coldfusion 8 released

July 30th is a good day. I've been 30 for 4 days. I'm with the girl of my dreams. Life is good.

And now CF 8 has been launched. I'm busy downloading it now! Just in time for one of my major projects starting, which was done in CF 7. CF 7 didn't work easily on my intel mac, but CF 8 is a universal binary, and the beta installed and worked just great. So now I have successfully moved across entirely to my mac.

Even though my main area of focus is now PHP and Symfony, I guess I'll always have a soft spot for CF. And will continue to develop in it if the demand is there.

Watch this space for the new Auction Explorer Books site in Symfony, and the new MISA site in ColdFusion; all due this year (before Leopard!). Like I said, life is good.

another funny

OK, we're gonna focus on Christopher Walken, because, everyone loves him, and also, cos he's hilarious. You can't not like the guy.

So, first check out the cooking lesson, then trundle over to Kevin Spacey doing a Christopher Walken impression as he tries for the role of Han Solo.

automator

Just a quick note to you mac users, once again the other day I was blown away by some standard mac features, this time it was by the little OS X robot called Automator.

I had some music backed up, a double disc-set and I needed to rename all the files, to prepend them with the singer's name. I could have sat and clicked through and taken 8 minutes (pfff, not likely), I could have written a shell script (but I don't do that much) - so I tried automator. It was easy, and I was done in under 3 minutes. Most of the time was figuring it out. I did it again to show someone and it took me seconds...

So, check out automator, one of the little things jammed into a mac which helps with mundane repetitive tasks. After all, repetitive tasks are what a computer should be good at!

Some download-able scripts are available here. Or use the built in steps and play around...

survivalphrases.com

I've recently been exploring some podcasts through iTunes and have found an overwhelming number of helpful lessons, discussions and tips! Podcasting is not exactly new stuff, but I'm finding the quality of these free lessons remarkable. One I discovered today, in my quest to learn Vietnamese was one from survivalphrases.com. They offer free audio lessons, and give you the option of paying for premuim material (a downloadable PDF, some bonus lessons, etc). I haven't bought it yet, but have downloaded the lessons and found them very good.

Also found some Russian lessons. Search iTunes store for "spoonful of Russian" and you should find it. There are many languages to choose from. But my joy with iTunes doesn't stop there - there are many IT related podcasts too! My favourites are the Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast, Apple Quick Tip of the Week, php|architect's Pro PHP Podcast.

There are also free lectures and discussions available from iTunes U, or iTunes University.

at last!!!

This news made me want to cry big fat tears of joy! Something South Africans have all heard about, experienced while travelling, and if you're like me, dreamed of for years now: inexpensive REAL broadband! People, this is the real thing, I repeat, this is not a drill! Check it out:

2009 target for undersea fibre optic link
Seacom has awarded the SEA Cable System supply contract to Tyco Telecommunications, a business unit of Tyco Electronics. The 13 000km project will involve the construction of the undersea fiber optic network providing high capacity bandwidth connectivity between South Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, India, the Middle East and Europe.

http://www.it-online.co.za/content/view/108384/142/

friend hit by a taxi

We all know that enough is enough when it comes to taxi's on the South African roads... but it's only when something comes close to home that we get shocked awake. A fellow cyclist and friend was plowed through by a taxi two weeks ago, he survived, in much pain, and has been in hospital for two weeks. He was riding on the side of the road in Sunninghill on the road that borders Leeukop Prison and the Seventh Day Adv. church. This is his story: He heard the taxi behind him hooting, so he climbed off his road bike and started moving off the road when he was struck. The rest of the story was told to him by an eye witness because he only came to about 30 minutes later. The taxi stopped a few hundred metres down the road because he was dragging the bicycle. He climbed out, removed the bike and started walking back to my friend. He then saw that another car had stopped to help, turned, ran back to his taxi and sped off.

FG (my friend) came to when the people who stopped started helping him up to take him to hospital. He had a severe concussion because his helmet's strap had snapped and he had a full blow to the head when he hit the ground. He had also lost most of his front teeth. He's alive, and I thank God for that, but I am filled with an anger at this injustice. Because no one saw the driver, or got the license plate, the police discouraged him from opening a case.

It's as if taxi drivers (the guilty ones I'm referring to) see themselves as freedom fighters, using their taxi's as weapons, carrying weapons too in some cases. Taking on even cops if they get too authoritarian. And it's not getting any better. Doing nothing doesn't make it go away. I really don't know what the answer is, how do you get people to grow a conscience?

So, while our government is working very hard at the task of clamping down on smokers and people who discipline their children... it seems it's up to the minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to face up to the reality of crime in our nation, all while taxi drivers rampantly plow down the innocent. Something is wrong people, something is very wrong.

my new site

Well, it was due for years now, and I've finally done it. I designed, built and wrote the content to this in 2 hours, so if you notice any problems, please let me know!

http://www.assemble.co.za

If you haven't clicked the above, then I dare you.

Comments welcome, and you don't need to be nice. And yes, it's only HTML and CSS, no fancy stuff. Built using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3, and Textmate. Right, Over and out.

better than quicktime!

For a while now I've been struggling to see some various avi codecs using quicktime. Stuff that just works nicely on my windows box just seems to be riddled with headaches on my mac. Well last night I discovered a little app called the VLC player.

How this happened: 1) Quicktime moaned that it couldn't play the movie correctly, so it sent me to the Quicktime site. Fortunately, I knew it was an XVID codec I needed (see, before, I didn't actually know - surely Quicktime should also tell us WHICH codec we need, not just send us to a list of 10 Quicktime plugins saying "pick a codec, any codec... oops, wrong codec").

2) I went to the XVID site, and downloaded the plugin, but at the same time I saw a link to another video player, suddently the mist started to clear and the sun came out and a chorus played in the background (it was late).

3) I downloaded this app also, and found my Quicktime plugins didn't solve the problem, so I installed VLC and happily forgot about Quicktime. What's great is that it is also multi platform, and responds to the Apple remote control too (Windows Media doesn't!).

It also supports Windows Media formats, and does a much better job than the Windows Media Player 9 for Mac. I'm impressed, so check it out.

anti-virus: ClamXav and ClamAv

Although the mac is reputed to have few or no viruses (a few have been made as proof of concept but they aren't really comparable to what windows users experience), it's better to take precautions. I've recently installed ClamXav, which came on one of the MacFormat DVD's. It's a freeware Anti-Virus for Mac. It comes from another project called ClamAv, which is for other platforms. It works well and you can also set up schedules to do a Virus scan, as well as a Sentry, which can watch certain directories always (for example your mail attachment or Downloads folder).

Now, although the risk is less for us mac users, we should be responsible and allow this to apprehend Viruses that could otherwise be passed on in an email to our colleagues or friends. It's like paying your TV license, it's the right thing to do.

the little coding factory comes to life...

The first training workshop on Saturday was a great success. We jammed 10 people into my little flat to learn web development, starting with HTML. 5 people couldn't make it, which means next workshop might need to be in a new venue!

To backtrack a bit, the idea behind this free training is to equip people who want to get into web technologies with the necessary skills so that they can become available for work. There is already a lot of interest in using the students for non-profit and corporate work, and two potential job interviews await the best.

The manual is available online here. More manuals will be done as we progress.

If you are interested in using the newly produced web developers for your own corporate or charity project, contact me directly.