[Looking for Charlie's main web site?]

Two unusual upcoming speaking engagements for me (CFUnited Keynote, Brazilian CF Conference)

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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.
Some readers may have seen some recent tweets about this from others: I have had the pleasure recently of being invited to present at a couple of unusual speaking engagements.

I'm giving a CFUnited keynote (no joke!)

First up, while it won't be that unusual that I'm presenting at this year's CFUnited (I've presented at ever event since it's founding), what is unusual is that I've been asked to give the second (Thursday) keynote!

What an honor, and of course a challenge, as Joe Reinhart set a high bar last year! :-)

While the organizers and I have discussed the topic, they've not yet announced it (though they have announced me as one of the keynote speakers, in addition to Adam Lehman and Terry Ryan from Adobe.)

I was awaiting their announcing the topic before I'd post this, but since I also want to announce the other "unusual" speaking engagement, I figured I'd go ahead and share this now and will post an update on the keynote topic later.

BR Conference 2010, in Rio

The second "unusual" speaking engagement for me is that I've been invited (along with Ben Forta, Ray Camden, Adam Lehman, Terry Ryan, and others) to come down to speak in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the BR Conference 2010, a CF and RIA conference being held Aug 19-21.

I've never been to Rio before (let alone Brazil), and I've long looked forward to visiting anywhere in South America, so this is a real thrill. Of course, being in the southern hemisphere, August will be the "deep into winter" with temps down to the 60's/70's Farenheit. :-) Better bring a jacket! Fortunately, it is in fact the driest month of the year, on average.

I'm of course delighted to have that chance, and as they're planning to cover travel costs for speakers I'm all the more honored and grateful, being selected out of so many fine available speakers in the CF community.

Maybe it didn't hurt that I have contributed to at least one book that's translated into Portuguese. It *was* about using CF to build mobile web apps, after all, albeit 10 years ago! I'm just kidding that there's any connection, of course. :-) The organizer, Francisco Paulino (aka, Tofinha) said he drove his decisions based on popularity of speakers down there.

Fortunately, they will have translators at the event for attendees to understand us yankee presenters.

So that now leaves me only Asia, Africa, and Antartica as continents that I will not yet have visited. If only we could get some CF conferences going in those places! :-)

New DataDirect JDBC Type 5 drivers (for SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and more)

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.
I think most folks know that the underlying database drivers in CF are from DataDirect. Well, they've announced new "Type 5" drivers. While you would have to buy and install them separately from those built-into CF (for now, as Adobe has not yet certified CF for use with them), I think some people may want to give them serious consideration even before then.

Several Performance Advantages, and Failover As Well

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

Some recent podcast participation

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.
I've had the pleasure of participating in a few recent podcasts and related activities. While regular listeners to those will naturally hear them, I figured I should highlight the episodes for those who may not be.

RIAPodcast

First, some may know that I'm a regular panelist on a podcast called the RIApodcast. Well, there was a special roundtable session at the recent cf.Objective() conference, and I was privileged to be asked to join in that, along with Ray Camden as well as RIAPodcast regulars John Mason (host) and Josh Adams (of Adobe).

(The RIAPodcast is recorded twice monthly, after the Atlanta Flex and then the Atlanta CF user groups. John then often splits each into two, so it's an approximately weekly podcast.)

CFConversations

Then, too, John and I joined Brian Meloche for his CFConversations podcast presentation of another cf.Objective() roundtable session.

While there's naturally a fair bit of overlap between the two (given there are different audiences for each), we still tried to cover slightly different things in each.

Mura Show

Finally, though it's not really a "podcast", on a perhaps related note I was also guest recently for several episodes on The Mura Show, which is a recurring (Recorded) online meeting. In these sessions, my site (CArehart.org) was a guinea pig/test case as the Mura guys graciously led viewers through a complete re-do of my site to run atop Mura. You can see the shows at their show archive.

We may still have another episode or two in the future to wrap things up, but certainly if you're interested in Mura it's a great start-to-finish presentation of getting a site running under and benefiting in many ways from Mura.

I may have still some more news of interesting participation in other such podcast-style activities to share in the future.

Ultimate list of CF debugging output template alternatives

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.
Following on the heels of my "Ultimate Var Scope Resource list" last week, here now I present what I think is the ultimate list of CF debugging output template alternatives.

Yes, you CAN modify the debugging output. Some have even done it for you

Many may not realize that the CF debugging output (optionally displayed at the bottom of the page, as enabled in the CF Admin) is actually created by a CFML template that can be modified ([cf]\wwwroot\WEB-INF\debug\classic.cfm).

Fortunately, several people have offered various resources that explain how to work with this file and offer packaged alternatives with specific features to resolve particular problems (where people wish the debugging output did more, or could be seen differently than at the bottom of the page).

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

The Ultimate Var Scope Resource list? Understanding/resolving problems with the var scope in CFML

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.
Do you know what the "var scope problem" is, and how pernicious it can be in causing very subtle bugs that can cause errors that are VERY hard to understand? I list here several resources to help you understand the issue. Some help plainly explain what the issue is, including even a live demo.

I also discuss below the key varscoper tool which you will want to use to help assess and indeed correct your own code.

(Update in 2022, 2019: while the many resources are indeed all quite old now, they all still apply, and most still exist. Where needed, I recovered them from the good ol' archive.org, an awesome resource for finding old content, as I've written about before.)

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

I'll be speaking on the CFMeetup this week, doing a CF911 talk

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.
Just a heads up: I'll be speaking on the CFMeetup this week, presenting a new talk, "CF911: ColdFusion Tools for When the Stuff Hits the Fan".

While you can find the details (and optional RSVP info) on the meetup event page, I'll repeat the description to save you having to go there:

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

Adobe CF ACPs listed

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.
Wonder who all the Adobe CF ACPs are? Here you go.

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

Renewed as Adobe Community Expert...er, make that "Professional"

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.
Like many others announcing today, I just got word that I have been selected again as what used to be called an "Adobe Community Expert", but today has been renamed the "Adobe Community Professionals" program.

Ah, well, as Shakespeare (kind of) said, "a rose by any other word smell just as sweet".

I'm just grateful to have been renewed in the program. I love doing all the things that were among the considerations for the selection, whether it's running the CFMeetup online weekly CFUG, my CF411 repository of over 1,000 tools and resources of interest to CFers, speaking at conferences, writing articles, writing in the CFWACK8 and 9 books, contributing to many mailing lists and forums, and more.

And I have still more resources yet to come. Besides the conference speaking (like I the first one I just announced earlier today) and new articles already in the works, I also have plans to create some entirely new resources focused especially on CF troubleshooting that I will announce in coming days/weeks.

We have a great CF community, and I offer my congrats to all my fellow new and renewed ACPs. I also offer my thanks to those who may not have been renewed (or chose not to renew) but have also contributed so much to the community.

Thanks also to Adobe for offering the program of recognition. Of course, we do it out of love for the Adobe products (in my case, CF), but the recognition and benefits are certainly appreciated. Here's to a great 2010!

I'll be speaking at cf.Objective() on "Stack Tracing CFML Requests to Solve Problems"

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.
Though I got the news a couple of weeks ago that my submission to cf.Objective() 2010 had been accepted, I only tweeted my delight about it and didn't blog it. Here's the description:

"CF911: Stack Tracing CFML Requests to Solve Problems"

Regardless of what CFML server monitoring tool(s) you have, or even if none, did you know that you can use a feature called "stack traces" to be able to pinpoint the exact line of code that a CFML request is running at any time? Did you know how to use that information to troubleshoot performance/stability problems? Do you know how to obtain that information either manually or automatically (such as during a crash while you're not watching)? Do you know how to obtain that information in any of the CFML Server Monitors (FusionReactor, SeeFusion, the CF8/9 Enterprise Server Monitor), or with free command line tools? And how to do this for any CFML engine (CF, Railo, BlueDragon, etc.)? Do you know how to interpret the information once you get it?

In this session, veteran CF troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will help remove the mystery from using stack traces. It really is amazingly simple with the right tools, and it can be incredibly useful to solve otherwise thorny problems, once you understand how to interpret the information.

Of course, I'm thrilled to be heading back to Minneapolis. I spoke there previously in 2008 and 2007 but couldn't attend in 2009. It'll be great to see all the fine folks who run and attend this unique conference.

BTW, I just saw also that CFUnited announced another round of topics accepted today and I see a topic whose title if very similar, "How to Read a Stack Trace", by the inimitable Daryl Banttari. It's hard to tell from his brief description how similar these will be, but Daryl is awesome so I'm sure I'll learn much from his. (I was literally just about to offer mine as another CFUnited submission but now won't of course. :-) Hopefully another of my submissions will be accepted, so I can keep my streak of having spoken at every CFUnited since they started.)

Anyway, the good news is that whichever conference you go to, this important (and often misunderstood) topic will be covered! :-)

Come watch the Mura Show as we enable CArehart.org under Mura CMS

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.

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

Copyright ©2024 Charlie Arehart
Carehart Logo
BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5.005.
(Want to validate the html in this page?)

Managed Hosting Services provided by
Managed Dedicated Hosting