Notes from CFUnited Day 1

Since all of your favorite well known bloggers are covering what actually went on in the different classes, I thought I would just write about 2 things that struck a chord with me.

The first is something that Hal Helms said during his talk on OO Programming using CFCs. He gave us the old Buddhist proverb: "If you see The Buddha on the street, kill him." (because the real Buddha is the one you internalize, blah blah blah), and then he gave us the programmers equivalent: (Paraphrasing) Don't do what I say just because of who I claim to be or who you think I am. Take my advice as an example and try it yourself. See if it works for you. Try other things, too. Make mistakes.

The reason that this caught my attention was that he's right. As much as we idolize some of the "big names" in the CF community, we have to remember that we are being paid (by our clients) to provide them the most optimal solution for their individual situation, and sometimes that deviates from the standard or from what so called experts claim are best practices. It was a great reminder to think for myself and realize that my own knowledge adds value to the situation.

The second was the Open Source BOF discussion led by Raymond Camden. It was a very laid back discussion, but what I took away from it were two things. First, that writing open source software can be a great marketing tool to advertise your abilities and create leads for custom consulting projects. Ray has more or less made his career out of the projects he lands based on the clout earned from his Open Source projects.

And secondly, that working on O.S. software that interests you will provide an engaging opportunity to learn and explore new ideas, which should be considered valuable experience by your company. Someone at the BOF mentioned the likelihood that each of our contracts state that anything we work on, even in our own personal time, is the IP of the company. Some will argue that you should be allowed or encouraged to spend part of your work week on personal projects (Google does).

Of course this depends on your individual situation, and it's understandable that if you're a billable resource then your boss wants to keep you billable as much as possible. Whether or not your boss will let you work on personal projects one afternoon a week, if you're reading this, you probably would work on them in your free time anyway. I know I will, and do.

So far, I think this conference has already paid for itself in the knowledge I've picked up and the contacts I've made. Heck, it even pays for my new subscription to Fusion Authority.

Posted in CFUnited 07 June 28 2007

Can it be? It’s finally here?

CFMenuCal α1 is, dare I say, ready for you to play with!

Considering that this is an alpha release, there is no way to modify user data (aka meals, settings) on-page. You'll need to edit config.cfm to change those things. Of course, this isn't a problem for you, because you're taking advantage of the ColdFusion 8 public beta, right?

I would love to get some feedback from anyone who plays with it. What do you like or dislike about it? What do you think should work differently? Feature requests, bug reports... bring it on!

• The demo has been updated, so you can see it live in action here.
• The source is available via Subversion at RIAForge. (Check under /versions/alpha1)

Posted in CFMenuCal | My projects | Scorpio June 23 2007

ColdFusion8 doesn’t create Client Variable tables for MySQL

...and potentially other database types.

Tonight I installed the latest CF8 beta on my home file/web server so that I can continue development and tinkering even in the event of a catastrophe. The server is running Ubuntu and MySQL, which to be honest, means this is the first time I've had to store client variables in a MySQL database. In the past, MS SQL Server has always at least been an option, and I never bothered before.

In the event that you might need the code to create these tables, because I did, you can find it here. I gather that this is not a new development (the page I linked indicates that these instructions are for MX), but I personally would have thought that now that MySQL is an officially supported DBMS, they would have implemented such a remedial feature.

If you can't be bothered to click through, here's the code:

<cfquery datasource="mydatasource">   CREATE TABLE cdata (     cfid varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',     app varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',     data longtext NOT NULL,     PRIMARY KEY (cfid,app)   ); </cfquery> <cfquery datasource="mydatasource">   CREATE TABLE cglobal (     cfid varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',     data longtext NOT NULL,     lvisit timestamp(14) NOT NULL,     KEY cfid (cfid),     KEY lvisit (lvisit)   ); </cfquery>

Posted in ColdFusion | Scorpio June 21 2007

inAction -or- Murphey’s Law In Action

The day that you make grandiose plans to spend hours working on a project when you get home, is the day that you leave the power supplies for both of your laptops at the office.

I am not giving up on or abandoning CFMenuCal, I promise.

I really want to work on it, and as soon as I have the means (when power supply availability and free time intersect) I intend to do just that. If absolutely nothing else, I'm planning on working on it during evenings or down time during CFUnited; because I'm shy and I'm sure that I'll end up alone in a corner somewhere. Bet your bottom dollar.

Posted in CFMenuCal | Meta June 20 2007