Blog
Paul Seal's personal blog
Blog posts
The sound of people typing drives me crazy.
dev How to get the YouTube thumbnail preview image from a videoThis post will help you if you want to get the preview image for a YouTube video. You may want to you this if you want to trigger the video to launch in a pop up window, or you want to link to the video.
dev 7 vital steps for delivering a successful software projectFor any software project to be successful, you need to have a plan. There are certain steps you need to follow and mistakes to be avoided. This article is designed to give you those vital steps to help you deliver a successful software project.
dev How to create a custom styled twitter feed for your websiteIn this tutorial I show you how to create your own custom twitter feed for your website, which you will have full control over the styling, like the one I have on my about page. It also pulls through the follower count. This tutorial is meant for an MVC website with .NET 4.5 which makes it suitable for Umbraco too.
dev Do what makes you feel uncomfortableThroughout your career and life in general there will be times where you feel uncomfortable when doing a job or a task. Your natural reaction may be to stop doing that task (if you can get away with it) or you may want to avoid doing it all together. My advice to you is to do it more often.
dev 10 golden rules for becoming a better programmerHere are my top 10 golden rules for becoming a better programmer
dev The Pomodoro TechniqueI’ve been hearing a lot of good things about the The Pomodoro Technique® for improving productivity. Basically, you work really hard and focus for 25 minutes without interruption and then you have a 5 minute break from it. You then go again for 25 minutes and have a 5 minute break from it, and so on and so on.
tools Free productivity tool - WorkflowyIf, like me, you like to write lists to help you focus on what’s required to complete a certain job, and sometimes break the bullet points into mini lists themselves, then this online tool should help you. Workflowy allows you to do just that, it’s free, really easy to use, and it is available on web, iOS and Android.
tools Test your programming skills with Project EulerIf you enjoy writing code and solving puzzles, you will love Project Euler. It is filled with mathematical puzzles which require you to write some code to get the answer. You could use the problems as a chance to write out the solution in a different programming language.
tools·dotnet LINQPadI recently came across this fantastic resource. It is called LINQPad. You can use it to test any C#, F# or VB snippet or program. You can even use it to query databases in LINQ or SQL. It's ideal if you find some code on the internet that you want to quickly test, or if you want to play with the new features in C# 6 without having to set up a windows console/forms app or website.
dev Maintain scroll position on postbackIf you want your site to maintain the current scroll position when the page reloads or when you go to another page, this post should help you. It is ideal for paging, or for sites where you don't want to submit a form using Ajax, but you still want it to stay in position.
tools lorempixel Placholder ImagesThis gives you real placeholder images to use in your site concepts or examples. It randomly picks an image each time the page loads.