I haven't actually announced it yet, but I'll be speaking next month at the Coldfusion conference cf.objective. My topic will be about using the open source Farcry CMS as a content management system for building websites.

This morning I got an email from Judith Dinowitz (the PR manager for cf.objective 2006 and well-known author for many articles on House of Fusion) that the cf.objective conference made the news today on PRWeb and Google News.

Here's a snippet from the article:

cf.Objective() (http://www.cfobjective.com), the first ColdFusion conference of 2006, is the only conference to focus solely on advanced ColdFusion topics and object oriented concepts. On March 11-12, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ColdFusion programmers from all over the world will gather to learn to incorporate sophisticated techniques and Enterprise-level concepts into their ColdFusion programming.

I see this question again and again, "How can I get the latest bleeding edge release of Farcry CMS?"

Many people don't have access to using a CVS client, don't know how to use one, or just don't want to. Well, now you can download the Farcry CMS nightly builds from my website.

The system checks the CVS server daily at 5:00 AM EST. If new file(s) exist the server gets them and adds them to the zip file. If no new files exist, it leaves the ZIP file alone. So you can just check the file date (shown on the website) to see if a newer version exists.

Please note that these are not officially released by Daemon as stable releases and you use them at your own risk. As always, if you are using these files to upgrade over an existing version of Farcry make sure to backup your database and farcry files first.

Download page

Go to Google Video to see the commercials for Super Bowl XL. They also have the GoDaddy commercials that were not accepted to be aired.

I don't know about you, but I thought the Window Washer was GoDaddy's best one (gosh darn censors).

A client of mine has an immediate opening for a full time ColdFusion developer in West Hartford Connecticut. This is not through me. You'd be working directly for the client. This is an onsite position (you must be able to be onsite daily).

The client uses ColdFusion 7 and MS SQL server (and some MSAccess) on a Windows platform.

If interested, send me an email and I can discuss further details.

Bryan and Michael have done it again. The authors and DJs of www.coldfusionpodcast.com have once again delivered a well-spoken ColdFusion podcast chockfull of CF goodness.

In episode 9 they breakdown the intricacies of application.cfc and discuss some of its finer details. This is really helpful for CF developers who have not yet delved into using application.cfc to replace the old (but still supported) application.cfm file.

Go check it out and make sure to listen to their older episodes if you haven't yet.

I was just reading a post on Seth Duffey's blog about using ColdFusion custom tags to output common headers and footers.

Although I don't disagree using custom tags for reusable logic (and layout), I don't totally agree with his method for the situation he setup.

In his example he wanted to express that using an include tag to output his header and footer did not allow him to pass variables to the included file (not without setting some global variables). So his solution was to make a custom tag and to output it using the following format:

The problem I have with this is that in order to call the file I have to either have it in my global custom tags folder (or one that I have setup in the ColdFusion administrator) or I need to have the file in the same folder as the calling file.

Using the traditional format <CF_myTag> does solve many needs; however CFMX has two tags that can help alleviate many headaches when using custom tags.

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Last night my wife surprised me with an early Christmas present (a video iPod). She found a great deal on www.edealinfo.com and unfortunately had to have me decide by today whether or not to keep it in order to get the rebate in time.

You betcha I'm keeping it :). I may be a first time owner (and user) to an iPod, but I use iTunes for all my MP3s and podcasts. So as soon as I got the iPod drivers installed and restarted iTunes it immediately started downloading all of my songs and videos (podcasts). An hour or so later (yeah, I have a lot of media files) I was in business.

Now, I may have never used an iPod (seriously. I've never even tried one), but I can safely say that the people at Apple know what they're doing. It took me a whole 10 seconds to figure it out. Sure, there are plenty of things I'm going to need to learn (features and other benefits), but I'm still amazed at how quickly I was able to start playing my media without having to read a manual.

Yup, you heard it here first. They haven't officially announced it on their website yet, but you can get it here in your language of choice.

Update: Mozilla has officially announced its released.

Also: I've been informed that some Mac users browsing the getfirefox.com page (or the new www.mozilla.com page) are getting "garbled text". If this happens to you I suggest trying the original link I provided earlier (as long as Mozilla doesn't take it down).

Last month I mentioned a website award I received for a website I worked on earlier this year (Middlesex Hospital). Well that website has once again won an award.

This time the award is from Strategic Health Care Communications (SHCC) in the category of Best Site Design.