This book was a very quick read - I read it cover to cover in a little more than two and a half hours. Still, it manages to pack in a very succinct and clear explanation of the basic building blocks of OOP in ColdFusion: CFCs and the "Bean" paradigm, as well as less tangible concepts like inheritance, polymorphism, and so on. I had heard that the author, Matt Gifford, is great at distilling the complexities of OOP down to simple and understandable language, and the book does not disappoint in that regard.
If you're already familiar with the technical aspects: What CFCs are, how to write them, and how to instantiate and use them; then you can probably skip directly to chapter 4, where the less tangible concepts like inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and aggregation are covered. These are the concepts I was hoping to expand my understanding of by reading this book, and while they are all covered well enough to get a basic understanding, I would have liked to have seen a bit more content dedicated to them. As it is, all of these topics share a single 22 page chapter. After which, a lengthy discussion of DAOs, Gateways, and Services finishes out the book; which -- if the reader isn't taking it as informational and somewhat cautionary -- may do more harm than good in the end (but that's a matter of personal style).
I think that this is an excellent primer for developers looking to move from procedural spaghetti-code into OO, because it explains all of the concepts necessary to make the move without preaching any particular style or making things overly complex. Most developers will use an OOP framework, which will require continued reading to learn how to do OOP with that framework, but the reader will be better able to understand and absorb that message, having read this book.
By the way, I'll be raffling off my copy at the February meeting of Philly CFUG, which is pretty apropos considering the topic will be MVC with FW/1.
Disclosure: Packt Publishing provided me a free review copy of this book in exchange for my review.
in
ColdFusion |
Reviews |
1 Response
Posted 2011-01-31 07:30
This will probably be somewhat off-topic for this blog, but I can't help myself. I'm in love.
After receiving a Kindle 3 for Christmas (side-note: love this too!), I decided to bite the bullet and buy myself the official cover. I was a little skeptical, but knew I could always return it if I ended up not liking it. Here were the things I was looking for:
- Book-style (not a pouch), attached, and folding flat for one-handed reading.
- A good built-in light, so that I can read in bed after my wife goes to sleep
- Fairly lightweight, because that's my biggest problem with using the iPad as an eReader: I might as well carry a hardback book or two!
- Durable and good looking (the Kindle is so sexy, it would be a shame to cover it with something ugly)
- Relatively thin (but not so thin it's not durable)
Not usually one to purchase sight-unseen, I spent hours reading reviews (and there are a lot of them). Some of them had me worried, saying things like the case was too heavy or the light doesn't cover the entire screen well (particularly the lower-left corner) because it is so far off to the top-right corner. I was also a little concerned about the color. I ordered the "chocolate brown" edition, and was slightly worried it would be a milky-chocolate color, but it actually is a very dark, rich brown; almost black (which I like). Between the fall-back plan of returning it if I didn't like it, and the deal I was able to get, I couldn't resist.
What deal, you say? For starters, I bought it "used" though I suspect it was more of an "open box" item. When I received it, I spent the first few hours playing with it and only then did I even remember it was used. It seems to be in pristine condition. By purchasing used, I saved $10 on the normally $59.99 pricetag (and still got free shipping). I also used a gift certificate I received for Christmas, which brought it from $50 to $25, a pretty good out-of-pocket expense, I thought.
How does it rate against my requirements?
- It's book-style, and it does fold more or less flat underneath the Kindle for one-handed reading.
- The light is perfectly bright and illuminates the whole screen. I've only used it once, in near-pitch-dark, with a full charge. I wonder if as the Kindle's charge starts to dwindle, if the light becomes less bright - leading to the complaints I read about in reviews. In fact, the light is a little too bright. It could be dimmer and still work well in low- and no-light situations. Not complaining, though.
- I haven't taken it on my commute yet (and won't for several weeks), but it seems light enough. Certainly light enough to hold up while reading in bed. Way lighter than an iPad!
- The leather feels pretty durable and protective, and it is very classy looking. No points lost for appearance or durability.
- It's not as thin as I would have liked, once the Kindle is installed (which was also a synch, btw), but to be fair that would probably have required a more expensive material, like Kevlar, in order to still be protective. ;)
All in all I'm quite pleased with my purchase. I like the elastic strap and the sliding leather tab used to hold it shut. This feels much more user friendly than a snap or velcro. If I had one complaint -- and it is minor, and about the Kindle, not the case -- it would be that, after setting it down without turning it off (to lock the keys) it can be a little difficult to pick the Kindle back up with one hand without turning the page.
Final verdict? Totally worth my $25, and I can easily recommend it for someone looking for something similar.
in
Reviews |
1 Response
Posted 2011-01-10 08:00
Disclosure: As an attendee at MAX 2010, my Logitech Revue was provided gratis. However, my opinions -- both good and bad -- are uninfluenced by this fact, as much as is humanly possible.
Hardware Install
Installing the Logitech Revue hardware couldn't have been simpler. I did surprise even myself by reading the instructions first -- mostly out of curiosity for how well designed they were (spoiler alert: not bad) -- but it is pretty easy to guess. Connect up the power and HDMI inputs (from your cable or dvr box), and connect the HDMI output to your TV. Including time to unbox and bask in its beauty, I think I had it powered up in less than 5 minutes.
The revue doesn't support component output, so this device also served as the final straw for my existing component-input usage. I'm switched over to HDMI for nearly everything now, and happier for it. My TV doesn't handle 1080p, only 1080i, and when I briefly enabled it there was a noticeable flicker, not unlike the "good" old days of CRT monitors at 60Hz. So for the time being I'm stuck watching at a lowly 720p.
Software Setup
The initial configuration that needs to be done is mostly well designed and intuitive. As others have noted, you have to sign in with a google account, which presents a conundrum for households with more than one übernerd -- whose google account do you use? I don't think my wife knows that she has a "google account" ("is that different from my gmail account?") so my choice was made for me: use my own account.
The only part that tripped me up was integration with my DVR. I have Dish Network service and one of the supported DVR hardware units, so when the step came up to integrate the Revue with my DVR I happily complied. I knew there would be a charge from Dish for anything useful (searching channels and shows, watching recordings, scheduling recordings, etc) but I figured that some basic level of integration would be supported for free, so I wanted to see what I could do. For the $0 I was willing to add to my monthly bill, what I could do amounts to precisely nothing.
I'm not exactly sure why Dish feel it's necessary to charge a $4 per month fee for the privilege of letting a better designed bundle of hardware and software control their haphazard clunky piece of junk. I wouldn't be getting any additional service that I'm not already, so it's not as if there is extra cost to them that needs to be covered. The only possibly-reasonable answer is to recover the costs of developing the integration features; but if that's the case then I would counter that the pricing model is unjustified and exorbitant. At most I would be willing to pay a one-time fee of $30 or $40 for the privilege of integration, and since I plan on having my Revue for much more than a year, the long-tail cost is more than I'm willing to pay.
In my personal opinion, the $4 monthly fee that Dish charges is what it is because the market will bear it; and the market, as is so often the case, is stupid. If more people spent less money on TV and more on their mortgages and car payments (and didn't take on debt they couldn't afford) then we would be in a much better situation right now. Ah well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. If I don't like it, I'm free to take my patronage elsewhere, eh?
Anyway, back to the setup process. When I realized that I wouldn't be using the integration with my DVR, I was taken aback in a moment of stupor. Will I at least be able to let the TV pass through? Of course, but the UI for the setup dialog did not make this clear: (paraphrasing) "Setup your DVR integration or you won't be able to control your TV!" This may be intentional, to trick the weak minded into paying for service they don't want; or perhaps just poor design. I ended up going back through the tv step two or three times to make sure I understood how it would work and that I was getting what I wanted.
Everything else about initial setup was pretty straight forward. I chose wired networking instead of wireless, because (1) I already have cable run and a switch in my entertainment center for the 360 and other purposes, and (2) I knew going into this that the majority of my usage would be streaming audio and video over my home network to the TV, and I didn't want any wireless signal strength, interference, or latency problems. It picked up an IP via DHCP and I was online in minutes.
What I do with my Revue
I've had it for about 7 days now, and I believe my suspicions were right. If I had to guestimate a pie chart of my usage so far it would look something like this:
- 65% streaming video
- 25% streaming audio (inflated by the holiday season and my awesome holiday pandora station)
- 10% web browsing/etc
The web browsing has been primarily to have my fantasy football team stats up on screen while watching football games. Using Picture in Picture for this is awesome. I do wish that I could select which corner to display the tv feed in, but just having the ability at all is something to be happy about. (If you're wondering, I'm in the playoffs in two of my three leagues and kicking some serious butt.)
What works well?
As I alluded to with the fantasy football comments above, multitasking is fun and useful, as is PiP. I like that the home screen is always just a single click away. And the video and audio streaming quality -- at least as far as I've seen so far -- has only been limited by the source content. There are only a handful of supported containers and codecs, mostly around H.264 or Xvid video with AAC audio or WMV, but thankfully my media collection seems to be made up entirely of this type of content.
What doesn't work well?
The built in DLNA streaming support, insofar as it seems to automatically pick up on my Windows 7 shared folders, is garbage. Don't waste your time with it. This may be a Windows 7 problem, not a Revue problem, but the key takeaway is to just use something else. I've spent days trying to get it to recognize that I've added new video and audio content to my collection since originally connecting the Revue, to no avail. Eventually I gave up on the auto-detected avenue and decided to give TVersity a try. So far it has been terrific: I haven't had a single problem, and the way you browse your library from the Revue seems much more natural, or at least more in tune with what I would expect.
I would like the ability to add apps to the left-most navigation bar on the home screen. Since media streaming is such a core part of how I use the device, having the app buried in the Applications menu or under Bookmarks is annoying. 70-90% of the time I want Logitech Media Player ("LMP"), so it makes sense to me that I would want it as the top option on the main menu. [Update: I've since figured out how to modify the left navigation of the home screen and I've hidden a few things, reordered a few, and added Pandora. I was able to add Pandora to the main menu but LMP is not an option, which I find incredibly annoying. Hopefully a future update will address this.]
As a last.fm user, I would like to be able to at least scrobble what I'm listening to on my TV -- whether that be what I'm streaming from my iTunes library with LMP or using the Pandora app -- if not also browse content from last.fm itself.
Being a part of the smartphone generation, when I browse the web away from my laptop I often need to zoom. Perhaps I'm just not using it right, but the zooming functionality in Chrome on Google TV feels clunky and forced. I would love to see a pinch gesture supported on the touchpad on the remote, but short of that, something has to be done to make it a more core part of how you browse.
Getting a list of running apps or open content still has some kinks to work out. There was one time that I stumbled on some sort of GUI for switching between running applications, but I can't remember how I got to it, so something's wrong there. That's a core part of multitasking. But that one time I did find it, it worked well. ;)
What I don't do with my Revue
I'm not a news, basketball, or youtube junkie, so none of these apps (cnbc, nba, youtube) interest me at all. I also don't check my email on it (too public), or do much generic web surfing. Generally I have an iPad or my laptop nearby for that.
I don't do much "searching" of my TV, because I don't pay the extra cost for the integration features. I will sometimes search for the video or audio that I want to stream, but more often than not I have something very specific in mind and with the size of my media library it is easier to just browse to the exact album or tv show season/episode I'm interested in, rather than paging through tons of search results. I can see how it would be useful --awesome, even-- if you paid for the integration. No more remembering what the channel number is for FX, or Spike, or G4; just search for it. No more remembering which network a tv show is on; just search for it. If only it weren't behind the wall of greed.
What's the biggest missing feature?
That's easy: An app store. I would have thought that by now it would have launched. There are multiple TVs with gTV software available in stores, and the Revue covers everything else. Heck, they just gave away a couple thousand Revues (to lucky people like myself), so there is a wide audience. I think it's time to see what great ideas 3rd party developers can bring to the moderately big screen.
Worth the price tag?
The jury is still out on this one. It will be tough to decide until the App Store emerges in some form and some cool apps start coming out. For now, it's mostly relegated to acting as an overpriced Roku or Boxee box, or an underpriced mac mini, which is what I was considering getting as an HTPC before the Roku/Boxee/gTV craze started.
in
GoogleTV |
Reviews |
8 Responses
Posted 2010-12-09 07:48
