Note: This post was updated. I am not speaking at noon, Ray is. I speak at 6:00PM.

August 21 at high noon, the illustrious Ray Camden will be speaking to the Online ColdFusion Meetup about CFC201. Hot on his heels, I'll present at 6:00. We'll be talking about ColdSpring, installation, Dependency Injection, Factories, Configuration, Dynamic Properties, Complex DI Strategies and also look at practical usage inside of production applications.

You are invited to join, all you need is a web browser and an Internet connection. More info here: http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/8569952/

Oh, and if you haven't heard of the Online ColdFusion Meetup, it is the largest CFUG on the planet, with well over 1500 members. All Presentations are delivered online, often on Thursdays, at 12:00PM and at 6:00PM. You'll need to buy your own Pizza :)

I don't know what they put in the water in Bloomington, Indiana, but the people there are CRAZY. The excellent leadership over at the Bloomington Flex User Group, the Indiana University Flash User Group, and the Indiana University Multimedia User Group have put together a 2 day training/conference event on Flex and ColdFusion for free. That's right, 200 lucky people will get their skills expanded on the hottest technology powering the web today, and won't pay a dime for it.

The event organizers booked leading experts in Flex and ColdFusion to run the sessions. And when they ran out of leading experts, they send me an email asking if I'd help out. I'll present 2 CF sessions and assist in the Flex Hands On. Here are the descriptions:

Refactoring In Coldfusion - From Procedural to OO

If you would like to know how to migrate an existing procedurally programmed application into an object oriented one, grab a chair and sit for a while. We'll discuss some sensible guidelines designed to help you make incremental changes towards OO nirvana.
We'll also look at lots of code samples, we all like code samples, right?

Fun With ColdSpring

The secret ingredient to modular and maintainable OO applications in ColdFusion is the ColdSpring framework. Efficient and practical use of ColdSpring is easy. In this source code based presentation, we'll cover installation, Dependency Injection, Factories, Configuration, Dynamic Properties, Complex DI Strategies and also look at practical usage inside of production applications.

So if you can make it to Bloomington, IN, Sept 6-7, and want targeted training on Flex and ColdFusion, Sign Up for BFusion/BFlex today!

I am a big fan of CFEclipse. I use it pretty much every day and using it opened up a whole new world for me. Before, I was a file editor, happily editing files. Now, I use an entire technology stack built on eclipse that make me productive, efficient, source-controlled and test-driven. Life is good.

One thing I really like about CFEclipse is I do not have to pay to install it. Thus, I have it on 5 computers. I don't often use all 5 at once, I'm no mutant, but I like the freedom to work on whatever I want, at whatever location I want. There's more, you know. I could gush all day long about the benefits of CFEclipse. But I have a point to make.

Recently on the CFEclipse mailing list, someone started a discussion on Let's Pay for CFEclipse. Some good points were brought up during the discussion and I also found out about the SuperCoolApparel available at http://www.cafepress.com/cfeclipse. However, the best way to show gratitude is by cutting a check. So today I made my first monetary donation to CFEclipse and I feel great about it.

I'd often thought of making a donation but just never actually clicked the CFEclipse Paypal Button (at the bottom of that page, if you are looking for it). So a big thanks to Rick Faircloth for starting the Let's Pay for CFEclipse thread. It was a great motivator for me to donate to a project that has really provided me with significant benefits over the last 3 years.

I read a lot of technical blogs because I benefit in knowing more about the thoughts and positions of others. Whether I agree with them, or disagree, the thought process is something that helps me sharpen my technical skills.

So it is of great anticipation that a new blog, The Argument Collection, just had her maiden voyage.

Consisting of some of the more thought provoking minds on the CF landscape, this blog promises to deliver timely information on how to solve problems. Sean, Ray, Joe, Brian and Nicolas all are accomplished programmers, thinkers and have great ability to convey highly technical matters in ways that simple minds like me can grasp the concepts.

I've added The Argument Collection blog to my feed reader, you should as well.

My 11 year old nephew Cole, is really good with computers. He is a smart kid in general, actually, being in the top 2% in the USA for mathematics. He's even been to Space Camp. He is also a surfer, and you know how I like surfing!

He knows what I do for a living and I asked him if he was interested in learning some programming. When he said he was interested in learning, I began to think on how to get him up to speed.

Here are the criteria I've come up with:

• Dynamic, Loosely Typed (Dereferencing Pointers? Blech!)
• Low hardware requirements
• Free IDE
• High Impact (should be easy to make it do visible stuff)
• Lots of tutorials (self-learning is good)

Putting on my unbiased hat,I think the language that fits the bill is Javascript. Javascript is fairly forgiving and can be debugged with Firebug fairly easy. Environmentally speaking, pretty much any computer comes with an environment that runs Javascript. This gets us out of a lot of annoying environmental issues. I don't live near Cole so this is in our best interest.

We can get him TextPad or Crimson Editor or another lightweight Javascript IDE that has syntax highlighting so that should take care of the IDE. For high impact, what could be easier to code and more visually impacting than:

Finally, there are billions of tutorials on Javascript on the web so Cole would have plenty of opportunities for self-learning. This means he can work at his own pace.

But Javascript isn't perfect. To do any of the really cool stuff, you would need to know HTML and CSS, which is a bit of indirection. You would probably also need to know one of the Javascript frameworks too. Not to mention, browser/platform inconsistencies are frustrating enough to a professional programing for his/her livelihood, how much more for an 11 year old?!

Since I am not the first person to think of this problem, I'd like to hear what others are doing about teaching kids programming...thoughts?

Just a friendly reminder, tonight I am giving a presentation on ColdSpring to the Best Darned ColdFusion User Group out there!

We'll cover installation, Dependency Injection, Factories, Configuration, Dynamic Properties, Complex DI Strategies and also look at some practical usage.

As usual, Pizza and refreshments for all. We're going to have a good time tonight.

More info on the July Meeting Page at TACFUG.org

The zip containing the code files reviewed in the application is attached to this post. Click the download link for Fun With ColdSpring Files.

I recently interviewed John Wilker. We talked about a variety of topics, his long ColdFusion career. His migration to Flex, His migration to Conference Co-Superstar... Snoop Dogg even gets a mention somewhere in there.

We even go behind the scenes at the 360Conferences series and hear some of the funnier things that go on in producing a top-notch technical conference. Even though he is busy preparing for the 360|Flex conference in San Jose, CA (August 18 - 20). John made time to talk with us. John is really fun to talk to and makes for a great interviewee. Listen to the John Wilker CFConversations Interview and let us know what you think.

While on a recent trip to NYC, I ran across a very large TV screen in Times Square. This thing was enormous, easily 40 foot square, if memory serves me right. At the bottom, I noticed a sign that made me proud, Powered By Adobe Flash

Today is a special day for Mike Brunt as this marks the day he will be sworn in as an American Citizen. Becoming a citizen is a long involved process and getting to the finish line is an achievement and a great milestone in one's life.

So a raise of the glass to Mike Brunt, my newest fellow American!

If you open a window and listen carefully, you can hear the moaning and wailing of the iPhone crowd as their iPhones are malfunctioning today. (This post isn't about the pure and flawless Blackberry Pearl I carry around and I promise not to bring up the fact that I've never had an update to that phone that left me stuck in 'Emergency Call Mode Only'.)

This post is about a statement of affairs on what I term 'the iPhone Crowd'. You can identify the iPhone crowd by their closely cropped hair, (a la Steve Jobs), their black turtlenecks (a la Steve Jobs), their jean pants (yep, iSteve again) and their mindless raving about how Apple products "Just Work" ^TM.

The iPhone crowd is in an uproar because a software update (just made available) rendered the iPhone unusable (for a little while). In modern day society, we are quite used to ubiquitous reachability. Our social and professional lives kind of depend on it. I take the pain of being out of contact seriously. My point isn't that the iPhone not working isn't a big deal, but the fact that people are surprised. Maybe to an iKoolaide swigging SteveClone this is unexpected, after all, what part of "It Just Works ^TM" doesn't the iPhone team understand.

To many of us, this is simply another software release that has hiccups out of the gate. I've been a part of a number of software released in my time. Most, had great intentions, a nice start, a rushed end, and some issues on deal day. This has been true across the board. From projects of 2 developers working from a napkin-spec to a developmental army augmented with a cadre of PMP certified project managers furiously tracking deliverables, timeboxing effort and managing the Critical Path.

Software development is not easy. In fact, it is downright hard. I'd be willing to bet 99.99% of all software projects have problems when they go-live. Even the best tested applications find gaps in their testing. Spots where the ugly Real World messes up their nice clean model. It is just how it is.

So, since this software 'upgrade' is going just like all other software projects, you can bet these problems are actively being worked on right now by stressed out, hyper-caffeinated people who really want to fix this problem. My iPrediction is that in a day or two, definitely by Monday, the iPhone problems will be largely forgotten. The iPhone Crowd will be back to prancing around in their black turtlenecks, jeans and closely cropped hair and spouting off marketing babble like "It Just Works" all the while sophmorically pointing and laughing at those with other handset brands...

The problem I have with it all is it doesn't "Just Work ^TM". Actually, it often "Just Doesn't Work", (Remember the Leopard release?) but no iSteveClone worth his black turtleneck would dare utter such a thing.

Business as usual, right?