of living seems to be going through the roof!
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Is 'Being Nice' The Secret to Team Harmony and Productivity?
I'm a nice person!
At least, I like to think so. Sure, sometimes I get a little stressed and annoyed (particularly with service providers) but rarely with my team... Why? Well, I've always been like that, I've always believed in that old adage to "Treat people how you expect to be treated"
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What Have We Learnt From Hackers?
Having worked in the financial sector for the bulk of my career, we always had to have an "ear to the ground" to understand the security vulnerabilities of the technology we were working with and to try to stay one step ahead of the nasty hacker types. I am pleased to say that in the 23 years I worked as technical director for a software development agency which focused on the financial sector, we never had any security breaches which resulting in financial or data loss.
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Am I addicted to data?
I learnt a lesson from a surprising source which makes me question if I really need all the data I constantly consume or if I am in fact a Data Junkie?
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Creating an application programming interface using .net Minimal APIs returning data from a stored procedure
Minimal APIs are a relatively new feature introduced in .net 6 architected to create APIs with minimal dependencies. They have a minimal set of features and dependencies and are much faster than traditional methods.
I resurrect an old project to implement a simple affiliate shopping site using minimal API's reading data from a SQL Server stored procedure.
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A Day at DDDNorth Developers Conference in Hull - November 2022
I do love a tech meetup or developer event, and the one I look forward to each year is the annual DDDNorth developer event, it has great speakers, you get to spend some time with fellow techies, great food and for the last couple of years it's being hosted in Hull... What's not to love!
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Elon Musk - Making Twitter GREAT again!
Elon's final takeover of Twitter back in October has undeniably caused a massive stir. Everything that has happened at the company since has been documented to the minute degree, and opinions have been far from favourable about the whole process. I'm not Elon's biggest fan but I think he's going to make Twitter great again!
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Replacing your creative staff with bots could harm your reputation, Isn't that right KFC!?!?
There are some tasks which can be easily automated using bots. For example, a bot can decide where a support call gets forwarded to or could determine which country someone is in to provide a correct address. Still, these are "mundane" tasks decided by a simple triage process, not creative marketing tasks.
Any company having the great idea of saving money by redirecting "simple" creative work to bots should think again, as KFC has recently found out.
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How To Get Noticed as a Developer at Twitter (it seems)
Since Elon Musk announced he wanted to take over Twitter, there has been a "flutter" of interesting information revealed about how the company works, how it is managed, how the system is built and its inherent flaws etc.
Elon took over the platform in October 2022 and promptly sacked a large amount of the staff resulting in even more revelations but one ex-developer on Twitter made a post today which caught my eye for the wrong (but very interesting) reason
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Hull Software Developers Meetup 7th November 2022
Hull has always been one of my favourite cities. Not only was I born there but every time I visit, I seem to be surrounded by people passionate about technical innovation. The city is hosting a digital expo this week so it was the perfect time to launch a new meetup group for tech and software developers.
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Finally, face to face meetups could be back!
Before the lockdown, the Yorkshire meetup community was thriving, especially in Leeds, Hull, and York. Not a week would go by without a pizza-laden get together with like-minded tech friends.
Of course, these meetings moved to online video when the UK closed to socialising in 2020 and have mostly stayed that way since.
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Audio Books and the story of our everyday accessibility
Like most people walking or driving to work, I connect my phone to my car or headphones and listen to a good audiobook, but did you ever stop to think how this form of entertainment or knowledge gain is yet another example of how accessibility and the disabled community have nourished our everyday lives
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Sega Mega Drive Mini 2 is a Shoot'em Up Fans Dream!
In my youth, I always preferred Sega games and consoles to Nintendo's offerings...
So when Sega announced a new version of the Mega Drive Mini, I just had to get my hands on it! What I didn't expect was just how good the Shoot'em up offering would be on this machine.
There are so many in-depth reviews of the mini console elsewhere if that's what you want, this is focusing on the greatest game genre of them all, the Arcade Shooter!
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Programming Guidelines I Have Followed Since 2001
In my last job, 23 years as Technical Director for a digital agency, I headed the development team through many different frameworks, systems and languages. We realised very quickly that we needed a set of solid programming guidelines to follow and in 2001 we set down to write them. I have tried to follow these guidelines ever since.
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Diary of a game that will never be finished - Part 3
Part 3 of the series in which I try to make a 3D motorcycle racing and shooting game using unity. This is just a short post but exciting because I finally added a few lines of code to actually get my motorbike moving!
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Eight Reasons Why You Should Marry a Programmer
I think a programmer isn't an obvious choice when considering the type of person you would marry, but I'm here to tell you that we make great spouses! And here are 8 reasons why!
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Diary of a game that will never be finished - Part 2
This is part 2 of the blog which will follow me trying to make a 3D motorcycle racing and shooting game using unity, a game development framework which uses c# as its core language. In the first part, I successfully installed the unity hub and created my blank project. Now, I have to actually do something!
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Diary of a game that will never be finished - Part 1
Like most people around my age, my first love of computing was playing games on the exciting old 8-bit computers like the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC. I want to remake one of my favourite games from that time
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Bounce - A Game Written in Pure Javascript with HTML 5 Canvas
In early 2005, a new version of HTML was released (called HTML5) which had an amazing feature. The feature was called CANVAS and allowed a developer to directly address the space within a special div.
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You Should be Accessible! Here’s 6 things You Can Do
Web browsers and computer systems have had accessibility features built in for years, from screen readers to the ability to zoom fonts, so it’s curious why so many companies and website developers fail to implement accessibility well.
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E-Commerce in the Pandemic Era
The UK has been in lockdown now for as many weeks as we care to remember, we’ve got used to taking fewer food shopping trips because of the time and effort and wasted queueing it commands but food shopping is a necessity, what about the everyday items and luxury things we’d all like to buy if the other shops were open? Well, if you have an e-commerce website, then that potentially falls to you!
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Pandemic Remote Working vs Working From Home
Everybody in the UK and pretty much the world has been flung into what seems to be the most surreal situation following the introduction of the COVID-19 Virus at the beginning of this year. Schools and shops closed with few exceptions, queueing for hours for your daily shop, the roads devoid of cars, staying away from family and friends who don’t live with us, homeschooling our children and office workers told to go home to work.
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Day Out at Umbraco UK Festival 2018
It is no secret that .net developers love to build websites within the Umbraco CMS. Its ease of use for both development and for content editors makes it our number one choice. So every year I, have attended the country's biggest and best Umbraco get-together – The Umbraco UK Festival.
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Your website CAN collect Direct Debit payments digitally online!
There are very few briefs that come into a digital team nowadays that don't have some e-commerce or e-payment element to them. In most cases, online payments are made by credit and debit cards using traditional online payment gateways such as Sagepay, Worldpay and Paypal, but there is another way...
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