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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

Simply perform a search, and a link for the feed based on that criteria will appear with the normal feed below the table of results.

Or, you can just modify the RSS feed yourself, adding:

http://www.carehart.org/ugtv/rss.cfm?search=your+keywords

(I'll point out that I also let you control how many are found, via an optional "entries" attribute, which defaults to 10.)

Enjoy.

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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

Actually, we'll be bookends: he speaks first (9am) and I speak last (5pm). Now, normally I might be bummed by that, as some may want to duck out to avoid rush hour, etc. But in this event there will be many prizes given away after that last talk, as well as a post conference party, so people should really want to stick around! :-)

Anyway, for £49.99 (£60 at the door), it's a good value with lots of speakers and other activities. Get registered soon, both to help Russ Michaels with planning, and indeed in case it might sell out now!

(And don't forget about my day-long training the next day on FusionDebug and FusionReactor.)

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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

First, it now boast nearly 30 presentations from 24 presenters, submitted by myself and 5 others. Thanks, everyone!

I've also added an RSS feed, so you can be notified of new postings. The URL is offered at the bottom of the list page.

Finally, I have also tweaked the interface further in a few ways.

First, thanks to Jeff Coughlin for sharing a few hints to help me fix my show/hide of the recording descriptions. I had it only showing, but not hiding, due to a bug that I hadn't gotten around to fixing. He offered me the appropriate Javascript, making it too easy not to update it. Thanks, Jeff!

Also, he wasn't thrilled by my next/previous links (I was using the greaterthan and lessthan brackets for prev/next, doubling them for first/last.) He pointed out his available custom tag, and again he made it too easy not to try, with a nifty "quickstart" in his docs. Again, kudos.

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.

The next day (Friday), I'll be giving an all-day training session on FusionDebug and FusionReactor, sponsored by the fine folks at Intergral, makers of the tools. I'll spend the day introducing the tools, sharing tips and tricks, and more. For more details, and to signup, see http://www.fusion-reactor.com/fastTrack.html.

The price is £249,00 (or about $312), but note this:

Each attendee gets a free copy of FusionDebug (full license), which lists at $299, so the training is really low-cost.

And for anyone near Germany, note that we'll be doing the same class in Munich on Nov 3, also detailed on the page above.

Please share the word with anyone you know who may be interested in these two tools. Those who know me know that I enjoy opening the fire-hose of information, so I hope you'd be sure to find it good value. :-)

We may well bring the classes to the US (and elsewhere) next, depending on how things go. So far, we have several signups and have only just started announcing it.

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.

(While I've arranged to give away 2 copies of the product at each meeting, I don't know if the groups are setup to enable remote attendees to take part in the draw. Please respect their approach and enjoy the chance they're offering to have remote participants. Otherwise, if you missed the news, note the new reduced prices and Community edition available through October as I mentioned previously.)

Here are the details on each of the meetings.

Mid-Michigan CFUG Tonight, on FusionDebug

The first is at the Mid-Michigan CFUG, tonight (Tuesday, Oct 10) at 7pm EST. The Breeze meeting URL is:

http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/r95948645/

ColdFusion Meetup Thursday Night, on FusionDebug

The second is at Steven Erat's ColdFusion meetup online CFUG, Thursday (Oct 12) at 6pm EST (note that his early announcements mistakenly said 7pm). He asks that you RSVP here:

http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/5130559/

where you'll also find additional details about the meeting and the group. The URL for the meeting itself will be:

http://stevenerat.breezecentral.com/fusiondebug12102006/

He has over 82 RSVPs so far, so it will be a busy group. If you want a quieter environment to join in online, I'm sure the number of folks online for the Mid-Michigan meeting will be much smaller. I'm giving the exact same presentation to both.

Watching the recordings

I'm sure both groups will post URLs for watching the recordings when they're available, and I'll try to add that here (as a comment) as well as on my carehart.org/ugtv/ list of recorded presentations from CFUGs all over the world.

(I do notice that the Mid-Michigan group's breeze meeting URL looks a lot like the URL for most recorded presos, so until we get it posted, you may just want to try changing the "r" to a "p".)

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.

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.

[....Continue Reading....]

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.

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.

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.

right-click and save this updated xml file

If you're using BlogCFC, you can just drop it into your /blog/client/includes directory (saving your old one to restore if needed, and you may need run the query string option "?reinit=1" to reload blogCFC settings.)

This will instantly your captcha will change from this:

to this:

I've confirmed that the original captcha.xml is the same between releases 5.005 and 5.5 beta 1, where Ray is now including the changed XML file himself in the product itself.

For those curious about what I mean by "simplifying", a few weeks ago I wrote an entry explaining how you could simply your Captcha to just a couple of letters, with a much easier read background and format. I also proposed why I think it's ok. We bloggers don't need to keep out really determined hackers (with a double-keyed deadbolt lock), we just need to keep out the annoying pests (with a screen door).

Since that post, many bloggers have indeed taken up the suggestion, but I have seen blogs where some commenters have pointed our my older entry, with the blogger's saying, "I do plan to get to it". That other entry offered the specific steps to change the captcha.xml file, but if you haven't changed it yourself since implementing BlogCFC, just drop this in. Of course, if you want to do a comparison to make sure, there are lots of good compare tools. My favorite is BeyondCompare.

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.

If you have had an error, please drop me an email, charlie (at) carehart.org. I still get plenty of comments, so it's clearly something unique. If you do write, please share what browser and OS you're using (and a screenshot or other details would be appreciated). Thanks

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'd like to put out a plea to at least consider listing your name, either in your title ("clever name - by blogger name"), or just in some text below it, or in your toolbar. Better still would be a small bio, or a link to a page that has one. (Maybe it would help if blog software offered an "about" pod that made you think of it more readily.) A photo would be nice, too. And for reasons (and with cautions) I propose below, I recommend you also list your email address.

Why bother with name, bio, and/or email? Because it's in your interest!

There are a couple of reasons to consider it, and they help both you and your readers.

First, as for listing at least your name, a good reason is simply to associate yourself with all the value you create by your blog. Why not get credit for your work? Plus, many would really like to know who you are. (And if your blog software puts a tiny "by" under each blog entry, I'll argue that's not enough. I've missed that myself on more than one site.) Again, whether in the title, below it, or in the toolbar, just put it somewhere! :-)

As for a bio, again, even just a couple sentences about yourself (below the title or in the toolbar) can really personalize the blog. Don't assume everyone knows your background, even if they know you by name. Many readers will appreciate knowing more about where you work, where you're from, etc. Such details can also lend perspective to what you write about. (For instance, if you're a fan or a foe of something where that would color all of your posts, it can be helpful for people to realize, "oh, he works for them|on that open source project|with that tool| etc.)." Let people know where you're coming from.) But at least consider offering some background, even a single sentence.

Finally, as for your email address, someone may want to contact you to offer feedback that's not specific to a post. They may want to offer you work (and not want to announce that in a blog comment)--and even then, which post should they enter such a generic note to you in, anyway? Keep in mind that not all readers realize that you get notified of all comments by email, so they may give up trying to contact you.

Heck, they may even have trouble posting a comment, and therefore need *some* way to contact you. I've certainly seen that before.

But isn't it bad to post your email address online?

OK, I realize you may not want to offer your email, as spambots will capture it. But you've probably noticed more and more people listing their addresses as "name (at) domain". The thinking is that people can figure that out, but spambots (at least the dummer ones) will not. I'll grant that they'll eventually catch on. You just need to way how important the benefits are against the pain of more spam. (You do have a spam catching program, I hope? I love the one I use, Cloudmark Desktop. No, it's not free, but there are certainly many of them you can check out.)

Be careful using that (at) trick with Mailto links
If you do decide to use the (at) approach, but you also offer a mailto link, like:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>

be careful: you need to list the "anti-spammer" address in the mailto (used to launch the email) as well as between the a tags (as shown to the user). Spambots grab all the text on your page, not just what's "visible". This is a pain, because then in the email that's opened the user must notice that you've done this and change it, or the mail will fail to get to you. What I do is explain to the user that by forcing some body text into the mail that's opened. Did you know that was possible?

<a href="mailto:charlie (at) carehart.org?body=please change the spam-fighting email address format I filled in for you, replacing the (at)!">charlie (at) carehart.org</a>

And for those who maybe already knew about it, did you know that you could also use:

<a href="http://tipicalcharlie.blog-city.com/forcing_a_line_break_in_an_html_email_link.htm">force a line break within such content in an HTML email link</a>

(this is from another blog of mine, typicalcharlie.com, which is for generic, non-CF tips)

So please, bloggers, step up and identify yourself. We'll all appreciate it!