Owner: Useful Concept URL:www.usefulconcept.com Join Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:09:47 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Technology, Reviews, Commentary and More. Site statistics:Click here
Repeating Events Question 2007-06-25 09:51:00 Just started looking into setting up recurring events in a calendar for an application of mine. I haven't had to deal with this before and to be honest I don't want to invent something that must have a standard out there. I would rather use the established methodology. I searched around the ColdFusion world a bit, but haven't found anything. I then started searching around for anything relating to it. I found lots of wiki's with info like "we need to do x" but not much that gave me a sense that there is a tried and true way to do store and search them.
I can easily enough make a schema for storing recurring events (monthly, weekly, every x days, etc). The tough part comes in doing proper searches. Ideally there is only one query result. Do people make temp tables of actual records for events, populated by the recurring event record? It would work, but seems wasteful. How far out would you populate?
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Getting Ready for CFUnited 2007-06-25 09:44:00 I fly out tomorrow with for CFUnited. Bill and I will be there as sponsors/exhibitors. Looking forward to the conference! I plan on attending a few of the sessions, and will be manning our CMS booth for a while too. I am also looking forward to hanging out with some of my ColdFusion friends. Sure we all im/blog/email often enough but it is another thing to sit down and have a beer/soda/lunch with people you really respect in your industry. Throw around half baked ideas, see what sticks, etc.
Seems like the unofficial meeting place has become the small bar at the hotel the night before the event, so probably see you there.
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CFUnited Update 2007-06-28 12:35:49 It is now day two of CFUnited. Just had lunch and feeling good. The conference has been great for us so far. Lots of interest in our ColdFusion CMS. Made a few sales already. We are giving away mouse pads that are actually note paper. They are very popular, with people coming back asking for extras. Good thing too since we don't want to take any back with us.
Yesterday I went to only a couple sessions. Matt Woodward and Hal Helms both put on good presentations regarding OO. Too short in my opinion, but not their fault. Just so much to say and not enough time. I am looking forward to Practical Design Demystified this afternoon. House of Fusion is next to us and they have a great deal on Fusion Authority. $50 gets you three back issues and three upcoming issues. I signed up on the spot. Currently the CF heads of the CF state are signing Fusion Authority books. Fun times!
Read more:Update
What is the Best Tequila 2007-07-08 10:42:00 Last night some friends of ours gathered around for a fun experiment. A blind tequila taste test.
We gathered 6 different tequilas ordered below in price.
Pepe Lopez Premium ($9.99)
Jose Cuervo Especial ($15)
Hornitos Sausa ($19)
1800 Silver ($19.99)
Don Julio Blanco ($36.99)
Patron Silver ($48.00)
We bought a lot of little dixi cups of various prints, and served to seven people a small sample of each. Turns out those little cups leak after a short period. I don't recommend using them. We randomized the distribution so people were drinking a different tequila than their neighbor so as not to be influenced. This requires at least one person to be running the taste test and not partaking (me and friend Jess). Get a handful of people to sit down and focus. We then wrote each score down against each tequila, also noting the person. This way later we could see the persons favorite vs the group favorite.
Som Read more:Tequila
Explain Trackbacks with BlogCFC to Me 2007-07-07 08:09:00 I have always had trackbacks disabled on my blog. just didn't seem worth the spam hassle, and honestly I didn't really understand how to do it so why bother? Well a friend is pushing me to enable them and so I thought I would give it a try, but now I want to actually trackback a post for someone else and I have no clue. I have tried many different things, but nothing seems to actually show my trackback on their blog. I think I am missing something fundamental. Can someone set me strait? If I want to do a trackback to someone else's blog how do I do that? I know people can do it to mine since I got those in the past when I had it turned on.
Simpsons Character and Transformers Thoughts 2007-07-06 08:35:00 Following many others I made a Simpson's character. I opted to build something that doesn't look like me in any way. I do wish I had the tshirt though. On another note, I saw Transformers
last night. I liked the action, but the story was really really bad. So many holes, bad dialog and a pointless romance setup. The movie itself was long. There were numerous scenes that could have been removed to help. I enjoyed many parts though. We all laughed several times (not sure we were supposed to for a couple of them). The action scenes were great. Turns out if you decapitate a megabot he dies. Who knew. At any rate in thinking of earlier films by the same director I liked on the whole The Rock and even Independance Day better. Transformers had big battling robots, which is super cool, but the D - story still brings it down. So sad. That said, I will probably buy it on DVD when the price is inexpensive. Read more:Simpsons
, Character
Advertising in your CF Blog 2007-07-13 13:37:00 There was an interesting discussion in a private group (check it out if you blog) regrarding blogging and CF and making money from it all. I posted this there, but felt that I wanted broader feedback from the community. The text below is slightly modified from its original form.
I know some of you are not interested in advertising and some
are. Some find the advertising a conflict of interest, and while I don't completely agree I find it reasonable to feel that way. This is mostly for those wanting to make some money on
their blog though I welcome everyones input.
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Text Link Ads ColdFusion Code 2007-07-18 14:55:00 I can't remember where I got this code from. You can't find coldfusion code on the text link ads site any more. I have gotten a couple private requests for it, so here ya go. You should wrap this up in some sort of error check, since sometimes the TLA web site goes down. Also, Brian Rinaldi wrote up a handly pod for blogCFC that does this all for you.
<!--- COLD FUSION CODE BEGINS HERE --->
<!--- This code is compatible with Cold Fusion 6.1 and higher --->
<!--- You must create a blank file named 'local_67489.xml' in --->
<!--- the same directory as this script. It MUST be writable by --->
<!--- the web server. On unix you would CHMOD 666 the file. On --->
<cfset local_file_name = 'local_67489.xml'>
<cfset inventory_key = 'get this from TLA'>
<cfset local_directory = Getdirectoryfrompath(GetBasetemplatepath())>
<cfset local_xml_filename = local_directory & local_file_name>
<cfif not fileExis Read more:ColdFusion
, Text Link
, Text Link Ads
On Vacation 2007-07-20 16:55:00 Blogging will be lighter than normal for the next week or so. No ColdFusion at all! I am off to Idaho then Yellowstone for a nice vacation with family and friends. In the mean time I leave you with this funny video.
American Beauty in 5 Seconds
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Help Promote ColdFusion 8 2007-07-30 07:45:00 ColdFusion bloggers already know that CF 8 has been released. Here are a few ways you can help spread the word to the non-CF community.
1) Digg It. Ray Camden has already submitted to Digg. So just +1 it.
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, ColdFusion
Using KTML with ColdFusion 8 2007-08-02 10:49:00 In testing our CMS with CF8 I have only found one small issue. With the editor we licensed of course. KTML works well with CF8 except for some image and file browsing. Turns out there is an easy code fix for this however.
You will see an error saying something along the lines of Cannot open Class plugins.modules.image.service.ktml4_mspl_image. The debugging errors are not accurate as it is a general error if anything goes wrong when calling a function in KTML. After a little poking around I see that there is an error calling one of the functions. getfileinfo Turns out CF8 also has a function named getfileinfo and thus the error on CF8 and not CF6 or 7.
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Yellowstone Pictures from Vacation 2007-08-02 17:31:00 Quick post to show you some photos from our vacation last week. These are random, and there are lots more to see on the main flickr site.
www.flickr.com
Read more:Pictures
, Vacation
how to pick a president 2007-08-06 21:28:00 This is a handy way to find out which presidential candidates are most in line with your values. This is based on their publicly stated positions on many issues. You simply fill out the form as best you can and find out which candidates match your interests. This is nice since it removes the whole 'I want to be his friend' vs 'he would be a good president' type decisions that people often make. The result may even surprise you.
http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php
Trying World of Warcraft Again 2007-08-06 11:35:00 I took a five month break from WOW. Just after Burning Crusade was released my wife and I just got tired playing. We had played since beta and though we had lots of fun, it really just became a grind. I couldn't care about getting to 70, etc.
Five months later we decided to give it a try again. We have a nice setup with two computers next to each other, so we can easily play together. We also have some friends that are new players, so we can play along with them. It has been nice so far.
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, Warcraft
, Again
Vacation time again. 2007-08-17 11:57:00 Yes, again! This time I will be cruising the Mediterranean. Spending most of my time in Italy it seems. As always I will take lots of pictures and post them for those interested.
In unrelated news I can't get the Peanutbutter Jelly song out of my head. What the heck man? Of all the damn songs...
Read more:Vacation
So you think you can dance final 2007-08-16 21:57:00 Spoiler Alert:
I just want to say, I was skeptical of this season based on the first 5 episodes. They voted off people they shouldn't in my opinion. However, the final winner was the person I loved from the start. Sabra deserves it no doubt and I am quite pleased she won.
Read more:think
Buffalo Swarms 2007-08-31 12:39:00 Jen and I were asked to write a description of our Yellowstone trip for The Wire. The Wire is a local entertainment weekly and is staffed by some cool cats. Anyway, we happily complied and wrote a story about some buffalo we saw on the trip. It was published while we were away, so I didn't get a chance to blog about it until now. Since many of you don't live in the area I thought I would reprint it below as well.
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Back from Vacation 2007-08-30 08:51:00 Oh yea! I forgot to mention I am back from vacation. It was amazing. A cruise from Spain to Italy, then France then back to Spain. We docked each day to play and explore, then cruised at night to the next port. Here are some photos I took. Mostly from the excursions. Who knew Pompeii is so big? That Monaco was that small? The Tuscan countryside is really that beautiful!
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Time to Revisit My Sites Resolution 2007-08-30 08:36:00 For a long time now I have been using the 800x600 resolution on most of my sites. On some of my newer sites (such as this blog redesign) I have played a bit with wider designs. The recent blog post by Pro Blogger got me thinking about doing more proper research into what my readers actually use, and pinging the ColdFusion community about their findings and preferences.
Pro Blogger recommends checking the stats for the site in question to see what percentage of people use 800x600. This isn't perfect, as many people may have a higher resolution, but have their browser not fully maximized or people may have a favorites bar on the left side (like my parents always do). However this is at least a bit of a guide.
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, Resolution
Wow from non-gamer point of view 2007-09-23 08:20:00 A good friend of mine was recently introduced to World of Warcraft. She isn't a gamer in any way, and her journey has been an interesting one. She just wrote an article for our local weekly about her experiences. I really enjoyed her point
of view on the game. It is easy for someone like me, who has played lots of games like this, to forget how exciting the game can be for the very first time. Details like getting a cat for a pet, fishing, etc. that are not essential to the game, but are to the game player like her. At any rate, you should give it a read.
Snippet:
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Margot at the Wedding Review 2007-09-22 21:27:00 Margot at the Wedding is basically about two sisters dealing with each other for a week before one gets married. My first thought about this movie once it was done... "I am utterly thankful that I can't relate to this movie in any way."
The movie was fun and disturbing, like many movies I watched this weekend. However in the end there was nothing endearing about either sister, their bizarre love/hate relationship and inappropriate behavior to their children. I gave my wife a big hug when it was done. Thank goodness she is sane and doesn't treat people like that. Thank goodness she has a nice family.
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I'm Not There Review 2007-09-22 21:15:00 I walked out of a movie theater for the first time ever tonight. Actually it wasn't a movie theater, but a Music Hall, which was showing a bunch of new movies as part of Telluride By the Sea. I have gone to this yearly Celebration of Cinema every year that I have been able and try to see most if not all the movies available.
I'm Not There is a portrayal of Bob Dylan's life told through six different actors. Some disclaimer here. I don't really care for Dylan's work. He is a fine enough guy. I have seen him perform live and understood none of it.. I like some of the earlier stuff, but in general it just doesn't do much for me. I know nothing of his life or history, etc. So I wasn't planning on watching this movie, however the preview sounded really interesting. A very creative way to approach the subject at the very least and it has gotten some good press.
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Into The Wild Review 2007-09-22 07:46:00 I have the pleasure of living in Portsmouth, NH. That means that once a year I get to attend Telluride By the Sea, Telluride Film Festival's little seacoast cousin. At Telluride By The Sea we get to watch 6 select movies that just recently were shown in Telluride the week before. These movies are often some combination of provocative, moving, troubling and beautiful.
Last night was opening night and they showed Into The Wild. My quick review: I liked it.
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submiting a form inside an iframe from outside the iframe 2007-09-21 15:29:00 This one has me stumped (friday afternoon and I am done!). I am certain it should be done (as long as the iframe content is from the same site). Yet EVERY example I have found online doesn't work in Firefox (not sure about other browsers). I have tried many possible variations. I have other workarounds, but for various reasons I would really like to be able to just have a submit button outside the iframe, that when pressed submits the content of a form inside
of the iframe.
Here is just one:
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Bob Dylan on CF8 2007-09-18 19:26:00 First off let me say I don't care for Dylan
much. Still this is a fun system where you can update his video with whatever limited text you want. Here is my CF 8 version as per stuff I can remember happening recently.
Read more:Bob Dylan
My Website Grade 2007-09-14 11:49:00 This useful little web site analyzes many factors and gives you a grade by comparing your stats with that of others that have submitted their site. My score is 94, which I think is way too high. I know I have a great google page rank, but I don't get much traffic or inbound links. Not as many as I would like anyway.
Which makes me think about the focus of my blog. I write about ColdFusion, technology, movies, and random stuff. The bulk of my google traffic comes from non CF related posts. Though the coldfusion aggregators only get the CF related feed to save you all from seeing my vacation photos, etc. I am thinking of maybe making a few changes to my blog by making the CF blog its own site. Certainly this is a good domain name and rank and perhaps I could put it to better use? Maybe use my personal name domain (joshuacyr.com) as my personal blog / cf blog. What do you think?
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Turns out it was adobe that canceled CFDJ??? 2007-09-11 10:22:00 Yup, sys-con had nothing to do with it. Adobe discontinued cfdj. Turns out. Ummm what?
Ok, I have read the latest press release from sys-con a few times and I am still confused. It's title says "Adobe's Decision Upsets ColdFusion Community". It quotes Michael Dinowitz, Sean Corfield and Ben Forta. It even acknowledges that some are pissed at sys-con. The coldfusion community wasn't upset CFDJ was no more (though it is still online). It was celebrated. Quite different.
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Reminder to Remove CFDJ from your Resources 2007-09-10 12:01:00 In reading all the commentary about CFDJ going bye bye it occurs to me there are probably a lot of links and references to it. Especially the many custom search engines that index it. So this is just a quick reminder that we should remove those sooner rather than later. I just removed those sites from my CSE cfhunt.com.
Update: Also is anyone else really really tempted to submit the screen shot of their home page which pulls in feeds from Sean and Ben's blogs bashing CFDJ on the CFDJ home page to boingboing, digg, etc? Half of me thinks it would be fun, the other half says that ColdFusion doesn't need the negative attention. I would link to it, but I don't want to give them more link love and it crashes my FF browser. so type cfdj.sys - con.com and check out the featured blogs in the center.
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, Resources
ordering search results excluding certain words 2007-09-05 16:01:00 I had an interesting sorting issue. What I need to do is output in alphabetical order the names of various things. Lets say bars in town. Now many bars have the word "the" in them. We don't want them in the T area though.
For example i have data shown in no specific order:
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, certain
An American Hedge Fund Review 2007-09-27 16:06:00 A few months back Timothy Sykes contacted me about a new book he was writing. An AmericanHedge
Fund: How I made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund. It was on the Hedge Fund industry and his experiences making lots of money in the stock market. I got a chance to read the book, though I honestly wasn't expecting much. He is a new author and usually these kinds of books are self serving and repetitive. See my other book reviews for best sellers that I consider trash. Instead this book read quite well. And every book is just a bit self serving. :-)
What I thought was going to be an instruction manual on how you too can make millions of dollars with scheme xyz turned out to be a story about a young man still in High School learning about trading stocks, doing it at the right time with the right attitude (sometimes) and doing quite well. It chronicles his life in college, his silly mistakes, ego trips, and experiences with th
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