We work fairly hard at TACFUG to keep our members informed and engaged in key information about programming and ColdFusion. Recently, Jim and I, put out a request for topics and we found some challenges in meeting the need. Some of our members have a long history of programming in ColdFusion and want to branch out into Object Oriented programming, but for one reason or another just haven't. Jim and I came up with an OO Code Camp concept and floated it out to our group to gauge interest.

I've recently signed up to go on RIA Adventure. By now, everyone knows RIA Adventure is a fun filled cruise containing all of your favorite Adobe Geeks. I totally dig the networking at conferences so I'll really like hanging out with a bunch of fun people that know the difference between coldfusion and ColdFusion. Can Ya Dig? I don't mind getting away to the tropics in February. In February, I'm usually ready for a little sun anyways.

I've been working on The Health Challenge over the last month and ran into a usability issue using my CFChart implementation. Apparently with enough data points, the labels would all jam into each other and become an unreadable mess. Have a look... CFChart is actually a wrapped up implementation of WebCharts 3D, a full featured charting engine. ColdFusion ships with a Chart Stylizer that adds significant functionality to the generated charts. I've been using this Chart Stylizer for years now.

Practical Refactoring I've done a few presentations on refactoring in ColdFusion and in those presentations, I show a lot of code samples towards the end. No matter how eloquent I am in the first part of the presentation, the light always goes on for the audience when I show code. If you think about it, it makes sense, why try to explain concrete principles in abstract terms? I do my refactoring in sweeps. A sweep is a cycle through the code in which I make incremental improvements.

Tonight (9/17/2008) at 7:30 EST, I'll present to the Hartford Adobe User Group on how to use the CFUniform custom tag library to create awesome forms in record time. I am a big fan of the CFUniform library, written by Matt Quackenbush and use it lots of projects.

I am back home now after a very lovely and stimulating weekend at the BFusion/BFlex conference. BFusion and BFlex are back to back 1 day training/conference events held in Bloomington Indiana on the grounds of Indiana University. While some poor misguided souls might think any conference in Indiana would be nothing more than a projector pointed at a sheet hanging in a cornfield, I assure you this was not the case. Far from it. The BFusion/BFlex event was awesome. Hands Down.

I read a lot of technical blogs because I benefit in knowing more about the thoughts and positions of others. Whether I agree with them, or disagree, the thought process is something that helps me sharpen my technical skills. So it is of great anticipation that a new blog, The Argument Collection, just had her maiden voyage. Consisting of some of the more thought provoking minds on the CF landscape, this blog promises to deliver timely information on how to solve problems.

Just a friendly reminder, tonight I am giving a presentation on ColdSpring to the Best Darned ColdFusion User Group out there! We'll cover installation, Dependency Injection, Factories, Configuration, Dynamic Properties, Complex DI Strategies and also look at some practical usage. As usual, Pizza and refreshments for all. We're going to have a good time tonight. More info on the July Meeting Page at TACFUG.org The zip containing the code files reviewed in the application is attached to this post.

I am going to be giving a presentation to The Triangle Area ColdFusion User Group entitled Fun with ColdSpring. This is the description I am shopping around: This month Dan Wilson presents on Fun with ColdSpring. ColdSpring is a wonderful framework used when working with CFC based applications. Using ColdSpring effectively reduces the complexity of CC based applications, saves time, makes applications easier to understand and adds a nice tool to the Rapid Development toolkit.

I am on-site this week in NYC. As luck would have it, the NYCFUG met with Michael Dinowitz (a.k.a. Papa Dinnie) presenting on the Google Webmaster Tools. The majority of my IT experience has been in building enterprise class applications. I do not build websites (DO YOU HEAR THAT, FAMILY?), though I occasionally take on a client that needs help raising visibility for a product or a service so I was excited to hear Michael present on the Google webmaster tools.