Note: This blog post is from 2017. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.I thought it may be useful to gather up a categorized listing of my most (seemingly) helpful/resourceful blog posts of the past year, to help others be aware of them (and indeed to help me be reminded).
Note: This blog post is from 2012. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Following up my last blog entry (highlighting the top 10 most-viewed entries for my blog this year), here's a listing instead of all the entries I've done this year, if it may help someone more easily review if they missed any that might be interesting.
I present the list in two forms: first, just a list of all the entries (31 of them), and second, broken down by category, in case some category may be more interesting to you.
Here are the 31 entries, in descending order by date.
Note: This blog post is from 2012. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.As the year comes to a close, many bloggers take a moment to document the most-viewed entries of the year on their blog. In that spirit, here are the top-viewed entries of the year for my blog.
I have more to say about the list (and such lists) below, but for those who like to "get to the point", here's the list:
Note: This blog post is from 2010. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.This could be very interesting. Starting today at 4pm EST, and over the next few weeks, the "Mura Show" (a weekly online user group for Mura CMS) will dedicate a few episodes to focus on the conversion of my site, CArehart.org.
In this post, let me introduce the plan.
Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Here's something I thought interesting. I just realized that Max 2008 marks the 25th CF conference I've been selected to speak at. I'm not talking about 25 conference, sometimes many years for each: I'm talking about 25 differently named conferences. I'll bet some people would be surprised to learn we've even HAD at least 25 differently named national and regional CF conferences over the years. :-) We have, and let's take a look.
I mentioned last night my delight in learning that I'd been selected to speak at Adobe Max later this year. It got me thinking: that was the one remaining major CF conference that I'd not yet spoken to over the last 10 years. I mentioned that I'd spoken at the MM and Allaire Devcons before it, but as I looked back in my records (carehart.org/presentations/, and elsewhere), I was surprised to see just how many there had been.
I can now say that (as of July 2008) I've been selected to speak at:
Sadly, a lot of them were one-off events, but I always want to support conference organizers. (No one at the first CFUN would ever have imagined it would turn into CFUnited, for instance.)
And while I was invited to speak at CFSouth in 2001, I ended up being unable to attend due to my father's passing the weekend before.
I should note that there are still a couple more conferences that I didn't make or haven't made. No slight intended in not mentioning them. I'm just listing those I did speak at.
Considering that I've spoken at some conferences for multiple years, that makes over 45 appearances total. And it's still more presentations, really, since I've often presented more than one topic at a single conference. Then if we count repeated sessions...it's been a lot of talks.
And of course, that's all in addition to all the presentations I've given to, wow, I count now nearly 60 different user groups around the country (and internationally) during the past 11 years! All told, again since I've often presented to a single user group more than once over the years, it looks like I've given nearly 200 presentations total across all CF user groups and conferences. (And that's not counting other conferences like SQL Pass, MS CodeCamps, Wireless Devcons, and then several other IT conferences during my 15 years prior to getting into CF in 1997.)
And I'm happy to say that they've not all been the same talk! :-) It's been nearly 80 different topics!
If anyone's interested in the details of the talks, I list nearly all of them (with titles, descriptions, dates, locations, and links to the slides) at my site's presentations section. I can say that some are as valuable today as years ago, since I sometimes still point them to to people looking for discussion of a given topic (sometimes I've never ended up writing an article on a topic that I presented as a speaker.)
I don't say any of this to brag. Not at all. It's really just rather unusual when one has a chance to stop and look back on their career (other than when writing a resume.)
You just do things day in and day out, and often you never realize how much you can accomplish with a slow and steady pace. Same with the more than 60 articles I've done, too. You just don't notice the pace while you're in the middle of it. Like the journey of a 1,000 steps, it all begins with the first. In that respect, I'd like to encourage any who've thought of giving a talk or writing an article to *just do it*. You never know where that first step may lead. :-)
Anyway, again, it's really nice to add Max as the capstone to this list. Thanks to all the organizers and attendees who've supported my presentations over the years.
For a real time warp, you can find out more about the various conferences I mentioned (including seeing speaker lists, topics, pictures, and more) at the CFConf.org site, which lists them all going back to 1998.
Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Have you started using the CF 8 debugger? Either way, you may have noticed that the documentation on it is rather sparse. Fortunately, there's a relatively new and substantial (25-page) resource that's available online in the form of a PDF.
In the ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit Volume 2: Application Development, I had the honor of doing the chapter on the CF8 debugger. If I do say so myself, I think that it's a really complete introduction both to installing, configuring, and using the debugger, along with many tips, tricks, and traps--perhaps even a better one-stop resource than the docs themselves.
Best of all, it's one of the chapters that's been made available online. There was fear that Volume 2 would be too big and so a few chapters (mostly on older topics) were put into a 550 page PDF. My chapter is near the back of this PDF.
Also, note that if you have the print version of the book, it's technically chapter 52 of volume 2, but you won't see these online chapters listed in its table of contents. Instead, they appear in the TOC at the start of vol 3 (long story)
Sadly, I couldn't get permission to just cut out this one chapter, so you do need to get the full PDF. You should be able to easily jump to the starting page (using Ctrl-Shift-n), which is page 467 in the PDF, despite the table of contents on the first page which lists it at 471. And of course, you can print just selected pages from a PDF as well.
Either way, I hope you get great value out of the information offered. I'd really welcome your feedback.
(PS I mentioned last week that I'd also done an article on the CF8 debugger in the FusionAuthority Quarterly Update, in their recent CF8 Special Edition. Unfortunately, the FAQU articles are not available online.)
Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.How many times have you wondered about what options are available to you as a CF developer for things like WYSIWYG editors, CMSs, DBs, & tools for blogging, query building, load testing and much more? Or you've seen others ask, and have started digging around search engines or old mailing list threads to recall a list of them that you have in mind. Well, I've long kept such a meta-list for myself and am now sharing it with everyone at:
http://www.carehart.org/resourcelists/tools_to_consider/
Actually, it's a list I started back in 2002 and hosted until recently at my old systemanage.com site. While the info there ranges from a couple to several years old (though still nearly all useful), this list was one thing I continued to update.
I just decided this weekend to pull it out to my Carehart.org site. Bookmark it and point others to it when you need to find such tools.
I know some will say, "don't you know about Brian Rinaldi's list?", and of course I do and I reference it there. The lists really are different, as I don't limit myself to only open-source tools. In fact, I don't limit it only to tools written in CF. Rather, I list them and tools (and services) written in other languages, but that may be useful to CFML developers. (And while there's some cross-over between my list and his, I'm not interested in just sucking out things he has that I don't. Instead, I point to his matching categories in each of mine, so you can check that out for still more alternatives.)
I don't claim that it's the ultimate list of all tools in each category. I may even have some glaring ommissions. I welcome additions there, as I repeat several times on the page. I will also be glad to add new categories if suitable.
In moving it here, I've placed it in a new Resource Lists page, where I also now point to other such resource lists and compendium-style blog entries that I've long kept (and others still to come). More about them in another entry to come.
Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Ever felt stumped trying to solve a CF problem? You've tried everything? Searched the web? Asked on forums and lists, and you're still stuck? Or maybe you're just pressed for time.
Maybe you've wished you could hire someone with more experience but can't justify a high hourly rate. Of course, with so many web tools available to share a desktop, travel need no longer be a significant issue. Sometimes, it could help to simply have someone "look over your shoulder" via the web to resolve a problem.
Recognizing all those challenges, I've created a new service that I'm tentatively calling "AskCharlie", to be able to offer just such assistance.
Via buttons on my site or an 888 number you call, you can arrange to speak with me by phone (and optionally join me in a shared desktop session) to solve some knotty problem.
Best of all, it's very low cost and at a per minute rate (first-time callers can use a 10 minutes free option, and everyone gets a money-back guarantee). That and more are explained on my site:
http://www.carehart.org/askcharlie/
There you can learn more about why I did it, how it works, how the remote desktop sharing assistance works (no problem with firewalls, for instance), and more.
I'd welcome your thoughts on what you think of the idea.
Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.I see that my latest CFDJ article has now been posted on the CFDJ site: "Errors in Your Code: Handling, debugging, and testing for them".
Here's a brief synopsis:
Errors and bugs: they happen in all code, mostly in development but in production too and perhaps more easily in CFML than in compiled languages. There are several features to help better handle, debug, and test for them, and this article will focus on those.
Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Folks going to Max will get the new October issue of the FusionAuthority Quarterly Update, and you'll find that I have two articles (well, I also am quoted in a 3rd).
One will be a feature on using FusionDebug, and the other is another of my "tips" column. In the first issue (July), it was on the back page as something like "tips from a coldfusion developer". That wasn't too clever.
In this next issue, we've chosen to call it "Tipical Charlie". That's not a typo. (I've already had one person ask if it was, when they saw another site listing the upcoming issue articles.)
Where did I come up with the name? Well, some know that besides this blog, I have an older one, called tipicalcharlie.com. That one focuses on non-CF tips. Still, I thought it also a suitable title for the FAQU column. ]
On the tipicalcharlie site, I do explain where I got the idea for the name. HGTV fans may already recognize it.
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