Gary Gilbert's Technology Blog

The Purrfect Use for AIR

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:34:00 -0400

It didn't take as long as I thought it would. As with most technological advances one of the industries that are always on the forefront in using the new technology is the adult entertainment industry. [More]

Outtage: Resolved

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:20:00 -0400

Had a bit of an outage there but we are feeling much better now. Need to check the logs to see what happened.

Piclens Firefox Plugin

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:53:00 -0400

A little while ago I installed the Piclens firefox plugin to take for a test-drive. I first thought "not another flash gimick". But I actually really like it for browsing my pictures on Flickr. Its a heck of a lot better than the built in slide show viewer. The scrolling is smooth the image loading is fast and it's really quite fun to zoom through the images. The only thing is that I find it has a very limited use. SearchMe on the other hand had made some pretty nice improvements to its flash visual search engine since it first released it's Beta back in March of this year. Its use as a visual search engine also probably has niche market, but I guess only time will tell whether it can carve out a little bit of the search engine traffic to stay make the business worthwhile. Happy coding...

Coldfusion Database Basics

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:51:00 -0400

This isn't about how to write queries, or stored procedures. It's also not about relational databases function or how to properly index. It is about being kind to your database and more efficiently communicating with it. [More]

Cftransaction Explained

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:15:00 -0400

I've seen some code lately that has prompted me to write this blog entry. The code in question uses cftransactions heavily and in my opinion in completely unnecessary places in addition to the use of serializable isolation levels which are also unnecessary. So what is the cftransaction tag used for, when should I use it and what about that isolation level thing I just mentioned? [More]

Ext On Demand Data Loading

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:07:00 -0400

Aaron Conran over at EXTJS posted a really interesting entry today on On Demand Data Loading. The functionality produced looks much like that of the data paging capability using Lifecycle and Flex in that the data is loaded into the grid when the user scrolls past a certain point. [More]

Google Maps Flash API - Developer mode

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:52:00 -0400

I decided to start playing around with the "not so new" Google Maps Flash API. I downloaded the SDK, got my API Key and set up a simple "Hello World" type example. [More]

iPhone Upgrade Woes

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:37:00 -0400

The new iPhone is out, and the old iPhones get upgraded firmware through the new iTunes store. But it appears not to be a joyous occasion for first generation iPhone owners. [More]

iPhone 3G Now Available!

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:38:00 -0400

The Apple iPhone 3G is, as of 8am, now available for purchase and promises to deliver some serious performance improvements over it's predecessor. "Twice the Speed, Half the Price" claims the Apple website. [More]

A Few Pictures

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:03:00 -0400

When I got back from my vacation I said that I would post a few pictures up. It took a little long than I would have liked (things tend to pile up when you go on vacation). But I have put together a small slide show of some of the pictures from my trip. More pictures can be seen in my Canada 2008 set on flickr. ? Some of the pictures up on flickr are a bit raw (especially the other pictures of the Bald Eagles) and need to be cleaned up a bit with Photoshop. Enjoy..

Loreena McKennitt Live!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:52:00 -0400

I had the supreme pleasure last night of being entertained by Loreena McKennitt live at the summer Tollwood festival in Munich. [More]

Photoshop Express Memory Usage

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:39:00 -0400

I've uploaded most of my Canada trip photos to Flickr while I was still in Canada and thought I would use the Photoshop express beta to touch up a few pictures through the flickr login option. [More]

A Fusion of Another Kind

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:21:00 -0400

Recently we received some pretty interesting news at work and this past week a few things were finalized which should prove really interesting over the next six months. I have been through mergers and buyouts before and they always tend to be interesting in other ways. Normally the chaff is trimmed so to speak. But the fusion between web-shuttle and Target-E has little to no overlap. Target-E is an E-Business and E-Marketing company mostly focused on the front-end and we are an IT Solutions company focused more on the back-end. The idea of course is to be able to provide end-to-end solutions under one roof. There is of course a small technology gap as Target-E's core technology competency is PHP (via Typo3), but thankfully not too far as they also do Contens implementations and therefore have some CFML. This past weekend we had a Team building workshop and I had an opportunity to get to know most of my future colleagues. I look forward to working on new projects with my new colleagues at the new as yet to be named company. Hopefully it won't take too long to come up with a new name. Happy Coding...

I'm Back!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:26:00 -0400

Just a quick note to let you all know that I am back from my 3 week holiday in Canada. Had a great time, did some Kayaking in Cape Breton with Kayak Cape Breton as well as near Advocate Harbor with NovaShores. Spent a day at Treego in Moncton New Brunswick. That was a Blast!. Will post more later with pictures! Happy Coding...

On Holiday

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:20:00 -0400

T-4 days to the official start of my 3 week holiday (vacation for those in the USA) in Nova Scotia Canada. This will be my longest holiday back to Canada since leaving in 1998 and I am really looking forward to touring around Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, New Brunswick and P.E.I (Prince Edward Island). This will give me a good opportunity to show my wife around my old "stomping grounds". I am kind of excited to get to play tour guide. The only problem is making sure that we see the "best" sights without making it into some kind of contest on how much we see. It is after all supposed to be a holiday where we can also relax and recharge our batteries a bit. I'm really looking forward to doing a bit of hiking in the Highlands of Cape Breton and doing a little kayaking on the lake of Bras d'Or. I will be taking about 5 Gigs of Compact Flash cards with me and plan on filling them all! Naturally during that time I will not be posting here. This will probably be my last post until I get back so... See you in July!