Another Lab Puppy?
Jenn and I are thinking of getting another Labrador puppy. We went back to the breeder yesterday as one of Maddie's older sister's, Trixie, just had a litter with the same father as Maddie. (Trixie had the same mother as Maddie, Lulu, but a different father.) We took Maddie with us and we all seemed to bond with the same female. Maddie was very gentle with her and the breeder immediately said he thought Maddie would end up "adopting" the new puppy as hers. It was very precious to see the interaction between the two. We will have probably made a decision by tonight as to what we're going to do. The puppy wouldn't be ready until around Thanksgiving.
Macromedia Flex ("Royale") Officially Announced
Macromedia official released some public information on Royale this morning. The new official name is "Macromedia Flex." There's a brief online presention done in Breeze which you can view—it gives an overview of the product, how to use it and where it fits in.
They've also released a "white paper" and several other articles at the Macromedia Flex home page.
For more information, see the official press release.
Macromedia to Join ECMA International
Macromedia announces today they've formally applied for membership to ECMA International. This is the organization that oversees ECMAScript (ECMA-262 and ISO/IEC 16262)—which is widely referred to as JavaScript (Microsoft JScript, Macromedia ActionScript, etc.)
For more information, see the official press release.
Funkiness w/CFC's "OUTPUT" attribute...
Matt Liotta brought up an interesting point about CFC in CFMX. It's been discovered that the OUTPUT attribute in the <CFFUNCTION> tag, when used to declare a method in a CFC, actually operates as a "tri-state boolean" value—meaning the default value does something different than the behavior if either true or false is specified.
In a nutshell, if you leave the OUTPUT attribute out, the code is processed just like any other CFML is—you need <CFOUTPUT> tags surrounding any variables you want processed and white space is generated as normal. However, if true is passed to the OUTPUT attribute, than all code inside the <CFFUNCTION> tag is implicitly invoked inside a <CFOUTPUT> tag. Lastly, if false is specified as the value for the OUTPUT attribute, than everything inside the <CFFUNCTION> tag is implicitly invoked inside of a <CFSILENT> tag—meaning nothing is outputted.
Here's a some sample code that illustrates the differences. This code is courtesy of Barney Boisvert from the CFCDev Mailing List:
qForms Mentioned In Some New Books...
It's recently come to my attention that some of my work is has been getting some mention in various forms of press as of late. The last issue of the ColdFusion Developer's Journal (Volume: 05 Issue: 10) has the second part of a two part article which is based upon the DTS article I posted a while back on PengoWorks.com.
Also, much to my surprise I found mention of my qForms JSAPI in a couple of books while browsing the bookstore the other day. The following books mention me:
Title: Reality ColdFusion: Intranets and Content Management
Author(s): Ben Forta
ISBN: 0321124146
Publisher: Macromedia Press
First peek at Sony Portable PSP?
After months of speculation, Sony unveiled a single piece of concept art which indicates what its forthcoming PSP game deck might look like. At Sony's Corporate Strategy Meeting, held today in New York City, the concept art of the PSP showed a thin, rounded rectangular handheld game deck with a 4.5-inch 16:9 letterbox LCD screen, sporting a snap-on cover and hand lanyard.
PSP CPU Core
MIPS R4000 32-bit core
128-bit bus
1-333MHz (1.2V)
8MB eDRAM main memory
2.6Gbps bus bandwidth
FPU, VFPU (2.6 billion flops)
3D graphics extended instructions
I Cache, D Cache
USB Storage Watch...
I found this watch while searching for KVMs. I've seen other products highlighted, but this is the first one I've seen for sale. It's an interesting idea, but I think that USB cable could be problematic. However, I definitely could see this being a useful tool for a system administrator who's constantly having to load stuff on different PCs on the network. It could also be extremely useful to someone needing to transfer files from work to home on a daily basis.
Another Nice Day...
Well, it's another nice day today. It's in the mid-70s here in Columbus, OH—which is pretty darn rare for mid-November around here. Anyway, with the nice weather I decided to spend my lunch hour at the park w/Maddie (whom by the way just turned 1 on 11/1.) Anyway, Monica and Nicholas decided to join us since the weather was so nice. I got some cute pictures of Nicholas on the swing set.
I also got around to updating my photoalbum today with the pictures from Salt Fork, Trick-or-Treat, Maddie's Birthday and of course from the Park today..
Harley's New Look...
While this probably isn't groundbreaking news to any of you motorcycle enthusiasts out there, I saw one of these on the road for the first time coming home from Salt Fork last weekend. This picture doesn't do the bike justice—this bike looks really sweet in person. I was really enamored when it passed Jenn and I on the road. I had to catch up with it just to get a couple of more good looks at it.
I really like what Harley-Davidson has done with this model. I'm sure some Harley purists out there won't like it, but I think the design is fresh, slick, gorgeous and yet it keeps the Harley feel. Kudos to the designers on this model!!!
Trick-or-Treat, Smell My Feet; I'm Going On A Cruise!
Well, Thursday night was "Beggar's Night" (aka "Trick or Treat Night") here in Hilliard. A decent turn out, but I think less than last year. It was real busy from like 6:15 to 6:45, but pretty did the rest of the time (5:30pm to 7:30pm.) I still have way too much candy left over. Around 6:45 I was telling kids to take handfuls of it (instead of keeping things to a couple of pieces per child.)
Anyway, Monica brought Nicholas by for in his little "Dino" outfit. That kids is down right adorable. He knew where the candy was supposed to go—he'd take some candy from the bowl and place it in his bag. He also spent a good deal of the time passing out candy between Monica, Jenn and me. At one point Monica had taken his shoes and socks off (so he'd be more comfortable,) we all made a that's stinky face and sound and he got a big kick out of it. So periodically he'd balance carefully on one foot and stick the other in the air and we'd all make a big fuss about his stinky feet—he would just laugh and laugh. Kids can be great fun at times.
While, Jenn and I both made arrangements to go on our first cruise (together) today. My parent's were able to get a special deal through a conference they're attending and we went ahead and booked the cabin next to them. It's a 7 day (from Jan 11-18) Western Caribbean cruise that starts in Tampa Bay and hits Grand Cayman, Costa Maya, Cozumel and Belize. We'll be on a Carnival Inspiration "Fun Ship." It should be a blast. I've always wanted to go on a cruise, so that's one more thing off my "to-do" list. I also would love to go on an Alaskan cruise some day. Anyway, Jenn and I are extremely excited about this trip.
Dream Theater "As I Am" Official Download
Dream Theater has released the full version of the single "As I Am" for download on their site! The full version is way better than the radio edit. I didn't care much for the song on the first couple of listens, but then I realized I kept singing the song to myself afterwards. The song has really grown on me.
Dream Theater: Train of Thought Preview...
The German version of Warner Brother's site has posted some audio samples of Dream Theater's new album, Train of Thought. I think this album is going to be pretty controversial amongst die hard Dream Theater fans. The preview sound quite a bit different from any studio work I've heard from them in the past.
A radio mix of "As I Am" is also been released to radio station (and subsequentially has made it's way on the 'net.) I didn't like the radio edit of "As I Am" much, but I did get to hear a sneak peak of the unedited album version and the full version of the song rocks. I can't wait to hear the rest of the album. The preview of "This Dying Soul" soul reminds me a bit of old Iron Maiden—especially the opening riff of the clip. I love hearing new music from my favorite bands...
Weekend at Salt Fork State Park
Jenn and I spent the weekend at Salt Fork outside of Cambridge, OH this weekend. Her parents were there camping in their new R/V and we stayed at a cabin in the park. The weather was overall excellent—it was pretty cold Friday night and rained all day Sunday—but the weather Friday and Saturday was really nice. The skies were extrodinarily clear Friday night—I really enjoyed sitting around the fire telling stories.
We saw lots of deer out Friday night. I'll post the pictures to my photoalbum soon.
Kid's Play
Ok, I feel old. This were all great games—many of the old arcade games I still prefer to the newer ones. I now understand why so many kids have attention deficit disorders.
Would today's tykes tolerate the classic games you grew up with? Kids do say the darndest things in this uncut version of an EGM article—now with a bonus game not included in the original story!
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Well, I'm sitting here at my desk on my last day. As always, it feels to odd to be leaving a place you've spent a number of years working at. I suppose I'd feel better if I was leaving on my own will, but the fact that we just moved buildings and am now in a little cubicle, makes leaving a little less painful. I'm actually a little excited and nervous about the future. I've been fortunate enough to build a number of contacts over the past 8-9 years while doing web development for/with different companies, so I'm hoping some of those contacts will pay off while contracting.
I have many good memories of my time with my soon to be ex-employer, but the last 12-18 months haven't been a cakewalk. It's really gone down hill here, so from that aspect I'm glad to get out of the environment. There's not many people I know left who want to stay—everyone is trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. I've said many times in the past 3 months that Joel (my other co-worker who was kept onboard to help shut down the all the services) that in many regards we were lucky. Unlike most people who get laid off, we had a good amount of time to try to prepare ourselves financially and we at least know what our future holds. The people who are left are all very worried about their jobs. No one feels that their jobs will be around much longer—and unfortunately their probably right. Even before the second round of layoffs, I told people here that our parent organization would slowly dissolve our company into theirs and they'd drop our name all together. We're already starting to see obvious signs of this merger—from them moving their employees to our payroll budget and them combining all of our HR resources to the fact that new literature is starting to show up with their name on it. Reminds me quite a bit of MCI/WorldCom or AOL/TimeWarner (both of which are now dropping part of their names—for obvious reasons.)
Anyway, there are still people who work here that I respect and call friends (and I few whom I am glad I don't have to work with again.) A group of us "old timers" (current and past employees) got together last night to celebrate our new stages in life. The group of us meet occasionally and we're trying to make it a regular event.