Boyzoid's Blog & Stuff

FlexBloggers.org is going 'Bye-Bye'

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:25:00 -0400

I have been thinking of doing this for quite a while and have decided that I am taking FlexBloggers.org down.

The site does not generate a whole lot of traffic and occasionally, the script that aggregates entries locks up my server (I have tried to troubleshoot many times, but have never been able to reproduce the issue)

If anyone wishes to take over running the site, I will gladly hand over the code, database and domain name. If not, FlexBloggers.org goes bye-bye in 2 weeks.

Never Forget

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 08:51:00 -0400

This is a repost from 5 years ago on this date. I will continue to post this every year until I feel it is no longer fitting.

Unless you live under a rock, you are undoubtedly aware that today is the ~~6th~~ ~~7th~~ ~~8th~~ ~~9th~~ ~~10th~~ 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As I am sitting here working, I am reminded of how I spent that day.

Like most Americans, I first heard news of the first plane that hit the World Trade Center on the news, and then watched in horror as the second plane hit the other tower and ultimately watched both towers fall. Unlike most Americans, I was unable to watch the events of the day unfold on TV. I had already made the switch to web development and was working in the IT department of the company where I had spent 12 years (at that time) as a paramedic, including 2 as a manager, but I was still certified as a paramedic and frequently worked extra shifts to pick up some extra cash.

One of the things my company was tasked with was setting up a staging area at a local airport. The plan was, as survivors were removed from 'Ground Zero' they would be flown to airports around the area so as not to overwhelm hospitals close to lower Manhattan. It was decided that I would be in charge of setting up and coordinating this staging area. I was sent to the airport at about 11:00AM and started preparing for what could have been hundreds of victims.

At the staging area, we coordinated with over 150 people from approximately 50 different police, fire and EMS agencies. It felt good to be doing something, something we were sure would help. From the airport in central New Jersey, about 40 miles from Ground Zero, we could see the smoke from the towers. We did not have a TV and relied on phone calls from others to get information as the day wore on.

As time passed we would get messages that we would be receiving patients soon, yet none ever came. After 9 hours at the airport, having not treated one person, we were told our services would no longer be needed and we could go home. It became a stark reality to me that anyone who would survive was already out of the towers.

In the days following 9/11 my company sent numerous crews to offer assistance at Ground Zero. I was on one of these crews at Ground Zero. While we were not on the pile of rubble trying to find bodies, we were close enough to see the utter devastation that was lower Manhattan. It is a scene that will never be wiped from my mind, but I am not sure I would ever want to.

My whole career as a paramedic I always said that as long as I could walk, I would continue to do the job, even if it was only part time. After 14 years as a paramedic, I let my certification lapse in December of 2003. The events of 9/11 played a huge part in that decision. It had nothing to do with fear. It had everything to do with the fact that I knew if something similar happened on my watch, I'd be running in to help people, regardless of the danger, and this would not be fair to my family. I also knew I could not change who I was, so the only way to ensure I wouldn't do that would be to remove the possibility of it happening, so I left EMS completely.

To this day, when I think of the towers falling, or seeing Ground Zero up close and personal, I get nauseous, I get physically ill.

ColdFusion Developer Week

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 09:43:00 -0400

In case you happen to live under a rock, I wanted to remind everyone that ColdFusion Developer Week starts in a couple of days.

What's that? You don't know what ColdFusion Developer Week is? Well, its a FREE week's worth of ColdFusion training from some of the best ColdFusion peeps around (did you see the list of speakers?)

Well, now you know what it is. So, go register. Now. And I better see you in my session. If not...well....I might cry.

ColdFusion 10 - Loading Dynamic JSON for CFCHART

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:54:00 -0400

As I mentioned here, CFCHART allows us point to an external file for the JSON configuration string, however, this file needs to be a plain text file - we cannot point to a ColdFusion file to generate the JSON configuration for us. Thanx to some help from Ray Camden, I figured out a way to 'trick' CFCHART into doing just that. I will admit, it is a bit of a kludge, but it works...and it works nicely.

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ColdFusion 10 - A Few Nice 'Quickies'

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:38:00 -0400

I thought I would take a break for talking about charting (but I will get back to it soon) to talk about some more 'small' enhancements to ColdFusion 10 that will make out lives just a tad bit easier.

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Flexbloggers.org is Down..oops

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:12:00 -0400

Just wanted to let people know that Flexbloggers.org is currently unavailable. You see, I am in the process of moving my domains off of GoDaddy and over to Hover. Now, when I started the process, I was smart enough to update the DNS records for the domain, however, I was not smart enough to update the Name Server records. Oops....

The name servers have been updated, but as we should all know, it sometimes takes a while for changes like this to propagate across the Internet. Thanks for your patience.

ColdFusion 10 - More Charting Stuff

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:29:00 -0400

Here is a cool feature of the new charting in ColdFusion 10. As I have made mention of, the charting engine is using ZingChart 'under the hood' to generate the charts. ZingChart relies on a JSON string for its configuration - everything from what type of chart, to the data contained in a series, to the styling of the chart. When we use CFCHART, ColdFusion generates this JSON string for us. However, there is a way for us to tell ColdFusion what that JSON string should be.

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ColdFusion 10 - Charting Style Defaults

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:26:00 -0400

I have become quite enamored with the new charting engine in ColdFusion 10. However, there are some things that I don't love about them - its not that I hate or dislike them, I just think they can be better. One such thing is the default styling of the tooltips.

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ColdFusion 10 - Client Side Charting Demo

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:30:00 -0400

One thing I have not played around with in recent versions of ColdFusion was cfchart . I simply have not had a need to do so. During lunch today, I was working on something that I hope to incorporate into one of my cf.Objective() presentations that required me to use the new charting engine in ColdFusion 10.

I do not want to give too much away - just in case it winds up falling flat - but here is a sample graph with which I was working.

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ColdFusion 10 - ColdFusion Administrator Changes

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:59:00 -0400

To continue my 'series' of posts about new features that may get over looked, I wanted to point out 2 pretty cool changes to the ColdFusion Administrator.

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ColdFusion 10 - Reset CF Administrator Password

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:43:00 -0400

Raise you hand if you ever had a need to reset the CF Administrator password - because you forgot it or took over a system where no one knows the password. If you are a ColdFusion developer and you do not have your hand raised...you are lying.

It's happened to all of us at some point in time, especially on systems where we rarely need to access the Administrator. By know you probably also know that there is a way to do this that involves editing some configuration files and restarting ColdFusion. But ColdFusion 10 now offers us a new, and much easier, way to reset the password.

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ColdFusion 10 - Form Fields With the Same Name

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:58:00 -0400

OK, here is a ColdFusion 10 feature that I like. I will admit, its not difficult to mimic this behavior, but its cool none-the-less.

We should all be aware of the fact that when you submit a form to ColdFusion for processing, and the form contains multiple form fields with the same name (a list of checkboxes, for example) that these values will be available to us as a comma-delimited list in the FORM scope. Typically, I wind up changing this value to an array as I find it easier to work with arrays.

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Speaking at cf.Objective()

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:21:00 -0400

I am a little late on announcing this, but I, once again, have the honor of once again speaking at cf.Objective().

I am giving 2 presentations: one on how to set up your Business Model and one on how to create mobile apps using PhoneGap.

Dave Ferguson and I will also be doing a live broadcast of CFhour on Thursday night. Check out the rest of the schedule here.

Happy 'Miracle On Ice' Day!

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:06:00 -0400

32 years ago today, the United States Olympic Hockey team delivered what many, including myself, believe to be the biggest sports upset in history.

This game will likely be the biggest sports memory of my life. Now, I know that may be hard to believe, especially when you consider that my beloved New York Football Giants have give me, 'Wide right', 'The Catch' and 'The Catch Part II', but, to this day, I still get chills when I hear Al Michaels emotional commentary: "Do you believe in miracles? YES!" (I just got chills writing that, too).

Enjoy the final minute of that incredible game.

ColdFusion 10 - For-In Loop for Queries

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:07:00 -0400

On top of some of the 'big ticket' items in ColdFusion 10, there are also a lot of small langauge enhancements that will make it even easier to use ColdFusion. One such example is using for-in syntax in queries.

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