My blog

Converge Data Type Converter

This post describes how I implemented a data type converter for Converge, allowing a different data type to be used in the destination site, when compared to the original source site.

Use Converge to Upgrade to Umbraco 8

I think that the easiest way to explain what Converge does is to see it in action. Here I will explain how I migrated a simple Umbraco V7 site to Umbraco V8.

Migrating to New Umbraco Versions

Before upgrading my current site to use Umbraco 8, I decided to revisit my experiences of moving sites from version 6 to version 7. When doing that I dabbled with the idea of starting with a brand new site and migrating the content separately. Here I take a look at applying that method to version 8 and from that my first Umbraco Package was born.

Storing Umbraco Media on Azure

A quick description of how to use Azure Blob storage to store your media files in Umbraco.

Umbraco Web.config

Before making a site live I tend to perform some tests to make the site as secure as possible. This usually involves using a tool like Qualys Web Application Scanning or OWASP ZAP to probe the site and then address any problems. In this entry I detail some of the more common changes that I make.

Umbraco Membership

In this post I employ the Umbraco membership functionality to password-protect my blog entry form. A user must login before they can access certain pages.

Creating a Form in Umbraco

A quick post describing how I implemented a simple form to accept film reviews for my Cinema Cento film blog.

Classifying my Own Images

One of my pet projects is to be able to scan in images of my old diary and convert the written words to text. As this is a bit too ambitious for an early machine learning project, I decided to first perform a more basic analysis on the images: classify them into left and right pages.

Creating a Post using the Tumblr API

In this post I detail how I set up my code so that it automatically updates Tumblr when changes are made to the content within Umbraco. When I update a Cinema Cento post on the CMS, it now gets created or updated on my Tumblr blog.

OAuth Authentication on the Tumblr API

In this entry I explain how I set up OAuth authentication for the Tumblr API. Eventually I want to be able to write posts to the API, but for now I explain how to retrieve user information as that also requires the extra steps.

Reading from the Tumblr API

I have been keeping a blog on Tumblr for a number of years, and I was keen to replicate and (eventually) post to it from my Umbraco website. This post describes how I went about using the Tumblr API to retrieve the current posts on the blog and re-create them as content within Umbraco.

Trying out TensorFlow

As my machine learning studying has progressed I have now learnt about TensorFlow, a Python Library that provides lots of functionality for implementing neural networks. I decided to apply it to the Titanic data I have used previously.

Machine Learning Practice

After spending many hours on courses studying machine learning techniques, I decided that it was time I had a go myself. I decided to start with a simple example: the Titanic dataset.

My First Python Project

When putting together a web page for an upcoming landmark birthday I decided that I’d like the banner of the page to be a montage of photos of me during my life. Hey, I’m allowed to be self-centred, it is all about me after all!

As I wanted to learn Python for my machine learning projects I decided to use that language to create my montage of images.

Umbraco: Model View Controller

A look at using Model View Controller (MVC) to implement some more complex logic when using Umbraco, keeping the code out of the view.

Getting Started with Umbraco

This blog entry explains how to get started with Umbraco, having installed all of the components required and being able to log into the back office.

Initial Umbraco Site Setup

In this entry, I describe how I go about initially setting up an Umbraco project, creating the local database, creating the .NET project, installing Umbraco, and adding it to a source code control system.

Preparing for Umbraco Development on my New Laptop

My intention is to create a new stuartmullinger.com website using Umbraco as the CMS. I have extensive experience of developing with Umbraco at work and wanted to continue that for my own personal website.

Developing an Alexa Skill

This is a short blog covering how I went about developing my first skill for Alexa. I had the idea that I wanted to create a simple skill for a bit of fun at work (we recently bought an Echo Plus for the office).