Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

So finally, after the whole being ill and Christmas holidays hiatus, I finally managed to edit the CFDocs podcast from December (Follow the link above to get more details on the episode).

One of the things that has been concerning me was how to record the damn thing! I have a Yamaha 8:2 Mixer but still the mic's that we got for the first podcast turned out to be unpowered so we couldn't use them. This left me with a problem... how to record four people (and the audience) and keep the quality at *some* acceptable level.

What we did was put two MacBooks (one Pro, one not) and record the whole session down using Audacity and the built in Microphones. This worked well, and to get the synching of the two tracks at edit time I simply banged my finger sharply on the desk (to the hilarity of other people present) to get a nice spike that I could see in the track.

After editing both tracks, removing the "erms" and "arrs" and "so..." as well as some idle chatter I rendered down the recording and moved it into GarageBand to make the actual podcast and mix in the music track.

I would love to hear people's opinions if it worked or not, as well as any suggestions on (cheap!) setups to hopefully improve the sound quality. Remembering of course that there are usually four people speaking as well as maybe questions from the audience.

Otherwise, just enjoy the podcast!

After the summer hiatus which is essentially the conference season, the UKCFUG is back! And its better than ever!
We have got a new site up, in blog format so you can easily subscribe to news of meetings and other events. There is also an awesome meeting planned for the 6th of November.

We are testing the waters with a new format, we have a new segment at each meeting called "CF Docs" (like CF Doctors, gettit?) in which you can ask the panel of myself, Niklas Richardson, Neil Middleton and Big Mad Kev any CF based questions (and some Flex ones!). 

Hopefully if no technical issues happen we shall be recording the segment and turn it into a podcast, something like a "Gardener's Question Time" for CF. 

So whether you are planning on attending or will catch up via the podcast, send us your questions via email and we shall read them out. The email for the questions is or leave a comment here or on the UK CFUG website. 

Neil will also be giving us a preview of his Adobe MAX Conference talk "Structuring your development team and getting the work done" which should be awesome! 

So whether you can make it on the 6th, or just want some answers to your questions, get registered on the UKCFUG website! 

It's going to be a great season!

Ok, you might have *other* reasons for going to CFUnited this year apart from wanting to hear me talk about Advanced CFEclipse, although I cannot imagine them (joking!). If you want a free (yes siree, FREE as in nada, nothing, zero, zip) ticket to CFUnited you have to listen to the most excellent ColdFusion Weekly podcast, which I presume you are already doing for goodness sakes! There is NO excuse not to! At the end of every episode from now to May they will be giving a valid entry code. Use your iTunes for something actually interesting and get listening! Note: You could be saving up to $849!!! You can spend it on buying me drinks!!!

Ray Camden, Ryan Stewart and myself sat down and did a skype roundtable to roundup CFUnited last week. It was interesting to talk to these guys about their experiences of CFUnited. I shall be listening to this today on my way to work and you should too! Check it out over at the Coldfusion Podcast

Yes indeedy folks! I have joined up with Niklas Richardson to manage the UKCFUG in London!

I have become more and more involved this year (2 presentations so far!) and I think its a great way to get news and information out there to the community. It will be an exciting year (it has been so far!) with a couple of new things happening,

First of:  The future of the Internet as an  Applications Platform (24-May-06) which is being run by Adobe over at the Olympia Conference Center
Followed by: Model-Glue and Coldspring: Inversion of Control and Configuration presentation by me.
After that, the next meeting lands right in the middle of CFUNITED, so since I am going, I am looking for people to interview, live, over iChat with feedback from the CFUG back in London. Anyone interested?

As you might notice, I have a nice shiny iTunes logo under the RSS & Podcasts pod! The iTunes people added my podcast pretty quickly too! which was pretty awesome. Now I have to make sure all the details are right and they get a nice picture and everything.

If you want to subscribe to my podcast, all you have to do is either click the logo or click here!

From ... me! I am now going to be doing some podcasts mainly presenting CFEclipse and Coldfusion notes and rambles, plus other things I hope. This is mainly a way of publishing some of the presentations that I have been doing so there will be video podcasts (vodcasts) as well as your "standard" voice based ones.

The first podcast that you can get by susbcribing to the link under RSS & Podcasts on the second pod on the right, has the first part of my Model-Glue presentation at the UK CFUG.

If you use iTunes (which I recomend!) copy the link and use the Advanced -> Subscribe to podcast menu item and paste in the following RSS feed: http://markdrew.libsyn.com/rss. The nice thing about the first podcast is that it gives you all the slides within the podcast as well as links to each of the items (this works well in iTunes)

Let me know what you thnk and submit any ideas of what you would like to have on the podcast!

(you can of course, go straight to the podcast by clicking here)