nil desperandum - CFML

I'm speaking at Scotch on the Rocks!

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:03:00 -0700

Today the Scotch on the Rocks Speakers list was release by Andy Allan and his motley crew . [More]

Truly mixing your components

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:45:00 -0700

I've recently been looking at different ways to extend and reuse code within various frameworks with a couple of the guys at work. We looked a all aspects of the systems that go to make up a web application and the content management that is involved. One of the area's we looked at was data definition, how it could be made more intuitive, more convention based, more extensible and more reusable. We talked around a lot of concepts. One of those concepts was something called data streams from the Fedora Content Model. [More]

AJAX Longpolling with ColdFusion and BlazeDS - Subtopics and building a messaging app

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:56:00 -0700

I'm sorry to say that I've been putting this post off. Why? Well to be honest I've been struggling with getting my head around how to actually use longpolling. Its all very well understanding the mechanics, but how can you use it effectively. Part of the problem I've been having is the nature of sending messages and filtering them with BlazeDS. What I keep forgetting is that long poll messaging is "fire and forget". You don't send a message and expect an immediate response. You send a message and a response might be broadcast to all event listeners with a specific filter. If you want a request and response, call a webservice or a make an ajax request. Don't use long polling and event gateways. [More]

Blog Roundup 7 May 2010

Fri, 07 May 2010 15:41:00 -0700

I'm on fire!! A blog round-up two weeks in a row!! I read and pick the entries for the blog round in Google Reader. There are currently 101 subscriptions listed there, but I'm always happy to add more if someone would like me to consider their blog posts for inclusion in these sporadic updates. You can see the 101 already added listed on my blog roll page. Lets crack on with the round-up. [More]

CFOverflow and my Twitter Favourites

Thu, 06 May 2010 23:40:00 -0700

I've been tinkering with a couple of bits and pieces with Twitter for a little while, but I've never really put them out there or publicised them. The first, and most importantly, is the twitter account CFOverflow. The second is my list of twitter favourites. [More]

Blog Roundup 30 April 2010

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:13:00 -0700

I'm rubbish! I really am... I promise and I promise to keep on top of Blog Round-ups, but I never seem to quite manage it. I would really like to keep writing this round-ups ever week, but its quite an effort. Can I persuade anyone to co-author these posts with me? Leave me a comment. Drop me an email. Shout me on Twitter. Anyway, on with the round-up. [More]

APR and IRR Calculator Component - Code Review please

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:11:00 -0700

Ten days ago I post my first project to RIAForge. Its a pretty simple project as it only consists of one CFC and I would appreciate some feed back on the code. Hence the request for a code review. This CFC is based on research and work that I did to be able to create a finance calculator for a client and works quite nicely. I'm also pleased to see that at the time of writing this post my project has already been viewed 700 times and downloaded 23 times. I hope you're finding it useful. The CFC is, as the title of this blog post suggests an APR and IRR calculator and you can download it from RIAForge here : http://aprcfc.riaforge.org/. [More]

AJAX Longpolling with ColdFusion and BlazeDS - Connecting and Messaging

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:13:00 -0700

In my last post on long polling I went through the basic set up of ColdFusion and BlazeDS before getting into too much code. This part I want to get a basic connection and a couple of simple messages being sent and received. [More]

AJAX Longpolling with ColdFusion and BlazeDS - Getting set up

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:31:00 -0700

I've spent some of my week this week fighting with JavaScript, BlazeDS and ColdFusion to get a working model for some ExtJS functionality that I'm currently building at work. One of several pieces of functionality we'd like is to have is real time notifications of workflow changes. The way it was described was "we want to push alerts to the users". I decided to have a look at how we actually addressed this "problem". We didn't really need to "push" alerts to users, so the solution was traditional polling or long polling. [More]

Compiling ColdFusion Applications for Deployment

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:04:00 -0700

I've been compiling ColdFusion applications on and off over the years for various reasons, usually on my server or another server that I have access to. Recently I've been compiling for deployment to an external server that I've not had access. I ran into a few problems with the resulting compiled code not running on these servers while it runs perfectly locally. To start at the beginning, I've often simply pre-compiled an application in place, so that it need not compile the templates on first access. Occasionally I've compiled for source-less deployment. Usually under those circumstances I've had access to the server, where I've simply loaded source code onto the server, compile, dropped the compile code into place and then removed the source. [More]

ColdFusion Podcasts Roundup

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:15:00 -0700

To kick start my reading of blogs I've started listening to podcasts again.

I used to listen to ColdFusion Podcast and Weekly, but unfortunately they are now deceased, so I had a bit of a search and asked around on Twitter. Here's the podcasts I'm now listening to and a few thoughts.

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Blog Round up 20 September 2009

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:49:00 -0700

This blog round up is somewhat later than I had intended, but for good reason. I've been waiting for a couple of blog posts to emerge into the public domain, so that I could include them in the round up. I can't impress upon you how important it is to read these posts.

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Blog Roundup September 11th 2009

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:40:00 -0700

Sorry..... Its been a very very long time since I posted a blog round up.

I recently moved my blog from hosting on my PC at home to extremely cheap Coldfusion 8 hosting with Hosting A to Z and I've updated to MangoBlog 1.4 with a new site theme, so I've decided its time I got my act together and started posting again.

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What am I reading?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:30:00 -0700

Previously I wrote a number of weekly blog round up of the 100 or so blogs I'm subscribed to, but I've let it get all out of date and I've not been reading as much as I should.

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Manually creating JRun Server instances.

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:12:00 -0700

I'm having a spot of bother with the JRun JMC (Java Management Console) at the minute.

For some reason I'm getting error messages like this :

[More]