Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

This weekend I got a package in the post, with an awesome t-shirt from the NYCFUG! I want to thank Clark Valberg and Ben Nadel from Epicenter Consulting for sending me such an awesome item as well as for the fantastic reception I had at the NYCFUG in May! 

 

 

A few people have asked me to post my presentations, and I should have done so anyway straight after the conferences, but of course, since I did three presentations + a Mystery Theatre at cfobjective and four presentations at Scotch on the Road I have been falling behind normal work and blog postings.

So, here for your delectation are all the presentations for you to download... (apart from the Mystery Theatre 3000 since that has a naughty picture in it)

• Atomic Reactor: or how I stopped worrying and love the ORM
• ColdSpring: Better Living through configuration
• Which Framework? ColdBox, Mach-ii and Model Glue compared
• Whats Railo 3.1 Open Source?
• Railo in the Cloud
• ModelGlue and You

I am currently in Zürich, after doing two days training on ModelGlue, Reactor, ColdSpring, Test Driven Development and Ant (a lot packed into two days I tell you!) as well as hanging out with Gert Franz, the first time since we both starting working with each other!

Anyway, on Friday the 8th of May I am heading off to New York City to hang out with Peter Bell for a few days which shall be a blast again, just before cfObjective, and to present at the New York CFUG on the 12th of May.

Find out more details over at the New York CFUG (http://www.nycfug.com/) come over and join us, as well as having a beer (they do beer in NYC right?)

I am not sure many people would have heard this as we did a little bit of a "soft" announcement, but I shall be taking over the Reactor Project from Doug Hughes!

This is awesome, and I am glad some people had some faith in me, especially since I am not very vocal in the mailing list (I tended to bug Doug more than anyone else!)

Hopefully this will mean that Reactor gets more love and even, maybe, a few more new features in the future.

We are meeting this Wednesday at 12pm PST (5pm GMT) to discuss the future of the project in the Reactor Connect Meeting room This initial meeting will be more of an organisational one, to pass the baton so to speak.

If you want to read more about the announcement, check it out over in Alagad's Blog

I have been doing a fair amount of work recently with Reactor, and not so related to reactor, I have also been using JQuery. This has led me to a little thought experiment I was going to propose to Doug Hughes for the project, which is the idea of chaining. This is something that JQuery does fairly well and Reactor does to some level. The idea is this, that in any object that has setters, or functions that return "void", they should actually return the newly modified object itself ( the "this" scope). "Why?" you might ask, well, here are a couple of examples from my code: <cfscript>
      orm = getModelGlue().getOrmService();
      myObj = orm.createRecord("Element");
      myObj.setId("124");
      myObj.load();
      
      //do stuff with the object now
   
   </cfscript> Well, that is ok, but I would prefer to do the creating the object and loading it in one line: <cfscript>
      orm = getModelGlue().getOrmService();
      myObj = orm.createRecord("Element").setId("124").load();
      //do stuff with the object now
   
   </cfscript> There we go, in one line. This could also go for doing all the setting of the other properties: <cfscript>
      orm = getModelGlue().getOrmService();
      myObj = orm.createRecord("Element")
               .setId("124")
               .load()
               .setName("Elvis")
               .setAge("34")
               .save();
   </cfscript> What do people think of this idea? It is fairly easily implemented, doesn't break any existing code and would remove a lot of <cfset>'s and if nicely formatted, make just as much sense. EDIT: As an aside, Doug let me know (and I should have known really but its nice to learn a new thing every day) that you can shorten the loading even further: <cfscript>
      orm = getModelGlue().getOrmService();
      myObj = orm.createRecord("Element").load(id="124");
   </cfscript>

As you may know from my previous posts, I am a bit into Model-Glue. Besides giving tips on using it I have talked at a couple of ColdFusion User Groups about the framework and try and pass on any knowledge I can, since I think its a nice brief framework that in conjunction with ColdSpring and Reactor (or Transfer) can really help your application development. The problem with just giving tips, is that if you have a whole development team to get up to speed, you need more formal training to really get up to speed. If you are in the USA, I found out recently that Alagad,Inc that über development company (run by Reactor supremo Doug Hughes, with none other than Jared Rypka-Hauer and Scott Stroz amongst others!) has started offering training courses in Model-Glue! The four day course based in Arlington VA seems to cover anything you need to get your team up to date, and, for a hands-on four day course doesn't seem expensive at all (ok, that might be because the pound is strong against the dollar, but then again, its still pretty cheap). Check out the details on Alagad's site (Tell them I sent you and I am sure they will make you a cup of tea!)

Yep, I am looking for a talented ColdFusion developer to come and work for/with me at Design UK's offices in the centre of London. If you want more information about the role, head over to the Design UK Careers section of the website and apply via there. You don't have to use CFEclipse, just be damn good... are you that good? Apply now! (the obvious bits...)

• You need a valid EU working permit
• This is an on-site role, sorry
• No agencies, how many times??? NO AGENCIES!
• Experience in frameworks is a must

UPDATE: this role has now been filled! Woohoo!

Thats right! You could be the one to get a great job at Alagad, Doug Hughes's company. The job sounds incredible, but unfortunately its only available for coders in the US of A (that counts me out then) :( Check out the requirements for submissions over on Doug's blog

Even thought I was late, and the room we had booked had no air-con I actually enjoyed last night's presentation on ColdSpring and Model Glue 2.0: Unity. There wasnt a major turn out (about 12 people) but considering we had to re-schedule it twice it was pretty good! I did promise to make my presentation available and this time I didnt bother recording it (takes so long afterwards to make the podcast with the slide presentations etc, I must find a better way of being able to record a presentation, images + voice and then switch to video+voice for the demos.) You can download the presentation from here!

I shall finally be presenting ColdSpring and Model Glue 2.0: Unity tonight at the UK CFUG after two (!) re-shedulings, one because I wasnt feeling well that week (oh, the headaches!) and then because of the England game last week (2-0 against Trinidad and Tobago! En-Ger-Laaand!), so its nice to finally do it. This is going to be an interesting presentation as nearly 90% of it doesnt even touch ColdFusion code but I shall still be creating an application faster than you have ever seen. This is a definate presentation to get yourself informed on some advanced ColdFusion frameworks that will change the way you code. Sign up for the presentation over at the UKCFUG website and join me and Niklas Richardson for a beer afterwards too!