nil desperandum - Flex

Blog Round up 19 Feb 2009

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:32:00 -0700

Ack! I really should keep up with these things. I've been reading through a couple of new blogs, looking at extJS and playing with Sun's GlassFish as a possible alternate java server for ColdFusion.

Well, Gary Fenton joked that I should change my blog slogan to "I read 100 blogs so YOU don't have to!", now I actually do read 100 blogs! Well 102 to be precise! hmmm make that 103... No idea why, but Adam Lehman's blog wasn't on my list!

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Blog Roundup 12 October 2008

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:22:45 -0700

I keep forgetting what the number of my next round up is, so I've decided I need to change the title. Hopefully it'll be generally more useful that #1 to n. It also means I can let my Friday lunchtime deadline slide a bit. I'm on the train coming back from Edinburgh and Andy Allan's stag do! Before you ask - typically, I made it up to Edinburgh, I had a couple of drinks and some food, but then had to cry off because I was suffering from a 24hour stomach bug. But I'm told lots of beer and fun was had.

First of all I added a new blog, Bob Silverberg, to my Google Reader this week. I saw a post by Bob on the CFCDev group regarding Object Oriented Validation that interested me given that I validation is one of those things you always have to do but gets in the way of doing the fun stuff. Bob's created a framework agnostic validation framework that will flexibly generate validation code for your data objects. Take a look - he explains it better than I can in a few words and there are also CS/Transfer examples available.

Ray Camden released an update to Sounding on RIAForge this week. Apparently its just a bug fix release with some user submitted UI improvements. Wish I'd spent the time to install Soundings for a survey recently, rather than use the free survey monkey account.

If you like a good book for learning tech from, then Ted Patrick is plugging Alaric Cole's new Flex Book - Learning Flex 3. Flash Player 10 is in the works, so Ted also has a post reminding us all to update our flash player detection.

Andrew Shorten has announce free one day flex training courses in London and the UK speakers for Max Europe

Kev McCabe has posted that Fusion Debug has released a beta update in their labs section for version 2.0.2.

While we're on the subject of editors, its nice to see that I'm not completely insane when it comes to setting up my development environment and that Scott Stroz from Alagad has an almost identical set up to me.

Legacy code is always a nightmare, and I'm sure most of us have left some classy snippets lying around, but it looks like Todd Sharp's friend has got their work cut out for them with stuff like this. Todd did show me some other gems.... It doesn't get any better! Along similar lines, John Whish asks "Refactoring - good or bad?" It all kinda rings a bell with me at the minute as I'm rewriting some code I wrote ages and ages ago, because I need to add some features and discovering that its just not that easy to do without the rewrite. If only I could wave a magic wand and replace all this dodgy old FB2 code with shiney new ModelGlue code.

A couple things that I've picked up off of BetaNews this last week that might be of interest. First is IBM's Bluehouse web collaboration service has entered a free public beta phase. Imagine Basecamp, but more. The other item that grabbed my attention was the review of Open Office 3RC4. I quite like OO, but I struggle with the transition between MS Office and OO. Perhaps its time to give it another look.

Well thats about all for this week, apart from noting that time flies when you're having fun. I've been writing ColdFusion applications since 1996, search engines have gone and been replaced in that time and A List Apart has been around for 10 years.

Blog Round up #1

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:47:46 -0700

So here's my first blog round up.

Some of these are probably a bit dated now coming from all the way back at the beginning of August, but hope you find them useful.

Matt Woodward - Very Cool Database Migration Tool
In this line of work databases are always involved in some way shape or form and migrating data is always on the agenda and its always a nightmare. I'll definitely be taking a look at this next time I'm moving some data around.

John Whish - Learn Flex in a Week.
Something I really need to do properly! Hopefully this video that John points to will help!

Dan Vega - Why you should not use ColdFusion
Humour from Ben Forta via the ColdFusion Community website.

Mark Kruger - Sick Server Troubleshooting
Part one of three of a very good series of articles on troubleshooting a sick CF server. Make sure you read them all!

Kristen Schofield - ColdFusion and Clustering
Pointer to an Adobe DevNet article by Mike Brunt on clustering with ColdFusion

Mark Mandel - Transfer 1.1RC2
Its not so long ago that Mark released version 1.0, but here is already a feature full 1.1 RC for Transfer that includes some critical bug fixes.

CFConversations 13 - Hal Helms Interview
They are all on my iPod, I just need to remember to listen to them at lunch times or when I'm on the train to work.

Joe Rinehart - I want CFGoto!
mmm... BASIC and COBOL come to ColdFusion

Scotch on the Rocks - A Wee Dram of Scotch
One day event in London with the likes of Adam Lehman, Claude Englebert and Andrew Shorten (Adobe), Sean Corfield
(Broadchoice), Mike Brunt (go2ria), Peter Bell (SystemsForge) and Mark
Drew (DesignUK).

Emmy Huang - Two! Four! Six! Eight! Numbers we appreciate.
Blogged by Ben Forta as an "interesting read" on Flash Player installs and it is. :)

Todd Sharp - Open Source Flash/Flex IDE (Windows only)
Strangely I can see Todd's post in Google reader, but can't get to his blog, so here's the link for the IDE - FlashDevelop

John Beynon - Flex camp London rocked!
John Beynon notes that FlexCamp - London was a success (even more so as he won a 4 day flex course!) I hope that they bring FlexCamp up to Leeds/Edinburgh in the future.

Ted Patrick - Creating Reusable Components by Ben Clinkinbeard
Ted posts Ben's presentation on creating reusable Flex components.

SOTR 2008: Early Bird - The end is nigh!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:21:06 -0700

Last chance to get your early bird prices for Scotch on the Rocks!! Last chance to get £100 off the price of your ticket!
Do it now! Tomorrow will be too late!

Find out about the speakers and topics that will be being discussed : http://www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/
There might even be some Open Bluedragon discussions that aren't on the agenda... Given that 4 of the committee members will be at the conference... ;)

Scotch on the Rocks : Early Bird coming to the end

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:25:31 -0700

Seven days left! Thats all there is before the early bird discount ends.

We're into April now, so your boss should be now have budgets opened up for the new financial year. Make him really happy by persuading him to buy your tickets to Scotch on the Rocks (probably the best conference you'll attend in the UK this year) NOW! Right now!! Before the end of the month, while the ticket prices are still at the early bird price.

Here's what you'll be missing out on if you don't get your tickets now.

Ticket Type	Before	After	Saving
1 Day Conference Ticket	£99 + VAT	£149 + VAT	£50 + VAT
2 Day Conference Ticket	£149 + VAT	£199 + VAT	£50 + VAT
3 Day Conference Ticket	£199 + VAT	£299 + VAT	£100 + VAT
FlexiPass	£299 + VAT	£399 + VAT	£100 + VAT

That's right! If you're coming to the full conference, paying for your ticket now will save your boss (or you) £100! (£117.50 if you can't claim the VAT back)

You know you want to! You really don't want to miss out on a 3 day conference with a speaker list like this at these incredible prices!

Adobe Consulting EMEA
Charlie Arehart (Everyone's favourite CF expert)
Sanjeev Kumar (From the ColdFusion Engineering team)
Jason Delmore (ColdFusion Product Manager)
Amir Shoval (From RADView)
Nick Watson (Adobe's EuropeanTechnical Account Manager for ColdFusion, Flex and LiveCycle Data Services ES)
Luca Mezzalira (Italian Flash Platform Developer)
Neil Webb (Flash platform developer / flower arranger / erotic dance)
Toby Tremayne (CF and Flex Developer based in Melbourne Australia)
Andrew Shorten (Adobe Platform Evangalist)
Adam Lehman (Adobe CF Specialist)
Kai Koenig (Adobe Certified Master Instructor based in New Zealand)
Ben Forta (No idea who this guy is)
Peter Elst (ACE, Flash Instructor, Belgium AUG Manager)
David Rutter (CTO Tag Worldwide)
Duncan Jack (Openworld)
Ian Bale (Celtic Internet)
Simon Gladman (Development Director, Tag Worldwide)
Neil Middleton (The man behind Feed-Squirrel)
Gert Franz (Railo)
Matt Woodward (ColdFusion Weekly Podcast)
Sean Corfield
Peter Bell (Application Generation)
Scott Stroz (Alagad, CFSilence, CFSnippets)
Joe Rhinehart (Model-Glue)
Mark Drew (CFEclipse)

I'm absolutely sure I've missed some! And of course there's Jatin Nanda, Big Mad Kev, myself and, the man in the skirt, Andy Allan, who will be working working hard to make sure that this conference is everything you want it to be and more!

Visit the website to find out more about the speaker, the agenda, location and to BUY YOUR TICKETS while they are still cheap as chips! ;)

Announcing Scotch on the Rocks 2007

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:04:00 -0700

I got accused of not blogging enough today, so I thought (and Andy was champing at the bit) that I best get something on here and make sure it was a suitably big entry. Well its not like its a long entry, but I think this is a big thing and hopefully you will too!Scotch of the Rocks is returning in 2007! Andy and I have been chatting about Scotch since July and we've finally got something concrete to tell everyone about and Andy has been busy getting the site up and running. Scotch on the Rocks will be a two day conference, held on Thursday May 31st and Friday 1st June 2007. Ticket price is yet to be confirmed, but we guarantee that it will be under £100. Whatever the price, it will include food and drink through the two days, as well as your goodie bag, the sessions and the chance to meet up with other like minded individuals. The venue will be the European in Scotland Business Center in Edinburgh. inScotland was formally Adobe/Aldus headquarters when Pagemaker was developed and marketed in Europe. We already have 3 confirmed speakers : Tim Buntel, Senior Product Marketing Manager for ColdFusion, Mark Drew developer of cfeclipse and Kev McCabe of BSkyB. The topics have yet to be confirmed, but we hope to cover ColdFusion (Scorpio), Flex, AJAX, Adobe Apollo and LiveCycle and more. Adobe have kindly agreed to be Platinum Sponsors of the event, but we are looking for more sponsors, so if you're interested give me or Andy a shout. There's more information on the website, which we'll be updating regularly and can be found at http://scotch.scottishcfug.com/ If you want any more information or want to speak or sponsor, please don't hesitate to get in touch with either Andy or myself.

Ben Forta presents on Flex 2 in London

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:21:00 -0700

Next Monday (20th March), Ben Forta will be in London giving a talk for the UK ColdFusion User Group on Flex 2 for ColdFusion Developers, including the Flex Builder 2 and the new ColdFusion and Flex integration. You need to register for this event on the UKCFUG website.