I came to the realisation the other day, that my blog has really
become almost totally announcement based. A series of presentation
announcements, eSeminars, ColdFusion User Groups, Code Releases and
various other 'hey! this is what is going on' posts.
It used to be chock full of weird and interesting things you could do
with ColdFusion, and combining with the Java layer that sits underneath
it to do even weirder and even more interesting things with that.
Sadly, I've been super busy over the past <insert long time
frame>, and I've let things slip.
That being said, I plan on returning to the original theme of this
blog, and start publishing some of the new things I've found out about
ColdFusion, and what can be done with it. I've got some interesting
ideas on article on ColdFusion and Threading, and also some more on
onMissingMethod and method injection and manipulation, so be prepared!
So what has kept me so busy? Quite a lot actually. In no particular order...
Consulting full time.
This
has been one of the biggest changes, and adjustments for me to make
over the past 6 months or so. That being said, it is going very well,
and I am keeping myself very busy (Almost
too busy!). I love working from home, and love the flexibility working for myself gives me.
I also find it is a really rewarding experience. Working for yourself
challenges you in a variety of ways, as you only have yourself to rely
on, and you are solely responsible to make it or break it.
While
mostly I've been doing Transfer related work, I've also been doing some
mentoring and memory leak analysis, all of which have been really
interesting. Coming from a background in which I have tended to work
on single projects for months/years at a time, having a variety of
undertakings going at once is a nice change.
Speaking at webDU
I didn't even blog about this, which was very remiss of me! But I went to
webDU, which was great fun. I gave a presentation on TQL, and although I had some projector issues, it seemed to go quite well.
Writing Transfer code
I also got very busy writing
Transfer
1.2 in my spare (?) time. I'm really getting excited about Transfer
all over again, and I think I have some really interesting ideas for
the future. The next version is almost mapped out in my head... but I
will wait until after the Transfer Survey before setting it in stone.
Writing DevNet Frameworks Article
Writing
articles always take far longer than you expect them to, but when they
finally get published, it feels really great. From the feedback I've
received the
Introduction to ColdFusion Frameworks has been well received, and given some people new to frameworks some perspective over the landscape.
Something Super Cool Special
Been spending some time doing something really, really cool, but I can't really talk about it yet...
Don't you hate it when people say that? ;o)
Technical Editing for FAQU
I've
also started technical editing for the Fusion Authority Quarterly
Update, which one was one of those random opportunities that show up
during a conversation I was having with Judith Dinowitz. Editing other
people's articles in an interesting endeavour, but (I find) much easier
than writing them in the first place ;o)
Went on Holiday
I actually hadn't had a proper holiday
in several years, and it has made a huge difference! Taking a solid
break for a few weeks has meant I've come back with a new passion for
writing code, and a variety of other things in my life. I always
forget how much change a holiday can bring.
So that's my life at the moment in a nut shell. Figured I would let people know what was going on.
This was too clever to pass up (By the way, 'Neuro', or 'Neurotic' is me):
<DanWilson> Neuro doesn't have kids, he generates them
<jamiejackson> hope they don't inherit behavior
<DanWilson> behaviour is mixed in at runtime
Check out more silliness at #coldfusion on Dalnet irc!
Just a quick note - I'll be moving this site, and transfer-orm.com to a VPS over the next few days, so I apologise if there is any downtime.
We should be back up again shortly.
This is a FAQ that was first written back in 2004, and has been
updated ever since, but outlines what I believe to be the best way to
ask questions on technical forums.
I think it's important to post it up, every now and again, so that people remember that it exists for a reason ;o)
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way
I've started using
Pownce mainly these days, instead of
Twitter. While I do like Twitter, Pownce just has a more polished feel to it, and has some far better functionality.
If you want to reach me on Pownce, you can catch me at:
http://www.pownce.com/Neurotic/
Here is a quick rundown of the things I like about Pownce, and some of the things I don't.
Things I love about Pownce
- The ability to send anything is SO much better than Twitter
- being able to set to 'sets' of people is great
- So easy to send someone a direct message, without anything weird to type (D name... wtf?)
- Threaded conversations! Very nice!
- You can delete messages once they have been sent!
- Multiple versions of privacy
Things I'm not liking / would like improvements for
- The search functionality is bad, if search for 'Mark Drew', I get everyone whose first or last name has 'drew' in it, which means I get way too many results, and in the wrong order
- I can't run the AIR application, as AIR isn't supported on Linux
(which I think is a silly move on Adobe's part considering the trend
for developers to move away from Windows to either Mac or Linux, but it
may be just something they had no choice on, as I believe the Flash 9
plug-in for Linux is not quite up to par yet...)
- It would be great if events showed up, automatically converted to my time zone
- I can't Pownce from my mobile (I'm sure it will come)
- I kinda miss the IM bot that Twitter has, but I probably wouldn't complain if I could run the AIR app
- I would like to be able to see replies to Pownce's load up under the initial Pownce, rather than having to click in.
If you add me on Pownce, you may even get quick glimpses of what I'm doing with Transfer.... now isn't that special ;o)
Yes, it's true, I've finally succumbed, and put ads on my site, and
switched out the wishlist for a PayPal donate button. I have finally
turned to the dark side.
Do not fear! There are reasons for this!
First of all, the Amazon wish list, didn't really work out. I'm sure
people thought 'I'll buy Mark something from the wishlist, he'll like
that', and then quickly realised it can be up to $30 to send stuff to
Australia, and that whole idea quickly went out the window.
Second of all, I really want to get out to more conferences overseas.
Unfortunately, while living in Australia is wonderful, we are about as
far away from anyone as can possibly be. This means that travelling
can be
really expensive. So this is to say that any revenue
and/or donations that I receive from the ads, or from PayPal, will go directly to funding conference travel costs, and
also to general open source development costs.
So if you do like the work that I've provided for you guys, please feel
free to click the PayPal donate button, its always appreciated, and
allows me to come out to more conferences, and put more resources at
your disposal.
Me as a Simpsons Character....
...the resemblance is uncanny. :oD
Nope, you're not going crazy, I have some posts that weren't showing up on aggregates. This was because my
RSS
feeds were being compressed by the web server they were on, and coming
back as a weird Content Type. That's all been fixed, so you should now
see all my posts as per usual.
Compound Theory will now continue its usual broadcasts...
When I was a boy, all I ever wanted was my very own Flash Face . I can't believe it has finally come true.
Just a neat little gimmick, but I've been using meebo as my IM client for a while now, and really love it.
Today they came out with a Flash widget that you can put on your site so that people who visit, can message you to your meebo account.
I had to put it on here, so send me a quick hello if you get the chance, it would be great to say hi to people who visit my site!
(For those of you who have seen this post come, go, come back, and then come back again.. don't worry you're not going nuts, my ISP has been having issues with their databases)
Things have been pretty hectic of late, which is why you haven't seen much of anything on the site.
I've been traipsing around the USA for the last few weeks, and will continue to be in Santa Clara, CA until the 1st of February.
Depending on what happens next week, I'm going to attempt to wander up to the
BACFUG meeting on Wednesday.
There is a heap of new pieces for
Transfer coming in the works, including support for database auto-generated numbers, list() and read() functions, the ability to turn off and/or control the persistent caching mechanism, and some other things I can't remember right now (and those people bugging me for those things know who they are, yes, they are coming).
I know the server has been up and down as of late - nothing I can really do about it, hopefully my hosting service will get it sorted sooner rather than later.
Finally, a blatant plug for a good friend of mine's new graphics design / illustration site -
One Strange Day . Check it out, it's very pretty.
Woah.
I spent months and months writing the stuff behind this site in my spare time, and finally I can see the results. v2.0 is up and running :o).
I had had a bunch of ideas for different pieces of Coldfusion software to write, some interesting ideas for CSS styling, and a whole internal argument on how to design my code... I decided to rewrite my blog with all those ideas in mind.
After refactor after refactor after refactor (you have no idea how much code I threw away and rewrote), I'm actually happy with the way this thing turned out. In all honesty it's been a great learning experience.
So in the near future you should be seeing me releasing some of the things I've written that are utlised behind the scenes on this blog, which is very exciting for me, as I've never really 'open sourced' anything before, and I hope everyone who looks at what I've written can (a) find it useful and (b) learn as much as I did writing them.
So keep your eyes peeled for a little 'Projects' box that will eventually sit on the right hand side, and various other things I've got in my head to go on this site, and hopefully you will enjoy your stay.
Sorry about the complete lack of posting on this website... things have been really hectic in my life recently, so I haven't really had much of a chance to get on here and blog about stuff.
On the upside, I have been doing some interesting work recently that I am very happy with, which I will post about when it's complete.
To tide you all over, here is a link to one of my friend's very pretty flash site: Minion Design.
Hope you enjoy!
Just got this via CFAUSSIE.
http://notflash.blogspot.com/
A whole blog complaining about the shortcomings of Flash and its IDE.
For those that use Flash, this is probably a good resource, and for those that don't, it's a pretty funny read.
Enjoy :o)
It's my 25th birthday today!
Things I want to do in this year of my life:
- Make my fiance as happy as possible
- Have a wonderful time at my wedding
- Get some dogs
- Buy a house
- Hang out with all our friends
- Do some work on CFEclipse
- Rewrite Compound Theory
- Release some open source software
- Keep training martial arts
Of course that's in no particular order (except for the fact my gorgeous fiance comes first)
:o)
You know.. instead of disallowing spam referrer bots from access to your site, and you instead pushed them to a page that had 500 links back to the referrer in which they came, the bots would continue on their merry way on to the site that they are wanting to advertise...
Maybe something like this here (view source to see the evil genius) >;)
Works well for those who are 'accidentally' picked up, and need to get back in (i.e. the copy paste directions).. and if you're a spam bot.. you get sent on your way... again and again and again...
I'm really starting to get annoyed with all the spiders I am getting through my site, simply so that they can put referrers in my web logs.
It wouldn't be such a big deal, considering it's very easy for me to pick out which referrers are real and which aren't pretty fast. The issue comes from the fact that they are badly written, so spider my links badly, and send URL requests that send me about 10-15 error message emails a day!
They all use a Internet Explorer User Agent, so I can't stop them all that way, I've tried banning people by IP, but they change that often it't almost not worth it.
I'm half considering puting some sort of CAPTCHA on my site just to kill these bots... but that would stop every other good bot too (i.e. Google).
Any thoughts anyone?
Btw - sorry about the lack of posts, I'm currently in the process of rewriting CT using a new OO framework idea I've been toying around with, but more on that later...
Sorry for the downtime guys, my website was being moved from one web server to another - and having the latest CFMX patches applied.
I'll have some more interesting updates for your shortly...
Okay - looking at this article from CNN -
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/20/star.changes/index.html
I start to get a tad annoyed. All I really want to see is the original Star Wars, in it's original format, with the original voices played by the original actors. Is it SO hard to simply release the DVD box set in the original format?
I mean really. This is getting silly.
Tomorrow I'm off to the USA for training, so I don't know how often I'm going to be posting on here.
Then again this whole 'internet' craze seems to be global, so I probably post from over in the US too.... ;o)
Bye bye Melbourne, see you in here in a few weeks!
For a variety of reasons I decided to bite the bullet and install the Windows Service Pack 2 on my trusty Toshiba Portege M200 tablet PC.
All I can say is WOOOOOH YEAH.
There is a bunch of stuff in here that is brilliant for Tablet PC users, and also for other stuff as well. Service Pack 2 is basically an upgrade to Tablet PC 2005. Free upgrade! :o)
The new writing input panel context is incredible - now it shows up whenever you come across a input field, instead of you having to manually open and close it. Also, character recognition is definatly better - not to mention the fact that the writing pad will translate your handwriting as you write so you can see if it's correct or not as you do it.
I could go on about the new bits and pieces - but here are some links to articles that explain it better:
Windows XP Service Pack 2: How it affects Tablet PC Edition
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005: Tools to Use with Your Tablet PC
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005: New Ways to Interact with Your Tablet PC
The other big thing I found useful was the move to the Microsoft Bluetooth stack. Before this came along, I was running the Toshiba Bluetooth stack, which worked fine for most things - however did not get along very well with my new Nokia 6230.
I uninstalled the Toshiba version (as described here) and installed SP2 and now, my Nokia phone talks happily to my PC.
So all in all - I'd like to say WELL DONE to Miscrosoft for once, it's been a pleasure working with you.
I'm so excited, I have to share.
My beautiful and incredible better half agreed to marry me over the weekend, and quite frankly I couldn't be happier.
She is the light of my life, and every day I am thankful she decided to fall in love with me. :o)
Sorry about the server dropouts everyone.
Not much I can do about it (it's not my apps fault! ;o) ) and they should hopefully be resolved shortly.
Thanks for your understanding.
My girlfriend and I had an incedent the other night, that threw me a little, so I thought I would share it.
We were walking my dog around 8:30 - 9:00 pm, when a woman across the road called to us and asked us if we had a mobile. This happened to be one of the few times I didn't have my mobile with me, but we walked across to talk with the woman. She'd found a beagle that was wandering around, and she then preceeded to unceremoniously dump the animal onto us because she was in a hurry.
Now my girlfriend and I are long time animal lovers (both of us have pets), so we were happy to sort the situation out. Unfortunately, while the dog had it's registeration tags, but no name tag, and no home phone number.
We managed to get a mobile, and made some phone calls to the local council and such, but of course being after hours, nobody was particularly helpful.
Thankfully, the owner of the dog ran into my girlfriend as I was holding this dog down the street, and they were both happily reunited.
However - if the dog had had a name tag with it's phone number on it, this could all have been easily avoided, and there would have been far less chance that someone would have ended up leaving the dog to be 'someone elses problem', when they are 'in a hurry'.
So please, put a name tag on your dog, and put a home phone number on it.
I never do quite understand why I derive such delightful pleasure out of developing icons.
Maybe it's just because they are so cute. or maybe it's because it's a rare day when I leave my code, and have a play with colours and shapes.
I'm not sure what I did, but I was trying to respond to the Struts mailing list subscriber, so I could validate my email address... and all of a sudden all I ever get when I try and send emails is 'An error has occured. This email was not sent'.
This is ANY email, i can't send any emails at all.
Ah well ;o) This is why it's a Beta program.
Anyone else had the same issue and know if I can fix it myself?
I've sent a message to Gmail, and hopefully it fixes itself soon, it really is great as a repository for mailing lists.
EDIT :::
Whoo! It works again! Man, those Gmail guys (or girls) are fast.
I think I'm going to see all my mailing lists go over to gmail! :o)
I don't usually post of things of this nature - but it scared me so badly, I thought I had to share it with everyone.
Quote from: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/19045/
"Lethal new regulations from President Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans' goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)."
Can someone please tell me this isn't real?
The thought of removing safe sex programs and replacing them with abstinence only programs is recipe for disaster, regardless of the nation that it belongs to.
I used to live in Atlanta, so this does hit a little close to home.
If you do live in the area - please take action -
"There's only a tiny window of opportunity to try to get the new CDC censorship rules changed before they go into effect (the deadline for public comments is August 16 -- they may be e-mailed to HIVComments@cdc.gov or faxed to 404-639-3125.)"
Woah!
3 Posts and I've been added to Full as a Goog, I'm kinda excited ;o)
That and I get one of those spiffy Goog images to display on the right - and it goes with my colour scheme!
Hey!
I've finally done it! I've created my own blog.
Welcome to my blog, where I will attempt to discuss ColdFusion, Java, some XML / XSL and probably whatever I am working on at the time.
I'm sure there will be some teething problems, so please bear with me as I sort them all out.
:o)
