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FCKeditor with BlogCFC and protecting tags
2007-04-21 00:44:00
I added FCKeditor to my blog the other day, and I am quite happy I did.  One thing the editor does, however, is alter things like the < more/ > tag.  So I have been looking around this evening for a way to protect those tags. I found a few people asking for the functionality, but very little that seemed conclusively to work.  Time to do some google searches. [More]
More About: Cold , Fusion , Edit , Tags , Editor

Time to get something done.
2007-04-20 19:56:00
I found a great blog entry with an idea on how to be more productive.  Basically modify your hosts file so that your favorite sites are redirected to 127.0.0.1.  then create a schedule that rewrites that hosts file every 15 minutes.  Even if you manually modify it to visit one of the sites 15 minutes later it goes back to localhost! Brilliant!
More About: Time , Methi , Something , Thing , Done

Pageflakes Feeds
2007-04-19 22:32:00
In my recent quest to up the profile of my blog I have been adding my feed to various aggregators, directories and such.  One site I came across is a pretty nice start page / portal called PageFlakes.  In additon to having a nice portal home page tool they also have a good RSS reader and they allow you to make any 'flake' into a widget to embed in any other site.  I submited my RSS feed to them to included into their pack of feeds and they accepted.  I kind of wished I spent more time in my tags I suggested, as it doesn't look like I can modify now. From their email: I am writing you to let you know that your Feed Submission to the Pageflakes Gallery has been successful. Your RSS Feed is now available to all Pageflakes Users in the Community Site at: http://www.pageflakes.com/Community/Conte nt/Feeds.aspx?Sort=0
More About: Technology , Lakes , Lake

cfunited
2007-04-19 16:05:00
Speaking of conferences I just booked the hotel for CFUnit ed .  Once again I booked the hotel too late and I wasn't able to get a room at the actual conference center.  I will be a couple miles down the road instead, which is really really frustrating.  Plus the conference rate has expired as of April 14th, so when I made my reservation over the phone they wanted to charge me $240 a night instead of the $180 advertised rate.  I went back to the cfunited site and found a link that still applied the conference rate and got it at the lower price, so I am happy (ish) about that.  I will try to call in a month or so and see if I can get moved over to the main hotel.  Would certainly be nice.

coldfusion conference on Cruise boat
2007-04-19 15:07:00
Is there any interest in having a small to medium sized conference on Cold Fusion or perhaps web development in general, but on a cruise boat?  It is often done in other industries, why not in ours?  In doing a bit of research I see that someone has done it or tried to do it a few years ago. I wonder how it went... If there were sufficient interest I wouldn't mind investigating further.  Couldn't be too hard to put together something on a small scale.  Something large like cfunited would certainly be another story.
More About: Coldfusion , Boat , Sion

Removing BlogCatalog
2007-04-18 20:07:00
I have decided to remove BlogCata log from my blog.  The performance is poor often, and it slows down my page load times because of it.  I also find it of little value right now.  There are some interesting blogs on the site, and nice people but for the most part it is filled with people pushing 'make money with your blog' type blogs and begging for link sharing, etc.  I am keeping mybloglog for now.  I find it is a bit more social and interesting and has a larger user base I am not sure what the future will hold for it beyond a novelty.  Yahoo may do something interesting... only time will tell.
More About: Catalog , Ving

Samsung SCH-u740 Review
2007-04-18 01:44:00
I have been in dire need for a new cell phone for some time now.  I have been using a Treo for a VERY long time.  I started with the Treo 270, then the 300 and finally a Treo 600.  All of them had significant hardware and software problems.  I can't count the times I had to send one back for speaker issues, mic issues, etc.  In fact they finally stopped letting me.  So I had to fix them myself.  Yes, I had to take apart my 600 a few times to properly insulate the phone from the battery interference.  No more expensive Treo phones for me. [More]
More About: Technology , Samsung , Review , View

Why we want you to be Rich - Review
2007-04-16 16:19:00
Why We Want You to Be Rich is a book written by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki.  Most people know Donald Trump by now, either from his TrumpTowers or the Apprentice TV show.  Robert Kiyosaki has other books out in a series called Rich Dad Poor Dad.  [More]
More About: Review , View

Automatic more/ with BlogCFC
2007-04-13 00:39:00
I wanted to have Blog CFC automatically add the more/ tag into my blog posts.  I first thought that I should count the chars of the post, and if over a certain size add the tag somewhere in the middle.  However that really didn't offer much control or predictability. [More ]
More About: Auto , With , Automatic

I'm On Vacation!
2007-04-12 23:48:00
Just a quick note to let my loyal blog readers know I may not be posting much for the next 4 days.  Jen and I are leaving the surprisingly blustery New Hampshire seacoast to visit family in Naples, Florida.  Warm weather here we come! On a related note I will still be reading email, so fire away.
More About: Cat , Vacation

They Might Be Giants - Dial A Song
2007-04-12 02:31:00
A group of us are going to see They Might Be Giant s in a few weeks at The Stone Church.  I am a fan of TMBG and am really looking forward to it.  For my Birthday last Friday Jen bought me a CD with 20+ of their songs.  It is titled Dial a Song .  I am embarased to say I had no idea what the reference was for.  After reading up a bit I am just floored about what they did with an answering machine in the 80's. It seems that shortly after they started as a band bad luck had befallen them.  They were unable to play out much and had wanted an outlet for their creative ideas.  The answering machine had just come into popularity and so they thought it would be a great (genius!) idea to record snippets of their song ideas on it, and just let it play for those that called in.  They published the phone number in ads for local Brooklen/NYC papers and became near instant celebraties.  The number is (718) 387-6962 and is still going today.  They ...
More About: Ants , Giants

Need for an RSS Aggregator Service?
2007-04-10 19:29:00
I find myself really wanting to build my own aggregator of RSS feeds.  I use Google's custom home page for my rss needs, and for the most part it works pretty well.  But I dont' want to add all the RSS feeds I like to it, just not enough room.  What I really want is one box that I have display a merged version of 10 different feeds.  These are my friends and such who only post once every few days.  It would take less space and offer an easier interface for me.  Am I alone? I think there could be a real value in a web portal that you can send a list of feeds and it will create a custom merged feed from.  It would have its own page but also be available as a feed for whatever needs.  You can do this with Yahoo Pipes, but pipes has issues that prevent it from being as useful as it could be.  A it isn't easy to find aggregations that already exist.  B it is quite slow.  C the interface is intimidating to all but techies.  D ...
More About: Aggregator , Service , Need , Vice , Gator

RPM Challenge Jukebox Powered by Flex
2007-04-08 03:58:00
For those that don't know RPM Challenge is a great project that pushes bands and individual musicians to write perform and record an entire new album in the month of February.  It started last year as a local thing in the seacoast of NH and had 160+ bands complete and entire album. This year it went international.  Well over 2000 bands signed up representing every continent including Antartica.  Of those that signed up 860+ bands completed an album.  That is 860+ new albums made of independant music.  The listening party was last week and happened in major cities all across North America, as well as 6 venues in Portsmouth NH simultaniously.  I participated the first year, but wasn't able to complete an album this year.  Next year for sure! Well, the long and short of it is that most of the bands that completed the challenge allowed their music to be heard.  Each selected their top track and that track is now on a jukebox.  The jukebox i...
More About: Jukebox , Power , Flex , Hall

Toyota Prius Review
2007-04-07 20:47:00
I have owned my Toy ota Prius for a few years now.  Its a 2004 Prius Black and sexy as hell.  I still get a fair number of questions about it.  They are either 'How does it work?' type of questions or 'Do you still like it' types. First, I should mention that we are actually a multi Prius family.  I put my Prius on order and two weeks later my girlfriend at the time (now wife) put one on order for herself.  Little did we know that her parents had also ordered one.  A few months later all three Prius were delivered and we were happy as clams.  Me with my Black, Jen with her Red and Jens parents with their Silver. The photos of black prius always have tinted windows like that.  The car isn't that cool looking though without the tint.  I didn't tint them, but secretly I want to.  HOT. To date none of us have had any trouble with the cars.  They work exactly like they are supposed to.  I have only done basic maintenance.&...
More About: Review , View

Making Money with Agloco?
2007-04-07 19:02:00
I have seen a few blog posts lately about a new company called Agloco. This company has a tool being released in the next couple days that you attach as a toolbar onto your browser. Based on your browsing you earn money from advertising viewed. The twist here is that you don't earn it directly. Instead the company distributes its earning to members based on their usage. Also based on their referral group. The way the referral group works seems a bit like a pyramid scheme to me. I refer you all to the system. You refer it to others, etc. They all become part of my group and add to my participation. Not sure what the payout breakdown is exactly. Honestly I don't think they are either. Still it is an interesting idea. I have decided to sign up and give it a try. You never know. You want to take a look? Here is the link.
More About: Money , With , King , Maki , Makin

Spiffy New Design for Blog
2007-04-06 03:09:00
I was so tired of my lame looking blog I decided to do something about it. I found an open source design by NodeThirtyThree to use. The original design was only two column. So I made it wider and added another narrow column. I use Blog CFC (thanks Ray) as my blog engine and so I opted to upgrade to the latest version of BlogCFC at the same time. Upgrading was simple enough, as was integrating my new design. Please let me know if you see anything off. I have tested in IE7 and FF but I don't have IE6 here to test with. Of course when I decided to do all of this I also decided to upgrade my server to BlueDragon 7. I did have a few programming quirks to fix, but mostly things that BD 6 did that it shouldn't have done and were fixed in 7. All in all it has been a good 24 hours!
More About: Design , Desi , Sign

Downtime, Updates, BlueDragon and more
2007-04-05 15:18:00
Well, I upgraded to BD 7 last night. I had all kinds of weird caching issues. I finally realized that there is a checkbox in the caching config of bluedragon admin that lets you cache per web site. That cleared up a lot of the issues. I still have some programming errors popping up, and I can't get the latest BlogCFC to run (not this site, but my dev site for my new blog design!). But I ran out of time to fix them, so please bear with me if you see any bugs. I should have them all fixed tonight. It does look like the page response is faster though. I haven't done much testing to prove that, but feels faster to me.
More About: Dates , Time , Updates , Blue , Update

stupid americans
2007-04-04 01:08:00
Video of America ns being very stupid. This can't be real. Please please please don't let this be real.
More About: Stupid , American , Americans

mybloglog why no coldfusion love?
2007-04-03 22:50:00
I just started fiddling with myBlog Log. It is a fun tool that helps track other mybloglog users visiting your site and shows their profile. There is also a social aspect through which you can connect / network and make friends with other members. You can see it to the right. If you had a profile your name and photo would show up. I am surprised that more coldfusion / flex / adobe bloggers are not using mybloglog at all. I have seen it on many blogs in other areas. It is easy enough to sign up and paste the little nugget of code into your blog. Within minutes I had traffic starting to show, and invitations for contacts etc. I did run into some problems signing up. I think it may have been an odd firefox filter. I just couldn't sign up with firefox. IE 7 no problem. I can't imagine that was something people normally would experience though. MBL has been around for a while and seen crazy growth. You would think that they would have that stuff nailed down. I did some se...
More About: Love , Cold , Fusion , Coldfusion

A few new blogs to read
2007-04-03 14:44:00
I have been meaning to do this for a couple days. I have a few new blogs I am reading. Chris Dahlen - writer and reviewer for various magazines and such. Good stuff and a good guy. http://savetherobot.wordpress.com Robert Squier - One of my favorite illustrators. Also a good guy even if he tells embarrassing stories about me from time to time. :-) http://robertsquier.blogspot.com Occasionally we all get together and play games and feel old. Good times.
More About: Blogs , Blog , Read , Logs

testing mini coldfusion feed app
2007-03-29 14:52:00
This is a test post. I am trying to get a mini widget to embed into my blog entry. I made it at yourminis.com. Update: I think I see why it isn't working and am sending a note to yourminis.com. Looks like they didn't URL encode the RSS feed, and my feed is from yahoo pipes which has url variables as well.
More About: Testing , Cold , Fusion , Mini , Coldfusion

coldfusion swicki
2007-03-22 18:56:00
I am at the Spring Break conference today and while between sessions I thought I would start a swicki for Cold Fusion . The process is pretty easy. I added a bunch of sites used to populate the cfhunt.com search results. Swick i is similar to google custom search engine but it is social in that others can suggest sites, vote results up and down, and ask questions based on search terms. You can also embed the search and hot search terms into your site or blog for others to see. If enough people use the swicki I think it would be a good resource and a continually evolving one. This is the link to use to get the code to embed it into your own site. Update: I figured I would mention a few differences I see between swicki and google cse. First the CSE is more focused on end user participation. I find that an interesting approach. Also they have fun tools to integrate the search and popular terms into other sites. There isn't as much focus with swicki, however, in allowing other...
More About: Coldfusion , Sion

Spring Break Conference 2007
2007-03-19 16:41:00
I will be attending this years Spring Break Conference . It is this Thursday. It is a quick Adobe focused conference that is jam packed with all kinds of tracks and technologies. Savvy Software will have a booth there and so I will be there to demo Savvy Content Manager to people. If you are near Athens OH, check it out. It is only $35 which is a great deal. Actually exhibitors and sponsors also get a great deal. Most affordable conference I have attended or seen in the topic area. My only beef is that I need to fly into Columbus and rent a car, then drive for an hour. No shuttles or anything. Yes, I am a wussy. I don't care for driving in places I haven't been. Anyone want to car pool?
More About: Ring , Ferenc

Vanguard Review
2007-03-18 23:15:00
Well, that was quick. I started my trial copy of Vanguard maybe 30 minutes ago and I have already had enough? I am sure I am not giving it a fair chance and I will try again but here are my initial thoughts. The interface seems old school. Lots of options though. I opted for a dark elf caster. I then was able to customize my character. I was overwhelmed with choices here so I just clicked on randomize a few times to get something interesting then off to play. No tutorial or intro that I could find. Instead you jump strait into playing in a starter area. I attack something nearby, kill it. It showed a bag to loot, so I try a few times. I see text in the bottom chat area saying no loot. Hmm. I see a guard or something with an icon over his head so I run over to talk. I did something wrong. Not sure how and I attack him. He kills me quick. I rez somewhere else. No idea where I am or where I started. I run around for a while. I finally get back to starter spot, fi...
More About: Review , View , Guard

Lord of the Rings MMORPG Beta Review
2007-03-18 22:49:00
Lord of the Ring s MMORPG Beta My first review: I happened to stumble upon a free closed beta account a few days back for LOTRO and thought I would give it a whirl. I have played a number of online role playing games over the years, starting with UO, EQ, AC, then growing into DAOC, Lineage II and WOW. I am sure I missed one or two in there, but they were probably worth forgetting. I really enjoyed parts of UO, EQ, DAOC and WOW and with that we now can check out LORTRO. Keeping in mind it is a beta, and not even open beta yet. First thing to note is that downloading this thing sucks. Even using their recommended bit torrent client. Once download complete you then patch for quite a long time. I was sick at the time and quite grouchy about downloading a game only to download what seemed like the full game again in patches. Thems the breaks I suppose. I am running on a brand spanking new PC with Vista Home Premium. 2GB Ram, Athalon 64 Dual Core, and a GeForece 7600 GT 256M...
More About: Review , View , Lord

Les Naturally 7 dans le metro a Paris
2007-03-16 01:34:00
This is a crazy crazy cool video. Make sure you watch more than the first 20 seconds to get a proper understanding. I wish every subway ride was like that. Concert sauvage dans le métro !Uploaded by lapapsprod
More About: Natural , Rally , Metro , Paris , Naturally

xbox360 USB and Dance Dance Revolution - Oh My
2007-03-10 20:41:00
My wife got Dance Dance Revolution yesterday for our xbox 360. I have played it in the past, and had a lot of fun. Plus it is a good workout. We ordered an extra dance pad as well so we could play together. For those that don't know my setup, I have a projector mounted to the ceiling that shoots an 80" screen. Nice setup for games and movies. The xbox360 is also mounted up at the ceiling. I then have it connected to my network (wired) so I can stream tv from my media centers, etc. Good deal all the way around. So we take the pad out to find that it isn't wireless. Doh. We need to plug the dance pad into the xbox which is above our heads. Well thats just silly. I looked all over for wireless game pads with no luck. In fact no spare pads were in any store for the 360. Next I looked for an adaptor to make them wireless. Also no luck. Then we thought to just extend the wires. Nothing official for that either. But there is a happy note to all of this. The wired cont...
More About: Usb , Evolution , Xbox

Spam leads to suspension of securities
2007-03-08 20:09:00
As many of you know I run a spam stock tracking site that is somewhat popular. For the most part these securities seem to get a pass regarding the spam. It is hard to tell who is pushing the spam and if the companies are directly responsible. Looks like the Securities and Exchange Commission is finally taking a stand called "Operation Spam alot". According to this article they have suspended 35 securities due to the spam. Just how obvious was the manipulation? From the article: "In one case, shares of Apparel Manufacturing Associates Inc. (APPM) closed at 6 cents, with a trading volume of 3,500 shares on Dec. 15. After a weekend spamming campaign distributed e-mails proclaiming "Huge news expected out on APPM, get in before the wire, we're taking it all the way to $1.00," trading volume on Dec. 18 hit 484,568 shares with the price spiking to over 19 cents per share. The price reached 45 cents on Dec. 20, before falling back to 10 cents on trading volume of 65,350 shares on ...
More About: Leads , Pens , Pension