Once every blue moon, I am reminded of the fact that you cannot create a null character in ColdFusion. At least not in any of the ways you would expect.When the moon rises, I quickly run through the logical possibilities chr(0), javacast("char", chr(0)), etcetera. Only to find they do not work. Each new attempt producing everything from a space character to an empty string. But no null character in sight.As my frustration grows, my nails begin to lengthen. My flesh erupts in fur and my teeth turn transform into fangs. Then I remember. There is a way. Somewhere in the

We’ve been talking a lot about improving our code at work and code reviews have come up several times, and we’ve even had a few informal code review but they always seem a bit tedious. I dug around a bit looking at online tools too help and discovered Review Board: Review Board is a powerful web-based [...]

So this week, I started Phase 3 of the Get Big program in Chad Waterbury's Huge In A Hurry workout . This is the final phase (not counting the unloading week) of the "Get Big" program. Workout A Load: Super Heavy (2-3 RM) Reps: 15 Power Clean Dumbbell Incline Bench Press Front Squat Standing Single-Leg Calf Raises Workout B ... Read More »

OMG! A game show about nothing! I don't usually blog personal opinions here, but it's my blog and I think this is important to point out, being an atheist myself and all. The story: CNN: TV Game show for athiest Notice that the point of the "ga...

Getting started with ActiveScaffold – A neat little alternative to the default Rails scaffolding that gives you a whole load more UI, and functionality out of the box Radar- Let’s you find ActiveRecord objects by year, month, fortnight, week and more. Adam Salter’s sitemap_generator - Need a Google sitemap for your Rails app?

I was thinking about how to be answer a new ColdFusion-based " Ask Ben " question about a rating system when I thought about creating numeric averages. All my life, when creating an average, I followed the simple formula of dividing the sum of a collection by the number of its entries: Average = Sum / N This, of course, requires you to have both the sum and the count of a ... Read More »

Working on a project that requires two coldfusion servers to chat with each other through web services; something I haven't had to do for many years now. Anyway, as soon as I made a change to my publishing CFC, my consuming CFC started complaining. Seems that the server caches the WSDL signature of the remote cfc. That is great for production, but not so much for development. So, practically crawling into the wayback machine, I quickly found Brandon Purcell's nearly 6 year old solution to Refreshing Web Service Stubs in ColdFusion MX. With two moments worth of added abstraction: And

Working on a project that requires two coldfusion servers to chat with each other through web services; something I haven't had to do for many years now. Anyway, as soon as I made a change to my publishing CFC, my consuming CFC started complaining. Seems that the server caches the WSDL signature of the remote cfc. That is great for production, but not so much for development. So, practically crawling into the wayback machine, I quickly found Brandon Purcell's nearly 6 year old solution to Refreshing Web Service Stubs in ColdFusion MX. With two moments worth of added abstraction: And

There have been a few stories about a vulnerability in FCKeditor that is bundled with ColdFusion 8, first on SANS and now on The Register. The FCKeditor ColdFusion connector isn't enabled on all CF installations, I think if you installed a fresh 8.0.1 it is enabled, older versions may have had it disabled by default. Either way you need to make sure it is disabled, and remove the file manager. John Mason has put together a blog entry detailing how to do this here. If you aren't using cftextarea you might as well go ahead and delete (or move outside

Many blogs are reporting this, and frankly I don't have more to add to the already good reports out there, but be sure you read and respond to this new issue involving FCKEditor. Details: CF8 and FCKEditor Security Threat ColdFusion 8 FCKeditor...

I have now experienced a couple of servers exploited to inject harmful code into .js files. There's a lack of information out there and I believe I have finally ran into what I was looking for. There appears to be a vulnerability with the FCKeditor file upload feature. It appears it affects at least ColdFusion and PHP servers. Attackers are able to use the file uploader to run malware on the server injecting a <script> tag into the end of every .js file. The script includes the URL: "http://bit.ly/dUdvv". Avast, an anti-virus program, recognizes it as a IFRAME virus when

I've got my 3GS (so space any more in the name) now. It's great. I just got it, literally, a few days ago. No I didn't rush out to order one at WWDC after the keynote. I didn't go wait in line at an Apple store, or any other variation on fan boy-dom. Oh and I could have, because I nver bought a 3G and bought my 2G on ebay, so I've been contract free for a while. No longer. I wasn't sold on the 3GS. for one thing, it's still aesthetically ugly IMO. It's plastic, which I don't like.

Not trying to be contradictive here (maybe a little bit) or rain on anyones parade, but I've been hearing and seeing loads of fuss from people who are "just waiting" for ColdFusion 9 ORM to be released, or some people who have projects where ColdFusion 9 ORM "would suit just perfectly". Whilst I find it to be perfectly normal and very exciting, I can also predict some deception is to come. Obviously this doesn't apply to everybody, but to some people who are expecting too much of it. When I say expecting too much of it, I mean people who think it

With the exception of new ColdFusion tag definitions, we all know that there hasn't been any active development on HomeSite in a long time. Dreamweaver, CFEclipse, and now Adobe Bolt have long since taken over that product path. But still, it made me a bit sad to find out earlier this week on Twitter that Adobe officially announced the death of HomeSite as a product as of May 26, 2009, not only in development but also in s ... Read More »

Have a Safe and Happy 4th of July! Everyone at Community MX wishes to thank the brave men and women of the Armed Forces, and remember those who have lost their lives defending our liberty. To allow all of our partners to enjoy the long holiday weekend with their families, CMX will not be releasing content on Friday, July 3rd or Monday July 6th. We will be back on Tuesday, July 7th, with two brand new pieces of content. Enjoy your holiday!...