I’ve uploaded the slides from the talks I gave at CakeFest Argentina. Both unit test talks are one file, as that is how it was originally written. You can find them in my Downloads area. Hope you enjoy.

Well I’m finally back in Canada after a somewhat hairy experience at JFK airport in New York, I’m home in the great white north. I had an awesome time at CakeFest and would like to thank all the sponsors and all the people who came out. It was a really great experience for me, and a pleasure to finally be able to put faces to the names and lines of text/code speak to / read each day.

Cakefest 2 Argentina is quickly approaching. If you are sitting on the fence on going until the last minute then get off and come on down. Its going to be a good time with lots of great talks. I’ll even be there! I’m giving two talks one on Unit Testing and the other on plugin development. Hope to see you there.

To find out more about Cakefest follow the link.

I’ve had quite the busy last little month or two. My wife and I have been house shopping for a while, and found a place about 2 months ago. However, just last weekend we moved into our new (to us at least) condo in west Toronto.

The new sideproject is the CakePHP DebugKit . I’ve been hard at work building a ‘debug toolbar’ for CakePHP.

If you are following the development of CakePHP today is a good day for you. RC3 was released today! We have all been working really hard to make this Release Candidate better than the last one. There have been over 400 commits since the last RC2. Some of the big changes are related to performance. Larry Masters and the rest of the team have been hard at work making CakePHP snappier and all around speedier.

Lately you may (but hopefully did not) have noticed this site being unavailable for long periods of time. It seems my hosting company has had quite the bit of trouble with the hardware running the VPS my account is hosted on.

However, they are working on it and hopefully it becomes a thing of the past.

So instead of an article this time around I’ve done some housekeeping and updated the geshi helper to a newer version that includes the ‘show plain code’ links and I’ve provided a sample of the javascript I use to do the effect. Furthermore, I’ve updated the licensing on it to be harmonious with the rest of the code found on this site.

Well the redesign and rebuild is complete. I’ve gutted my site and rebuilt it from the ground up. There are more changes than just a shiny new design though. With this redesign I’m shifting the focus of the site around a bit as well.

Well Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. I’ve been busy as always and have put up a new character painting in the Digital Section. This is the first painting that I’ve done in Photoshop that is approaching the quality and feel of my oil work. As time is always at a premium these days, I will probably be doing a few more digital paintings. They are easier and less fussy to work on than oils.

These updates keep getting farther and farther apart however, this time I have a good excuse. I got married! On Aug 25th of this year I got married to a lovely woman named Tina. We met in college and have been inseparable since. So that is my excuse, I never realized how much work went into a wedding. Insane. I designed the invitations the thank you cards, and did calligraphy on all the name cards.

Well I finally finished a few things that I’ve been working on. I’ve added a couple more shirts to the clothing portfolio. I’m really happy with them, and they’ll be available on my store as soon as I get it complete. It is coming along well, and I plan on getting it done soon. Furthermore, I have more shirts and paintings in the works for your viewing pleasure.

Wow, it has been one heck of a long time since I’ve posted anything let alone new work. I have been working on a number of things including learning much more about programming in PHP and mySQL. I’ve also been doing a bit of sketching and drawing but haven’t had the chance to really get my paints out.

New work! Check the portfolio for a new painting called “the man with the hollow heart”. I tried a new surface with this piece, and think it came out quite well. Since my old cart system was not working at all, I am working on deploying Zen cart and hope to have it configured soon. There will even be goodies to buy as well.

Well it has been a while since I last did anything here. But I have been busy in the last month, and have things to show and share. First is a new painting in the gallery. It is the largest painting I’ve done yet. The triptych measures 20“x52” which is quite large for someone like me who doesn’t normally work larger than 11“x14”.

Another small update, again to the markup of the page. I found that without javascript enabled my portfolio sections simply didn’t work. And while most people do have javascript enabled, there are those that don’t and I want them to be able to look at my work as well. In addition it is just good site/code practices to make pages accessible and javascript unobtrusive.

You may (hopefully not) have noticed that the site is all php now. Difference to you, is absolutely nothing. It makes my life easier though. However, one thing that did change, is that the mailers available for download have been updated. Now they have the right phone numbers and such.

The store in case you are wondering is currently on hold. I can’t find an affordable credit card processor.

Well I changed a few things around here. The drop down menu at the top is no more. I was finding it to be really uncessary and not very intuitive. Furthermore, Explorer just made a mess of it. Also, I’m trying to make the portfolio section more user friendly. A few people I talked to didn’t even know there was more work beyond the 16 images on the first page. I’m still working out the Internet Explorer bugs.

Added my most recent digital work to the portfolio. It was inspired by the constant talk and evidence of gun violence in Toronto. I thought it was relevant, especially considering last summer’s extensive violence, and talks of preventing it from occuring again this year.

It seems that although, safari, firefox, opera, and even Internet explorer 5 like rendering my page, Internet explorer 6 does not. It has to do with the CSS and Internet explorer’s way of rendering it. So I’m working on it, but its hard for me to see the changes as Internet explorer 6 doesn’t exist on Mac OSX. Which makes for a trouble some bug fixing session.

Well its almost done. As you can see, the main interface is done and the content has been reformatted and appended to. Futhermore, there are more images to look at. An entirely new section makes it debut as well. The clothing section has my t-shirt designs and will expand over time to other apparel. The shop section is still under construction, but should be done soon.