As you may have noticed not much has changed on my blog in a while. A couple of entries ago I called it writers block. But it's not really writers block at all.

I have been quite busy at work working on several new software features and working on the 4.0 release. But that isn't the reason why I haven't been blogging nor the reason why I haven't yet managed to do the long overdue upgrade from Blog.CFC to Mango (thats been on my TODO list for about 9 months now).

The simple matter of fact is I have lost the desire. Without getting personal, lets just say that I currently have a lot of stuff going on in my life that makes 'worrying' about posting fresh content to my blog secondary or event tertiary.

Until then... Happy Coding...

Been a long vacation but I am finally heading back home. Just getting ready to pack my suitcases and head home.

Funny I decided to check my blog today because I received an error report and I noticed that the front page has that lovely message that there are no blog entries available. I guess I really need to update my blog software so it doesn't show that message and/or make sure that it doesn't have the opption of displaying that horrible message.

Monday is back to work day, and I am actually looking forward to it.

Sorry for the double post but it seems as though the previous post didn't save correctly. Lets see if this one does.

It's been awfully quiet on the blogging front here lately and to be perfectly honest I'm having a major case of writers block combined with quite a bit of work both at work and at home. Time, at the moment, is playing against me and robbing me of the energy to sit down and write something that is at least of a quality that I find acceptable.

I admire those who, day in and day out, find useful things to blog about, little tidbits of this or that that can be turned into a blog post. It's not particularly easy for me to do that and comes in fits and spurts instead of a steady stream of ideas. At the moment the well is dry as I continue to polish my presentation for CFUnited and tie up loose ends at work as I get ready to go on vacation for 3 weeks in May.

I'm hoping my vacation will revitalize my energy so that I can come back to work and family fully recharged.

Just about everybody has an LCD monitor these days and I have started noticing that the width of fixed width websites have increased from the previous 776 pixels all the way up to 1000 pixels.

As you see from my site I am still currently sitting at 776 pixel width and have been debating on whether I should A) think about a complete redesign or B) Widen out to about 970 pixels.

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Just want to wish everyone a happy new year and a good start to 2010.

I also wanted to apologize for the downtime, the control panel on my server was upgraded around midnight last night and apparently didn't go exactly as planned. It's "mostly" working now few glitches to iron out but the main thing is that the site is back up.

Happy Coding...

I just wanted to take a brief moment to wish all of you a wonderful safe and happy festive Christmas time with your loved ones.

All the Best

Gary Gilbert.

Just a little over four months ago now we "rescued" a little Labrador/German Shepard from the Animal Shelter and gave him a place in our home and hearts.

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My last post was an update to the tale of the cat we found that had been hit by the car. Well if you read that entry the little bugger survived and will be receiving the required medical treatment to get him up and running again (hopefully not across the street).

So where have I been and what have I been doing?

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I'm continually amazed at the lack of responsibility people take for their actions, especially when it comes to human - animal relations.

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It has taken us a long time to reach this decision, we have been talking about it for almost 5 years. Realizing that this decision will naturally be a big adjustment in how we schedule our daily lives. When we were in Washington DC it just didn't seem to make sense, we knew that our time there was finite and that our lives would lead us elsewhere.

Now that we have been in Munich for over 2 1/2 years (can't believe it's gone by so fast) we have finally made the decision to expand our little family.

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There are several reasons why I moved to Germany, none of which, officially, have anything to do with Beer.

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This just in, oh how I love politics, the German political party Piratenpartei (yes folks that translates to "The Pirate Party") has just won the right to run in the next German elections.

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I've been working pretty hard lately and putting in some pretty long hours. I've had little to no time to write on my blog much less play with any new technologies, or techiques that have come out in the past six months.

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In my hurry to get my last post "out the door" and let everyone know that yes I am actually still alive and kicking I didn't bother to mention exactly what went wrong. So if you are interested you may read on for a little bit of self deprecation.

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Lately work has being getting the best of me. I have been frankly just being working a little too often too long and things that are important to me, such as my blog, have been suffering the consequences.

Sometimes, however, things just don't go the way one has planned, the resources aren't there and you find yourself trying to wear just one too many hats to hold off the inevitable catastrophe. I sometimes feel like I am spending too much time bailing the boat out to man the oars, but if I don't bail the boat there won't be any need to man the oars because the boat will sink!

And then there was today. I start my computer up, visited my blog and its just not there anymore. I made a change on Thursday and managed to take my blog off-line. Today is Saturday! almost 48hrs down, It is sickening this would never have happened six months ago without me knowing about it. Something has to change before I either have a break down or snap or both.

I need to slow down and spend more time doing the things I enjoy. I enjoy my blog, I enjoy writing on my blog and sharing my enthusiasm for web technologies with the people who take the time to visit and read what I write, whether stumbled upon during a Google search or a frequent visitor.

In the end, though, it didn't take too long to figure out the cause the problem is that something I did in a hurry brought my site down when it shouldn't have. For that I appologise to those who visit my site.

It's been some time since I have been to the Movies and needing something to distract me and a little entertainment I decided to go see Wolverine last night. It's the first movie that I have seen this year and also the first time in a long time I have gone to the theatre alone.

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This isn't about Software that is free "as in beer" this is really about beer that is Open Source.

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I knew when I posted my first entry asking you to help me decide on what type of computer to get that it would end up being like asking Republicans and Democrats to give their opinions on how best to turn the US economy around.

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Since my laptop is completely irreparable without having to replace the motherboard (Problem is with the BIOS chip) I've been "forced" to make a somewhat hasty decision. Thanks to the comments left on my previous post, and naturally trying my hardest to take it all in perspective, I've reached a decision.

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Thanks to all those who sent me emails telling me that my blog was down. Not sure what happened there but will be checking the logs to see what it possibly could be.

I've been getting some timeouts due to long running requests but generally only on crawlers, now that my site actually crashed I guess I have to pay a bit more attention.

It may have something to do with the Host machine but will have to investigate further.

2008 in Review

This year I celebrated my second wedding anniversary and also my second year living in Germany. My German has drastically improved and I can "almost" say that I am bilingual. I still make a lot of grammatical mistakes mostly because German grammar is a PITA "Deutsche Sprache - Schwere Sprache" as the Germans say. Never-the-less I am making serious in-roads and have even started reading some German books for fun.

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Got the mails flowing again so at least I can answer any questions or comments :) Hopefully the other small kinks will be worked out soon. NO Railo problems mostly just little problems with the server configuration.

I have some good help thus far :)

I took the opportunity while on Vacation to move my site over to my very own server this weekend. There are probably some more kinks to work out but you will immediately notice the "Powered by Railo" badge on the left.

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Going to probably go off the Radar a bit until next year (sounds so far away doesn't it?).

At the moment is crunch time at work while I tie up some loose ends and prepare to go on Christmas Holiday and spend some quality time with my wife and family.

Hopefully I will have a bit of time to write as well :)

I've been holding off on writing this for a while to see if the new iGoogle design would grow on me but it hasn't

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I believe in the Separation of Politics and Technology so don't typically use my blog as a political forum but thought that in this case, with this historical achievement, I would at least congratulate the majority of the USA on making the right choice.

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I have Google alerts set up on specific keywords to keep me informed. Yesterday I posted an entry talking about Railo and BlogCFC. This morning I checked my alerts and found Google correctly reported my entry, it also reported it on fullasgoog as well as another aggregator that I have never heard of (makemoneyproductreviews.com). In the alert from them, unlike from fullasgoog, the author was reported as "From External Sources".

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Just a little fun for Tuesday morning.

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The last two weeks have gone by so fast it's really hard to believe that we've been without DSL and Phone the whole time.

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I've been pretty quite since last week and in case you are wondering it's due to my work load. I currently have four paralell projects that I have inherited that have some serious baggage in the team that needs to be shed so that we can do a good job. While the number of hours that I am working has only increased by about 15% the stress level has trippled. At the end of the day I have very little engergy left to sit down at my computer and "play".

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With a name like that it can't possibly be bad can it? What exactly is a Square Pig Holborn you ask? Well firstly it's not A but a THE. The Square Pig Holborn is where the A Wee Dram of Scotch will be located. Yes they do now have a location.

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It's become apparent to me that Germans love the calendar week. Until moving to Germany I never really paid attention to what week of the year it was.

Knowing the current date was challenging enough (High School was an interesting time for me). But I just can't get the hang of the "KW" (Kalendar Woche). I even installed a tricked out Google Calendar that includes the calendar week for a helping hand.

In programming CFML I never really had to worry about it either since CF comes with a handy week() function, which by the way is flawed according to my German colleagues as there are only 52 weeks per year! But that's another story.

Eventually I hope to get the hang of it like I'm learning the German Language. Hopefully I get the hang of the whole week number thing quicker than the Language.

BTW this is week 34.

It's taken over a year and a half to find the "right" place but today we did it!

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a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

There is nothing more annoying than being bored, I hate being bored really I would rather go home than sit at work and not have anything to do but twiddle my thumbs. Just when I was afraid just that would happen something entirely unexpected happened. I got four new projects to manage almost simultaneously. From almost famine to a definite feast, or when it rains it pours choose your saying.

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Somethings are just too bizarre not to mention. In an article on CIO-Today I learned that the notorious "Spam King" Edward Davidson broke out of jail then proceeded to killed his wife, 3 year old daughter and then himself.

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Well the results are in. I managed to come in first in our team with 30m 57sec which works out to a pace of about 4.35 min/km or 13.09kmh. My boss trailed me by just under 3 minutes. The winning team was a local group from Siemens who had an average time of about 22min! The winner managed the 6.75 km in 18 min or a speed of 22kmh, yikes! I highly doubt I would be able to maintain that kind of speed for even a couple minutes let alone 18!

Never the less I plan on running more often, after all I sit on my butt a good 12+hrs per day in front of the computer and would like to keep my sportive University weight as I approach the 40 mark and well into my later years.

I just hope my knees agree with regiment...

Today is the annual Munich business run(German). It's a "just for fun" run with a distance of just 6.75 KM.

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Had a bit of an outage there but we are feeling much better now.

Need to check the logs to see what happened.

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..

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

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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...

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...

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!

Read the email waiting for me in my inbox. Cool I thought, I like prizes and I love giving my feedback especially when it is solicited and there is a chance of winning something.

I've enjoyed being part of Adobe's beta testing program for both Coldfusion, Flex and AIR both in the public beta test as well as the closed betas. Anything to help Adobe improve the whole thing.

So I clicked on the link, and started answering the eligibility questions, age, place of residence which listed such places as (Canada, UK, USA, Mexico, Other). Since Germany wasn't on the list I chose Other and that was the end of the survey.

WTF! I checked the email again and realized I didn't read the disclaimer at the bottom of the email.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. COMPLETION OF THE SURVEY IS NOT REQUIRED TO ENTER OR WIN. SWEEPSTAKES IS OPEN ONLY TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND LEGAL RESIDENTS OF CANADA, EXCLUDING QUEBEC, WHO ARE AGE 18 YEARS OR OLDER.

So ok no prize, but I would also have given you my feedback without the bait of a prize...

It took a little longer than we expected but on May 7th at 14:30 we were finally able to take the newest memember of our family home!

Here are his stats:

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Last year I decided that I would get my motorcycle license in Germany. I already have a Canadian motorcycle license but the agreement between Canada and German only covers class 'B' vehicles, meaning all two-track vehicles under 3500 Kg.

The German drivers license system is not particularly the easiest so I am quite thankful that while I can not simply transfer my Canadian for German license I 'only' have to take the theory and practical tests. I say only because a normal drivers license can cost thousands if you have to go through the entire process with required classroom and driving hours.

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I write this blog mostly for my own enjoyment and to hopefully provide people who read my blog with some insightful and useful information every now and then.

I like to receive comments from my readers on what they think of my articles, whether they like them or not, or give me suggestions on what I can do better, or ask questions.

You do realize of course that I delete every single spam comment you post and will eventually resort to moderating my comments, so why don't you do everyone a huge favor and just piss off eh?

Yours Sincerely,

It took a little longer than anticipated (partly my own fault) but the server migration is finally complete.

I am now on a CF8 server instead of the old MX6.1 server. This means I can write up some working CF8 tutorials/examples instead of resorting to screenshots :)

Happy Migration day...

"Two Dozen Programmers, three years, 4,732 bugs, and one quest for transcendent software" reads the teaser for Dreaming in Code, the book that just arrived from Amazon.com. It's a gift from and old colleague and friend Tom H. from Washington DC. Thanks Tom!

I still need to finish Necessary but not Sufficient by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. If you haven't heard about this book it's a book about critical chain management written as a novel especially for the software industry instead of a typical theory book. It seeks to teach by using a classic problem/solution metaphor. It is light reading and by now a bit dated but I still recommend it.

Happy Coding Reading...

An article on OSNews.com explains the intricate details on how code review panels rate code.

Read the full article

I would like to wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

2007 was an exciting and interesting year for me. While I moved to Germany at the end of 2006, 2007 was the real beginning of our new life in Europe.

2007 was also a busy year: I visted about 30 Biergartens, started this blog, attended Oktoberfest, went to my first Adobe Max conference, went sailing at the Lake of Garda, and went Skiing in the Alps! And not to forget the many biking and hiking trips in Germany, Austria and Italy.

If last year is any indication of what 2008 will be it will be another great year!

Things have been really quiet around here, I think most people have gone away for the Holiday's. Most of my co-workers, like me, have decided to take some time off over Christmas and New Years and my boss decided to give us both Christmas-eve and New Years eve off.

This will be my last post in 2007! I have been relaxing as much as I can and at the same time thinking of new projects to work on in 2008. The problem is I have so many things I would like to work on and have a hard time prioritizing the huge list or trimming it down into something a little more manageable. After all there must be a clear border between work (and play work) and family, neither should suffer but most importantly family first!

I really need to sit down and prioritize my list or I won't get anything done.

And that is my New Years Resolution for 2008!

Until Next Year.

Happy Coding...

Yesterday I hit the slopes at Brauneck Mountain with a colleague of mine for the first time since 1994. It was also the first time I have ever gone skiing in the Alps, or any real mountain for that matter.

The weather was truly amazing, we are currently experiencing a temperature inversion so the weather in the mountains was warmer than in Munich, it was perhaps 5 Degrees (40F) at 1700 meters! I had to take my outer layer off it was so warm.

I had thought that everyone and their dog would be there but thankfully a lot of people were still out Christmas shopping so it didn't start getting busy until after lunch.

This won't be the last time I go skiing, the view of the Mountains from the top is really breath-taking!

...of my new design?

The layout is provided by the folks over at Studio 7 and the banner image is one of my own. I took the picture in Nova Scotia, Canada near Peggys Cove.

I will probably tweak the color scheme a bit but I wanted desparately to change the default Blog CFC design (no offense Ray).

I welcome your comments and/or suggestions

A relatively simple question but with a possibly painful response depending on who you ask and how you ask.

Men typically aren't all that concerned about answering the question and generally if it's close to a birthday will say almost xx (or in my case almost 37).

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Ray Camden posted a nice comparison between the new Google Charting API and CFChart. I can certainly see some use for using the Google Charting in certain instances, even though Google has less choices they have charts that CF doesn't have.

An unlikely combination you may think but certainly not an unlikely union. Apparently Activision (Guitar Hero, Call of Duty) will joining forces with Blizzard (Worlds of Warcraft), in one of the largest unions of game makers to date.

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Ever sit and wonder about your funeral?

Well picture this if you will...

Your loved ones, family and friends gathering to remember and honor your life. Perhaps a somber eulogy with everyone dressed in black, and then your best buddy takes the pulpit and begins his eulogy, and as everyone looks on with tears in their eyes and at the end of his speach your buddy raises his hands in the pentultimate salute of geekdom and says "Live long and prosper!"

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They say that you should never judge a book by it's cover, meaning you should judge it by it's contents not the fancy art that adorns it's cover.

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I'm attending my first ever "Powerpoint Karaoke" tonight but hopefully just as a spectator. I think I could pull it off in English but I think I would do a miserable job if I were to try and pull it off in German. Bull-shitting in ones mother-tongue is a hell of a lot easier than in a foreign one, especially when you only have 10 months of the language under your belt.

Nevertheless it should be rather interesting...

Took a quick trip to Italy from Wednesday to Sunday to get a bit of R&R. Did a bit of hiking and a little sailing on the Lake of Garda. Was a good time, but now its back to business as usual and hopefully I will get to finish my AIR DB Manager this week.

Last week I posted about getting a Jury duty notice from the Superior Court of the District Of Columbia (Washington DC) forwarded by the USPS to my address here in Munich Germany.

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Looks like Microsoft is finally anteing up and joining in on the social networking revolution by paying $240 million for a measly 1.6% of facebook, according to this wired news story.

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Just for the record I am not, and have never been a citizen of the United States. I did, however, live in North Carolina for 1 year and Washington DC for 6 years. Nevertheless that in no way makes me eligible to participate on a Jury yet for some reason I received a Jury notice for Washington DC in Munich. Ok it was forwarded but still!

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Yesterday I took an exceedingly early flight out of Munich to Barcelona (7:25am is just to early a flight!).

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Yesterday Germans marked the day their country was once again unified as a single entity (at least geographically). The removal of the Berlin wall signaled the end of a divided country and the beginning of a reconciliation process that continues today.

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Tod Sharp posted today about the expiration of the Federal Internet Tax Mortatorium scheduled for Nov 1. While the US taxes probably won't affect me directly over here in Europe there will undoubtedly be an indirect consequences.

This affect would probably be felt by a reduction in new services, innovation (less dollars for R&D) and overall reduction in investment dollars.

While the US is not entirely responsible for "all" the Internet innovations, the low entry barriers for starting a new business and the willingness to "give it a go" that is the American entrepreneurial spirit would be hampered by adding the burden of additional taxes.

I would highly encourage you to head over to Don't Tax our Web and get informed and make your voice heard.

Yesterday (Saturday September 22nd) marked the start of the largest "drunk fest" in the world. The first keg was tapped at noon and shortly there after the first staggeringly drunk people could be seen.

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Viral marketing has become one of the most powerful "weapons" of todays marketing firms. One catchy you tube video can do more for a company's marketing efforts than any 30 second Super Bowl spot for a lot less money.

So today I decided to do my part in help, this comes by way of a colleague of mine and I happily share it with you.

It is a marketing campaign by Wilkinson & Sword for one of their new razors (English with French sub-titles).

http://www.ffk-wilkinson.com

Enjoy

I found out some rather sad news yesterday that Author Robert Jordan died of the rare blood disease that he has been battling for some time now.

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Remember the scandal about the laptop that went missing that had some 50k veterans Social Security numbers, and an announcement from Bank of America that they "lost some tapes"?

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Yesterday was a very long day. I left Nova Scotia at around 6:05pm (11:05pm Munich Time) and walked into the apartment at 12:00pm the following day. The only real way I have managed to combat jet lag is to make sure that I go to bed my normal 'local' time. Watching "The Born Ultimatum" last night helped me beat the jet lag.

One unfortunate thing about vacations is that work doesn't stop when you are away it kind of piles up and waits for you to return. Small price to pay though for the rest and relaxation.

I'm sitting here at my parents computer in good ole Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, and enjoying my time off from just about everything.

Well that is not exactly 100% true as I did stop in and buy a tech book at the book store and I am writing in my blog, but I am 99% away.

I think it is important to our mental and spiritual well-being to take a break, not think about or do anything that is related to work and just allow ourselves to reach a state of calm and tranquility.

For the first time in over a year I was able to reach a state of calm today sitting on the beach and watching the waves lap against the shore.

So I thought I would share, just this one time...

I will be back September 12th, until then Happy Coding...

It's 10:13pm and I just finished packing my suitcase. I leave tomorrow bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia and a nice 10 day break to visit with family and friends. It's been over a year since the last time I was "home" and I am looking forward to smelling the salt air of the "Maritimes".

It will also give me a chance to work on a few things at my leisure, take some pictures, read a book, do a little "fun" programming.

My next entry will most likely be from the east coast of Canada.

Happy Coding...

Yesterday, in the German Financial times, I read a detailed article on how to unlock the Sim lock on the Apple I-Phone. I had heard that some people in the US had created both physical (hardware) and, additionally, Software that would unlock the I-Phone so that it can be used on any GSM enabled network.

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On Friday Ray Camden posted a entry titled Friday Joke - Share your best geek one liner, which turned out to be rather funny with some one liners that I had not heard before.

So being Monday, the day everyone needs a little light entertainment, I decided to have a little fun with Coldfusion Error messages.

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I just received an email a few minutes ago with the subject line

"Using the cfflush tag within a cfsavecontent tag (if the cfsavecontent tag has content) causes an error."

So of course I opened the email to see why this person decided to write to me.

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or

Why documentation is the most important yet overlooked aspect of development.

Ok so hate is a very strong word. I don't hate legacy code, I more despise it. In my current situation its a project that looks nothing like it started out, it kind of just grew organically..like mold..only worse!

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So a little bit of a spoiler on both Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and what I did this weekend.

Picked my copy up of the 7th book in the Harry Potter series and spent a few hours reading on Saturday Night and Sunday morning.

I must hand it to J.K. Rowling her writing is fluid and easy to read. I suppose being at first targeted towards a much younger reading audience it should be a rather easy read.

Not going to spoil anymore of the book for anyone who is currently reading it.

It's a nice distraction and a nice change of pace from my regular reading.

Thanks Dan Vega for sharing what you found at lifehacker. This had me actually laughing out loud!

I have embedded the video here for your viewing pleasure:

Is a total oxymoron!

I am constantly reminded every time I see an article like this or this of how large an oxymoron it is!

I have recently seen a flurry of advertising from Atomic energy plants in Europe and abroad touting how energy that they produce is so clean and safe. What a joke!

Zero Co2 they proclaim, and clean energy for years and years!

It is true, they haven't lied, atomic energy produces no Co2 emissions, but what they are forgetting to tell you is how much Co2 is emitted in the process to get the fuel rods from raw materials to the power plant. How much earth must be mined and crushed all using dirty old fossil fuels. How that earth containing the fuel must be refined to produce the fuel rods.

They also fail to mention how the really deadly waste that the energy plants do create, you know all that radio active stuff, will be around for minimum 10,000 years, or what will happen if there is a meltdown.

So yes, atomic energy is clean if you only look at the surface, but atomic energy is not a solution to global warming, and it is not a viable solution to replace fossil fuels. We need a real long term solution that won't leave our planet a radio active wasteland for all time.

I don't have the answers but perhaps the Iter project will be able to provide us with some hope for a cleaner radio active waste free energy solution.

On Saturday I celebrated, with my wife, our first year of marriage exactly in the fashion that we wanted, at 2400 meters in the Austrian Alps.

We stayed at Gasthof Altginzling away from the hustle and bustle of our Munich home in a small town called Ginzling. The weather was beautiful for hiking in the mountains, the air crystal pure and clear.

I have put up a few pictures, for your viewing pleasure, of our trip up on flickr.

Tomorrow will be back to work...with all the well earned aches and pains of our weekend adventure.

Until tomorrow...

Happy coding!

The team over at Aptana have been very busy of late. Not only did they release support for Adobe Air development in July they also announced a Plugin for developing on Apple Iphone!

They have come up with a couple really great features to help you develop the next 'hot' App like preview support in both horizontal and vertical mode, starter files, importing of ajax libraries, and full support for javascript and css embedded within html. So for all of you that want to get a head start on developing cool apps for the iPhone here is your chance.

I was doing my rounds and stumbled on a post over at Blog in Black relating an article over at Good magazine on Internet Porn Statistics.

I decided to link it here for all to see. It's hard to believe the amount of pornography being watched, bought and made in the USA. I find it rather hypocritical that one of the most sexually uptight countries in the world is also the largest producer and consumer of porn. Then again is it really so hard to understand?

The video is quite suggestive but thats about it. I would give it an R rating for suggestiveness but a PG rating for amount of skin shown.

Billions of dollars are spent on porn. A vast majority of it housed electronically on huge servers. The investment that the porn industry has in technology must be staggering.