Yves
Over the last several years I've quite literally fallen into jobs requiring different technologies and skills.... none of which I'd seen in my college course. But thanks to a few books and the wonderful world of the search engines... forums and technical blogs... a fella can set out to learn pretty much anything "technology". My first love is ColdFusion.... but I'm pretty much open to learning as many new skills as possible. That's enough for now!
Homepage: http://www.cfyves.com
Posts by Yves
WordPress Mobile App
Aug 31st
Seems like Smart Phones and mobile apps have changed everything.
I pretty much do everything on my smart phone now. Email, banking, Twitter… I don’t do much YouTube unless I’m at home on my network… 
I’ve recently discovered WordPress’s Android App and figured I should really try it out.
So as I sit watching my daughter’s soccer practice in a grassy field, I can now write a short blog article on my HTC Incredible S.
This might come in handy when I’m on the road.
What will come about next??? Who knows.
How I got started in ColdFusion
Aug 2nd
I saw some people writing these posts yesterday and though I’m late to the party (1 day common!!) I thought it would be neat to write a bit.
Back in 1998 I enrolled in a 2 year college program in IT. Our focus was kind of a broad spectrum of topics. From PC repair, networking, database design, Visual Basic, Windows and Linux servers…. C++ and even writing.
When I got out with my diploma I wasn’t quite sure which direction to go. In my first year’s “on the job training” I had been in a PC repair and sales shop. I really enjoyed the work. In my second year, I had started to study MSCE exams and really thought that network administration was the direction I was heading.
But in my second year’s “on the job training” I was with a local web dev shop (Cifta Technologies). They worked primarily in ColdFusion 4 at the time.
There were several of us in the OJT basically taking a crash course in ColdFusion (and MS Access!). The company had told us that 2 of us could land jobs for the summer and I was one of the lucky ones who got to stay on board.
The company was upgrading from CF 4 to CF 4.5 at about the same time I started the summer position.
From there at the end of the summer my term with Cifta was up and it was time to start looking for work. I applied for a couple of jobs and didn’t think prospects were to bright. There weren’t many shops around and most of the places I looked at were asking for years of experience.
All of a sudden I was contacted by a small company about 45 minutes away who needed someone with ColdFusion experience. I took the job. It wasn’t the best paying gig but having just gotten out of college I figured that I needed to take what I could in order to gain experience.
I was there (InfoTech) for 2.5 years. In that time I not only did a bunch of ColdFusion but also worked on and learned about implementing Linux servers… (like Postfix, Bind DNS, Apache…etc). We had servers in house.
I also did work like network configuration and PC repairs for clients.
After that 2.5 years I was adventurous enough to try my hand at being self employed. So I started a small business (in 2004), which lived in full time or part time mode until 2010. From 2006 to 2008 I also worked for a local business development firm managing servers, network and coding a whole bunch of ColdFusion based projects.
Since my college diploma ColdFusion work has actually kept me fairly busy. And in that time my approach gradually evolved from a procedural approach (used a bit of Fusebox way way back) to using MVC/OO style frameworks (ColdBox being a favorite).
In 2010 I spent almost the entire year working in PHP. I worked for a couple of different local businesses where PHP was the tool they preferred using for development. The experience wasn’t negative for me. I used an MVC framework called Kohana that I really enjoyed working with.
In 2011 I started the year without employment and shortly after began working for another company maintaining an existing ColdFusion based e-com system and re-writing it.
ColdFusion as a language has been good to me. Kept me busy through the years and has also helped me learn programming principles which transcend “language”. Such as “Object Oriented” principles…etc.
I’ve recently been offered another position which will take me out of the CF world once again. Looks like I’ll be learning Delphi, C# and other languages that are a bit more foreign to me. But I look forward to the challenge. My previous experience in learning… throwing myself into something new has been that it helps me understand programming in new and different ways…. and hopefully makes me better.
I’ve been toying with the idea of joining an existing Open Source CF project or starting a new one. We shall see.
Object-Oriented programming in ColdFusion – Great resource
Aug 1st
Last spring I bought Object-Oriented programming in ColdFusion (written by Matt Gifford and published by Packt Publishing) to brush up and also learn more about OO techniques using the ColdFusion language.
I have to say that I loved the book. I read it in a short time. I know I’m quite late to write about it but I thought I should because my experience with it was very positive.
Basically I thought it was very easy to read, clear, to the point and easy follow with practical code examples. For me reading about beans helped me as I had never typically used beans before. But the chapter that really got me thinking in a different way was the chapter on the Service Layer.
This might be elementary for some of you reading this, but in my web application development background, for many of the projects I would be involved in, there was never such a breakdown and encapsulation of functionality that would have me thinking of a Service layer. In the old days everything seemed to be strictly procedural.
I began to see more examples and more reason why my code could be easier to maintain.
I would suggest this book as a great read for anyone interested in exploring Object-Oriented programming in ColdFusion.
Microsoft takes direct swing at Google and Gmail with “Gmail Man” video
Jul 29th
Saw this new ad this morning, where essentially Microsoft desires to help make the case for their Office 365 products by poking fun at their big competition.
Something that strikes me with this kind of advertising though, it resembles those political ads that I really dislike. You know, where one candidate really says nothing about he or she’s platform but instead tries to leave an impression in your mind that the opponent is either wicked, cruel, evil, idiotic….etc.
I’m wondering what, if any, will be Google’s response.
If you haven’t seen it. Here it is….
“Gmail Man”
Gmail automatically gives a second address
Jul 28th
I seem to remember hearing about this but I just found it again this evening.
I use a gmail.com account alot. I have multiple accounts forwarded into it and frankly, I’ve been using this account for a long time. And I love it.
I just found a scenario where I had my main gmail.com email tied to an account (unrelated to google.. something else) I had created for a past client. I was trying to create a personal account and it was telling me the email was already used in the system.
Well, after thinking about how to create an alias or foward… I found out that gmail automatically has an “alias” account setup. Change gmail.com for googlemail.com…. and voila.
2 email accounts that are one. This can be handy.
Google Chromebook is out and for sale
Jun 15th
Google is now selling their new laptops (Google Chromebook) on Amazon and on Best Buy.
This new laptop really goes in a different direction as these laptops are designed to be heavily “cloud based” / “internet based” animals…
Just check out one of their promo videos to get a taste of it
It’s a great idea really… as most computers get bogged down with programs loading when they start up and many average users likely aren’t aware how to disable much of those programs… which does result in something quite similar to what is showed in the video.
Definitely a new concept in that this is a “web computer”.
What do you think?
I’d love to try one!
(That can be a hint to Google, if you fine folks want to send me one to play with and review)
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! team up on schema.org
Jun 3rd
Major search engines, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have teamed up to help create some standards so webmasters can help better define the information contained on their website’s pages.
Lack of standards, it could be said, has been a problem for some time.
But this new site, supported by the major search engines, gives clear cut information on how to define data/text by adding simple HTML attributes to DIV and SPAN tags.
Definitely worth a look if you’re creating HTML5 sites.
You can find the website here: schema.org
Check out one of the examples…. A Person Schema
Does your cell phone or smart phone cause cancer?
Jun 2nd
Last few years I started hearing more and more about the effects of long term cell phone use. I remember being a bit surprised hearing about Cell phones being banned (or a movement to ban them) in some places for kids under a certain age. I remember reading 14 as an age limit. I certainly took a mental note.
I was surprised but at the same time, I think it’s quite reflective of what we (humans) tend to do with many “new” discoveries and technologies. We end up adopting measures or lifestyles, medications or methods without truly understand what it’s long term effect can be.
At the same time when something new comes along, how do you measure it’s long term effect?
There are no tests no known experiment to test or calculate something that has previously not existed.
The best method seems to be caution and balance.
But really, being cautious and balanced in respects to technology is somewhat becoming the opposite of where the global society is headed. I’m sure many would say it is the opposite.
Once thing that has been reported is that the use of a headset would reduce the risks by much. One thing is for certain, if you use a mobile phone on a regular basis it’s up to you to decide how you use it and what you do about the increasing amount of data on the possible harm that you’re being exposed to.
Recently, there have been many media outlets and sites reporting on the health issues which pertain to cell phone use. Here are a few:
Cell Phone Use May Reduce Male Fertility – RF Globalnet
Amid new health concerns, cell phone users are talking less – CNN
How to set a delay in Javascript
May 31st
Writing a simple delay is quite simple in Javascript.
I’m not a Javascript guru…. or any other type of guru. Often times while working on something I just come across a certain scenario that needs a tweek or a small problem to solve.
So while writing some code to create on inline editing (in a data grid for example) I had some JS functions that would load my form to replace the data, submit the form in the background (POST HTTP request…). Problem was when the data grid’s cell would reload it would actually reload the old data. The update was taking just a touch longer then the function that was requesting the row’s data.
Every thing was firing in the proper order. I just needed to delay the function that would reload the grid’s row.
At first I thought I could do something like this:
$(“#divToReload”).delay(500).load(reloadURL);
I figured the delay should work. But I believe, the delay function is better suited for animations… fades and such.
(Also, I am using jQuery)
So I set a timeout function to initiate the jQuery function which worked perfectly.
setTimeout(function() {$(“#divToReload”).load(reloadURL);},500);
How to Fix Skype crash (APPCRASH) in Windows 7
May 26th
So today when I logged into the computer to start work I had a most unpleasant surprise.
That being that Skype was unable to start. I use Skype a whole bunch in my “day to day” work activities. It’s how I keep in contact with my current “work team”.
Looking into the details, the message was APPCRASH. I didn’t have much to go on and I cleaned off the computer as I thought it may have something….. which it did. Some spy-ware and malware. I believe it may have picked some up from some “Girls games” sites my daughter plays on from time to time.
Anyways, cleaning this thing off didn’t do anything.
Eventually, I found Aasim Naseem Siddiqui’s blog and the answer was there. There are directions for fixing this for Windows 7, Mac OSx, XP and Linux.
Thank you so much Aasim!
I will post the Windows 7 solution here.
Find and delete the shared.xml file in the Skype data folder located here:
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Skype
Restart Skype and there you have it. Worked fine for me. Skype likely shouldn’t be running if you do this… but if you have this problem, Skype probably isn’t running anyways right???
Once again, Thanks to Aasim for posting this on his blog. And for the other OS fixes, please visit his blog:
http://aasims.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/how-to-fix-skype-crash/
