Josh Highland

Internet addiction is serious business!

Josh Highland — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:02:38 +0000

Benefit plans in the age of social networks

Josh Highland — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:16:34 +0000

Macbook Pro – Make an external monitor your primary display

Josh Highland — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:00:09 +0000

Recently, I got a mac laptop at work, which is sup[er sweet, but I wanted to hook it up to a real monitor, keyboard and mouse. All very easy things to do. The problem I had was that the laptop was acting as the primary monitor. Every application that I drug over to the secondary monitor worked great, but the application tool bar was still on the laptop.. annoying.

I did a quick Google search to see if there was a solution to the problem. There was, and it’s dead simple to put into action.

Connect the external monitor

Start up the “System Preferences” app
Click on “Display Preferences”
Within Display Preferences, choose Arrangement. You should see two blue squares that represent each display, main and secondary. On the main display you’ll notice a bar along the top.
Click and drag this bar from the Main Display to the Secondary Display.
Close Display Preferences
That’s it!

Outputting a BOOL in NSLog

Josh Highland — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 07:19:46 +0000

Ever wanted to use NSLog in the iPhone SDK to see the value of a BOOL? Heck I have! “How do you do it”, you say? Just like this:

NSLog(@"BOOL =  %@\n", (boolVar ? @"YES" : @"NO"));

Then again, I don’t use NSLog anymore, I use DebugLog

ColdFusion powered iPhone Applications

Josh Highland — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:07:20 +0000

Last month I had the honor of being a presenter at CFUnited 2010.
Luis Majano and I gave a presentation on creating “ColdFusion Powered iPhone Applications”. Specifically, coldfusion apps running on the ColdBox Framework

The volume is low, so you need to crank it up. You can download our demo source code and slides here

Click here to view the embedded video.

UITextField.text is not always there!

Josh Highland — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:25:35 +0000

If you have UITextField in your app and you want to validate a value or see is there something in it you might think to write some code like this:

if (![addNewCellTextField.text isEqualToString:@""])

You would be right, but this will fail if the field is never touched! When a user taps the field, and it gets focus, UITextField.text = nil. That means that the condition above would be true, thats not what we want at all!

But once the UITextField is touched, the value becomes an instance of NSString with value of @””. So make sure that you write your code to check for the nil case, like this:

if (addNewCellTextField.text != nil && ![addNewCellTextField.text isEqualToString:@""])

Upgrading RAM in a MacBook Pro unibody

Josh Highland — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:45:20 +0000

I helped run the camera while my good friend Luis Majano upgraded the RAM in his MacBook Pro unibody

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here Is Why Web Developers Like Me Hate IE6

Josh Highland — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:28:59 +0000

CFUnited 2010 here I come!

Josh Highland — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:00:36 +0000

I will be speaking at this years CFUnited conference in Lansdowne Virgina, at the Lansdowne Resort

CFUnited is an annual conference based around the Coldfusion, Flex, and AIR languages and platforms.

This year I will be co-presenting with Luis Majano on “ColdFusion Powered iPhone Applications”

The session will cover how to develop and power iPhone applications via ColdFusion REST Services. I will cover all the development basics, intricacies, best practices, etc of iPhone development. The focus will be on how to make an iPhone application connect and consume ColdBox REST services.

The ColdFusion portion of the session will be led by Luis Majano, Creator of the Coldbox Framework.

I’m really looking forward to this great experience. I will be posting the slides and sample code here, after the presentation.

My iPhone 4 review

Josh Highland — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:09:42 +0000

hands down the best mobile device I have ever used. If you have an iPhone 3g of 3gs, you will want to upgrade to the iPhone 4

Click here to view the embedded video.