This release contains a small change to the DateFormat() function.

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I have updated the CFJS function listing page. There is a link to it in the sidebar on the right -- or just click here.

My goal will be to update that page as often as necessary and then post a quick blog note (like this one) alerting folks to the update. Overkill? Maybe... but I'm havin' fun. :)

Just a quick note to let folks know that all branches of CFJS (both jQuery and non-jQuery) have been updated with a bug fix for two of the list functions, namely ListContains() and ListContainsNoCase().

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So, I’ve been upgrading my blog to the latest and greatest version of blogcfc, getting all my styles back the way I used to have them, and swearing to myself that I will blog more often.

One thing I think would help me with that last bit is the use of some sort of WYSIWYG blog editor. I just really don’t like the blog editor in the admin of blogcfc. I’m still trying to make up my mind between Windows Live Writer and ScribeFire. Live Writer seems to have more bells and whistles when it comes to inserting photos into my blog entries, and for that right now I’m going with it over ScribeFire.

But, I’ve been having some problems getting Live Writer to work. For some reason, I get these blasted ‘500 Internal Server Error’ messages.

Upgrading my version of blogcfc which contained some fixes to the xmlrpc code was supposed to fix this I thought, but so far it hasn’t seemed to do the trick.

The strange thing is that despite getting this error… if I go to my blog and refresh the cash, My post is there!

Man… am I confused. :o/

I've successfully added HTMLCodeFormat() and HTMLEditFormat() functions to CFJS and have checked the new code into the repository as version 1.1.10.

But I've got more to do. Looking through some old notes, I found that I still needed to add the following:

• NumberFormat()
• ArrayAverage()
• ArrayClear()
• ArrayDeleteAt()
• ArrayInsertAt()

I will of course, still be working on a demo page as well.

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After having taken quite a long hiatus from working on CFJS, I've decided that I need to return to it. I was looking at the bug tracker over at cfjs.riaforge.org and it looks like there have been two long open issues:

• Demo Page Not Found
• Fleshing out formatting functions

I think it's about high time I took care of these things. So, within the next day or two, I'll begin working on a new demo page with a few working examples, and also on trying to flesh out the formatting functions.

... and making some new ones in the process.

I'm a recent convert to the world of facebook. Yep, I got sucked into it because a girl I liked had an account, and I wanted to see more pictures of her. No. I'm not an Internet stalker. I actually knew (and still know) this girl and we met for the first time far before I knew about facebook.

Unlike myspace which is customizable via some very convoluted css (not very many nice selectors), all facebook pages look roughly the same, and I see this as a clear benefit. The facebook screen layout is very clean and simple. I can move my little pods, or "boxes" around by dragging them and this is a very nice thing indeed. I hated it on myspace that everyone's page looked different, maybe it's the programmer in me that likes things organized and orderly, but really I think it's because the focus of facebook doesn't seem to be people tweaking the look of their profile, but rather getting people in touch with one another. I must confess that there are people's profiles on myspace that I stopped going to simply because I found their page layout annoying or harsh on my eyes.

I started out on facebook as I said just to see pictures of my friend, but during the registration process facebook (with my permission) logged into my gmail, discovered my contact list, and automatically found out who I knew that was already on facebook. It then sent those people friend requests. Before I knew it -- BAM! -- I had 80 friends. Now, why none of them ever told me about facebook is another matter entirely, but the point is that setup was simple and helped me to get started in the facebook community. I also like how facebook is constantly (yet unobtrusively) suggesting new friends to me. It's not being random either, the suggestions it makes are friends of friends. So, I'm up to 122 friends as of this writing, and it's simply amazing how many old friends from my days in high school this little (okay huge) community has put me back in touch with. I've spoken recently to old teachers, classmates, and old girlfriends. But that's not all! I frequent a few popular mailing lists for programmers, jQuery, jQueryUI, CFTalk, my local CFUG, OpenBD, and numerous other mailing list (many of which are Google groups), and facebook has helped me to keep in touch with these folks in an area outside of the mailing lists. It's nice to put faces to names that you're used to reading either in blogs or in mailing list posts.

So, I'm a big facebook fan. One other thing they've done which is nice, is their approach to advertising. Yes, advertising. I hate adverts in general, but I also understand the need for the revenue that they create, and the desire of the advertisers to be seen by such a large audience as the facebook community. That said, I like the way in which facebook handles advertising. All adds are unobtrusive, and small. So far, I've never encountered any flashing or spinning or obnoxious adverts. I have run across some ads that I found objectionable, but in this regard the facebook folks were listening to their users. There is a group on facebook (groups are another neat feature of facebook, but not one that I'm going to talk much about) of people who are against offensive adverts on facebook. Particularly the way in which some of the advertisers choose to objectify women. Well, underneath every advert (except some flash ones...) there is a little thumbs up and thumbs down button. No matter which one you pick, you get to give immediate feedback to the facebook folks on why you gave the thumbs up or down. If you chose to give the ad the thumbs down, it immediately replaces the ad with a different one. I've not confirmed this with anyone at facebook, but it seems that they're doing something like Stumbleupon does when you tell it you like or don't like a site. The types of adverts I dislike I'm seeing less and less of, while I'm seeing more of the types of adverts to which I've given the thumbs up.

Currently, my high school class is planing a fifteen-year reunion, and my high school theatre group is planning a reunion of their own (since not everyone was in the same graduating class). I also, use it routinely to communicate with some folks the way I'd use my gmail account to communicate with others.

Are you on facebook? If not, why not? If so, what do you use it for?

So I've got three more performances left of Larry Shue's The Foreigner, and so far we've had a really good run. Last night's performance was particularly good. I think it's the best performance I've given so far. The audiences are loving it, and laughing the whole way through.

Yesterday I was cast in the role of Krojack in Artisan Center Theatre's upcoming production of Don't Drink The Water directed by Kit Hussey. For Krojack, I get to play a bad guy again, yea! I think it has something to do with my mustache. It helps me to look sinister, and dark. Krojack, is the archetypal eastern-block secret police-type guy. I'll be working on my best Boris Badenov accent. This is going to be a really fun show. I can't wait!

In other theatre news, rehearsals for The Music Man continue. I finally have a wife! Mrs. Jacey Squires will be played by Allison Klingler, and what a cutie! 

We stepped all over each others feet yesterday trying to learn the Shipoopie. Actually, it was really fun! Music Man is a very large cast, but despite the organized chaos it's starting to come together slowly, but surely.

Just for grins, here's another picture of me with my quartet:

That's me, second from the left with the moustache. They're a great bunch of guys really, and we're working on our sound.

From left to right: Connor, Me, Trent, and Chris (yes, there are two Chris')

And here's another picture of us being silly:

The Foreigner closes on May 17th, and my remaining performances are May 13th, 15th, and 17th at 7:30pm.

The Music Man opens on May 30th and runs through June 28th. My cast runs every Monday and Friday at 7:30pm and every Saturday at 3:00pm. The second cast performs every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening for the duration of the run.

Rehearsals for Don't Drink The Water, begin on June 2nd and the show runs from July 11th through August 2nd. As with most shows at The Artisan, this one is double cast. I don't yet know which cast I'll be in, but I'm looking forward to working with everyone involved!

As for what comes after that, well... potentially a role in Peter Pan the musical, but it depends on what comes up in area theatre in the way of audition opportunities.

Well, that's what's happening with me in the non-technical arena.

Well, the OpenBD mailing list is all a flutter with new activity. The amount of activity and the enthusiasm that folks are showing is really exciting!

Amongst the various topics, questions like "How do I set this thing up?", and "Should I use JBoss, Jetty or Tomcat?", etc. are popping up. In one such topic: 'SOLUTION: OpenDB + Tomcat Example Setup' the mailing list user 'per' gives an excellent little step-by-step setup.

I'd repeat the instructions here, but he's recently blogged about it himself. So rather than duplicate effort, just click the link.

I'm excited to see folks who are not on the steering committee starting to put out helpful information. So, my thanks to "per", and all the other folks on the OpenBD mailing list who are getting involved, spreading the word, rolling up their sleeves and diving in and using this great new piece of Open Source Software.

As of May 3rd, Open BlueDragon has finally been released into the wild, and is available in a variety of formats from their download page. Two versions are available now, and others are coming soon!

Let's start putting this thing to some good use! And when you've got a site running on OpenBD be sure to tell everyone on the OpenBD mailing list!

I caught this on CF-Talk today, and immediately jumped over to the New Atlanta press release on the subject.

Vince Bonfanti, President of New Atlanta said, "This announcement is in direct response to community and customer feedback, who've seen most other web-scripting languages like JSP, PHP and ASP become commoditized as part of a free and/or open-source portion of various web application stacks."

This is very encouraging! One thing that I really, really dig about the developers of the various CFML engines out there: They listen to their users! And they don't just listen, but take action based upon what we've told them that we want.

According to the FAQ the open source version of BlueDragon will be "...nearly identical to the current commercial Java EE version of BlueDragon..." minus a few third-party commercial technologies which they cannot include. New Atlanta says that these differences will be minor [emphasis added] and will be "clearly published."

Also, according to the FAQ this new open source edition of BlueDragon will be released under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2), just like MySQL and other popular open source projects.

I for one, am seriously pumped about this announcement! The small company I work for only uses ColdFusion on our really big projects and even then my boss doesn't like spending the money on it -- but that's his issue. For all of our smaller one-off projects I've been forced to learn a bit of PHP to work on those, and while I'm not afraid of working in PHP, I'm definitely more comfortable in CFML if only for the fact that I rarely have to look anything up! That's all just a matter of how familiar I am with the language, but I still think working with queries in PHP (without any frameworks like Cake and the like) is damn stupid. I just dislike the way they work. I spent almost a half a day once just trying to figure out how sessions worked in PHP! It would have been a lot easier if they had something like application.cfm or application.cfc.

Okay, so this wasn't meant to turn into a tirade on my dislike of PHP, but it's very nice to see a heavy hitter like New Atlanta stepping up and open sourcing their CFML engine.

Let's make sure everyone and their dog knows about this! Let's get some link love happening!

http://www.dzone.com/links/open_source_cfml_engine_on_the_way.html

http://digg.com/software/New_Atlanta_announces_free_open_source_BlueDragon_edition

Last Tuesday at Apple's shareholders meeting Steve Jobs was reported as saying that where the iPhone is concerned, the full-blown PC version of Flash "performs too slow to be useful," and that the mobile version -- Flash Lite -- "is not capable of being used with the Web."

Since these statements were made the Internet has been abuzz with speculation about why Apple would discount a software development platform which reaches 98% of all computers connected to the Internet.

Judith Dinowitz and the folks over at Fusion Authority are on the ball though, and now you can read Simeon Bateman's article, iPhone: The Real Story.

I think Simeon has hit the nail squarely on the head here. So, read up. It's good for you.

It could happen. The jQuery team is trying to gauge the interest of the community at large in attending a fee based online training class on jQuery delivered live by John Resig himself.

To quote the post to the jQuery general mailing list:

"Nobody knows jQuery better than John and in terms of JavaScript, he's considered one of the best in the world. So a training class delivered by him would surely help anyone become more proficient in JavaScript and jQuery."

Realize now that they're just trying to gauge interest. No details have been hammered out. Some concerns that have been raised so far on the mailing list are:

• cost
• time/date
• will it be recorded for later viewing

All are valid questions, but don't really have anything to do with the poll in which the jQuery team is asking that we participate. They're merely trying to ask the question: If John were to deliver a live, online class on the subject of jQuery (and by association JavaScript) would you pay to attend?

Do the community a favor and answer the poll. Answering the poll is not the same as making a commitment to attend or to pay any sum of money. It's a simple yes or no question. So head on over to the poll and give your yea or ney.

And in case you've missed it the three or so times above... here the link to the poll. :o)

Hi folks,

Rey Bango just passed along a link to this blog entry of Phill Nacelli's about a security problem in CF7 and CF8. It looks a bit old (November 14, 2007), but I'd never heard of it. Oops!

So, I thought I'd pass along the word in case I'm not the only one who'd never heard of this problem.

Here's Adobe's summary of the problem:

"An error in ColdFusion MX7 and ColdFusion 8 applications could allow an attacker to hijack user sessions. This issue does not apply to customers using J2EE session management."

Here's a link to more information about this problem and how you can make sure that your server is updated. http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-19.html