Peter Boughton's aggreggated blog feed

Speaking at SotR 2013 conference

2013-03-13T12:10:00Z

In June I will be speaking at the Scotch on the Rocks web developer conference in Edinburgh. More details.

Speaking at Scotch on the Rocks 2013

2013-03-13T12:10:00Z

I will be speaking at this year's Scotch on the Rocks conference. My presentation is on the subject of getting help when you are stuck and how to describe your issue in a way that makes it easier for others to help you.

All developers have times when they need help, but it's not always easy to ask for (particularly when all you want is to get past a tricky problem, not have long tangental discussions). Having spent a lot of time both seeking and offering help, I hope to shed some light on the quickest ways to find solutions and effective methods for framing your issues so that fellow developers can understand what you need.

The talk will be aimed at developers of any level who want help with getting help.

Scotch on the Rocks is Europe's longest running conference catering for CFML developers, having been held most years since 2005. This year it takes place on the 6th and 7th of June at the Hilton Edinburgh Grosvenor hotel and covers a wide variety of topics on different aspects of web development - so whether you're looking to learn new techniques and technologies or you want to network and socialise with other programmers, Scotch on the Rocks is the conference for you.

Hurry up and book your tickets before they sell out!

QueryParam Scanner v0.7.5 Released

2013-01-10T15:30:00Z

Earlier this week I promoted the release candidate for 0.7.5 of QueryParam Scanner to full release.

For anyone unaware, QueryParam Scanner is a simple tool for identifying unparameterised variables in CFML queries (which may indicate a potential SQL injection risk).

This version has a handful of bug fixes and code cleanups, resulting in faster more accurate scanning than previous versions, plus the addition of JSON output format, giving a more lightweight option if used in scripted processes.

For further details on these, see the previous RC article; other than a couple of trivial fixes and a new readme, nothing has changed since that.

To download the latest version, you can either clone the git repo, or grab it as a zip archive from the GitHub tags page.

For any feedback, problems, or questions, please use the issue tracker.

Apache, cPanel and ErrorDocument

2012-11-08T01:49:00Z

If you're using a cPanel-powered Apache server, there's a chance it may not be setup in the best way.

The same issue might manifest itself in two ways: confusing error messages and ignored htaccess directives.

In both cases, the solution is to use the ErrorDocument directive.

Find out more.

Revamped blogs and new aggregator

2012-11-01T00:00:00Z

I've revamped my blogs and created an aggregator to group all posts and allow them to be filtered. More details.

Hi There!

2012-11-01T00:00:00Z

Hello. So this is one of those awkward posts, where I'm talking to you without having any idea of who you are or why you're here, nor indeed do I know if you know why you're here and who I am.

Well you can figure out that last bit yourself, if you're interested, and as for the rest, the waffle which follows intends to be addressing the why, because the point of this post is to give a brief history of this blog along with indicating my intentions for the future and beyond.

Read Full Article

Where do music collections come from?

2012-10-17T14:13:38Z

Most sensible people have known this for years, but here's yet another study proving what the RIAA & others refuse to comprehend...

Tim O'Reilly originally shared this post discussing an article by the American Assembly:

Online file sharers buy 30% more music than those who don't share. In other words, "pirates" are the music companies' best customers.

Article: Where do Music Collections Come From?

Good article on technology patents

2012-10-08T16:39:05Z

Christian Cantrell originally shared a post highlighting this NYTimes article on patents:

In the smartphone industry alone ... as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years � an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings.

Article: In Technology Wars, Using the Patent as a Sword

New Website! (This one)

2012-09-07T01:00:00Z

Finally uploaded my latest website - this one! You can read more about what it is and isn't here.

Your phone company is watching

2012-07-29T14:30:22Z

Here's an interesting TED talk by Malte Spitz on what kind of data phone companies are collecting.

Malte Spitz wasn't too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code — a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

Video: Malte Spitz: Your phone company is watching

New El Davo website

2012-07-07T01:00:00Z

Just uploaded a new website for the hugely talented El Davo - head over to eldavo.co.uk to see his latest artwork.

Folkestone Airshow 2012

2012-06-04T12:23:00Z

At the weekend I went to the Folkestone Airshow, being held to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - the first in the area since the last Shepway Airshow held in 2003.

After an overcast start to they day, fortunately the sun came out and the sky cleared enough to make for some photographic opportunities by the time the planes turned up.

The photos were taken using a Sigma 70-300mm - a cheap lens with slow and noisy auto-focus - and I was uncertain how well it would perform, but I knew I wouldn't get the necessary reach with my standard 18-70mm, so I gave it a try.

As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. Whilst I did have issues with the lens, I was still able to get some shots I was happy with.

Below is a selection of images, with more being available in the gallery.

(The Red Arrows started the display with seven planes, and unfortunately Red 6 had technical problems, further reducing the display to five - but they still put on a good show.)

Folkestone Airshow

2012-06-04T01:00:00Z

Went to Folkestone Airshow today and took some photos - details and photos on Midnight Isle.

Happy Regex Day 2012!

2012-06-02T00:42:00Z

Today was the 1st June, and that means it's Regex Day again!

This annual event was started four years ago by Ben Nadel to celebrate this wonderful (yet often misunderstood) technology, and as usual Ben is running a fun regex competition, with prizes, on his blog.

If that's not enough regex goodness for you, here's a couple of projects you should know about.

First up, there's XRegExp, a library by Steven Levithan which augments JavaScript's native regex functionality with new functionality, and ensures cross-browser compatibility.

For CFML developers, there's cfRegex a replacement regex implemenation providing more power and functionality than CFML's native functions, whilst being easier to work with.

Whatever your level of regex skill, both of these tools are definitely worth checking out.

QueryParam Scanner 0.7.5 Release Candidate

2012-01-07T20:59:00Z

I have just pushed an update of QueryParam Scanner to GitHub, containing various improvements.

This update is on the rc0.7.5 branch, and it'd be nice if people could take it for a spin and make sure there are no issues with it. (There is a zip download for anyone without git.)

The visible changes which you might notice are:

Added JSON output format, giving an alternative to XML for anyone using qpscanner in a scripted process.
Added variable for number of potential risk files, and improved related wording in HTML output.
Fixed bug where identical queries were causing incorrect line numbers.
Fixed bug where query names were not being detected.
Fixed bug where blank lines were incorrectly removed.

However, there are also significant under-the-hood changes. I removed my obsolete "Java Regex Utils" library (replacing it with the object part of cfRegex), and made a number of little code clean-ups.

A result of these changes is that qpscanner rc0.7.5 appears to be almost twice as fast as previous versions.

If you have any feedback, please feel free to contact me via GitHub, and similarly if you find any bugs then please raise them on the issue tracker.

Stop touching and actually use your hands!

2011-11-24T02:49:29Z

Anyone who knows me should already be familiar with how I feel about touch screens, especially in regards to typing.

Well, Michael Miller has shared an article explaining it far better than I ever have, written by Bret Victor, a professional interface designer.

Here's Michael's post discussing Bret's rant:

Anyone who has tried to type on a touch screen "keyboard" knows this is true.

Touch devices are wonderful but they are only part way there, the device certainly "feels" your touch but what do you feel in return? A sheet of glass. Featureless, numb.

You can't use this device without looking at it carefully to make sure that your fingers are keeping up with the visual metaphor being presented. Eyes and hand must work together carefully and while touch might be less mediated and indirect than, say, using a mouse, it still requires far more cognitive and sensual effort than using a physical device. A physical keyboard for example can be used, in fact it requires that it be used, without you looking at what your fingers are doing.

"Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a sandwich?"

Touch interfaces are not the destination but a way-station. In the future touch devices will become tactile devices.

Article: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

The greatest speech ever made?

2011-11-10T04:19:46Z

This comes from Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film The Great Dictator - over six decades later it still seems unfortunately apt.

The video is 3m 38s long, or alternatively the transcript is available in the full entry.

Video: The greatest speech ever made

Why Railo 3.3?

2011-11-06T23:54:00Z

It's been over two and a half years since my last "why railo" post, and - despite Railo "only" being 0.3 versions on - there's been a lot of improvements!

In fact, because it's been so long, a few of the things here are not new with v3.3 (though they are all new since the previous article), but are still great features that deserve mentioning!

Read on to find out what my ten favourite new feature are.

CFML on Wikipedia

2011-10-02T23:08:00Z

If you've ever looked at the CFML related articles on Wikipedia, you can't fail to have noticed that, especially when compared to other programming articles, they're not very good.

When somebody puts "coldfusion" or "cfml" into Google, they will almost certainly see the respective Wikipedia pages amongst the top three results, but when they follow those links they're unlikely to get a very good impression!

Not only could both these pages themselves benefit significantly from being cleaned up and improved, but there are only a few frameworks and tools that even have pages, and most of what does exist are very unencyclopaedic stubs. And this doesn't even consider the generic programming pages that often don't even mention CFML.

Take a look at the CFML category page - does that category contain everything you would expect an encyclopaedia to cover about CFML? Check the pages for the frameworks you are familiar with - do they go into the level of detail you would expect, and tell you everything you'd want to know if you were entirely new to CFML?

If you agree that the CFML presence on Wikipedia can and should be improved, and it's up to the CFML community to do it, then read on to find out how you can help fix it.

Introducing the cfRegex Project!

2011-07-22T23:20:00Z

The cfRegex project is two things. Firstly, it is a complete regex implementation for CFML, providing more functionality, flexibility, features and power than the existing CFML RE functions. Secondly, it is a drive to encourage people to properly learn and make use of regex.

Regex is a very flexible language for matching patterns within text, and it has the power to greatly simplify certain programming tasks. However, it can also be intimidating to people not experienced with it.

This problem can be compounded by the relatively limited support for regex in CFML, which often means code is written that is more complex than should be necessary.

cfRegex helps to address both these problems. It provides a number of functions and features that help to reduce the amount of code which programmers have to write, whilst also helping to make their code clearer and easier to understand. In addition, the project provides documentation, not just for its own features, but also for regex itself, helping people to understand exactly what their expressions are matching, and how to get the most out of regex.

Whilst cfRegex is still at a relatively early stage, it is currently usable, and if you're a fan of regex it is certainly worth checking out.

It currently runs on CF 9.0.1, OpenBD 2.0, Railo 3.2 and later.
(Support for CF8 and others will be considered if enough people need it.)

The documentation should tell you everything you need to know about using it, but if not then get it touch and say what's missing so it can be fixed!

If you get stuck, there's a mailing list where you can receive answers to any problems or questions you have.

International Regular Expressions Day 2010

2010-06-01T15:20:00Z

It's 1st June 2010 today, and that means we're celebrating for the third time the annual International Regular Expressions Day.

Ben Nadel kicked off this event two years ago, in order to promote the use of Regex, especially amongst those who might consider them something scary and obscure.

As before, Ben is running a contest, this year's prizes being some O'Reily Regex books and IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro licenses.

Entry to the competition requires writing some code, and the deadline is today, so if you're interested then hurry up and read Ben's blog entry to find out more.

Happy Regex Day!

Railo: Still Awesome!

2010-01-26T21:42:00Z

It's nearly a year on from my last Railo blog post so it is well overdue that I write another - just in case there is anyone still sitting on the fence, unsure if they should use Railo - or indeed, anyone who might be unaware of Railo's very existance!

So to start with, a quick summary of what Railo is:

Railo, pronounced /ˈraɪ.ləʊ/, is super fast Enterprise-level sofware for RAD webapp and website creation.
Railo is LGPL-licensed Free Software, so anyone can use it how they like.
Railo runs on any Java EE server, (but doesn't require Java knowledge), and is a Jboss.org project.
Railo uses the CFML language, like Adobe ColdFusion (the primary CFML engine), OpenBlueDragon, and others.
Railo is really awesome.

Find out why Railo is the perfect choice for your next development project.

After the Storm

2009-12-09T23:31:00Z

It's been far too long since I last posted anything, so I'll kick-off what I hope will be the start of more frequent posting with a couple of photos taken down on the UK's south east coast last month, immediately after some incredibly stormy weather.

The winds were still very strong and the evening sky nice and atmospheric, allowing me to create these two images:

Beehive Forum 0.9 has been released!

2009-07-07T00:50:00Z

Version 0.9 of Beehive Forum, probably the greatest forum software there is, has recently been officially released.

Since the previous v0.8.4 there have been a variety of fixes and improvements, particularly to client-side caching and UTF-8. There is also now support for Google Analytics and for displaying optional Google Adsense adverts. For full information on what has changed, you can check the release notes.

Download Beehive Forum 0.9 from SourceForge

Also, Beehive is currently a Finalist in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards!

If you're a fan of Beehive and haven't yet voted, please vote for Beehive now.

There is a lot of competition, with many thousands of votes already having been cast, so please help spread the word to as many other Beehive users as you can, to help vote for Beehive to win, and gain the recognition it deserves!

Java RegEx Utilities - v0.7 preview

2009-04-09T22:47:00Z

Java RegEx Utilities, or jre-utils, is a CFC which provides a convenient way to access Java's regular expression functionality.

Whilst ColdFusion, Railo, and openBD are all built on Java, and CFML does have regular expression functions, they do not actually use the Java regular expression engine, which supports many useful regex constructs.

The purpose of jre-utils is to provide this extra power to CFML developers in a familiar and easy to use way.

I will shortly be releasing v0.7 of jre-utils, which adds a number of new functions, as well as making things more consistent, so I decided I would give this quick preview of what it contains.

Open Source Railo

2009-03-31T22:03:00Z

Earlier today, the eagely awaited Railo 3.1 public beta was announced!

And the reason for much of this eagerness?

Railo is now Open Source and Free Software, released under the LGPL v2.

This license requires that any changes to Railo's sourcecode itself must also be released under LGPL v2 (or later version).

However, unlike the full GPL, it does not require that you release any packaged applications under a compatible license - so you can still use whatever license you like for your own CFML code, Open Source or otherwise.

Along with the announcement comes two new Railo websites: The commercial-oriented getrailo.com and the community-oriented getrailo.org, which also contains wiki-based documentation.

Details on updating this documentation, as well as information about the new features in Railo 3.1, will come later this week - stay tuned to the Railo blog for the latest details.

The next four months are going to be a very exciting time for Railo and CFML!

Elemental Views & Stormy Weather

2009-03-15T23:43:00Z

The exhibition ended last night, and it was a good show this year, with a lot of excellent photos on display.

I did reasonably well - whilst I didn't win any of the trophies, two of my images received certificates of merit, plus I received a panel certificate for my "Elemental Views" panel.

This was a set of extra-wide landscapes with ratios between 4:1 and 8:1 - showing that it is not necessary to stick to the 4:3 or 3:2 standard that comes out of the camera, and photographers should instead consider what shape suits the image best.

Both my print panel and digital set of images are now available to view online:

Elemental Views

Stormy Weather

Photo 2009 - Exhibition

2009-03-05T21:50:00Z

This coming Monday 9th March, I will be exhibiting a panel of photographs at my Camera Club's annual exhibition, Photo 2009, to be held at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon.

In total there will be more than 150 mounted prints, plus over a hundred slides and digital projected images. These latter two will be displayed when the Exhibition is officially opened by Damian Demolder (Editor of Amateur Photographer), at 20:00 on Monday the 9th.

The prints will be available to look at all week long, at any time that Fairfield Hall is open - starting on the morning of Monday 9th and running until the evening of Saturday 14th.

The exhibition and opening event are both free to attend, and with Croydon Camera Club regarded as one of the best clubs in the region, there are sure to be some excellent pictures on display.

Anyone remotely interested is strongly encouraged to visit.

View the full article for a sneak preview.

Update: For the full panels see my post Elemental Views & Stormy Weather.

Why Railo 3?

2009-03-01T02:53:00Z

It's been nearly half a year since Railo 3 was released, and with 3.1 just around the corner it is a good time to write a post about some of the features that continue to make Railo such an excellent CFML engine!

This blog entry covers things new to Railo 3 - however, if you've not looked at Railo before, you should also look at my previous postings, as they are still valid:

This blog entry gives ten reasons for using Railo 3...

Snow

2009-02-04T14:09:00Z

There's been a little bit of snow in England for the past few days, and whilst I haven't had a chance properly go out and take photos, I have grabbed a few random shots.

Switch on String in Java

2008-12-12T21:50:00Z

For anyone working with any other modern language, (such as CFML, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, and more), using a String within a switch-case statement is not an issue, and probably something you've done many times without thinking about.

However, when working in Java you cannot use strings in a switch statement.

Fortunately, despite what many sites suggest, there is a solution.

T-Mobile G1 - Google's Android mobile phone

2008-11-01T14:09:00Z

On Thursday, the G1 mobile phone was finally released in the UK, and - ignoring the sensible policy of not getting first-generation devices - I ordered mine as soon as the website was available.

I now have my G1 and have written up my first impressions.

Updates
1-Nov-2008 15:30 added photos
Last Updated: 16-Nov-2008 22:35 added more details

Creating my very first Eclipse Plugin

2008-09-23T01:10:00Z

I recently* completed my very first Eclipse Plugin, and I found the whole experience to be very interesting.
*(well about a month ago; took me longer to get writing this than intended)

This blog entry will focus on two main areas - my experience with Eclipse (as opposed to CFEclipse and similar), and the issues I encountered from a development perspective

Read on to find out about it.

Mount & Blade - A time of war, a game of legend!

2008-09-22T20:46:00Z

This weekend Taleworlds have finally released v1.003 of Mount & Blade, an excellent game based primarily around mounted combat.

The game has been developed in shareware form for many years, it has a large following of fans and numerous graphical and gameplay mods, and earlier this year it was picked up by publishers Paradox Interactive, through whom it is now available to buy online and in shops.

Anyone who paid for a shareware version is entitiled to this full release at no extra cost, and as one of those I decided to write this short review.

Goats Teleported

2008-09-15T19:29:00Z

The more exploratory of users may have noticed that the Task Manager in Google Chrome allows you to specify which fields you would like to display.
(The menu for this is on the context menu of the background panel, not the main area of the dialog.)

One of the 234 possible options (yes, I did count them) is the intriguing "Goats Teleported" field, which (when enabled) displays a number that increases at an alarmingly rapid rate.

Where are these goats coming from, and where are they being teleported to? Has anyone even noticed their disappearance?

Railo 3.0 released!

2008-09-09T20:08:00Z

The long awaited Railo 3.0 is out of Beta and available to all.

There are a lot of exciting new features with Railo 3.0: multimedia video conversion and manipulation, video player with playlisting, task manager, cluster scope, CF8 compatibility, and more.

Also, with Railo 3.0, the Community and Professional versions have been combined - keeping the price of the Community edition (i.e free), but without the previous restrictions this had. (With Railo 3.1 due later this year, Railo will fully become Free Software, under the LGPL2 license.)

For more details, the best place to head is the rebrushed Railo website, which has been updated to provide information on what is new with Railo 3.0.

There will also be a three part series on the Railo blog covering the new features. The first entry in the series is already available.

Beyond Tables, Beyond Divs - Simple JavaScript Calculator III

2008-08-30T19:32:00Z

As we (hopefully) all know, using HTML tables for layout is Bad and Wrong.

Unfortunately, the most common way people avoid using tables is to just replace their table, tr and td tags with divs, divs and more divs.

The div tag is a generic container that should be used as a last resort, if there are no other more suitable options.

Whilst the problem of excess divs is not limited to the conversion of table layouts, it is perhaps most obvious here, as it shows the developer is still stuck in the column+row frame of mind, rather than thinking about what they are actually displaying.

In this blog entry, I show an example of how avoiding this mindset can result in much simpler and cleaner code.

QueryParam Scanner - Eclipse Plugin

2008-08-26T00:24:00Z

The first pre-release version of the qpScanner Eclipse Plugin is now available.

This is the very first Eclipse plugin I have created. It was an interesting experience, and something that I will be writing up in a separate entry as soon as I can collect my thoughts.

It order to use the plugin, you must be using v0.7 or higher of qpScanner - if you do not yet have this, you can download the latest development version of qpScanner, which contains details of the Update Site to use. If for any reason you cannot use the regular Eclipse Update method, you can directly download the qpScanner Eclipse Plugin instead.

Just to be clear, both v0.7 of QueryParam Scanner and v0.1 of the qpScanner Eclipse Plugin are currently considered development releases, and are being made available so that they can be tested and any bugs that might exist can be found - if you are unwilling to use pre-release software you should wait until the official release.

If you do get the Eclipse Plugin, or even just qpScanner on its own, I welcome any and all feedback you might have - whether to report bugs you have found, request new features you would like, or simply to let me know that works with your local setup.

Please send feedback via the GitHub Issue system.

Related websites:

QueryParam Scanner v0.7-dev

2008-08-17T01:01:00Z

The latest development version of qpScanner is now in SVN at RIAForge.

It would be great if people could test it out and let me know of any issues they encounter.

As before, it is all self-contained, so it can be installed and run with minimal effort.

Note: As this is still the development version, you need to use the zip option at the bottom of the RIAForge page, not the "Download Project" link - the button will only give the old version.

When released, v0.7 will be a significant new version, so I want to give a quick discussion of the new features...

expandPath bug in CF8

2008-08-16T18:23:00Z

I've just encountered a very annoying bug with the expandPath function in CF8.

Take the following code:

<cfset MyDir = "."/>

<cfloop index="i" from="1" to="5">
    <cfset MyDir = expandPath(MyDir)/>
    <cfoutput><br/>#MyDir#</cfoutput>
</cfloop>

Run the code through Railo and you will get exactly the right behaviour, with the current directory output five times:

C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch

Now go run the same code with CF8 - and this is what you get:

F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch

It simply stacks the current directory onto the front each time. Very frustrating.

In order to get round this, I created a regular expression to pull off the last value of any directory containing more than one colon - this will work for Windows machines, but may need to be changed for Linux or MacOSX machines (if the bug affects these).

<cfif isDefined('Server.ColdFusion.ProductName')
    AND Server.ColdFusion.ProductName EQ 'ColdFusion Server'
    AND ListLen( MyDir ,':') GT 2>
    <cfset MyDir = REreplace( MyDir , "^.*([A-Z]:[^:]+)$" , "\1" )/>
</cfif>

Railo goes Open Source with JBoss.org (Update)

2008-06-08T18:59:00Z

As promised previously, here is a more detailed entry on the announcement to Open Source the Railo CFML engine.

Scotch on the Rocks 2008

2008-06-06T23:57:00Z

Scotch on the Rocks 2008 is now unfortunately ended, read on to see my thoughts.

Railo goes Open Source with JBoss.org

2008-06-05T18:30:00Z

Today at the midday Scotch keynote, Gert Franz and Luc Texier made an impressive announcement: Railo is going completely Open Source.

This is an exciting move both for Railo and for the CFML community as a whole, and I'll be writing more details about it later, but for now here some some quick key details...

There will be two editions of Railo, with the Community and Professional editions combining into one, and the Enterprise edition being the other:

The new Community+Professional edition will be Open Source and there will be no limit to the number of web contexts allowed.

The Enterprise edition will have added value features, including tools from Intergral.

The license will be LGPL2, which means you can distribute Railo along with commercial software.

The timeline for release of the source code is mid to late October, around the time that Railo 3.1 is due for release.

The announcement is online at the JBoss website at www.jboss.org/railo

More Information available: Railo goes Open Source with JBoss.org (Update)

International Regular Expressions Day!

2008-06-01T15:48:00Z

Today, 1st June 2008, has been officially decreed as Regular Expressions Day.

And in honour of this event, there are a couple of regex-oriented competitions happening.

Ben Nadel, nominator of this great day, kicked things off with a handful of prizes for the best comments: June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day!

The deadline for Ben's competition is today - that is, you must post the comment on (or before) RegExp Day, and the winners will be selected tomorrow.

Don't despair if you miss that though, as Steve Levithan also has a regular expression competition running, and the deadline for that is Friday 13th, almost two weeks from now: Regex Day Contest

Happy RegEx Day!

QueryParam Scanner

2008-04-06T18:42:00Z

The code for my QueryParam Scanner has been uploaded to RIAForge.

QueryParam Scanner is a simple tool which scans your code for queries and reports back about any variables that are not inside <cfqueryparam/> tags.

Download QueryParam Scanner from RIAForge.

Java RegEx Utilities

2008-04-06T00:30:00Z

I have just released Java RegEx Utilities on RIAForge, which is a CFC enabling easy access to Java Regular Expression functionality, adding to what is available in the standard CFML functions.

Currently there are two main functions.

jre.get(Text,RegEx) returns the matches to the regular expression as an array.

jre.replace(Text,RegEx,Replacement) is similar to REReplace, but the Replacement argument can be a function pointer, allowing you to process the results of a regex match with a function

You can find more usage details on the jre-utils wiki, which I plan to update with some examples of when each of these functions can be useful.

I have tested jre-utils against Railo 2 and CFMX 7, but it should also work with ColdFusion 8 and the Java version of BlueDragon - if anyone can test/confirm this please let me know.

Download Java RegEx Utilities from RIAForge.

JavaScript Leap Year check

2008-02-22T11:32:00Z

I've just needed to fix a calendar that didn't implement leap years, and thus was missing 29th Feb this year.

Unfortunately, Google was bringing up various functions that rely on how browsers handle oddities in the built-in date functions, which isn't a sensible approach.

So, here is how to do it relying on the leap year formula:

function isLeapYear(year)
{return ((year%4 == 0) && (year%100 != 0 || year%400 == 0));}

And to implement that:

function readDaysInMonth(month,year)
{
	if (month == 1 && isLeapYear(year) == true) return 29;
	else return [31,28,31,30,31,30,31,31,30,31,30,31][month];
}

(Remember, in JS months are 0-indexed, hence 1 = Feb)

Fusebox 5.5 is out now!

2007-12-03T23:44:00Z

The highly anticapted next major version of Fusebox has finally been released to the website.

Fusebox 5.5 allows you to use the Fusebox applications without using XML, which should please many people.

Instead of fusebox.xml it checks conventional places for your circuits, and instead of circuit.xml it can either use CFCs, where each function is a fuseaction, or just a directory, where each file is a fuseaction.

It also brings support for dynamic do to both xml and non-xml configuration, which is a feature I've really wanted on a couple of occasions.

Get it while it's hot...

http://fusebox.org/go/fusebox-downloads/core-files

Beehive Forum 0.8 out now!

2007-11-28T23:11:00Z

The newest version of Beehive Forum has been released today, with a large selection of new features, improvements, and fixes.

It is very much recommended that users of previous versions upgrade to the latest version without delay - upgrade paths are available from both 0.6.* and 0.7.* so there is no excuse!

For those not familiar with Beehive, it is a superb free and open-source discussion forum system which (in addition to its superior interface) exhibits several rare and unique features which make it a joy to use. For example: there is a relationship system which allows you to ignore others users, or their signatures, or give them amusing nicknames that only you see; each user also has an individiual word filter, with a regular expression option for very powerful filtering; there's a flexible polling system with groupable options, public/private ballot, fixed/changable votes; and many other cool things.

To learn more you can look at the Beehive website, or you can go straight to the SourceForge project page to download it now.

My Yorkshire Adventure

2007-11-09T23:54:00Z

For the next week, I'll be staying in York, wandering around and taking photographs of whatever I find up here.

Each evening I updated this post with what happened that day, and show a quick selection of the photos I've taken.

Beginners Tutorial: Cropping with IrfanView

2007-09-21T00:16:00Z

I was asked how to crop an image with IrfanView, so I created this basic tutorial, and decided I might as well post it on my weblog.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of it.

Railo 2.0 out now!

2007-08-29T01:48:00Z

The final release of Railo 2.0 is now available for download from the re-vamped Railo website.

If you've already tried Railo, you'll probably be wanting to head straight to the download page.

If you want to know more about what Railo is and why you might be interested, read on...

Why Railo 2?

2007-06-06T22:58:00Z

A while ago I wrote an entry about why people should consider Railo. Well, with the Release Candidate for version 2.0, there comes a lot more reasons for using Railo. And here are twenty of them...

London Eye

2007-04-30T01:18:00Z

On Saturday I went up on the London Eye, and took a few photos. It wasn't that easy to get shots because the pod was over-crowded, but I still had a good time, and I've decided to put my photos into a gallery, called Views of London. Most of the images have only been quickly tweaked (exposure, white balance, cropping, etc) and could do with some extra work, but feel free to give comments about any of the images as they are.

Here's a picture looking west along the Thames:

Spirits in the Woods

2007-03-14T00:18:00Z

Well the exhibition has ended now, and I'm happy with the reception my images got. Whilst it wasn't undying praise, the general consensus seemed to match my own opinions of my prints, which is always a good thing. :)

Here's a photo of my panel:

I was pleased that the exhibition judge came up to me on the opening night and let me know he liked where I was going with the prints, though pointed out that the print quality needs attention (it does; I need to get some decent printing paper instead of Jessops brand stuff).

For anyone wanting to see the images properly, I have thrown together a little webpage containing my panel, entitled Spirits In The Woods.

Photo 2007

2007-02-22T22:02:00Z

In just under a fortnight I will be exhibiting a panel of my pictures, as part of my photography club's annual exhibition, Photo 2007.

The event takes place from the 5th to the 10th of March, at Fairfield Halls in Croydon.

If seeing my beautiful pictures is not motivation enough for you, twenty six other club members have work on display, a total of nearly two hundred and fifty images (prints and slides) on display, covering a great range of subject areas.

If you're in any way interested in photography (or art in general) I definitely recommend you come along and have a look — it's completely free and there's certain to be some great pictures on show.

Update: You can see my panel here.

Why Railo?

2007-02-07T21:36:00Z

In the near future I'll be getting myself a dedicated server, and decided to find out if anyone would be interested if I was to setup Railo hosting on it. So, I posted on the CF-Talk mailing list to see if anyone was interested, and crikey, what a reaction I got! The discussion is currently the longest in the past four dozen threads.

The first few replies basically boiled down to was "why would anyone want Railo hosting?!?".

Tempting as it is to reply with "Railo PWNS U l4m3rz!", I've decided that I'll instead explain why I choose Railo, over all the other CFML engines available (CFMX, BlueDragon and Smith being the significant alternatives).

However, to prevent me from rambling on for hours about how wonderful Railo is -- and I really could talk about it all day -- I am simply going to pick just five things that should help to show what attracts me to Railo.

Read on.

Railo 1.1 Beta

2007-01-01T21:04:00Z

The latest version of Railo is now available as a public beta from the Railo customer center, and it brings with it an exciting new feature: Resources.

Resources are a brilliant feature that allows you to perform file actions on virtual filesystems such as in memory, ZIP archives, and FTP sites.

Read on to find out more.

cfDevCon 2006

2006-11-09T22:49:00Z

Okay, so I've arrived back from the UK's first* ColdFusion developers' conference (*if you ignore the previous two UK-based CF conferences), and decided I would give my thoughts about it.

Link lexicon verb for Fusebox 5

2006-11-08T17:54:00Z

I have created a simple custom verb which allows you to link specified resource files from circuit.xml, without having to go to the bother of writing it all in a script and including it.

For example, you can do this:

<cf:link resource="/res/bubbles.css"/>
<cf:link resource="/res/bubbles.js"/>

And it will convert that and place the following inside your HTML head:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/res/bubbles.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/res/bubbles.js"></script>

This should be useful if you have a lot of different circuits that all have unique styles and scripts, and you'd rather avoid putting lots of conditional statements in your layout pages.

For more information and a download link, read the article.

Lydd Airshow

2006-09-16T02:38:00Z

Last weekend I went to my first airshow in ages, at Lydd in Kent, and took lots of photos of the various flying machines there.

This entry is essentially just an excuse to show of some of the photos I took.

Accessibility Is Not CSS!

2006-09-15T22:05:00Z

The biggest barrier to creating an accessible Internet is not browser support or badly designed syntax, but rather people's false beliefs of what accessibility is; what it means to 'be accessible'. For many people, being accessible means switching from font tags to CSS, using em tags for italics, and replacing tables with divs. THAT IS NOT ACCESSIBILITY!

Read on to find out more.

Railo

2006-07-17T20:31:00Z

Railo is the best CFML engine.

I guess you'll be wanting me to validate that statement? Well I'll make a start on that in a moment, but first I think I'll post a few disclaimers to pre-empt any potential whiney people.

I have nothing against Adobe, NewAtlanta, CFMX, nor BlueDragon. They're both great companies/products - without the company formally known as Allaire, I'd never have had my life enriched by the joy that is ColdFusion - and BlueDragon is no doubt a fine product if you find yourself stuck using that .NET thing. ;)

But Railo is better than both of them, and here is why...

Eileen Donan - Scotland's Most Romantic Castle

2006-07-17T20:07:00Z

Whether you know the name or not, there's a good chance you have seen Eileen Donan at some point - it is often described as the most romantic and most photographed castle in Scotland. The vast majority of pictures you see tend to be similar to this:

So, of course, when I visit it I am immediately looking for ways to be original; to take a picture that doesn't simply not look like the one above, but that goes completely against what people expect to see.