There's so much Astroturfing Down Under, it's un-australian

Just a quick post, my friend Tom who is a passionate anti-pokies blogger and campaigner wrote a great piece
over on ABC's The Drum about how Poker machine reforms won't work? Don't bet on it

Reading his piece, I was reminded of this video which puts it all in perspective

How I got started in ColdFusion

Just a quick post, on today's Coldfusion meme - How I got started in ColdFusion

I first started with Coldfusion 2.0 back in 1996 whilst working in my first IT job
at a recruitment agency. I had been playing with assembler, basic, html and C on all sorts
of platforms from CP/M, SunOS, Linux and PC's.

I was tasked with developing a website for the company, to post available jobs and allow
candidates to upload resumes. I had started working with Perl, but soon was getting
annoyed at Perl as it wasn't a great solution for building websites.

One night I was at home, surfing on dialup and I found a link to Allaire Coldfusion 2.0
on a shareware website. It was amazing stuff compared to Perl. Wanna send an email,
wrap it in CFMAIL, wanna do a query, wrap the SQL in CFQUERY. I was sold.


After I left that company, I signed up for an Advanced Coldfusion course which turned
out to be more like a Coldfusion 101. I filled out the feedback form afterwards with some
pretty strong but expletive free language.

About a week later, the Australian Distributor for Allaire, called me up while I was at a friends
place and told me I had been given a full refund and the offered me the Job as the Australian
ColdFusion Trainer. I contemplated it for a while and decided I'd rather cut code and build
apps than train people.

I'm still using it all these years later! 

Update: I just remembered, Google even evaluated CF back in the day,
but didn't like the <CFELSE> tag coz you couldn't parse CFML with an XML parser...

Paul Keating on Economic Reform, Pricing Carbon and Tony Abbott's so called "Direct Action" policy

Solipse 2001, Zambia, 10 year Anniversary, Digital Edition

Tony Abbott supports a Carbon Tax!

Say Yes Rally 5 June 2011

Sydney: Prince Alfred Park, 11 am
Melb: Outside the State Library, 11 am
Adelaide: Victoria Square, 11 am
Brisbane: Riverstage, 1pm
Perth: Perth Cultural centre - Wetlands stage, 11am
Hobart: Franklin Square, 11am
Canberra: Regatta Point
(near the bridge), 1.30pm

Coldfusion: Slow ImageResize problem SOLVED

Sometimes, the built in Coldfusion Image functions can take a very long time to resize a jpeg image, like 20-30 minutes.

This is caused by ICC colour profiles, which really should be supported by an Adobe Product.

The quick solution is to use Imagemagick to strip out the ICC colour profile.

It's also a good idea to force the RGB colour space, as CMYK is also not handled.

C:\Program Files (x86)\ImageMagick-6.7.0-Q16\convert.exe
src_with_icc_profile.jpeg -colorspace rgb +profile 'icc' icc_stripped.jpeg

You can also use identify.exe with the -verbose option to detect ICC profiles, although it is a bit slow, 2-3s.

Adobe Coldfusion Builder 2 pricing down under is a JOKE

Adobe announces they have released Coldfusion Builder 2 today, but the Australian pricing is a sick joke.

List price in the US is $299, but in Australia for download only is $407 ex GST.

Now I'm not sure if the Adobe folks realise, but our dollar is worth more than USD!

Today, via xe.com  USD $299 is actually only $274 AUD

Adobe has a loyal group of Australian CF developers, treating us like this is a sick JOKE

MapGuide 2.2 has been released

Just a quick post, Trevor announced on the MapGuide-Users mailing list that 2.2 has been released.

Release notes and download links

Builds are available for Windows 32 bit & 64 Bit, CentOS 5.4 / RedHat 5.4 / Ubuntu 9.10 32 Bit 

It was a very long release cycle, but we wanted to ensure a high quality release.

I encourage anyone using an older version of MapGuide to upgrade.

Also, please don't ask support questions on my blog, direct them to the MapGuide-Users mailing list
*AFTER SEARCHING THE ARCHIVES FIRST*

MapGuide 2.3 optional subversion install for web tier (RFC 111)

Thanks to the 25 people who answered the MapGuide Source Control Survey Survey, the results were considered by the last Mapguide PSC meeting where RFC 111 was discussed and voted on. 

RFC 111 was adopted, a subversion checkout will be available as an option in the installer for the next major release 2.3. This allows quick deployment of new features/bug fixes for the MapGuide Viewer web apps.
This will be all managed by the user, so if you don't want to use this feature, you can either simply choose not to install it, or just install it anyway, but never do a subversion update. 

Here are the survey results:

Q1:Which versions of MapGuide are you using in production? 

2.2 (MGE 2011)					13	41.94%
2.1 (MGE 2010)					12	38.71%
Classic 6.x					3	9.68%
2.3					2	6.45%
2.0 (MGE 2009)					1	3.23%

Q2:What is you background with GIS? 

I'm a programmer who uses GIS					16	64%
Other Option					4	16%
I studied Geomatics					4	16%
I'm a novice with no programing or spatial background					1	4%

Q3: What source control systems have you worked with? 

Subversion					14	46.67%
CVS					8	26.67%
What is source control?					4	13.33%
Git					3	10%
Other Option					1	3.33%

Q4:Which MapGuide Viewer do you use? 

AJAX Viewer					13	54.17%
Fusion / Flexible Layouts					6	25%
Other Option					5	20.83%

 
Q5: Have you modified the viewer code in your installation? 

Yes					17	70.83%
No					7	29.17%

Q6:Would you like to have minor bug fixes and improvements available via Subversion?  

Yes					19	79.17%
I don't care					3	12.5%
No					2	8.33%

Q7:Have you ever manually deployed a bug fix for MapGuide? 

No					14	58.33%
Yes					10	41.67%

Q8:Have you ever upgraded Fusion using a version from the Fusion Website? 

No					15	60%
Yes					7	28%
I wanted to, but it was too hard					2	8%
Fusion has a website?					1	4%

Q9:Finally, have you ever avoided upgrading to the latest MapGuide release because of your customised code? 

Yes					11	45.83%
No					11	45.83%
I have never customised any MapGuide code					2	8.33%

Oracle Reserved Words System Table

If you ever need to check if a column name is a reserved word in Oracle, you can get the list using this query

select keyword from v$reserved_words