Cybersonic

I am moving!

2005-10-27T14:39:00.000Z

I have been busy moving my blog over to BlogCFC and have decided to up and move residence!

You can check out my blog in its new home over at:
http://www.markdrew.co.uk/blog/!

Make sure you update your feeds and bookmarks!

See you there!

Sean Corfield on CFEclipse

2005-10-21T09:00:00.000Z

It is great to see that Sean Corfield will be helping out with the CFEclipse project!

He will be helping us to plan a feature roadmap for the next release and is currently looking for ideas on features.

Check out his post over at the An Architect's View

Some of the features discussed in his blog were

Word Wrap (no, I dont like it neither as I know the guts and those guts dont wanna be touched)
More RDS Functions
Tag Insight
Intellisense
Integrated Help
Debugging
Component and Webservice Info

Any other thoughts send them over to Sean!

Flex Builder Continued....

2005-10-18T16:05:00.000Z

Yesterday, and the thrust of this morning's post was that I ws having problems getting data from a cf script from the flex swf's I was creating. The solution was to add a crossdomain.xml file to the root of my local server. This crossdomain file defines what hosts we will accept flash requests from.
Check this page out for more details http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14213

I am still left with the problem of not being able to view generated SWF's using http:// but only being able to run them from c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\yadda\something.swf

Annoying isnt it?

I coulddn't find anything that mentined that the swf's generated by Flex Builder are disabled in this manner.

Flex Builder and Macromedia Labs

2005-10-18T07:29:00.000Z

Just in time for the MAX conference (where every other developer seems to be but me!) Macromedia release a new section on their site (like Google) with labs.macromedia.com, as a showcase of their up-coming products.

One of the more interesting products for me is the Flex Builder 2. Formerly named Zorn it is an Eclipse based plugin that allows you to build flex applications as you would Java (write, compile, deploy as swf) rather than using the Flex server to do the compile and deploy for you (along with a hefty price tag!)

I am using the plugin version of Flex Builder 2 which is a fantastic way to develop since I can have my CFC's in one window and the flex app in another and switch between them in one IDE.

Pretty easy to develop, it builds automatically (as you would expect in eclipse) and you can both run and debug your applications. Awesome!

I have some niggles tho:
Firstly, is that the plugin is windows only. So I can only play with it at work. I don't understand why this is since (when writing the CFEcplipse plugin) I never encountered features that I had to make Windows only.
Secondly, when running a flex app, it seems to run locally, from the file system (not from localhost) even when I changed the build paths for the project to run it through my webserver nothing runs in the swf. I am not sure if this is a limit on the alpha or something but there is nothing in the documentation.

I am re-reading the following (Flex Wiki) and will let you know if this solves the problem. Seems to be that we have to create a Proxy to get it running.

Any Ideas out there?

iPod Video and new iMac

2005-10-12T19:22:00.000Z

Wow, holy cow. I mean awesome.. first it was on.. then not.. the rumours abounded, were discarded and now it is here. The Video iPod. Apple shoots, it scores with another great appliance. You get to watch the shows in a little screen, or plug it into a TV. Great stuff! you can download music videos of course, at a reasonable fee (about £1.89) but they are also saying that you can get shows like Lost (which I am completely addicted to by the way).

Also a new iMac with iSight built in and a remote that you can now browse your music, videos, CDs and podcasts from your sofa... awesome!

I have to replace my TV and I might go to straight to the 20" iMac. And my second generation iPod to the iPod movie... ahh.. now all donations accepted!

Who is CyberSonic

2005-10-10T21:46:00.000Z

I have had a nickname of cybersonic for yonks. I mean a real long time, 12 years or so. A friend gave it to me as I had long dreadlocks tied up behind my head (looking like a certain fast game character) and a penchant for spending many hours behind the computer shooting germanz playing Wolfenstein 3D

so whats the point of this post? Well.. I want to know why now when I look for my nickname I get a damn Toothbrush!!!

Google Aggregator

2005-10-07T18:27:00.000Z

I subscribe to a number of Coldfusion based RSS feeds such as Ben Forta's, Sean Corfield's, Spike and Rob Rohan's amongst many. The great thing is that I mainly read these on the Mac using Safari as I have them all bookmarked and can open them all up at the same time. This is fantastic on the mac but what can I do on the PC?

Well Google have launched a news aggregator application. I am just testing it out and importing all my feeds to see what I think of it. Watch this space!

http://www.google.com/reader/lens/

Blogging From Word

2005-10-07T10:51:00.000Z

Blogging has now even got easier when using www.blogger.com. They have released a plugin for word that allows you to publish posts you write straight from Word!

This also means that I am now going to have to spell check everything!

As an aside, I would say that most of my posts are done through the web interface. I don’t have some blogging client side software, but I think it’s a major step for most people since it is using a tool that they know.

Ironically enough, Word doesn’t know the word blog or blogging.

Flex 2.0 available for the Masses!!!

2005-10-07T07:45:00.000Z

Flex so far has been a bit out of reach for a lot of projects with its $10K price point. I know, I know, it speeds up the development so if you have a large project you would expect that kind of price point for an app server license, but so far that has been putting the punters away. At least the people who make the financial decisions.

Macromedia announced yesterday (and I picked it up from Ben Forta's blog that the new version of Flex licensing will be on a tiered model that:

...will be sold for less than $1000 per developer and will include the ability to develop, compile, and deploy Flex applications that connect to XML and SOAP web services with no additional charges or server licensing required

This means that they have basically put a compiler into the new Flex Builder (know as Zorn) that I presume will create a WAR file ready for you to deploy to your application server.

Flex Builder is built on Eclipse the same as the project I work on CFEclipse.

I wonder if we can build the same thing into CFEclipse. And I wonder if it would be useful that after all the development of an application you can simply bundle it up pre-compiled and push it to the server as a WAR or EAR file ready for deployment?

This of course is already available in the CFServer but taking that to CFEclipse might be a bit difficult. Watch this space on more thoughts on that.

When are frameworks appropriate?

2005-10-07T07:27:00.000Z

I have started on a small project and thought it was a good time to get into Fusebox 4. There has been some discussions around the community and especially by Simon Horowith.

I already work on a plugin for CFEclipse that supports the Fusebox 4 and Fusebox 3 frameworks giving you an outline of your application and thought this was a good chance to both test FBX4 and learn some of the skills involved. Since this is a commercial project time is tight so I was hoping to get to grips with it pretty quickly.

The result?

Well, I decided not to use a framework in the end. The application is pretty small, mainly logging users in and displaying a dynamic page which is a survey. There aren't that many actions in there, or different sections so after a while messing with doing login pages etc in the FBX 4 framework, I turned to just using the Application.cfc to sort that bit out. It also consumes a webservice which it then holds in memory for that user so that the questions are displayed and saved to memory so that when they log off, the results are sent back to the webservice (which is written in PHP, but don't get me started on that!)

My thoughts?

Frameworks are good for larger apps. ColdFusion gives you a mini framework already and if you are neat and use good conventions and documenting you don't need a framework, and in fact it can be a hindrance to your development at this stage.

Of course, I am doing a larger project later in the month (in ASP of all things!) so I wonder if I should use FBX there?

Getting Spammed

2005-10-04T07:50:00.000Z

I seem to be getting comment spam on this blog of late. Very interesting comments of course but all linking to something. A bit daft since the whole point of doing that is to get higher search engine rankings... but they wont get that since each post that has a link gets a nofollow attribute and thus not doing anything for the page ranking!

So, to slow that down a little at least I have implemented word verification when posting, at least that should slow the spammers down a little!

Sorry for the inconvenience if you REALLY wanted to post a comment here but the traffic is so slow that I dont think that will bother anyone!

iPod nano

2005-09-08T09:03:00.000Z

This took me by surprise this morning, I hit the Apple website (as you do) and on the cover there was something that blew me away. The iPod nano. A small version of the iPod with screen and all the features you would expect, but smaller than anything you would expect!

Check it out!

Available in 2Gb and 4Gb versions. With colour screen and all!

Darn sexy bit of kit that!

Google Talk

2005-08-24T08:58:00.000Z

Those clever bods at Google have been at it again. Now for your entertainment and chatting convenience comes Google Talk!:

They say:

Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world.

It runs on Jabber so you can connect to it from iChat on OS X for example which is superb!

Will this force other IM systems to also open up?

Shaun of the Dead/Land of the Dead

2005-08-21T20:52:00.000Z

Last night I spend a wonderful night at Somerset House watching Shaun of the Dead and then the English premier of Land of the Dead! I managed to bump into Simon Pegg, star of Shaun of the Dead and my favourite series, Spaced!

An awesome night in an astounding venue. You can feel the summer is ending as there are less and less things happening outside. Ho hum. Roll on next summer!

Want to learn to build Eclipse plugins?

2005-07-25T18:41:00.000Z

Want to learn to build Eclipse plugins? Steve Nelson and I are going to do another chat about developing Eclipse plugins tomorrow. Hopefully there will be some interest in this as the CFEclipse team are trying to rally some more troops to increase the development effort in CFEclipse. So come along and contact Steve (contact info in link above) to be part of the chat.

I shall see if I can get a demo breeze room to help with the presentation.

Firefox hidden Features

2005-07-15T12:40:00.000Z

I was bashing away at the web as you do, and I spotted an interesting feature in Firefox and tables. You are able to select individual (and multiple) cells from a table by pressing the CTRL (or Apple key on OS X) as you hit a table cell, go ahead and try below (if you are watching this in Glorious Firefox-Vision)

Select Me	Not me	Select Me
Not me	Select Me	Not me
Select Me	Not me	Select Me
Select Me	Not me	Select Me

Any other features that people have come across...post them here!

London stands still for 2 minutes silence

2005-07-14T11:32:00.000Z

I have just come back from Aldgate East Station, one of the many places where Londoners have congregated to observe 2 minutes silence in remembrance and support for last weeks bombings.

The spooky thing for me is that this is the second time I have seen this in as many years. Last year I was living in Valencia, Spain when the Madrid bombings happened and I saw how people reacted to that. London seems to have the same defiant spirit and today's midday silence just shows that.

I hope that this is the last time we have to do this, but realistically we know that this isn't something you can stamp out. Its guerrilla warfare all over again but the only way to combat this is to hold firm to our behavior and show that idiotic attacks such as these do nothing but make the community become more united.

It is obvious that these attacks are done by such small minded people, I read that they are "foot soldiers" of Al-Qaeda but they are nothing more than fodder. The ones we need to hit back are the leaders. Obvious really but they hide like terrified little children. Is that the kind of "cause" you would want to follow?

I make it to 31

2005-07-11T13:22:00.000Z

Yes, finally made it. Not even bombings on the underground could stop it. It is my birthday today! woohoo!
Had a great BBQ round my parents on sunday, even with those disposable jobbies I managed to cook up some nice steaks and marinated pork chops.

Still hyped about the CFEclipse announcement by Macromedia at CFUNITED thought. even a week later!

AND its sunny out here in London!

CFEclipse development chat with Steve Nelson

2005-07-08T09:20:00.000Z

Yesterday I had a long chat with Steve Nelson over IM about a sample project that has content assistants that Spike had posted for the developers out there.

Steve has posted the chat (in full! including dumb comments) so that hopefully it will answer some of the questions potential CFEclipse developers might have and how they can figure their way round developing a plugin

Technorati Tags: CFEclipse

London Bombings

2005-07-08T06:51:00.000Z

I have to comment on the bombings in London yesterday. Just to put it in a personal perspective, Aldgate East, one of the stations that was hit is my stop for work. I went to work yesterday and everything was closed. I didnt see much and was late enough to miss any action.

This attack was not a "terror" attack in that we don't feel any terror from this here in London. Most people just stoically 'got on with it' and made their best efforts to contact loved ones, work colleagues and family, then began their journeys home, or to the nearest pub to discuss the day's events. We are used to this and we have been in this situation before. That is why the events of yesterday are in no way comparable to America's feelings from September 11th.

Most people are back at work today.

Our hearts go out to the people that have died and are injured, but put it into perspective, about 2.6 million people travel into London by train. There must be double that figure that use the tube. There were in comparison very few victims. Of course there were 37 (so far confirmed) more than there should be, but we are a strong and pragmatic breed.

Londoners still remember WW2 when we were bombed to smithereens, and many years of IRA bombings. I myself have been near 2 nail bombings in both Brixton (where I lived) and Soho (where I worked). I heard the Canary Wharf bomb. Everyone I speak to has a similar story to tell. We have all grown up with this. We always knew that we would be attacked - now however, we are just going to be more vigilant.

Being attacked by "Secret Organisation Group of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organisation in Europe" is surreal, and almost funny; its like being attacked by a Monty Python Liberation group. Irrespective of politics and culture, this attack is just saddening.

Edit:
I just thought I would add a link to a review that I think nicely sums up the attitude of Londoners
http://www.lnreview.co.uk/news/005167.php

Technorati Tags: London

Macromedia Back CFEclipse: The cat is out of the bag

2005-06-29T16:29:00.000Z

Well, the cat is out of the bag and I can finally tell friends and relatives what I was doing in Newton, Ma a couple of weeks ago. I was visiting with the Coldfusion Team, including Tim Buntel and Ben Forta with Spike, Simeon Bateman and Rob Rohan to have a couple of good meetings with Macromedia to talk about how they will help us make CFEclipse a better product.

I am really psyched that they mentioned this over at CFUNITED finally as this really gets the ball rolling! Well, if anything its a real kick up the backside to get me coding and fixing those bugs (and back to ripping my hair out too.. but that is part of the course of course)

Sad I cant be at CFUNITED this year but I am sure Spike and Simeon will have a drink for me.

London CFUG: Sending SMS's using Coldfusion MX 7

2005-06-28T13:29:00.000Z

As you may know, using the Event Gateways in Coldfusion MX 7 you can send SMS's. Great I hear you say! But apart from setting up the CFC's and the instance of the event gateway, the questions that most often comes up is how you plug that into your service provider? Do you get a box? A webservice to call? How do you pay for it? etc. Basically the connection between CFMX and a phone service provider is the missing link. Of course this varies from country to country but here in the UK we have a few major service providers to choose from.

From a post over at Ben Forta's Blog, Piers Chandler has posted some useful links to get you started.

http://www.orange.co.uk/thirdparty/sms.html
http://www.orange.co.uk/thirdparty/aggregators.html
http://www.text.it/business

Remember that a SMS/Phone Service Provider will charge in "bundles" of text messages, so if you are either starting out or use it for low volumes of traffic you might want to use an "Aggregator" company that will bulk buy from the Service Provider and re-sell it at reasonable rates to you.. the common public.

Ben Forta and Allan Manning at London CFUG

2005-06-24T07:06:00.000Z

The other evening Ben Forta and Allen Manning presented some interesting things at the London CFUG.

The meeting was packed out this time and Allen presented a very interesting RIA that Prismix have been working on, which is built upon a three tier architecture, with the Presentation Layer in Flex, Business Layer and Integration (Data) Layers built in CF. I was very interested in the way that Allen built his app using VO (Value Objects) and CFCUnit. Using CFCUnit the whole development is done in a Test case, so that each CFC can be tested and more tests are added unitl the CFC "passes" all the tests.

The Integration layer was a self-made system that resembled Hibernate. Which I thought was very interesting in creating VO's and letting the Integration layer figure out all the SQL functions for creating, reading, updating and deleting records. Nice one Allen!

Afterwards Ben Forta did his presentation on the (asynchronous) Event Gateways that are available in ColdFusion MX 7 (mind you, only in Enterprise). The gateways open up very interesting possibilites in integrating CF with other systems such as Instant Messaging, Telnet, SMS, JMS amongst others. So now CF is not only browser based!

Must look more into the VO/DTO pattern in CF applications as this does seem to be the way to go. No more pesky SQL statements!

Music I tend to listen to

2005-06-09T15:12:00.000Z

I got a spam email from Spike. Not really surprising really... but I thought I would FINALLY update this as it has been a while since I blogged!

So here goes.. a deep dark insight into my iTunes collection

Total Volume (of my MP3 library): 5.44 GB
Last CD Bought: "Get Behind Me Satan" - The White Stripes
Song Playing Right Now: Blue Orchid from the above album

Five Songs I Listen To a Lot:
"Anne's Song" - Faith No More
"The Hardest Button to Button" - White Stripes
"Phoenix" - The Prodigy
"Itchy & Scratchy" - Boss Hog
"Track 021" - Skafander

Skafander are a great russian band! check them out at http://skafandr.ru/

PostSecret

2005-05-24T12:43:00.000Z

PostSecret: "PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard."

This is a great blog I stumbled upon that has a number of postcards with people sharing secrets with the world via home-made postcards. Some funny, some disturbing but definately all interesting.

Blogging from the Dash

2005-05-14T12:55:00.000Z

Since Tiger (OS X 10.4) come out it has a natty feature called Dashboard. The Dash allows you to have a number of mini-applications such as clocks, calculators, weather info etc accessable quickly on your desktop at the push of a button, in my case F12.

I am therefore testing the Dash Blog widget that allows me to post straight to my blog from the dash. neat eh?

I also got the UK train timetables that shows me when trains are leaving and arriving in the UK train stations. Very handy!

Back to the smoke, Ben Forta at CFUG, CFEClipse at CFUG in March

2005-02-18T17:13:00.000Z

Well, I have been back in London for nearly three weeks and I am still waiting for my furniture to arrive from Spain.
I am still thinking of innovative ways to create temporary furniture, including bean bags (confy, fall asleep easly, end up on the floor) and coffee tables (great for coffee, not so good for coding on!)
London has wather, no more blue skies but at least its .. *interesting*

Last tuesday I went to see Ben Forta talk at the London CFUG to present CFMX7. He is a great talker it must be said and there were interesting questions. The PDF and FlashPaper output is most interesting but I think the idea of Gateways will be widely used once understood. Its obvious that CF is coming of age when developers start talking about threads and gateways. Definately an enterprise tool.

On the CFEclipse front, Spike has re-written the partitioner (what knows where each tag is in a document) and from there we are performing some bug fixes and hopefully get some of the niggles out so that some new features can be implemented better, such as the insertion of tags from the dictionary view and the editing of tags.

I think I might have talked myself into helping Allan Manning at the next presentation of CFUG on the 17th of March to talk about CFEclipse

Check out more details at http://www.ukcfug.org/go/meetings/next-meeting

Gmail 50 Invites!

2005-02-03T17:40:00.000Z

Gmail have now completely ramped their invitations, yesterday I had a meager 6 invites left, now I have a new item to give away 50 invites!!

So, stop me and grab one!

Fancy Table Layouts in Coldfusion

2005-01-22T13:30:00.000Z

//We set a list of words we are going to loop over

<cfset lWords = "eine, meine, miney, mo, catch, developers, by, their, toe">

<cfset nLength = ListLen(lWords)>
//The number of columns we want (this is a word and spacer)
<cfset columns = 5>

//Now, we check how many rows there would be , I do a ceiling function
so that I get the upper integer e.g.
//if we have 9 items, and we have 4 columns, we shall have 3 rows, the last row having one item and 3 blanks
<cfset rows = Evaluate(ceiling(nLength

/columns))>
//the ideal number of records that we shall have in TOTAL (including empty ones) in the table
<cfset idealrecords = Evaluate(rows * columns)>
<cfoutput>
Number of items = #nLength#<br />
Number of columns = #columns# <br />
Number of Rows = #rows#<br />
Ideal Number of Columns = #idealcols#<br />
<table border="1" width="80%">
<tr>

//Loop from 1 to the ideal total number of items (never mind rows)

<cfloop from="1" to="#idealcols#" index="i">

//We set if this column needs a row

<cfset colCounter = i MOD columns>

//make sure that we dont need an empty space

<cfif i LTE ListLen(lWords)>

<td>#ListGetAt(lWords, i)#</td>

<cfelse>

<td> </td>

</cfif>

//Insert a row if required

<cfif colCounter EQ 0>

//Unless we are at the end of the list (we already have a TR

<cfif i LT idealcols>

</tr>
<tr>
</cfif>
<cfelse>
<td> </td>
</cfif>
</cfloop>
</tr>
</table>
</cfoutput>

you can change the <cfset columns = 5> to change the number of columns and the code should still work

Let me know if this helpful to you!

Mach-ii for newbies - part1 Getting started)

2005-01-21T10:42:00.000Z

I know I talk a lot about Coldfusion and CFEclipse etc, but one of the frameworks that I havent been exposed to has been Mach II. Not a great bane of my life or anything but I simply havent been exposed to it to really know whats "good" about it and what it gives me as a developer.

Sean Corfield put a recent entry in his Architect's View blog about this tutorial, which even if its a part one does give a good insight into getting started with the Mach II framework.

This is interesting particularly to me since I contribute to the CFEclipse project and have my own Fusebox plugin for CFEclipse. One of the things that astounded me was that as I had started developing the plugin for Fusebox 3 was how easlity I could include support for Fusebox 4 since it was basically parsing and XML document.

One of the thoughts, if no one else is doing it is to also add Mach II support. But first, I have to get my head round Mach II! So this tutorial is a great starter for 10

Random Tunes

2005-01-20T13:59:00.000Z

From Patrick's Meme Proliferator : The Playlist Meme I got the idea of randomly playing 10 songs from my iTunes library (I must say this is a limited library on my PC, my iMac contains a lot more) to give a feel for the stuff I listen to, so without much ado, here it is!

Chemical Brothers - My Elastic Eye from Come With Us : A classic album, I think its the last album I bought before coming to Spain

Tricky - The Hawk is coming from Blowback Loved this album with the rude cover

Lights Off - Loudeast from Yoshiesque Two - East Coast : I got this album as I loved the cover

Foo Fighters - Burn Away from One By One : Great music to play air guitar to

Fatboy Slim - Song For Lindy from Better Living Through Chemistry : Need I say more?

The Lemonheads - Confetti - It's A Shame About Ray : Saw them at Glastonbury years ago and was hooked, especially with My (Drug) Buddy

E.Z. Rollers - Funked Up Flava'S from Weekend World: From Lock Stock and two smoking Barrels I think, has a great tune in the album called Walk this Land

Beck - Peaches & Cream from Midnite Vultures

Pulp Fiction - Royale With Cheese from Pulp Fiction Soundtrack

The Prodigy - Memphis Bells from Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned : This reminds me of the gym

What are your Top 10 Random songs?

2005-01-15T17:50:00.000Z

With the help of Simeon Bateman and Sean Corfield I have included support (maybe minor) to view fusebox 4 applications.

This was actually easier than expected, with the only real drag being the property page not behaving like it should.

So, instead of choosing what version you have of fusebox, the plugin now auto magically chooses for you based on whether you have a fbx_circuits.cfm file or a fusebox.xml.cfm file.

Clever people out there will probably ask "what happens if I have BOTH in the same directory??" Well, in short.. dont. I havent tested this but I suspect that the fusebox.xml.cfm file will win. (hey, he is the latest and greatest!)

I hope we get good feedback on this release. I know that it isnt FEATURE packed, but that is coming soon. Any suggestions for features etc are always welcome

Get the download at: http://cfopen.org/projects/fusebox3cfe/

Apple - Mac mini

2005-01-11T19:55:00.000Z

Imagine a PC smaller than a Shuttle mini. the Apple Mac mini is something that Apple had to do. Its a replacement for your old (or hell! new!) PC that integrates with all the peripherals (yes including your old monitor). So. a new mac machine.. whats so good about it? its 2 inches high by 6.5 inches wide and deep. That is small but it just looks sooo lovely! Great to go with your IPod

And no, it doesnt stop there, they have also introduced a 99 USD Ipod called the IPod Shuffle. This is up to a Gig of space for all your songs that are played in a chewing gum sized package. This is so awesome I am constraining myself in this post

I shall write more when I have got myself together.

Helping people affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunamis

2004-12-30T19:13:00.000Z

I would like to send out my heart to everyone effected by the disaster affecting the countries round the Indian Ocean.

With the death toll rising to such huge levels that it is hard to understand, I think that everyone in the west should start sending donations. You can donate at via the Red Cross

http://www.redcross.org/

Firefox More Popular that IE

2004-12-24T10:24:00.000Z

Just thought I would post a breakdown of the browsers hitting this blog. It seems that Netscape (I assume its actually Firefox) is beating IE! What a shocker in light of some of the threads on cf-talk

Fusebox 3 Plugin for CFEclipse

2004-12-24T10:02:00.000Z

Fusebox 3 Plugin for CFEclipse: "This is a plugin for the CFEclipse project that extends the capabilities of CFEclipse to develop fusebox 3 applications. It provides views and functions in line with good practices for fusebox development"

I started a project about a week ago to develop a plugin for eclipse that would help me with managing and basically browsing Fusebox 3 applications. Its a new View that is added to eclipse that displays your application as a tree with circuits/fuseactions/fuses that you can click from each and go to the relevant file.

I have more plans for the plugin but with Olliver Tupman leaving the CFE project and Xmas looming I dont think there will be a lot of checkins from now till the new year! But I would love to hear from people if they have checked it out and used it! Any feedback is welcome!

cf_snow

2004-12-17T12:33:00.000Z

There is also snow near Valencia. We are not sun drenched all the time.. sometimes a good snowball fight is also needed. This was taken in Javalambre (I like that place as it starts with Java. sad eh?).

dbdesigner4

2004-11-15T15:28:00.000Z

I have been looking for a way to emulate Microsoft SQL Server's Enterprise Manager when using a mySQL database. Basically I wanted to be able to design the tables in a db as you would do in EM and add relationships etc (this is the way I think so its nice to have a tool that behaves acordingly).
I asked Oliver T for any sugestions and he come up with dbdesigner4. I got more than I bargained for. This is a great little app, not your usual "create DB", "create Table" kinda thing. But what it allows you to do is visually design all the tables (giving you hints like id for the Primary Key) as well as all the relationships

Now the REAL cool thing about this is that you can group tables into Regions into which you can put related tables in the diagram so you can see WHAT all the tables are for.

Another thing that is SUPER cool about this is that you can use the provided SimpleWebFront plugin to create a PHP website to administer the tables! You add the groups into which you add the tables you want to administer.. add the DB connection properties for a mysql db and then point it to a directory for it to go off and create you a nice simple web front end to your db.

Did I also mention its free??? Rock on!

cfeclipse: CFEclipse 1.1.17 released

2004-11-12T10:51:00.000Z

cfeclipse: CFEclipse 1.1.17 released At long last, althought it must be said that the releases are coming in fast and furious! Like evolution, it takes a time to build a base onto which you can then start adding great features... once the foundation is laid, a lot of new features can be added and I forsee this happening a more and more with CFEclipse.

Some of the new features include:
* 11 Selected text drag 'n' drop
* 138 Bracket highlighting
* 17 Block indent/unindent enhancement
* 183 Code folding
* 21 Ctrl + Double click selects tag
* 175 CFML comments
* 97 CFC Browser enhancement

You can get the update from Eclipse itself via Help -> Software Updates

On a similar related note, Rob Rohan has put some videos up of using CFEclipse as well as the possible logos for the project, check it out here:

http://www.rohanclan.com/projects/cfeclipse/index.cfm

Delicious Library

2004-11-08T15:30:00.000Z

Delicious Library Is a product from the tastily named Delicious Monster. It allows you to scan the barcodes of your DVDs, CDs, books and games to add them to a library. You can then feel free to lend them out to your friends and know that you can chase the thieveing rascals up when they dont fess up with the goods in time.

Its an OS X app so if you are Windows Only Square (WOS), maybe you could look for an emulator like PearPC and give it a whirl. It says it needs iSight to work (Aople's Webcam). As yet I havent managed to get it running on my lowly iBook, as I still havent upgraded to Panther but I shall let you know.

Rob Rohan Interview

2004-09-22T09:45:00.000Z

Since my last post with regards to the release of CFEclipse V 1.1.16
I thought I would post an interview with the main guy behind the project Rob Rohan.

Mark Drew: What is CFEclipse?
Rob Rohan: CFEclipse is a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE that provides CFML support to Eclipse. In addition to code insight and syntax highlighting, CFEclipse adds CFML specific tools to Eclipse such as CFML outlining, CFC method outline, and CFML problem reporting. It also adds some cool tools that improve development / spelunking time and some can work with other plug-ins - like Snippets for example.

MD: How did you get involved in the project?
RR: I started it.

MD: What were you doing before this/what is your background?
RR: I don't really have a before project per se - I have a lot of active projects that get worked on in slices as time / interest allows. Some open source developers have just one project, and some have many projects going all the time - their pay job often being one of them; I fall into the later category.

As for my background I am a freelance hacker hailing from the Bay Area.
I mostly code in Java, or C++, but turn to ColdFusion for web applications. I have been coding for about 8 years for profit, and for about 18 years for fun (apple][e woot woot).

(For the corporate types: hacker as in the "computer enthusiast" sense not the media's criminal, steal-your-credit-card, sense)

MD: Why Eclipse as the IDE?
RR: At the time I was running Linux as my workstation and Net Beans as my Java IDE. Net Beans was pissing me off so I took the plunge, tried Eclipse, liked it, and switched all my Java projects to Eclipse. Around that time I got a couple contracts to do some ColdFusion work, so I started looking for either an Eclipse plug-in or a IDE that would run on Linux. I didn't find much, and wound up using JEdit for my ColdFusion development.

JEdit is cool, but it lacks a few niceties that I wanted in a ColdFusion environment. I started to write a better ColdFusion plug-in for JEdit, but then it dawned on me that I could just do it in Eclipse and then I'd only need the one IDE (plus Eclipse is faster). So, taking the long way around, I went with Eclipse because it's faster, has better Java tools, and works well on Linux (and on Mac which I now use for my workstation).

MD: What are the best bits?
RR: In my mind Oliver's behind-the-scenes parser is the coolest. Without it the Outlines and filtering wouldn't be possible. Nor the right-click open-file. In fact, most of the cool stuff the plug-in can do is because of the parser (I call it the Tupman Parser, but I think I am the only one who calls it that)

In a close second is the Snippets. Spike took that hap hazard area by the horns and made something very very cool out of it. I use the snippet view with most of the plug-ins I use.

Aside from those the help features are nice. Spike's and Mark's F1, the hover help, and the return types in code insight all come in helpful on a daily basis.

MD: What is coming up next?
RR: Oliver will be the man for that one, but I think we are focusing on UML integration, better dictionary and user customizing tools, and the every present bug fixes.

MD: Will it support fusebox/MachII?
RR: I am of the opinion that fusebox and MachII should be separate plug-ins. After all you can use Fusebox in PHP, and not everyone who uses ColdFusion cares about frameworks anyway. Oliver will have the final say as to weather framework support is built into the CFEclipse core.

As an aside, I have been toying around with a fusebox3 plug-in, and I know Spike is working on some MachII tools - so we'll see.

MD: What is your favorite editor apart from eclipse?
RR: Oh so many... JEdit has a special place in my heart as I used the editor component in the Treebeard XSLT IDE and my on-line Java editor.

On Windows servers I am forced to deal with, I stick on Notepad2.
For Mac OSX I like SubEthaEdit for random file editing.
On anything Unix when I need to edit a system file I use vi, and to write any applications (where I have no GUI or Eclipse is not installed) I default to Emacs.

MD: Which other plugins do you use?
RR:

Tail log viewer http://graysky.sourceforge.net/ (thanks Spike)
JSEdior http://jseditor.sourceforge.net/
CSSEditor http://csseditor.sourceforge.net/
DBStuff http://quantum.sourceforge.net/
RegExp Tester http://brosinski.com/stephan/archives/000028.php
XMLBuddy http://xmlbuddy.com/
PHPEclipse http://www.phpeclipse.de/tiki-view_articles.php

And I am playing with C# a bit so...
http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp/

MD: Would you use non open source plugins?
RR: I do now. However, I only use free plug-ins at present.

MD: What attracts you to the open source movement/ideology?
RR: I have been an open source freak since I first booted Linux back in like '97 (man, I am old in Metaverse time). Open source is awesome for many reasons, but the one that stands out the most in my mind is the fact that the project is the main focus. What makes the project useful and cool. Not money, not "how do we increase the bottom line", not how can we get the best RO f'ing I. It's what do developers want, what solves the problem at hand, we (developers, hackers, actual computers users) control what happens and where the project goes.

Tt's not what we are given, or told to do or use, it's what we can make - limited only by our imagination and time.

Wozniak once said in a speech that innovation is dead in the computer industry. For the most part, from a corporate perspective, I think he is right. For example, Microsoft spent millions to add useless features to Office just so they would have something to sell. The core of Office, the parts people actually use, is the same as it was in Microsoft Works. The corporate types almost never come up with something new. They steal or buy other people's ideas, but they rarely come up with something new and cool.

Open source is where technology is innovative. Its where ideas are praised and implemented. Open source is where everyone has equal share - truly equal share - in projects. Its where you can see the code, see what's really going on, learn from it, adapt, or fix it. If you are in computers for the money or the shiny bobbles, Open Source probably doesn't make much sense to you; much like a musician who plays free doesn't make sense. However, if you are a hacker, a programmer who loves your craft, you already know why it's cool and probably do it already :)

::End Dissertation::

MD: How do you compare to He3?
RR: I haven't used it - nor will I; so I can not comment on the differences between it and CFEclipse for daily ColdFusion coding. However, I can say that it is trying to brand and create a product to sell whereas the CFEclipse project is contributing to the open source developer and ColdFusion communities (not that they are mutually exclusive).

MD: Who to give feedback/donations to?
RR: Feedback can go to one of the lists, to any of us directly, or to the bug list. We try to handle all requests in an expeditious nature, and we do pretty well I think. As for donations, I'd never thought of that... I'll pass that to Oliver (though my Swiss bank number is ... :-D)

Oliver Tupman Interview

2004-09-10T09:26:00.000Z

Last night a special event happened... CFEclipse version 1.1.16 was released including a number of bug fixes and more importantly new features.
You can use your ecplipse update feature or download it from: http://www.spike.org.uk/downloads/cfeclipse1.1.16.zip

Some of the new features that were released are:

Context insight for scope variables: just type SESSION. or APPLICATION. to get a list of the available scope variables

NEW! Component insight available for pre-defined CFC's via user.xml: Just add your own CFC in to the user.xml and hit Ctrl+F5, that will reload all the Dictionaries to update the code completion etc

NEW! cfinclude 'template' attribute proposals list directories & files:when adding a <cfinclude template=""> now lists all the files and directories! Handy!! You can also enter a non existent file name in there and if you right click you will see an option to "Open File...", if the file does not exist.. it will create it for you! Double Handy!

NEW! Can change the editors background colour (cheers to Mulcahey Robert J.): Under Window -> Preferences -> CFEclipse -> CFML Colours

NEW! Drag and drop text from outside the editor beta and may only work on Mac: This does work on PC's as I tried it from notepad.. not sure what would happen from Rich Text documents such as Word or Excel

NEW! Snip behavior modified - single character triggers supported: Create a snippet called (for example "link") with the trigger "a" and the Snippet Starting Block as: <a href="$${link}">$${display}</a> you can now just type a + Ctrl + <space> and you get your snippet insertion

NEW! Snip dialog has scroll bars for edit boxes, multi-line snips inserted with same indent as first line: This is great if you have very long snippets!

NEW! F8 saves & refreshes browser if scribble file is already active: Check out Spike's post on the CFEclipse Wiki

NEW! Now there's only one dialog per snippet for variables & drop-downs for enumerator values: if you are a heavy user of Snippets this is a must!

With this release I decided to interview one of the developers of CFEclipse, Oliver Tupman and get some details of his involvement and opinions on the direction of CFEclipse

Mark Drew: In your own words what is CFEclipse?

Oliver Tupman: CFEclipse is an open-source attempt at creating the perfect coding environment for CFML coders. Of course there's also cross-over into the world of client-side stuff (JS, CSS, etc.).

MD: How did you get involved in the project?

OT: My ColdFusion experience started something like a year ago when I was asked to develop my company's new Quality Control intranet. I tried a whole bunch of IDEs including Dreamweaver, HomeSite, PrimalScript,jedit, etc and ended up using the tried and tested Textpad.

Then Rob released the first version of CFE. I tried it out and said to myself"doh, no CFScript insight". Asked Rob for the code, played around and got hooked.

MD: What were you doing before this/what is your background?

OT: I'm the youngest of the development team so my background probably isn't as impressive as everyone else. Currently I'm two years out of University working for a Geotechnical company using ColdFusion, MFC C++,.NET and a small bit of Java/FoxPro/everything. Prior to this I did PHP,C & C++ and some PERL.

MD: Why Eclipse as the IDE?
OT: Originally Eclipse held no benefits for me - why would a CF and Microsoft developer want it? There wasn't any CF support. Compared to Visual Studio 6 it is rather slow and hey, apart from CF I don't do any non-MS work.

But compare Eclipse to the behemoth that is MS.NET and now you're talking! I should seriously start looking into C# on Eclipse, but unfortunately I don't believe it supports everything I need to be as productive as I am at the moment.

MD: What are the best bits?

OT: CFE :D The Java support is fantastic. I sit in VS.NET wishing I had that sort of functionality (and then wondering whether I can persuade the boss to buy it for me). The source control support is great as well, I love that feature. Oh, and the fact that it's so extendible.

MD: What is coming up next?

OT: From my areas of CFE will be improved content assist (aka tag insight,'content assist' is the Eclipse terminology) including - hopefully -basic CSS & JS support. Also coming along nicely is improved file parsing and CFScript block parsing.

MD: Will it support fusebox/MachII?

OT: Hell yeah. Kinda. Sort of. In time. Basically there's a problem: how much time to devote between core CFE functionality and the support of frameworks. There are so many frameworks, where does one begin? With the one currently in vogue? The most widely used? The answer is probably going to be: the ones that developers are personally using :D One gets into CFE by scratching that itch.

My workplace use FB3 and I have no time to learn new ones, so I'm just sticking to core CFE functionality. I'll throw in extra bits of code to other framework stuff when someone has done the ground work. And I'll always be willing to provide dev help to anyone who wishes to contribute.

MD: What is your favourite editor apart from eclipse?

OT: On Windows: Textpad. On *nix: Emacs!

MD: Which other plugins do you use?

OT: Lets see, there's a JavaScript plugin, a CSS plugin, DBExplorer, XPathevaluator, that's about it.

MD: Would you use non open source plugins?

OT: I'm of "tools to be used" opinion with a leaning towards open source. So if there's an open source tool that does the job, then cool. Otherwise I'll use closed source. For example: the XPath plugin is closed source. I think there's an open-source version being developed somewhere too. I'll probably switch to that soon.

MD: What attracts you to the open source movement/ideology?

OT: Originally it was just "hey, its free". Being a poor Uni student that sort of thing really helped. But I wasn't really sure until I started playing with FarCry. Now using FarCry I can see what's happening within the code. I could, if I chose to, trace through the core and see hastate. Very cool.

MD: How do you compare to He3?

OT: CFE compared to He3. I haven't really used He3 properly, and as I don't do any MachII development one of it's core features is of no use to me.Oh, and the CFML stuff in CFE feels more polished than He3. But perhaps it's improved by now.

MD: Who to give feedback/donations to?

OT: Feedback and donations, hmm. Well on the feedback side of things then feel free to e-mail any member of the CFE dev team. We're always happy to hear from people. Alternatively hop along to the CFE project at http://cfeclipse.tigris.org/ and register. We have a user mailing list that's a good place to sound off.

On the subject of donations then I suspect that its best to mention it to one of the dev team leaders and we'll sort it out from there.

Apache, Virtual Hosts, PHP, CF5 and CFMX (part 2)

2004-09-06T19:20:00.000Z

Continued from Part 1...

In the last episode I talked about adding virtual hosts to your system and showed you how to set up one of your sites as a Coldfusion 5 site. That is a great start but I don't just run Coldfusion 5 (you Grandpa you might say! Who uses it?!) I also run PHP and ColdFusion MX on this poor little box.

The next step is to add PHP support, so if you look back to your httpd.conf file we can add an entry for our PHP site as before, we add a new VirtualHost entry and add the right PHP module (you should have already installed PHP, I am not going into that... they have a better manual and more time)

<VirtualHost php_project>
ServerAdmin mark.drew@gmail.com
DocumentRoot "c:/www/php_project/"
ServerName php_project
ErrorLog logs/php_project-error_log
CustomLog logs/php_project-access_log common
LoadModule php4_module c:/php/sapi/php4apache2.dll
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
</VirtualHost>

Once you have added that you can start testing it by adding a php file in the root
(at c:/www/php_project/ in my case)
such as index.php with the following code

<?php phpinfo();?>

you should have it all running and telling you all sorts of very useful information about your php setup!

The next step will be to setup our CFMX Virtual Host.

I am presuming that you have Coldfusion MX installed on your machine and running either as a standalone server (off port 8500) or installed onto IIS, you can download a copy from http://www.macromedia.com/ and follow the install instructions here http://www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/installation.htmll

Once you have your copy if CFMX running nicely you need to use the wsconfig tool that comes with CFMX, browse to your C:\CFusionMX\runtime\bin and double click on wsconfig.exe. This should pop open a window, click "Add..." and enter the correct values about the location of your Apache httpd.conf file and which instance of coldfusion you want to create a connector for, e.g.:

Jrun Host: localhost
JRun Server: default
Web Server: Apache
Configuration Directory: C:\Apache Group\Apache2\conf
Tick "Configure web server for ColdFusion MX applications"
And click "OK"

This would have created a connector in your Coldfusion Directory and added the following code at the bottom of your httpd.conf file:

<Ifmodule># JRun Settings
LoadModule jrun_module "C:/CFusionMX/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun20.so"
<IfModule mod_jrun20.c>
JRunConfig Verbose false
JRunConfig Apialloc false
JRunConfig Ssl false
JRunConfig Ignoresuffixmap false
JRunConfig Serverstore "C:/CFusionMX/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store"
JRunConfig Bootstrap 127.0.0.1:51010
#JRunConfig Errorurl <optionally redirect to this URL on errors>
AddHandler jrun-handler .jsp .jws
</IfModule>

This means that ALL virtual hosts will now run Coldfusion.. which is what we DONT want.

What we need to do is create our Virtual Host for our coldfusion server and move this block inside only that Virtual host:

<VirtualHost cfmx_project>
ServerAdmin mark.drew@gmail.com
DocumentRoot "c:/www/cfmx_project/"
ServerName cfmx_project
ErrorLog logs/cfmx_project.local-error_log
CustomLog logs/cfmx_project.local-access_log common

Alias /cfide/ "C:/CFusionMX/wwwroot/cfide/"
Alias /Main/ "C:/CFusionMX/wwwroot/cfide/"

# JRun Settings
LoadModule jrun_module "C:/CFusionMX/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun20.so"
<IfModule mod_jrun20.c>
JRunConfig Verbose false
JRunConfig Apialloc false
JRunConfig Ssl false
JRunConfig Ignoresuffixmap false
JRunConfig Serverstore "C:/CFusionMX/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store"
JRunConfig Bootstrap 127.0.0.1:51010
#JRunConfig Errorurl <optionally redirect to this URL on errors>
AddHandler jrun-handler .jsp .jws
</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

Stop and restart your webserver and place a index.cfm into the path you defined as your directory for your Virtual Host (in this case: c:/www/cfmx_project/) and test your server.

Voila!

Eclipse and CF Eclipse Shortcuts

2004-09-03T00:26:00.000Z

Welcome back after the bank holiday (if you had one!) I thought I would post a few handy shortcuts for CFEclipse. If you have any others that you want to send me, please do so.

Working with Files
Ctrl + E = List open files, then start typing the name and it should limit it to the ones you want
Ctrl + Shift + R = Find a file in the project (in CFEclipse this shortcut needs to be used from the Navigator window)
Ctrl+F6 = Tab back through open files
Ctrl + Shift + F6 = Tab forwards through open files
Ctrl+M = Maximise/Minimse Current window

Editing in CFEclipse
Ctrl + i = insert the snippet defined by the trigger text

We have you surrounded
Here are a few shortcuts to surround the selected but of code with whatever you need
Ctrl+F3 = Surround with ##
Ctrl+' = Surround with '
Ctrl+Shift+' = Surround with "
Ctrl+Shift+O = Surround with
Ctrl+Shift+D = Surround with a good
Ctrl+Shift+R = Surround with

No, Comments!
You can also add comments very quicky with these shortcuts:
Ctrl+Shift+M = Surround with CF comments
Ctrl+Shift+C = Surround with the apropiate or comments depending what type of code you are surrounding, neat huh?

HELP!
The trusty F1 will send you to http://www.cfdocs.org and redirect you to the right page.

More info on CFEclipse can be found in a new Wiki located at http://www.spike.org.uk/cfeclipse/space/

End of the holidays

2004-09-01T08:47:00.000Z

I just wanted to post (with sadness) that it is the end of the holidays here in spain. Every august it is taken as a general whole of spain holiday and today is the end of it. The reason I post with sadness is because I didnt manage to get any holidays myself! Pah! Gimme sympathy!

CFEclipse tips and tricks

2004-08-27T15:20:00.000Z

I have been using cfeclipse now for a couple of months, in case you dont know what CFEclipse is you should check out http://cfeclipse.tigris.org/, it is basically a plugin to Eclipse (java editor extraordinaire) that allows you and helps you in most wonderful ways to do your ColdFusion coding!

I have switched to it and sometimes even try to contribute to its development a little and now find it really hard to go back to Homesite, CFStudio or Dreamweaver (Textpad will always be there like my lucky pair of underpants tho!).

I thought I would add some hints and tips on how to get using it even more efficiently

Snippets
WE all have snippets in different environments, these are bits of code we re-use, such as creating a 2 column table or the header of an html file for example.

CFEclipse has snippets on steroids. They are the real killer addition to this IDE. I shall use an example that I use every day to show how powerful they are, that is of adding fusedocs to my documents.

Switch on the Snip Tree View (Window-> Show View -> Snip Tree View) and add a new snippet by clicking on the blue cross. You will be prompted with a dialog, enter the following:

Snippet Name: fusedoc
Trigger text: fusedoc
Snippet Description: This snippet inserts a skeleton fusedoc
Snippet Starting Block:

<fusedoc fuse="_____">
<responsibilities></responsibilities>
<properties>
<history type="____" date="____" author="_____">
</properties>
</fusedoc>

Snippet Closing lock: (leave this blank)

Now click OK. you have made your first snippet! well done!

To insert this snippet into your code you can either double click it from the snip tree view or could (my favourite!) type fusedoc folowed by the CTRL+i command

Thats good, but all is not over yet! this is all fine and dandy but in the fuse="" I usually insert the filename, which is a drag to type it all the time by going back to the code that I inserted, so what you can do is to edit the snippet by right clicking on it and editing it so it says the following:

Now save it and try adding the snippet again, you should get a dialog where you can enter your fuse name! Great isnt it? but wait! there is more! Change the $${fuse} to ${fuse:myfuse} and you should have "myfuse" already entered in the dialog box as default, fantastic! I could do that for my name... or... I could enter a dynamic variable. Try adding the following: $${fuse:$${CURRENTFILE}}, this will make the dialog box default to the current filename!

In the same manner you can add other variables as shown below:

<fusedoc fuse="$${file:$${CURRENTFILE}}">
<responsibilities>$${responsibilities}&lt;/responsibilities>
<properties>
<history type="$${action:create}" date="$${date:$${DAYOFMONTH} $${MONTHNUMBER} $${YEAR}}" author="$${author:$${USERNAME}}">
</properties>
</fusedoc>

The other variables that you can use are:
$${DATE}$${MONTH}
$${TIME}$${DATETIME}
$${DAYOFWEEK}
$${CURRENTFILE} - Current file name (just the file)
$${CURRENTFOLDER} - Current folder (The path to the containing folder)
$${CURRENTPATH} - Current path (full file name)
$${CURRENTPRJPATH} - Just the folder
$${USERNAME} - Current user
$${MONTHNUMBER} - Month as a number
$${DAYOFMONTH} - Day of month as a number
$${DAYOFWEEKNUMBER} - Day of week (the week starts on Sunday)
$${DATETIME24} - DateTime24 - a 24 hour clock version of datetime.
$${YEAR} - Current year.
$${YEAR2DIGIT} - Current two digit year.

I have found myself using a lot more snippets and if you change the Key combination to Ctrl+ space it is consistent with the rest of the code highlight and completion in the IDE (to do this go to Window-> Prefrences -> Workbench -> Keys and select Command Category:CFML Editor, Name:Insert Snippet, then under Key Sequence Name: click Ctrl+space and click add)

If you are using CFEclipse, let me know and send me any other tips that you would like to share!

2004-07-01T08:35:00.000Z

This is just a test.. ratther than rock and roll

2004-06-29T12:58:00.000Z

It has to be said, and a nod given , that Beans are good. Just had a heaped plate of them on toast after a midday swim and I feel fantastic. Do you share my taste? maybe not but there is something very British about beans on toast, especially here in Valencia. So, if you are back in blighty.. salute that old bean!

Apple - AirPort Express

2004-06-08T09:07:00.000Z

Whoa, and double whoaaaa... Apple do it again, a simple darn idea. You want your itunes playing on your stereo in the garage, you dont want to take your expensive iBook or Pc down there, what do you do? you take airport express, plug it into a mains socket, plug the speakers in and send your tunes from the living room. What an absolutely amazing idea!

iTunes to hit Europe

2004-06-07T16:42:00.000Z

About the most anticipated thing this year (apart from my move back to london). The iTunes Music Store from Apple is finally hitting europe which means that you will be able to buy each tune and play it on your ipod, legally!!!
FANTASTIC
you can get itunes for both pc and mac... so dont moan you dont have a mac

2004-06-07T15:18:00.000Z

Hate having your links destroyed by some crazy email client? This site promises to shorten the link (it is basically a forwarding service). Mind you , all it might be is an email trap. you have been warned.

Apache, Virtual Hosts, PHP, CF5 and CFMX (part 1)

2004-06-07T09:46:00.000Z

Web development sometimes can be a right pickle. If you have been working for few different sites you start to get conflicts of technology or you start buying computers for the sake of running one environment per computer, NOT economic!

Take my current setup for example, I am doing development of a site in Coldfusion MX, support of another site based on Coldfusion 5 and development of another site based on PHP. To sort all these things out I use something called Virtual Hosts. The concept of a Virtual host is that of hosting a number of websites on one single server, most probably using a single IP address and using the URL (domain) name that is requested to display the chosen website.

In my setup I use Apache(2.0.49) and have implemented the virtual hosts for each of the projects that I am working on, e.g.:

http://cf5_project/ which would point to c:/www/cf5_project
,
http://cfmx_project which would point to c:/www/cfmx_project
and
http://php_project which would point to c:/www/php_project

For each of these projects I have a slightly different setup and it is achieved as follows:

Add entries in the hosts file
To achieve this you need to edit the hosts file which can be found in:
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

and add the following lines.

127.0.0.1 cf5_project
127.0.0.1 cfmx_project

127.0.0.1 php_project

of course, replacing WINNT for your system path, if you are using OS X you can use NETINFO manager under Applications/Utilities to add an entry (duplicate localhost and change the name)

Enable and add the Virtual Hosts in Apache
Now that you have done that, you need to change the configuration of Apache by editing the httpd.conf file

If you look at the bottom of the httpd.conf file you will see an entry such as:

# Use name-based virtual hosting.
#NameVirtualHost *:80

Remove the # so that you can add a few more entries as follows:

# Use name-based virtual hosting.
NameVirtualHost cf5_project
NameVirtualHost cfmx_project
NameVirtualHost php_project

Now that you have told apache which domain names it hosts, we can now defined each one with its different settings. To do this, add entries for each project below the NameVirtualHost entries.

<VirtualHost cf5_project>
ServerAdmin mark.drew@gmail.com
DocumentRoot "c:/www/cf5_project"
ServerName cf5_project
ErrorLog logs/cf5_project-error_log
CustomLog logs/cf5_project-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Note the changes in bold. The first one, next to "VirtualHost" should match the NameVirtualHost you added previously. Change the DocumentRoot attribute to point to your project's root directory, add the ServerName the same as the NameVirtualHost and then setup the name of the log files to which errors and access requests will be logged to.

Repeat this process for cfmx_project and php_project.

Adding the individual modules
For each project I have a different server assigned, for coldfusion 5 you need to download (and follow the install instructions) available from
http://home.nextron.ch/coldfusion

then I modified the entry for cf5_project as follows:

<VirtualHost cf5_project>
ServerAdmin mark.drew@gmail.com
DocumentRoot "c:/www/cf5_project/"
ServerName cf5_project
ErrorLog logs/cf5_project.local-error_log
CustomLog logs/cf5_project.local-access_log common
#Coldfusion 5 module
LoadModule coldfusion_module modules/mod_coldfusion.so
AddHandler type-coldfusion cfm dbm
</VirtualHost>

Once this runs we can then go on and set up CFMX as another Virtual Host.

to be continued...

Pool party madness

2004-06-05T19:51:00.000Z

Like a well oiled clock, Spain has taken to the swimming pools. The temperature is just right and we dived right on in. It is fantastic to be able to go for a swim again, I think I shall miss this but the culture of London beckons. It still amazes me the precision at which the Spaniards like regularity.

*Spanish Survival doesn't survive?

2004-06-04T13:47:00.000Z

An MSN site that I have been a member of since we decided to move to Spain has finally disappeared in mysterious circumstances, this is the second MSN group that seems to have been cut short in its life.

I am still trying to get to the bottom of it but I wonder if other groups are suffering the same fate and if Microsoft is planning a complete removal of these features in MSN or simply starting to charge for them!

*Update! Hotmail is loosing people's files. could this be the culprit?

Google's Gmail adds Safari to supported browsers

2004-06-04T10:24:00.000Z

AS a recent convert to GMail and a Mac user this is exciting stuff! The site says:

Beta testers for Google's upcoming Gmail service, which will offer 1GB of storage and leverage the company's search technology to organize e-mail, have been informed that Safari 1.2.1 is now on the list of compatible browsers. Gmail also currently supports Netscape 7.1 or higher, Mozilla 1.4 or higher and Mozilla Firefox 0.8 or higher on the Macintosh. Google can't say when the service will end Beta testing and become widely available, but the company does note that it hopes to add to Gmail's list of supported browsers "in the near future."

2004-06-03T11:32:00.000Z

Sitting in the Jardines de Turia which is a dry river bed that meanders through valencia, filled with palm trees, gardens and interesting places to go such as the City of Arts and Sciences and a massive replica of Gulliver (as seen from a tiny persons point of view!)

IPOD gets 60Gb enlargement

2004-06-03T11:04:00.000Z

InfoWorld: Apple lines up for Toshiba's new 60GB drive: June 02, 2004: By : HARDWARE

You need MORE space? with Google providing Gmail (1GB email online) and 60GB new drives for the iPod I am not sure where I am going to put all this stuff! I mean, WHAT would I want to store... less is more people

phpMyAdmin, how I love thee...

2004-06-03T08:47:00.000Z

SourceForge.net: Project Filelist

A new release of my favourite web based tool. phpMyAdmin, which allows you to control your mysql databases effectively, now if only they could do this for MS SQL! I would be a happy puppy!

I refer to the "export data and schema" options!

Manic Browsing

2004-04-01T13:14:00.000Z

How could I reference myself in a blog? slightly surreal non?
Read the blog that you are reading here:
Manic Browsing

2004-04-01T13:00:00.000Z

Another day another dollar, working hard on a couple of sites.. a couple? I meant at least three!!!

What do you do to relax?
What computer should I buy?

2003-10-13T10:22:00.000Z

Nutrici� How to tell you what to eat in spain. who would believe it eh?