Charlie Griefer

In light of the recent news regarding Apple's modification of their ToS regarding how iPhone (and now iPad) applications can be developed... what seems to be a thinly veiled effort to specifically undermine Adobe's attempts to bring Flash to those devices... I thought it might be worth demonstrating that Flash can absolutely run on the iPhone.

A picture, as they say...

For a while there, I was in a groove. Not a Nadel or Camden-like groove, but I was posting frequently enough that I no longer felt pangs of guilt over my poor neglected blog. But it's been weeks since my latest entry. What's up?

As of October 23rd, I am no longer with Amcom. I enjoyed my time there, but their long-term goals were not in line with my long-term goals. After a series of discussions, we ended with an amicable parting of the ways.

The following Monday, I started a new job. A 3 month contract at Barclays Global Investors. The work is good, but I've gone from a 3 mile 10 minute drive to an hour+ commute into San Francisco. I really enjoy being in the city, but the close to 3 hour commute each day has significantly cut into what I laughingly refer to as my "spare time".

I expect that I should be getting used to the new schedule soon, and might be able to organize/tweak my routine to allow for whipping out a blog entry or two in the evenings each week. We'll call this entry the new beginning.

Next up, I'll be detailing another new endeavor... coming on as Co Editor-in-Chief of the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update magazine. Yes, I'm aware that you think it's dead/defunct/EOL. I can assure you that this is not the case.

Meanwhile, as mentioned above... the current job is a contract, scheduled to go through the end of the year. If you are looking to bring on a ColdFusion developer with 13 years of experience sometime in early 2010, or know of somebody who might be, please drop me a line.

A few months back, I started using Mozy for off-site backups of my important files and folders. Back then, I stumbled across a way to back up hidden files and folders (such as the apache folder on OS X).

A friend noticed that I had this set up, and asked how to do it, as Mozy, by default, will only allow you to browse to public files and folders when choosing backup sets. I had completely forgotten how I did it, and spent a few minutes googling before finding the answer.

I'm doing a fresh install of OS X today, and as I'm setting up Mozy again, I just spent another few minutes trying to figure out how to back up hidden files and folders. So, in an effort to save me (and hopefully you) some time in the future... here's how it's done.

To show hidden files, run the following command from the Terminal application: defaults write com.mozy.Config "BDSShowHiddenFilesKey" -bool YES (taken from http://support.mozy.com/docs/en-user-home-mac/guide/tasks/mac_hidden_files.html).

I just "flipped the switch", and this blog (which had been running MS SQL Server) is now running on MySQL.

If you see anything funky, or at least funkier than usual, please drop me a line.

I have a confession to make. I don't know what "Agile Programming" is. At least, I didn't before reading "Becoming Agile ... in an imperfect world" by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky (In the interest of full disclosure, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy from the publisher).

I'd heard the term before, but I didn't really know what it meant to be an Agile programmer. What comprises Agile? Is it an abstract concept or are there explicit steps to take in order to "get there". How do you know when you're "there"? More importantly, is it worth investing the time to become Agile?

I got as far as page 4 before two of my questions were already addressed (What components comprise Agile development, and how do I know that I've achieved Agile development?). I took that to be a good sign. A sign that the authors know who their audience is, and will do their best to deliver the answers that their readers are looking for.

It's been almost a month since Joe Rinehart, one of the superstars of the ColdFusion community, and an all-around good guy, revealed that his wife Dale had been recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

To get right to the point, some folks in the community got together and organized an effort to collect some funds to try and help offset the cost of medications and treatment. Please visit http://www.helpsupportjoeanddale.com to read a little bit more about the effort, and to help out if you can.

I know times are tough for many. I know there may be people saying, "That's really terrible and my heart goes out to them, but I've got problems of my own so I can't help out right now." I can sympathize with that. Hell, I can empathize with that. On the personal side of things, we're dealing with a house in FL that we've not been able to sell since we left over 2 years ago. It's pretty much devastated our finances. Believe me, I understand. I might even have thought that way myself. But here's a little story that might help explain why I'm going to do what I can (aside from "Every little bit helps", which is true, of course).

As much as I hate to do this, I'm getting tired of the loser(s) posting WoW spam links in the comments. I don't particularly mind cleaning 'em up... but for the 3 or 4 people that actually cared enough to subscribe to the blog... I really don't like the thought of them getting the spam in return.

At some point, I may look into incorporating Jake Munson's cfFormProtect or some other measure to try and eliminate the spam. But for now, between work and a couple of side jobs that I'm desperately trying to finish up, I simply don't have the time.

If anyone's interested, the spammer in question posted from the following IP addresses (updated 11 Dec 2008). Feel free to add 'em to your blacklist:

67.180.242.3
121.24.171.92
85.254.186.161
78.37.225.89
125.214.254.171
58.61.82.111
218.18.190.89
59.40.36.103
218.18.191.107
88.249.98.46
91.194.191.250
72.3.137.82
122.234.50.22
122.234.49.8
85.26.161.48
122.234.52.25
125.120.151.48
122.234.49.5
122.234.48.176
218.108.223.26

On one of my current projects, I needed to barcode a document (via CF) and subsequently read the barcode (again, via CF). The documents would be sent via fax and rerouted to the CF server.

Because of its durability, my client wanted to use a data matrix barcode. As luck would have it, Ryan Stille had already gone through the trouble of putting together a CFC for reading and generating data matrix barcodes (Thanks, Ryan!).

The CFC is a wrapper for some Java libraries that read and write barcodes. In the docs for the CFC, Ryan suggests a company called Java4Less.com. I grabbed evaluation versions of the appropriate libraries to ensure they'd work, which they did. I then instructed my client to go ahead and make the purchase and told him which 2 libraries we needed. Now, Java4Less offer up a few components and I've been a bit sleep deprived and long story short, one of the libraries that I told the client to purchase was not the correct library.