Critical-Web

Wow, I haven't been here in a while. Things have been pretty crazy over the last two years. Hopefully things will be getting better soon.

A little bit of a recap. For the last three years my work has been implementing e-commerce websites for one of the leading players in the industry. The platform is built on a massive ColdFusion layer. I was responsible for creating new modules, customizing implementations and everything in-between.

In August of last year it was announced that our company was merging with another provider. A decision had to be made: there were now two very different platforms available from the same company. In the end, the other platform was chosen, for a variety of reasons.

The implication, aside from the obvious "I now need to learn a new platform", is much more important: the entire platform is built on Java.

The last time I used Java was in college, almost ten years ago. To say I'm rusty would be an understatement. I have a whole lot of learning to do.

Luckily, the company is assisting us in this process. There are several ColdFusion developers on the floor with little to no experience with Java. A training path has been set forth and broken down into manageable chunks. We've all got a lot of work ahead of us, but I see it as a challenge.

In the next couple of months I will be sharing my experiences as I struggle to continue supporting our legacy implementations while learning a new language and platform.

This is going to be fun.

Over and out

This entry was posted on July 27, 2012 at 8:09 AM and has received 390 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Surprise! Yeah, I bet you didn't see that one coming, did you? It's Friday and I didn't want to start getting into the code just before a week-end. What better opportunity, then, to go ahead and announce the details of my new project? For your reading pleasure, I give to you: SQUASH.

[More]

This entry was posted on July 31, 2009 at 9:20 AM and has received 1963 views. There are currently 5 comments. Print this entry.

I'm back again. Over the last couple of months I've been pretty busy with a lot of things in my life. A new addition to the family and a new job all happening at the same time had a bigger impact on my "blogging time" that I had anticipated. Luckily, I feel that I've finally struck a balance in my schedule and the time I spend commuting by train will be a perfect time to work on projects / blogging.

I've actually started work on something that I've wanted to tackle for a while now. I'll have more information in the following days, but for now I just wanted to let the world know that I'm still alive.

Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on July 22, 2009 at 12:53 PM and has received 1469 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Yeah, it's been a month, I know. I'm back now. Hopefully for good, too. I'll spare you the details. One way to put it is I've had a busy month. Maybe some day I'll share the story, but in the meantime I just wanted to let my faithful readers know that development of cwBlog wasn't cancelled, just put on pause. I haven't had any time to put into it yet, but hopefully that will change later this week. Stay posted!

This entry was posted on October 13, 2008 at 7:37 PM and has received 939 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I know I promised I'd have a big announcement for you last week, but I don't know if I can talk about it yet, so I'll have to make you wait . Luckily for me, though, I've got some other interesting news for all of you. I've just installed CanvasWiki and prepared a couple of reference pages for cfExcelProxy, my attempt at creating a wrapper cfc for Apache's POI-HSSF Java classes. Not all the pages are ready, however a comprehensive list of all available methods is already online so that's obviously the first thing someone interested in using cfExcelProxy should be looking at. I'm hoping I'll have most of the method detail pages up before the end of the week. Some day I'd like to have a couple of example scripts available there also, so stay tuned!

You can hit the Wiki from the cfExcelProxy project site, or from the main Wiki page.

This entry was posted on September 1, 2008 at 7:38 PM and has received 1536 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I was going to put that entry up today, but the proxy at work doesn't let me connect to my SVN at home... I guess it's going to have to wait until tomorrow.

This entry was posted on July 28, 2008 at 9:13 AM and has received 793 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Wow... my last post was 3 months ago... That's a new record! Hopefully I won't have the opportunity to beat that one...

I know I've said this before, and I know I said I meant it at that (those) time(s) as well, but I'm back. And I've got plans. BIG plans!

The biggest thing I have in mind is getting back to the root of what this blog was meant for: sharing the little things I learn throughout a regular work day. Too often in the past months I would figure something out, or learn something new about how ColdFusion or Javascript works, and say to myself "Hey, this is cool! I should write a post about this." And for some reason, I never actually made it to the blog admin... Well, no more!

So stay tuned, this channel's about to get much more interesting (yay, no more static!) !

By the way, have you seen Dark Knight yet? If not, you should... I mean, like now.

What are you still doing here?

And... of course...

Why so serious?

This entry was posted on July 22, 2008 at 7:46 AM and has received 801 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I'm relatively new to the "blogging" scene. However, I've been reading blogs and web comics for years now. I don't know why, but I always thought writing in a blog or coming up with a new comic was an easy thing to do. I'd see all these people frequently posting in their blogs, drawing comics 2-3 times a week, and when one of them would miss his update schedule I'd get angry. I mean, these people commit to an update schedule, right? Why can't they keep to it? Can't they respect their readers enough to keep up the pace?

And then my life changed. On December 4th of last year, I decided it was time I started my own blog. I mean, it looked so easy, why couldn't I do it myself? Today, however, I have to face the fact that it's been almost 3 weeks since my last real blog post. I now understand how the writers and comic artists must've felt when they happened to miss one of their deadlines. You want to post something new, but for some reason you can't. There are plenty of possible reasons, pick one. However, regardless of how good your excuse is you still feel bad for your readers.

Do you want to know what my reason is? Don't worry, it's not a sad story. I've been thinking about it lately, and I think I figured out why I can't seem to get myself to post. I've been putting myself too much pressure. For example, working on Project moreADS has been a chore, rather than a hobby. I was telling myself that if I worked on the project, I'd have to talk about it on the blog. That being said, if I want critical-web to keep moving forward, I need to make some changes. I won't be keeping an update schedule. Ironically, I'm positive this will actually mean more posts in the long run. I'll also stop thinking that working on Project moreADS means I have to keep a development log. I'll probably drop in from now and then with updates, but now every single step of the way.

Hopefully this is a change for the best. Only time will tell.

Welcome to the Animus

This entry was posted on March 4, 2008 at 8:08 AM and has received 833 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I know I've been rather quiet lately, but last week all my enthusiasm was funnelled into preparing for last weekend's LAN party. I'm back now and ready to get back to work, so stay tuned for some more critical goodness.

This entry was posted on February 25, 2008 at 8:41 AM and has received 1008 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

That's right, I went and changed the blog's theme. Again. However, I think this change was for the best. I like the clean feel I have with this new theme. Now, the reader can focus on the content rather than the container. I might play a little with the header, I'm not too sure I like that big image being up there, but it can stay for the time being (I hate doing graphics...).

Anyways, feel free to leave a comment whether you love or hate the new theme. Regardless of your reactions, I'll have a nice Project moreADS update for you tomorrow. Keep posted!

Stuffed crust.

This entry was posted on February 17, 2008 at 11:07 PM and has received 1064 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.