Blankbaby

Isaac Asimov

I went to a sort of geeky high-school (shocking, I know). Everyone there was pretty smart (I often wonder how I slipped in) and there was the full range of geekdom on display (even the athletes were geeks when you get right down to it, though there were cliques as there always are. I was, even amongst the other geeks, considered pretty damn geeky). The school had a library, which contained a fairly good SciFi section. Since I had a 45 minute commute each way, I needed reading material and so I started to read the entire
collection of SciFi/fantasy books which were available.

Early on in my readings I came across Isaac Asimov (not too odd since
his last name begins with 'A' and I am nothing if not methodical). His books really sparked my imagination. I started with “Caves of Steel”, which isn't his best work; I was hooked.

If someone were to ask me where they should start with Asimov I would recommend the Foundation Series, with a few caveats. His characters tend to be... one dimensional, his writing style is no frills, and his female characters (when one shows up) are particularly one dimensional.

You might wonder why the heck I read so many (and I mean many. The man wrote over 500 books) of his books if I wasn't that impressed with his writing style. Well, you see, he may not have been Shakespeare but his ideas were always intriguing, and his books are good fun.

Anyway, the point of this entry is to share this quote with you:

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

Well, he is awfully fond of wands...

Reverend Graham Taylor was talking to a bunch of 12 year olds and he called  Harry Potter gay:

"As for Harry Potter, well, he's not the only gay in the village," the former Anglican priest told children at Penair School in Truro, southwest England, referring to a catchphrase from the popular British comedy TV show "Little Britain."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

A spoon full of CFML

Thanks to the wonders of ColdFusion, if someone linked to one of my posts on Blankbaby Media at the old address the link shall still work.

Hurrah!

I don't think anyone actually did link to any of my posts there (maybe I did once or twice) but better safe than sorry.

And as an added bonus I now have yet another about page on the web about, well, me.

So here is the code, no it isn't that complicated and that's why I like Coldfusion. This took me all of 2 minutes:

<cfparam name= "p" default = "" type = "any">

<cfif p NEQ "">
<cflocation url = "http://www.blankbaby.com/media/?p=#p#">
<cfelse>

<cflocation url = "http://www.blankbaby.com/media/index.php">
</cfif>

This would have been much more difficult if Wordpress used static files, thank goodness it doesn't.

Screw you, Eclipse

Terry likes it.  Ryan likes it.  So do all those hardcore CF'ers out there.  I might like it, if I could get it to frickin' work!  I am talking about Eclipse, more specifically CFEclipse which is an open source IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that all the cool kids are using.  Heck, Macromedia has taken notice and will be using it in some ways.  I would love to use it.

If only I could get it to run on my Thinkpad.  All I get is that stupid error above, and I know for a fact I have the right version of Java installed.  How do I know that?  I spent some of yesterday afternoon and most of this morning installing, rebooting, getting the error, uninstalling, install another version, rebooting, getting the error.

So, dear Eclipse, I say to you: get bent!  Back to Dreamweaver I go.

I heart sparklines

I like Sparklines, and the only thing better than Sparklines are dynamically generated Sparkines.

The lastest web programming language to have a Sparklines library is Ruby on Rails.

When is someone going to do this for ColdFusion? I want to use them in my apps, but I don't actually want to create the whole darned thing myself.

Ruby on Rails easier to use than Coldfusion?

Michael Buffington thinks so. I was firmly in the camp of Ruby on Rails being a fad (with a dash of Ajax thrown in to make everything... cooler) but it seems I should do some research or something (but I'm a blogger! We just make crap up, like NY Times reporters. Ooooh, snap. No, I didn't! Yes, yes I did!).

The biggest surprise in the whole post was this:

I'm used to rapid application building with ColdFusion, but Rails is more rapid, which was a surprise.

Now, if you didn't understand any of that post, feel free to ignore it.

ColdFusion Report Builder

For a few years of my life I was what is known as a 'report writer.' Data was my stone and Crystal Reports was my chisel. Though the people I worked with called all reports 'lists,' which depressed me, and they didn't want none of them darned fancy graphics, so there was a limit to what I could do.

Anywho, seeing as I am a ColdFusion dude now I am excited about the new ColdFusion Report Builder, and I want to make sure I check out Ben's presentation about it.

Here's how excited I am about this feature, I spent 15 minutes in a bookstore reading the ColdFusion book chapter on it. When I was done I said, out loud mind you, 'That's it?'

Garnered some odd looks from my fellow bookstore patrons.

Forta on ColdFusion Security

Something I will check out later.

CFForm.com

If you don't know what flash forms are don't bother checking out CFForm.com.

I have subscribed to it though, and I look forward to playing about with flash forms. I hate, HATE, coding forms in HTML, and guess what? A large part of most web apps are... you guessed it, forms.

Scotty wants

The last one I have is CF5. I am so out of date, dude.

ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit