Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts

Thursday 20 February 2014

Completely off topic: this is the state of spam

G'day
A slightly lighter moment. I just had this land in the "is this legit?" box in my blog's moderation queue:

Tuesday 18 February 2014

I might not be, but Gavin is...

G'day:
A few days back I got a bit shouty about not being a dead CF installer storage facility: "Things I am not...".

Gavin, who is a much nicer person than I am, has - instead of just complaining about stuff like I do - done something about it, as detailed here: "CFML Server - A Different type of ColdFusion Repo - ColdFusion Installs". Gavin has created an online repository (via copy.com), of old ColdFusion installer files. He's got a range of installs for various versions back to ColdFusion 5, as well as a mix of operating systems and bitness (what's the technical term to describe the concept like "32-bit" or "64-bit"?) of the OS architecture.

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Things I am not...

G'day:
Just quickly. Whilst I might have various old ColdFusion installers lying around, I am not a download service for complete strangers who didn't think to keep hold of their own software.

When it was one person once in a blue moon who needed help with this sort of thing, it was no problem. But I've had two complete strangers in the last 48hrs ask me for various CF installer files, so am making a policy decision that the answer is automatically "no" if you're thinking of asking me for a ColdFusion installer file. NB: to the two bods who asked for help... I'm not having a go at you: it was a reasonable question to ask.

I can only suggest you post a question on the Adobe ColdFusion forums, or contact Adobe, or ask on Twitter or something.

Cheers.

--
Adam

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Gavin is a star!

G'day:
Within minutes of me reaching out for help regarding my wee icon for the @CfmlNotifier Twitter account, me mate Gavin Pickin had sent me a number of options, more than one of which was eminently fit for purpose.

So I've picked this one:

That's pretty cool, and is fairly simple. Which suits me :-)

Currently my Twitter page is broken (Twitter are claiming responsibility) so I can't update it just yet.

Gavin: next time we're in the same place at the same time: there will be beer.

Cheers mate!

--
Adam

@CfBugNotifier renamed to @CfmlNotifier

G'day:
This is just a heads-up that I have renamed the @CFBugNotifier Twitter account to @CfmlNotifier. It will continue, short-term, to provide exactly the same status updates that it does now, but I intend to diversify it slightly perhaps. Plus I want to decouple it from the notion of "ColdFusion", as it'll have some CFML-vendor-neutral content too.

Thursday 2 January 2014

Go on, tell me what you really think...

G'day:
I touched on this in the article I just pressed "publish" on a few min ago: "Contempt of court". A while back Kev put me onto this website sayat.me. It's for people to leave anonymous feedback about other people.

It's an interesting concept, and I have opened an account there. You can whine about me all you like via http://sayat.me/daccfml.

To be honest, you should feel you can say anything you like to me to my face (or personally, without feeling the need to be anonymous). I won't take offence, and I could well agree with what you say, or we can make a discussion out of it. But anyway, some people like hiding behind electronic apron strings, so if that's you: here's your opportunity.

Whilst it's anonymous, that doesn't mean it's private. I reserve the right to reproduce anything written there. And I might even comment on it.

One thing I will say though, if you're commenting on what a baddy I am but then stoop to this sort of ad hominem:

you come across as a complete and utter asshole. [...] In short you become a unabashed prick.

Then I'm just gonna observe that you're engaging in the very thing you're deriding me for, however not having the courtesy to say it to my face.

Still: "sticks ''n stones" etc. It's not like any feedback along those lines surprises me or anything. It's just not really that constructive.

But it's great reading, so get into it.

--
Adam

Saturday 7 December 2013

500: to put things in perspective

G'day:
In August, Ray posted this: "Over 5000! (Almost...)".

So it puts things into perspective that this is only my 500th article. Still: I've only been going for 513 days, so that ain't bad. Almost one per day (obviously the content is variable though!). I was only really aiming for one a week - concerned I'd run out of things to say - so I'm doin' all right, really.

And, no, I will not remind you every 100 articles (I did an article at 400 too: "Bad Request"). But I probably will remind you @ the 1000 mark. If I get there.

Cheers for reading & commenting & stuff.

--
Adam

Sunday 27 October 2013

Comments

G'day:
This is a quick apology to people who take the time to comment here.

Thursday 10 October 2013

ColdFusion: Why weI fight

G'day, and apologies to Frank Capra for trivialising his work.

An alternative title for this article could be "Readers: can't live with 'em... can't kill 'em". But I liked the Capra allusion which popped into my head initially, even if it does self-aggrandise what I do here "somewhat".

Can I please remind you lot of something. At the top right of the page you are reading, second paragraph, it says this:
I tend to be a bit "forthright": I think CF is a good product, but I won't blindly defend it in all circumstances, and I have been quite critical of ColdFusion and Adobe at times. This will come out occasionally here: I make no apology for it.
It says that on every page of the blog. And I put it there on every page for a reason.

First: a digression. The back story of this blog - and the gist of the title - is this.

I have been in the ColdFusion community since about 2001 (working with CF since 2000, but was unaware of the community at the time). I have enjoyed reading the various blogs that have come and gone, but they all and one common thread: they were always - or at least almost always - never in the slightest bit critical or questioning of what Macromedia / Adobe were doing with ColdFusion. The general approach of the CF community seemed to be blind adulation, matter-of-fact stick to examples of how the code worked, or stony silence when something was a bit rubbish. No-one ever seemed to go "Oi, WTF is going on with this?"

I had been thinking about starting a blog for a number of years, but for a while I was suffering from imposter syndrome, and thought I'd probably only have enough material for about half a dozen posts, and then run out of steam. Plus it would simply not be of any benefit to the community. Plus I have the attention span of a goldfish, and lose interest in stuff fairly quickly.

But whenever it was - a year or so ago - I decided, screw it... I'm fed-up with where Adobe is taking this community (or more to the point: I'm fed up with that the community seems to be sleeping through this happening), and I perhaps do have an interesting alternative spin on what's going on in the CFML world, so I'll write it down. My position has always been to question what's going on, rather than just sit idly by watching it but not saying anything because I'm too darn polite (like an awful lot of people seem to be). The raison d'être for this blog is kinda "well someone's gotta say something".

Saturday 21 September 2013

Thursday 8 August 2013

Friday 26 July 2013

Recognising the people who help me with this blog

G'day:
Adam Tuttle (that's twice today) was quipping last that I'd mentioned him twice on the blog on Weds, and I should try for three times y/day (which failed: just the one mention, sorry). Anyway, as a joke back I said I should tag my articles with the people who I mention - these are usually people who have helped me, or caused me to write the article - and whoever is at the top of the list is automatically on my "give them beer next time I see them" list.

And then I thought... well why not? People do help me out and inspire me to write, and I appreciate it. So I did go through all my back articles last night, and tagged them up with the people I have mentioned in them, and I will continue to do so. So there are people's names listed at the bottom of the article on the "tags" bit, and the tag cloud thing on the right hand side also lists a bunch of people amongst the other tags I've got. Now there's been a whole swag of people tagged up, and the tag listing became unhelpful with every tag displayed, so you don't get a mention on the right unless you've got 3 mentions (or are Chris who only had two mentions until now, but as he wrote my most popular article, I decided to list his anyhow. And now he's got his third mention anyway).

Sean's currently at the top of the leaderboard, and there's a fair gap back to the rest of the pack.

Anyway... cheers y'all for your help along the way.

--
Adam

Wednesday 24 July 2013

weB LOG

G'day:
Just so you know... I never sit on any of the stuff I blather on about, or save it to make a particular point.

Thursday 18 July 2013

1

G'day:
I'm a bit late with this as it happened a week or so ago, but I just noticed I've been prattling away on this blog for a year now.

Apropos of nothing, here's some mostly useless information about this blog.

I said in one of my earlier articles that I've learned more about ColdFusion since I started this blog than I had in the preceding few years. This continues to be the case, and I've learned a bunch of good stuff about Application.cfc, ColdFusion regexes, JSON (grumble), REST, interfaces (in general, as well as ColdFusion's inplementation of them), and various other odds 'n' sods. Even some web sockets stuff, whilst troubleshooting that security issue from a coupla weeks back. I've also used Railo a lot more, and had a look at Coldbox. Beyond ColdFusion I've also started dabbling with PHP and Ruby. It's been cool! I hope some of it was useful to you, or at least slightly interesting. Or killed some time whilst you tried to decipher what I was wittering on about.

To close, I'd like to say special thanks to a few people whose participation in this blog has been helpful, interesting or thought-provoking. In no particular order, and it's certainly not an exhaustive list:
  • Chris Kobrzak
  • Sean Corfield
  • Andrew Myers
  • Bruce Kirkpatrick
  • Brad Wood
  • Andrew Scott
  • Adam Tuttle
  • Ray Camden
  • Gavin Pickin
  • Jay Cunnington
  • Simon Baynes
  • Duncan Cumming
  • Brian Sadler
There's been a bunch of great input / correction / sanity-checking / bullshit-detection done by a heap of other people too.  Cheers to everyone who's participated here.

And now on to year 2...

--
Adam

Friday 14 June 2013

A list of things I am not researching

G'day:

All of these things I am not investigating:

Why not? Because - f*** me - I don't know where to start! There's so much bloody interesting technology around and only about 18 hours in the day (eating, sleeping). Plus my blimin' life keeps getting in the road (case in point: I type this from the Wetherspoons @ LHR... the one at which I am beginning to recognise the staff, and they me...).

This article exists almost entirely to guilt-trip myself into doing something about all this. I've even got about a dozen blog articles underway on all this stuff. That weighs heavy too.

Argh!

Right. That feels better.

Have a good weekend.

--
Adam

Friday 24 May 2013

Identity change continues

G'day:
My mission to neutralise my CFML-oriented social media presence continues. As well as the blog name and domain change (which you probably know about / have noticed by now), I've also changed my contact email address (now dac.cfml@gmail.com. This has changed as well, however I'm not publicising the new one; you'll need to already know it, or spend 5min finding out), and my Twitter name: dacCfml DAC_dev (Twitter won't allow fullstops in one's account name).

If you've ever wondered where the "dac" part comes from my former Twitter account name (daccf), and now in these new accounts, it's because my first name is actually Donald. So those are my initials: Donald Adam Cameron.  My folks had a disagreement (well more a failure to agree, rather than a disagreement, per-se) over what my first name should be: Dad wanted it to be "Donald" (his name), Mum wanted it to be "Adam". So they compromised, and my first name is Donald, but in casual circles I go mostly by "Adam". In official circles (banks, govt, etc) I remain "Donald". I answer to both. Well: I answer to almost anything people choose to call me: I'm not fussy.

I actually think it's quite cool because I get usage out of both my forenames, and I consider myself both a "Donald" and an "Adam", whereas most people only really think of themselves by their actual first name, and any other forenames they have are just noise.

The only real side effect of the email account change is that you might get a Google+ / chat "invite" from that account. So if you see this happening, you know why. Or if I'm not already in Google contact with you, by all means: add me in.

Righto.

-- 
AdamDonald

Tuesday 21 May 2013

New Domain & new blog name

G'day:
I wasn't quite ready to go live with this, but GoDaddy and Blogspot are more efficient than I hoped they would be, and everything(*) is already redirecting.

So the URL for this blog will now be http://blog.adamcameron.me. Old Blogspot URLs should all be redirecting to that now.

Sunday 14 April 2013

Apropos of nothing: readership stats

G'day:
Vainly, I track how many unique visitors I get to this blog each day, and chart a weekly average. The readership is really low - since its inception in July last year, the average is just over 100 people a day - but it's steadily climbing.

This year the average has been around the 120-150 mark, but last week spiked to an average of 243. On Monday I had 447 unique visitors according to Google Analytics. My previous highest was 285: that's quite a spike. Obviously that 447 had a big impact on the rest of the week's average: the other days were each just above 200, except for Sunday which is traditionally a very quiet day, with just 80-odd.

Still: it seems I'm getting more traffic, which is good.

Friday 12 April 2013

So... aah... PHP then

G'day:
It's funny how things work out. For various reasons (which I shall not be disclosing) I am going to start shifting my spare time focus from ColdFusion to PHP. ColdFusion will still continue to be my primary focus for the foreseeable future, however I want to get up to speed with PHP as fast as I can. Starting today (Saturday in NZ).