Charlie Griefer

The Nicest Thing Anybody's Said About Me in a Long Time...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:57:00 -0500

you're like the herpes of the internet, theres 50000000 CF forums and everytime i read a thread going "ah this is the issue i have, i really don't want to do it this particular way" there you are answering why you should do it like that, very annoying

The above was just IM'd to me by a friend. I think it might actually be a compliment of sorts.

On an unrelated note... sincere apologies for the lack of blog entries (and even more sincere apologies for resuming blogging with this particular entry). Suffice it to say, I've been busy, which is a "good thing" (tm). I do intend to get back to it, updating everybody with what's been going on (we moved... again), things I've learned about working from home, and of course, ColdFusion.

Stay tuned...

Flash Running on the iPhone

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:17:00 -0500

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...

Uninstalled Mozy or Carbonite on OS X? Read This.

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:13:00 -0500

A few months back I had tried out both Mozy and Carbonite for OS X. I wanted some assurance that if a comet crashed into my house, my files would survive. Long story short, neither of them really fit the bill, so I ended up uninstalling both of them.

Today, I was having some issues getting CF8 to start up. Checking the logs, I saw the following:

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Both applications were uninstalled cleanly. I was pretty surprised to find that there were processes still running (frequently) for both of them.

Some googling revealed the solution to removing 'em (run as sudo where needed):

launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mozy.backup.plist
rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mozy.backup.plist

launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.carbonite.launchd.carbonitealerts.plist
launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.carbonite.launchd.carbonitestatus.plist
rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.carbonite.launchd.carbonitealerts.plist
rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.carbonite.launchd.carbonitestatus.plist

Ah, much better. Seeing how poorly each of the uninstall processes actually worked makes me feel pretty good about no longer using either service.

To give due credit, https://www.georgestarcher.com/?p=177 detailed removing Mozy, and http://de-co-de.blogspot.com/2009/03/un-carbonite.html detailed removing Carbonite.

Thanks to both blogs for posting the information.

FlashCamp San Francisco: April 16th, 2010

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:25:00 -0500

Mike Chambers has officially announced FlashCamp San Francisco for the evening of April 16th, 2010 at the Adobe offices on Townsend Street.

What is it?

FlashCamp San Francisco is a free one night event hosted by Adobe covering everything you need to know about about the latest Flash Platform tools and technologies, including Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Flash CS5, Adobe Flash Builder 4 and mobile design and development.

Not only do you get to spend an evening with some of the top Flash talent in the area, but food and drink will be provided as well. How much would you expect to pay for all of this? Put your wallets away. The entire evening is yours for free.

If my math serves, this will be the 3rd FlashCamp at the location (the first was actually called FlexCamp), and these events have traditionally filled up very quickly. There's a very limited number of seats available, so do not hesitate. Register today!

TextMate - My New IDE of Choice

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:10:00 -0500

A little less than a year ago I made the switch to OS X and treated myself to a Macbook Pro. Just recently, I started working with the TextMate IDE on a current contract.

My first impression was less than stellar. Visually, TextMate is pretty spartan. Applications on OS X are supposed to be pretty (see Coda). TextMate is most decidedly not pretty. But as I'm starting to learn, she's got an amazing personality.

Sometimes it's the little things that hook you in. For the longest time, I put off learning jQuery. Didn't see the need. I'm pretty comfortable with JavaScript, and couldn't justify investing the time to learn a new way to write what I already knew how to write. Then I learned about .toggle(). I was sold. I hopped into bed with jQuery and I've not looked back.

Today, I was introduced to TextMate's equivalent of .toggle(). It may seem trivial, but it got me hooked, and hungry to learn more.

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Light Blogging - What's Been Going On

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:09:00 -0500

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.

Backing Up Hidden Files/Folders with Mozy

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:12:00 -0500

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).

jQuery - Ensuring Unique Usernames in Real Time

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:40:00 -0500

A question came up yesterday on the cf-talk mailing list. The question involved a user who is filling out a form and choosing a user name. The poster wanted to check in "real time" (after the blur event on the username input) that the name is unique.

As Steve "Cutter" Blades points out, this can be accomplished using Jörn Zaefferer's Validation Plugin for jQuery. This plugin is essentially the defacto standard for doing validations via jQuery. It can be implemented very easily to do the most basic validations, but it can also be extended to do any number of complex validations.

That being said, I thought it still might be worthwhile to see a quick example of how to build out that specific functionality from scratch. How can we use jQuery to give a user real-time feedback as to whether or not a username is available? Start with the markup below:

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Los Angeles Bound... MAX Here I Come

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:04:00 -0500

Finishing up some last-minute packing before heading off for Adobe MAX tomorrow morning.

Saving a few dollars (I think... the price of gas might actually prove otherwise) by driving instead of flying. I like the convenience of having a car at the conference. Provides a little bit of freedom for getting out and about.

I'll be picking up Sean Corfield at 9am. It'll be nice to share the ride as it's a pretty monotonous drive down I-5. Saturday night I'll be hitting a Dodgers game with Scott Stroz and Ray Camden, which should be a good time. I don't follow baseball, but I do enjoy getting out to a live game. I haven't done that since I went to a Diamondback game back in AZ.

Sunday morning, Scott and I are heading over to ESPN Zone to watch the Giants vs. Chiefs. Scott and I both grew up in NJ, and are both Giants fans. Getting to watch the game together is going to be a blast. If you're at the conference and want to meet up, we'll be there for the early game (10:00am). Depending on who's playing and who shows up, we may stay for the late games as well.

Sunday night is the Community Summit. This is my first year as a User Group Manager, and I'm really looking forward to meeting other managers and Community Experts.

Monday the conference starts in earnest. I expect that most of the time I'll be in the ColdFusion Unconference area. Ezra Parker and I are going to be doing what we can to help Ray make sure everything runs smoothly.

With the exception of the Max Bash on Tuesday night, evenings are open. I'm sure both open evenings will fill up. Scott and I talked about the possibility of a trip to Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills. Maybe Monday night? Any takers?

If you're going to be in town, come by the Unconference area and say hi. I look forward to seeing you there.

jQuery - A Traversal Quickie

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:37:00 -0500

Paraphrased from the jQuery mailing list:

I have a table with links inside of it. Each <tr> has a unique ID assigned to it. How can I get the ID of the <tr> that contains the link that was clicked?

The following code snippet was included:

<tr id="1">
    <td>Name</td>
    <td>E-Mail</td>
    <td><a href="#" class="accept">Accept</a></td>
</tr>

jQuery provides a number of DOM traversal methods. While the initial thought might be to go with parent(), that would get the <td> containing the link. You could double up on parent(), but that seems a bit kludgy (IMO).

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jQuery - What You Can do with the Data Method

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:06:00 -0500

A question came up yesterday on the jQuery mailing list where somebody wanted to effectively "embed" data into a link. They essentially wanted to call a function on click, but needed to pass arguments. Since jQuery is supposed to be unobtrusive (e.g. "Find Something, Do Something"), how can we tell jQuery that, when a specific link is clicked, there's specific data associated with that link?

The jQuery data() method allows you to do just that.

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ColdFusion and jQuery - New tutorial(s) on LearnCF.com (Part 3)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:54:00 -0500

The long-awaited and eagerly anticipated (by me) conclusion to my 3-part tutorial on learncf.com on using jQuery to return JSON data from a ColdFusion CFC.

The tutorial can be found here. When all is said and done, you'll have built this page, and hopefully you'll have a good (better?) understanding of how it all works.

As always, hit me up with questions or comments.

jQuery - Dynamically Adding Form Elements

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:34:00 -0500

You know the situation. You have a form with 'x' number of text inputs. Eventually, you realize 'x' may not be enough for all users. But in the interest of keeping the page clean, you don't want to arbitrarily continue to add these elements.

What you really want to do is show a minimal amount initially, and then give the user the option of adding as many more (within reason) as that particular user might need. You might go about doing that by creating 100 fields and setting their CSS display attribute to "none", while adding a slick JavaScript function to allow the user to display as many as they need. And that would work, but...

Why create any DOM elements that aren't going to be used? Wouldn't it be better to dynamically create an element and add it to the DOM as the user needs it? (Hopefully you're nodding in affirmation) Great! Let's do it with jQuery.

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Remembering

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:27:00 -0500

ColdFusion and jQuery - New tutorial(s) on LearnCF.com (Part 2)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:20:00 -0500

Part 2 of what is now a 3-part tutorial on using jQuery and ColdFusion has been posted to http://www.learncf.com.

To recap, Part 1 showed how to use jQuery's getJSON() method to pull data from Twitter's public API.

The current installation shows how to use that same getJSON() method to pull data from a ColdFusion CFC method, and output it to the current page.

A future installment will add some bells and whistles using various jQuery methods including show(), hide(), fadeIn(), fadeOut() and the new-in-jQuery1.3 live() method.

Check out the latest installment at http://tutorial43.learncf.com/. As always, I look forward to your comments or questions.