Azentek's Atlas CPC-1000 - In-Vehicle PC
One of things I'd love to upgrade in my Toyota 4Runner when I finish paying it off at the end of the year, is the radio. It's currently got a JBL Radio/Navigation system in it, but I've not been able to find an interface that for the radio which will allow me to connect an mp3 player to it. I could buy an FM modulator, but I really don't want to lose sound quality if possible.
However, I'd really love to get a stereo with native hard drive for mp3s, Sirius support (so I can get rid of my Sportster—which I like, but would prefer not to have to have it on the dash) and I'd like to have handsfree Bluetooth support.
MTube - The world's smallest ColdFusion Server?
There's always tons of stuff shown off at CES each year. This year VIA showed off a prototype of 3.5" x86 PC that was running Linux. 
They're promoting it as an advanced PMP, but I could definitely using it as some kind of portable server.
The specs I could find on Gizmodo list the following:
Processor: VIA C7-M @ 1.0 GHz
Storage: 8 GB Flash
Display: 2.8" LCD
Resolution: 640 x 480
Dimensions: 8.5 cm x 8.5 cm x 2 cm
Weight: 150 g
Battery Life: 4 hours
Connectivity: WiMAX & WiFi
Video Codecs: H.264, WMV, RMVB, MOV, FLV, DIVX
Mike Tomlin is an Iron man...
I really hate those Coors Light commercials where they've tried to re-factor NFL Coach's Post Game Conferences into something "funny"—at least I assume they're supposed to be funny. I don't know anyone who actually thinks the commercials are amusing in the least bit.
However, someone has been actually able to create a funny parody of the commercials in the Pittsburgh area. Perhaps it's only going to be funny to those who've lived in Pittsburgh, visit there frequently or are just a fan of the Steelers (I qualify for the last two.) Anyway, I found this parody to be much better put together. They've selected quotes from Coach Mike Tomlin that are much more fitting to the questions being asked. Well I think it's funny anyway!
Converting MSSQL XML to a native ColdFusion Query
Every now and again I have the need to test some code against against some live data. The reasons vary from simply trying to recreate a bug, testing a piece of code for performance or for testing a UI widget.
In the past the quick and dirty way I've done was to move a template into production that would perform the query and then convert the query object to WDDX. This would allow me to create a "copy" of the live data that I could port to development. The problem with this method is it makes you move temporary code to a production environment that you then have to remove.
Coworking in Columbus, OH
The other day I posted on working from home, isn't all it's cracked up to be and I mentioned Coworking. Turns out there is a Coworking movement going on in Columbus, OH. This group is still in their infancy, but they are in the process of trying to find some locations for office space.
I've signed up for the Columbus Coworking Google Group so I can monitor the progress. The concept of Coworking is something I definitely have interest in. The location of the office space is going to have a lot to do with how frequently I'd use the facilities, but it's something I could see myself using even if there was a bit of a commute (although it would limit my frequency of going.)
Working from home, isn't all it's cracked up to be...
Whenever the topic of my employment comes up, everyone's first reaction when I tell them I work from home is: "Wow, that must be really nice!" While working from home definitely has some benefits, it has some cons.
As Cameron Childress mentions in his post on Coworking in Atlanta, the two hardest things to adjust to are the lack of socialization and self motivation—both are issues Cameron and I have talked amongst ourselves about in the past.
Conan O'Brien's staff playing Rock Band
Pretty funny skit of the staff of Conan O'Brien playing the game Rock Band.
If this video gets pulled, just trying searching for it.
Using AntiSamy to protect your CFM pages from XSS hacks
I recently posted about a new open source Java project called AntiSamy—which allows you to protect your websites from XSS hacks. I also promised that I'd soon show you some code examples that show you how you can use AntiSamy within ColdFusion.
I've only tested this code under ColdFusion 8. It should theoretically work on any ColdFusion installation, provided you're using a JDK version that supports the compiled version of the AntiSamy code (which is compiled to Java v1.5.)
Before you can actually use AntiSamy, there are a few quick steps you need to make.
View recently run queries in MSSQL 2005
Pinal Dave posted this great little SQL snippet to view most recent queries executed in SQL Server 2005.
deqs.last_execution_time as [Time], dest.text as [Query]
from
sys.dm_exec_query_stats as deqs
cross apply
sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) as dest
order by
deqs.last_execution_time desc
This is definitely a useful SQL snippet to see what's just happened when you're in a pinch.
Protect yourself from XSS attacks using AntiSamy
An extremely common problem web developers face is protecting themselves from XSS exploits. Any webpage that takes input from a user and displays it is potentially at risk. The simplest way to protect yourself from this type of exploit is to remove anything that could interpreted as HTML by the browser—either by escaping the content or by using removing it altogether.
However, there are many use cases where you may want to allow a user to enter some HTML markup—to allow for basic formatting. Browser tools such as XStandard, FCKeditor and TinyMCE all provide developers with easy ways to provide users with rich text formatting capabilities, but allowing users to input HTML opens your site up to the possibility of XSS attacks.
The Dark Knight High Quality Trailer Online
Warner Brothers has finally released a high quality trailer of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. I'm a big fan of Nolan's work and Batman Begins might be the best actual movie that was based on a comic book character. Batman Begins doesn't feel like a typical "superhero" movie, it's much more driven by story and character development than we've seen in the past.
While I was really impressed with the way Michael Keaton's ability transform himself into Batman (which I admit, I was very skeptical of the casting) Christian Bale I think captures Batman better. Keaton was certainly the best of the Batmans in the original series of movies, but Bale was perfect casting for Nolan's vision of the film.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the new trailer.
Grand Theft Auto 4 Box Art Revealed...
Rockstar came up with a cool way to unveil the new box art for GTA4. They used a bunch of mural artists to draw the box art on a wall and then published the time lapsed video. I like how this approached worked.
Using Eclipse to restart your Web Server
Scott Stroz (who's always up for a round of golf) today asked How Do You Set Up Your Development Environment? In his article, he has an excellent tip for restarting your local install of Apache using an Ant script. This is a great tip and something I quite frankly never thought to do.
But what if you're using Windows and want to stop a service on remote server?
Eclipse Navigator Toolbar - "Link With Editor" button...
I have to admit, I only use a small portion of the features that are in Eclipse. That's because there are so many features that I often miss things, even buttons that stare me in the face everyday. I love Eclipse, it's a really powerful IDE and one of the most impressive uses of client-side Java that I've ever seen.
Yesterday Michael Henke posted a nice entry (complete with screenshots) on some of the features of the Eclipse Navigation Toolbar. I've used the "Go Into" feature quite a bit. If you have a large project that you're going to be working in exclusively, it's a nice way to keep your navigation tree to just the relevant files and folders.
However, I must admit that I've never taken the time to figure out what the "Link With Editor" button does. I've clicked it once or twice, but never saw an immediate purpose for the button. Thanks to Michael's post, I know now that the clicking the "Link With Editor" toggle button will cause the Navigation pane to automatically jump to the active file open in the current editor tab.
Since I often have many tabs open at once (sometimes even dozens) I can see this feature being useful. Especially since often related files are grouped together in my project.
Update on my JVM Heap problems in CF8...
A couple of days ago, I posted on how I was monitoring memory usage on a recently upgraded CF8 server. I was seeing a quite a bit of memory being tied up in the tenured generation portion of the JVM Heap that would steadily rise all day.
Since there were so many dramatic changes between ColdFusion MX 7 and ColdFusion 8, I wasn't sure if this really indeed was a "problem" or simple a difference in behavior. Afterall once the load on the server would reduce in the evening I'd see the tenured generation usage drop back down to an acceptable and more expected value.
Because this did have me concerned, I kept digging around server logs to see if I could find any clues to why I was seeing the memory usage climb. I then noticed that the ColdFusion8/runtime/logs/coldfusion-out.log files were getting tons and tons of activities. After opening up the log files, I noticed I had tons of errors like the following: