My blog has now moved to http://www.simonbingham.me.uk/. If you would like to subscribe to my RSS feed you can find it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/SimonBinghamsBlog.

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Here's some useful code for looping through an array of objects in ColdFusion 9 using CFSCRIPT.

employees: an array of employee objects.
Employee: the current employee object in the loop.

for( Employee in employees )
{
writedump( Employee.getID() );

}

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Source: pure360

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As a programmer I find that I'm often required to do a bit of design work whilst working on web projects. An example of this scenario would be creating a simple button. I could ask a designer, but they're busy people and it would take them hours to choose a nice font and suitable colour scheme for the button. :)

Anyway, here's a short tutorial for creating a simple button in Photoshop.

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Select File > New.
3. Enter a width of 400 pixels and a height of 100 pixels.
4. Click Ok.
5. Select View > Show > Grid to show the grid.
6. Hover over the horizontal ruler at the top of the page, click and drag down to create a guide for the top edge of the button.
7. Repeat the step to create a guide for the bottom edge of the button.
8. Hover over the left ruler, click and drag across to create a guide for the left edge of the button.
9. Repeat the step to create a guide for the right edge of the button.
10. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangle on the canvas using the guides.
11. With the rectangle layer selected click Add Layer Style and tick Drop Shadow.
12. With the Add Layer Style dialog still open tick Gradient Overlay.
13. Click the 'Gradient Overlay' text to show the gradient overlay options.
14. Double click the Gradient option to open the Gradient Editor.
15. Double click the bottom left slider and select a dark blue colour.
16. Double click the bottom right slider and select a light blue colour.
17. Click Ok to close the Gradient Editor.
18. Click Ok to close the Layer Style window.
19. Select the Horizontal Type Tool.
20. Click the canvas where you would like the button text to appear and enter some text.
21. With the text layer selected click Add Layer Style and tick Drop Shadow.
22. Click the 'Drop Shadow' text to show the drop shadow options.
23. Set the distance to 1 pixel.
24. Click Ok to close the Layer Style window.
25. Done! Well almost. Be honest with yourself now - does the button look a bit shit? If so, then it maybe a good idea to ask a designer for assistance...

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I had a bit of trouble figuring this out initially, but this is how you do it:

1. Login to your LinkedIn account.
2. Click Contacts (top navigation).
3. Click Remove Connections (top right).
4. Select the contacts you wish to remove.
5. Click Remove Connections.
6. Done!

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Source: AbdulMoniem's Thoughts

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Source: Mashable

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SSLANT is a communication protocol.

When being spoken to:

• Smile
• Sit up
• Listen
• Ask questions
• Nod when being spoken to
• Track with your eyes

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Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

• Don't criticize, condemn, or complain.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person's name is, to him or her, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in the terms of the other person's interest.
• Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

• Avoid arguments.
• Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never tell someone that he or she is wrong.
• If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Begin in a friendly way.
• Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes.
• Let the other person do the talking.
• Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.
• Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
• Sympathize with the other person.
• Appeal to noble motives.
• Dramatize your ideas.
• Throw down a challenge; don't talk negatively when a person is absent; talk only about the positive.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

• Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
• Talk about your own mistakes first.
• Call attention to other people's mistakes indirectly.
• Ask questions instead of directly giving orders.
• Let the other person save face.
• Praise every improvement.
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
• Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.
• Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

Seven Rules For Making Your Home Life Happier

• Don't nag.
• Don't try to make your partner over.
• Don't criticize.
• Give honest appreciation.
• Pay little attentions.
• Be courteous.

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My favourite talk from this year's Like Minds conference.

Click to see talk

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REReplaceNoCase( string, "<[^>]*>", "", "ALL" )

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Source: Flickr

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1. Login to your Facebook account.
2. Browse to your fan page.
3. Click the 'See all' link in the Insights section in the left column. The statistics page will be displayed.

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Here's a handy formula to extract an email address from a string.

=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(" "&$A1&" "," ",REPT(" ",40)),FIND(REPT("@",COLUMNS($A1:A1)),SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(" "&$A1&" "," ",REPT(" ",40)),"@",REPT("@",COLUMNS($A1:A1)),COLUMNS($A1:A1)))-40,80))

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Microsoft Excel lacks a function to find the number of days in a month so instead you can use:

=DAY(DATE(YEAR(A31),MONTH(A31)+1,1)-1)

A31 should be updated to point to a cell in your spreadsheet containing a date.

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There are three bits of information you need from the client:

1. What they want.
2. What they need.
3. What they can actually afford.

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1. Keep the scope as simple as possible. You don’t need to do everything with this project. In fact, if you can just do one thing, that’s perfect. As small a thing as possible. Don’t redesign an entire city - just work on one building. If the project starts to get complex or seem overwhelming, narrow the scope. Do less. It’ll help you get things done.
2. Practice ‘Good Enough’. Perfectionism is the enemy of completion. Nitpick and worry about getting it “just right”, and you’ll never get it done. Done is better than right. So if you start to nitpick and worry about perfect, say “screw it” and then just try for “good enough”. You can always make it better in the next version.
3. Kill extra features. Similar to simplifying the scope, you’ll want to try to make your creation do as little as possible. Want it to talk and walk and cook breakfast? Just try for talking. Want your website to publish great content and have social networking and podcasts and news and a newsletter and a membership area? Just shoot for great content. Whenever you find yourself adding new features, see if they can’t be killed.
4. Make it public, quick. Your goal should be to get your project in some working form out to your customers/readers/public as soon as possible. In as few steps, as quickly, as easily, as simply as possible. Remember: don’t worry about perfect, and don’t let this first public release be wide in scope or full of features. Release it with as few features as possible. Releasing it publicly will 1) get you to done faster and 2) put some pressure on you to make it better, quickly.

Source: Zen Habits

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To find the number of inbound links to a web site you can do the following:

Google & Bing

Enter the following search term:

"www.simonbingham.me.uk" -site:www.simonbingham.me.uk

This returns links to www.simonbingham.me.uk from web sites other than www.simonbingham.me.uk.

Yahoo

Visit http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/, enter the domain name at the top of the page and click 'Explore URL'. Select 'Inlinks' and apply the 'Except from this domain' and 'Entire Site' filters.

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When quoting for a web project you need to have knowledge of scope (i.e. what's included), cost (i.e. how much money the client has to spend) and schedule (i.e. when the project needs to be delivered).

Clients are often reluctant to tell you how much they have to spend so instead it's a good idea to give them some options and gauge their reaction. This should give you an indication of how much they are willing to spend. 

For example:

"Based upon your requirements we could produce something like this [insert web site] for around £X,XXX. Alternatively, if you didn't want to spend that much we could produce something like this [insert web site] for around £X,XXX."

Credit to @aliaspooryorik for this tip.

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