We recently had one of these ridiculous time changes in the US for Daylight Savings Time, as if shifting the hours of the day 1 hour back or forward has any effect on anything beyond annoyance. Apart from being just silly, it also wreaks havoc with many computer functions -- especially on Windows 2000 and earlier, where the time change dates are not updated to the new dates mandated by our hard-working Congress last year.

Aside from that, Dreamweaver also has fits and crashes regularly after the time change. To fix the problem, the cache file in your local settings needs to be deleted. It will recreate itself automatically. Information on that is here.

Interview with Sponsor Joshua Cyr from "Savvy Software, Inc."

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with sponsor Joshua Cyr from Savvy Software, Inc about their ColdFusion based Web Content Management software. So what brings you to CFUnited this year?

Joshua Cyr: We have been a sponsor and exhibitor for the past few years. It is a great event for us to interact with our customers and meet potential new customers. It is also a great networking and learning event for us.

MS: Tell us a little about what Savvy software does?

JC: We have a ColdFusion based web CMS. It is known for being easy to install and easy for end users to use, while also offering developers a lot of flexibility. While we do work directly with both large and small companies, we also have a strong partner program for developers who regularly install CMS's for their clients.

MS: What exactly is a CMS and why would I need one?

JC: Definitions vary but generally a web based content manager allows multiple non-technical people to update a web site in a structured and controlled way. Many developers would rather that content contributors (customers, coworkers, etc) make text and content changes. That way they may focus on more important tasks such as implementing new features. Other benefits include historical storage of content, change audit logs and ease of site build-out / design changes.

MS: I thought Content Management Systems were expensive and hard to configure?

JC: Many are! However in the CF world we have many open source and lower priced CMS options. Regarding implementation, the complexity and difficulty run the gamut. We recommend you demo a variety of CMS options so that you can find the right CMS option for your specific needs. Our aim is to keep Savvy CM low cost and easy to install while keeping it flexible for the developer. All of this without cutting any corners on delivering a quality web site. In fact many of our partners use Savvy CM because it makes building web sites faster.

MS: How about SEO (search engine optimization)? Does Savvy generate search friendly pages?

JC: Absolutely! You have full control over real page names and your directory structure as well as your title, description, etc for each page. In addition our built in navigation object is very search engine friendly. The templates can be developed with table structured HTML or with CSS positioning. We work very hard to ensure that Savvy CM doesn't present a roadblock for SEO and helps enforce good SEO techniques when possible.

MS: Joshua, we look forward to seeing you at CFUnited and recommend everyone stop by and say hello and be sure to check out Savvy Software's Content Management Solution.

You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm
CFUNITED-07 is Wed 6/27/07 - Sat 6/30/07 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $1049.
For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/

We've finally got the TODCon Vegas 2007 schedule and speaker list up. Check it out. Lots of excellent sessions about the new Adobe products, running your web business, usability, CSS and more. There's still time to register for the best little conference in Vegas! Come play on the strip with the rest of us geeks. You know you wanna... :)

Interview with Raymond Camden on "CFC Development"

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Raymond Camden about his CFUNITED-07 talk "CFC Development". So why should a developer come to your session Raymond?

Raymond Camden: ColdFusion Components are really the main way a developer can take his or her code to the "next level" of development. In this 3 hour extended session I will cover both the syntax as well as show numerous examples and suggestions for using CFCs.

MS: How will my code be better if I use CFCs?

RC: Beginning developers tend to rebuild code they have used before. They do this because their earlier code wasn't properly abstracted, so it's not reusable. CFCs are one way within ColdFusion to reuse code.

MS: What do you mean by "abstracted" - that sounds complex!

RC: It really isn't. Here is a simple example. The total value of a shopping cart is each line items unit price times the quantity. That is one simple business rule. However - you use this logic in multiple places on your site. You "abstract" it by simply packaging it up into one file. Then every place that needs this logic calls that file. Let's then say that on Mondays you want a 10% deduction applied to the total. If you modify that one file, every place that uses it will see the new logic.

MS: So are CFC hard to learn?

RC: Like most things in ColdFusion, they are easy. Using them right though takes a bit of time. Once you learn the basic syntax, there is a lot of thinking that needs to take place on how to organize them.

MS: What tags do I need to use to write a basic CFC?

RC: There a few basic tags and functions. They are cfcomponent, cffunction, cfargument, cfproperty, cfinvoke, cfinvokeargument, createObject(), and I'm sure I forgot one or two. The CFML behind CFCs really aren't that complicated.

MS: Is there anything people need to know before they come to your talk?

RC: Nope! You can come to this session knowing nothing about CFCs and I will teach how to do it the right way from the ground up. Of course I assume you do know some basic CF code like CFOUTPUT and CFIF!

MS: Will you have any code sample or demos in your talk?

RC: Heck yes. I'm a big believer in code examples.

MS: Cool - see you at CFUNITED!

You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm
CFUNITED-07 is Wed 6/27/07 - Sat 6/30/07 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $1049.
For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/

CFC Development

This three hour session will delve into the basics of building ColdFusion Components (CFCs) as well as discuss various methods of CFC development. We will have many examples that you can take home with you to help you start building your first site with CFCs!

Speaker Bio:

A long time ColdFusion user, Raymond is a member of Team Macromedia and one of the managers of the Acadiana MMUG. Raymond is a co-author of the Mastering ColdFusion series published by Sybex Inc, the ColdFusion MX Developer's Handbook, and a co-author to the "ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit". He also presents at numerous conferences and contributes to online webzines. He is a contributor and technical editor of the ColdFusion Developer's Journal. He and Rob Brooks-Bilson created and run the Common Function Library Project, an open source repository of ColdFusion UDFs. You can reach him at ray@camdenfamily.com. Raymond’s blog is at http://ray.camdenfamily.com

Interview between Michael Smith and Chaz Chumley

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Chaz Chumley about his CFUNITED-07 talk "Creating and Consuming WebServices". So why should a developer come to your session Chaz?

Chaz Chumley: Web Services make up such an integral part of the web framework when developing applications today. Such technologies as ColdFusion, Flash and Flex make working with XML data easier and quicker than could have been conceived. If a developer plans on sharing data with external customers or consume data from such clients like Google, Yahoo or RSS feeds then they don't want to miss this session. I will be sharing real world examples of just how easy it is to produce and consume web services utilizing ColdFusion.

MS: Can you tell me more specifics about some of those web services and why they are cool to add to my app?

CC: No one wants to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Web Services are "cool" because we can build some great functionality once and reuse it by sharing it with the outside world just by specifying where the Web Service lives and how to interact with it. Imagine if a client asked you to pull in all the local news into a portal or web site. Do you want to statically write the news items down each day and then republish it. Of course not. Why not browse over to Yahoo!'s Web Services and tap into an already prebuilt API that does all the work for you. In addition to web search results, Yahoo!'s API includes the ability to fetch results for images, local information, news, and video.

MS: OK! So is it hard to create a web service in ColdFusion? What do I need to do?

CC: The great thing about ColdFusion versus other languages is just how easy it is to create a web service. More and more developers are writing ColdFusion Components to encapsulate their logic from their presentation. Following these best practices we can expose the logic inside a CFC simply by adding one attribute (|access="remote"|) to any of your component's methods to turn it into a web service. However if you want to learn more about it in detail you will have to come to my CFUnited session Michael.

MS: One parameter to publish a web service - that is easy! What about reading those cool web services that you mentioned above? That must be hard right?

CC: You might think that but actually it is very simple. Let's take the Yahoo API's for example. All that is needed to get started is to register with Yahoo, obtain an application ID which is just a string that uniquely identifies your application and send a request url to Yahoo. The information is then returned in the form of a REST (Representational State Transfer) response.

MS: Cool! Now it sounds like some of those web services might return complex data - how does ColdFusion deal with that?

CC: When a web service returns a complex data type you can write the return value directly to a ColdFusion variable. You can then access elements of the variable using dot notation the same way you would access a structure. So if we had a person object returned to us we could access the firstname element by specifying "person.firstName".

MS: Do I need CF 7 Enterprise to use web services or do other versions of CF work too?

CC: You can both create and consume web services with any version of ColdFusion.

MS: What about all this SOAP my java buddies keep telling me about? How does that relate to web services and does ColdFusion support SOAP?

CC: SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is just one of the XML-based protocols that you can use to write messages to send and receive web service requests and responses over the internet. ColdFusion does support SOAP thru the use of a WSDL (Web Services Descriptor Language) that describes the arguments accepted by a specific web service. The great thing about ColdFusion is that the WSDL is automatically generated when the ColdFusion Component is deployed.

MS: This all sounds so easy! Are there any gotchas to watch out for with web services?

CC: One of the biggest gotchas when developing web services is forgetting to refresh the web service within the ColdFusion Administrator. CFAdmin caches the web service when it is first generated so any changes will not be reflected until you refresh it. We will be looking at more gotchas in detail in my session.

MS: I am looking forward to seeing you at CFUNITED.

You can see more interviews.
CFUNITED-07 is Wed 6/27/07 - Sat 6/30/07 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $949 until 3/31/06 then $1049.
For more information on CFUNITED.

Creating and Consuming WebServices

Web services provide us a channel to communicate using standard XML (Extensible Markup Language) to users over an internet, intranet or extranet without exposing all of the functionality of your application. Using ColdFusion you can easily publish a web service - to make application functionality available for remote use as well as consume a web service - to access remote functionality to perform specific tasks. Join us as we discuss the basic structure of a web service, utilize ColdFusion Components (CFCs) to create simple data typed web services, how to consume a web service and the different data types you may encounter, take a look at working with soap requests including nillable arguments and CFMX7's new isSoapRequest function, error handling and finally best practices to ensure that your experience with ColdFusion MX 7 and web services is a memorable one.

Speaker Bio:

Consultant, Instructor, Author, Husband and Father. Chaz has been specializing in web development and database design since 1995. He currently resides as an Application Developer for Lucidus Corporation, an Internet Application Development & Hosting company as well as an Instructor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas teaching XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Fireworks, Photoshop and ColdFusion. Chaz is also a contributing author and parnter at CommunityMX as well as as a frequent speaker at Adobe User Groups and such conferences as Todcon and CFUnited.

The Premiere ColdFusion Conference

If you are a ColdFusion developer and plan on going to any web conference this year, then you definitely don't want to miss CFUnited. Not that I am trying to self-glorify myself but I have the pleasure of speaking this year and can't wait to see all the great presenters and people involved in the ColdFusion community.

CFUnited is the only conference of its kind that is run by developers, for developers. What this means is that the topics are exactly what web developers need to learn now and are based on real world experience.

This year's conference is a 4-day event that includes a bonus on Saturday repeating the most popular sessions. You can purchase the 4 day package, 3 day package, or the Saturday only package. In addition to the keynotes and sessions you expect at any conference, this year will include Birds-of-Feather discussions in the evenings, panel discussions, a community area, and many other social and networking events. If 4 days isn't enough for you, there is a User Group Manager event on the day before the conference, and full-day hands-on classes, instructed by CFUnited presenters, during the two days prior to the conference. Read More...

I upgraded to Vista and almost immediately needed to run ColdFusion pages. I didn't find much on the internet that explained ColdFusion server installation and configuration on a Vista box and indeed, ran into some sticky problems when I tried to use the install program (since it was intended for IIS6).

When I finally got all my ducks lined up and had the ColdFusion server running smoothly with Vista and IIS7, I figured I better write about it since I'll never be able to remember all the steps ... there are missing DLLs, a confusing little Vista bug, and new mappings to be defined in IIS7.

Check out my free article, which takes you step by step through the process, explaining all the little gotchas along that way that you'll need to deal with.

The last part of a 3-part series I wrote about building a multi-language site goes live today at Community MX. I've seen different ways of creating data-driven multi-language sites, but the method I used in the series uses an incredibly underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags. Basically, the technique will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page. Using <cfimport> you can create custom tags using any name you want -- including the names of HTML tags. What that essentially means is that your h1, h2, h3, p, a, td, th, and any other tag you want to use can become a custom tag with the full power of the ColdFusion language.

Maybe it's been done before, but I devised the system because I'm lazy -- I didn't want to have to rewrite pages and have to type content again. The system actually sucks the current content out of your site and puts it in the database -- and then from that moment on uses the content from the database instead. Also, the fact that you can use ColdFusion code in the custom tags allows you to insert things like administrative links to edit content.

The article series shows the construction of the base custom tag, the custom tags that take the place of the html tags, and the administrative page that allows you to edit and update content in 1 or more languages. The first part was a freebie, and part 2 and part 3 are free for subscribers and a small fee for non-subscribers.

I wrote about harmonica virtuoso Jason Ricci on my blog a while back. It has always been amazing to me how some people can rise to the top and become successful while others more talented are often neglected or have to work like dogs to make a living. It has always been the case, unfortunately. A band I played with for over 10 years could never break out the grind of being a part-time local band. We all had day jobs because none of us had the willingness to take a chance on a shot that might never happen. A new article at Mercury News ( http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/15421107.htm) talks about Ricci's trials and tribulations on the road playing 300-320 nights a year for little money:

"Everyone keeps telling me they know someone, or they can help me, but nothing ever happens. I'm going to play 320 nights this year for a few hundred dollars a night. I'm getting really tired of it. I don't think it's ever going to happen."

His playing is a revelation, and at times seems beyond human capacity, hitting notes that few other players can find. Sometimes he stretches out impossibly long blue notes. Then he fires off a machine-gun-fast, perfectly precise volley to get people dancing.

At one point, he does a tribute to great harmonica players, including Little Walter and Magic Dick, wrapping their hardest riffs inside even harder ones of his own, orchestrating a solo symphony of five songs simultaneously.

And he doesn't just do it for an hour or two, like most performers. He runs at top speed for four hours a night, playing and singing, with barely a break between songs.

"He is to the harmonica what Eddie Van Halen was to the guitar," said Robert Bonfiglio, one of the world's most respected classical harmonica players, who saw Ricci play for the first time in Denver last month at the 43rd annual convention of the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica. "He has changed the instrument. It will never be seen the same way again. Players after him will want to sound like that."

I finally saw Jason a couple months ago locally and was blown away, not only by the amazing virtuosity of his playing, but also by his willingness to hang out with the fans and talk shop. His band is hot, and the music is original and catchy. Hopefully the word will get out on Jason Ricci and New Blood. The times seem right:

At a time when harmonicas have been getting the most recognition in years -- from "American Idol" winner Taylor Hicks to "America's Got Talent" runner-up L.D. Miller -- Ricci has been packing blues clubs across the country. He's played more than 300 shows each of the past five years.

I've been focusing more and more recently on my own harmonica playing, but I do it strictly for fun and love of music. I have come to the realization a long time ago that I have neither the drive nor the talent to ever become a full-time musician. Still, listening to Jason's playing has only made my own playing stronger.

Jason's site is at http://www.jasonricci.com. Stop by and buy a CD, or check out the tour schedule for a show near you.

Cross-posted at tom-muck.com.

This week we have begun a Let's Learn ColdFusion learning track.

The series with dedicated forum support which provides a group learning experience is aimed at folks that have absolutely no server-side knowledge or experience at all. If you are a CMX member or would like to join in order to participate in the Let's Learn ColdFusion learning track now is the time to do it. Part 1 featuring the installation and set up of your local development environment was released this week, in forthcoming weeks you will learn how to implement ColdFusion and gradually build up to creating your own simple CMS.

Announced just yesterday! MAX details:

When: October 23 - 26, 2006
Where: Venetian Resort Hotel, Las Vegas, NV

Adobe will have over 90 different hands-on and workshop sessions presented by Adobe experts and other industry leaders on best practices and coming technologies. Currently, there are six tracks:

• LiveCycle and Acrobat
• Web Development
• Rich Internet Applications
• Mobile and Devices Applications
• Vertical Market Solutions
• Web Design

It doesn't appear you can register just yet, but you can sign up for email updates to notify you as information is available.

I think I have finally taken a bite out of trackback spam. When I instituted trackbacks on these blogs, it worked well. . .for a couple of months. The next time I looked, there were literally thousands of spams that had to be deleted. It seems once these spammers find you, they add you to their automated spammer machines and hit you relentlessly. Filtering by keywords was the first defense, and it worked on 90% of the spam. The problem is, every new spam contains some new spammer product or service. . .acne treatments, cricket blogs, disney vacations. I can't possibly keep up with all of it.

Rather than submit to these parasites or remove trackback functionality, I added functionality that automatically checks every link in the trackback post, goes out to each linked site, reads the site content, and checks for a reference to the post being trackback linked. If there is no reference to the post, the trackback is not legitimate. In those cases, I check the whois and grab the information in put it into my database. At that point, I can parse the email addresses of the domain holders and send them an automated bill for their trackback spam and send out an automated email to whoever I think the spam should be reported to.

I don't expect to ever get results from the measures, but at least now the trackback spam has dropped off from thousands to hundreds to dozens to zero. I deleted over 16,000 spams from Community MX over the last few months.

Cross posted at http://www.tom-muck.com/blog

Community MX has grown over the years to the point where we will hit 1500 pieces of content tomorrow -- articles, tutorials, and extensions. The following is a list of various ways to keep track of new content and find existing content at Community MX:

Main list of CMX categories:
http://www.communitymx.com/categories.cfm

Main RSS feed
http://www.communitymx.com/services/cmxrss.cfm

Add CMX feed to Google feed reader:
http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http://www.communitymx.com/services/cmxrss.cfm

Full list of RSS feeds by author, category, most popular searched:
http://www.communitymx.com/services/cmx_opml.cfm

CMXTraneous blog RSS feed:
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/rss.cfm

CMXTraneous full post RSS feed:
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/fullrss.cfm

All CMXTraneous RSS feeds:
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/cmx_opml.cfm

Add CMXTraneous to Google feed reader:
http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http://www.communitymx.com/blog/rss.cfm

Free Community MXtra Central application:
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=EE860

Free Community MX sidebar for Firefox:
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=E0069

Free Context Help extension for Dreamweaver, including CMX search:
http://www.tom-muck.com/extensions/help/contexthelptoolbar/

Update: The calendar is a good way to see daily content (thanks Laurie):
http://www.communitymx.com/calendar.cfm

After much arm twisting, this past weekend I updated my Context Help extension for Dreamweaver for ColdFusion 7. I am a big fan of the Homesite-style help system -- put your cursor on a tag or function in code view and pull up the help file for that particular keyword. Dreamweaver has similar funtionality, however the help file comes up in the tiny little miniscule useless Reference Panel. Of all the development tools on the market, Dreamweaver and Flash have the worst reference/help systems. This extension attempts to rectify that. You have to be online to use the help system, but it will pull up Livedocs to the appropriate page. There are also buttons on the toolbar for a Google search, Google group search of the Macromedia forums, and a search of Community MX. I've also updated the version at the Exchange. I think this is the most useful extension I've ever done, which is why it is my most frequently updated extension. It also has PHP, ASP, and ASP.NET help, as well as HTML help.

Cross posted at my site.

There was a question on the forum today about finding bounced emails in a mailing campaign after retrieving the results with CFPOP. The problem with email bounces is that you can't determine who the mail bounced from by looking at any of the headers: typically the mail server will respond with a message something like this:

----- Transcript of session follows -----
<jack@SOMEDOMAIN.COM>... Deferred: Connection timed out with mail.somedomain.com.
Message could not be delivered for 5 days
Message will be deleted from queue

The message is also frequently loaded with other email addresses, like MAILERDAEMON, or some random characters that seem like an email address (message IDs frequently resemble email addresses). The only way I've found to reliably extract bounced email addresses is to examine each message, extract ALL email addresses, then compare them to the original list. The following function will extract all email addresses from a string:

<cffunction name="getEmailAddresses">
  <cfargument name="stringToParse" type="string" />
  <cfargument name="emailArray" type="array" default="#ArrayNew(1)#" />
  <cfif REFind("([a-zA-Z0-9_\.=-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9_\.-]+\.[[:alpha:]]{2,6})",stringToParse)>
    <cfset sLenPos=REFind("([a-zA-Z0-9_\.=-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9_\.-]+\.[[:alpha:]]{2,6})",stringToParse,1,true) />
    <cfset emailAddress = mid(stringToParse, sLenPos.pos[1], sLenPos.len[1]) />
    <cfset arrayAppend(emailArray, emailAddress)>
    <cfset stringToParse = Mid(stringToParse, sLenPos.pos[1] + sLenPos.len[1], len(stringToParse))>
    <cfif REFind("([a-zA-Z0-9_\.=-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9_\.-]+\.[[:alpha:]]{2,6})",stringToParse)>
      <cfset emailArray = getEmailAddresses(stringToParse, emailArray)>
    </cfif>
  </cfif>
  <cfreturn emailArray />
</cffunction>

call it like this:

<cfset someString = "blah blah email@somedomain.com blah blah blah
morestuff<tom@somedomain.com> more blah blah blah 'test@test.com'">
<cfset emails = getEmailAddresses(someString)>

test it like this:

<cfdump var=#emails#>

What I would probably do is cycle through the emails, grabbing email addresses for each bounced email, then adding all addresses to a database. At the end of the session, compare the list to the original table to find the correct bounced addresses.

I have never used ColdFusion for this because I wrote a VB program that does it in bulk with thousands of emails daily as a scheduled task, but it was a good exercise to do something in CF.

I finally broke down and bought a Mac, after many years of saying "I need a Mac." I got it mostly for testing web sites and extensions, but I think I'll be using it for a lot more than that. Microcenter had a deal where you buy a Mac Mini and get a keyboard, mouse, LCD monitor, scanner/printer for free. You can't beat that -- a whole Mac system for $499. I got the upgraded version with the faster processor and 80gig HD for $599.

I started my career using a Mac, but gave it up shortly thereafter to work exclusively on Windows machines (around the time of OS 7.5). I'm pretty amazed by the whole experience. . .I like it. I even downloaded a remote desktop connection so I can access my Windows server from the Mac. Very cool. I like the fact that everything is included in the box, and everything seems to work right out of the box -- wireless network, Bluetooth, etc. If you need a cheap Mac, head to Microcenter before they are all gone.

I've blogged about my various laptop problems (Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100), and have come to the conclusion over the years that a laptop cannot be depended on. My latest use of the laptop has been strictly using remote desktop to my main workstation, and for things like browsing the Internet and playing poker. Anything that requires storage dependability is not worth putting on a laptop. This includes things like running a web server with ColdFusion, PHP, SQL, etc, and also includes programs like Dreamweaver. After running numerous installs, it seems like I was getting at most a few weeks or months before having to do it all over again. Summing up the various repairs I've had in 3 years:

12 total repairs:

6/30/2003
No boot/video
Reseat VGA board
P000372720 VGA support assembly

9/18/2003
Boot failure, no boot
HDD, LCD Hook, HDD Unit (60 GB)

3/10/2004
HDD Failure, no boot, grinding HDD
HDD Unit (60 GB)

5/7/2004
Cursor drifts every day, unit shorts out and shuts off when moved
Defective PCB Main Board

5/12/2004
no boot, just had M/B and video card replaced
Reseat and Secured all internal connections

6/4/2004
no boot
Main Board PCB Assembly

6/18/2004
LCD goes grey, mouse only works on horizontal axis
Keyboard unit

6/23/2004
Boot failure, no display
Power supply, CPU 2.0 GHZ P4 Processor

9/14/2004
No boot, blue screen, DVD not working
Update Win DVD

11/19/2004
HDD failure, no boot
HDD Unit 60gig

12/2/2004
Unit gets extremely hot, fan not working
Main Board

7/25/2005
HDD Failure, no boot, grinding HDD
HDD Unit (60 GB)

10/30/2005
Unit dead, warranty expired. RIP.

Summing up: 4 hard drives, 4 motherboards, 2 video boards, one P4, one keyboard, and miscellaneous other parts. Luckily I had a 3 year extended warranty, so all repairs were free, but there was way too much time consumed with all this crap. It's not like I abused the machine. It sat on my table and I used it a few hours a night. Once in a while it would go into a bag and be taken to a hotel room where it would sit on a table. Here's the good part: after blogging about it a few times, one of the comments on my blog talked about a lawsuit against Toshiba for the faulty 6100:

The lawsuit alleges that the Satellite Pro 6100 contains a design defect that causes certain power-supply, display and related failures. The lawsuit further alleges that Toshiba knew of, and concealed the existence of, the alleged defect at the time it sold the Satellite Pro 6100. Toshiba denies any and all liability to Plaintiffs and the Class and has agreed to settle the actions for the sole purpose of avoiding the expense and time of further litigation.

Sounds like it applies to me! I signed up at the settlement site and should be getting a credit of $1500 for a new laptop (which I have to spend at Toshiba, unfortunately). The unit was about $2200 originally plus $300 for a warranty, but $1500 is better than nothing and will get me a new laptop. So who says blogging doesn't pay?

New Years Resolutions

Everyone has 'em, but I thought I'd make a list of 10 things I'd like to do this year:

10. Be nicer to people with cloven hoofs.

9. Maintain my 0:1 vomit:year ratio.

8. Scratch my butt less.

7. Spend more waking hours in bed and more sleeping hours at my desk.

6. Never open a bottle of beer with my eye socket.

5. Learn to fly without the use of my arms or legs.

4. Eat kumquats and boysenberrys without giggling.

3. Learn a new trade, like toaster repair or clown tickler.

2. Open a home for wayward midgets.

1. Stop making lists.

Most of you likely heard the news about the close of the Macromedia acquisition over the weekend. And this morning there's a new site in place of the old Macromedia site. Honestly, it gave me an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach this morning.

The lists I frequent are abuzz with concerns, excitment and confusion. And thankfully, it seems Adobe engineers are trying to be proactive and answer what they can. So far, this is what I've culled out of the discussions and my reading (in no particular order):

• For now, the products will be sold under the Adobe Company name, but will have Macromedia appended on the front. ie: Macromedia Dreamweaver
• Any changes and/or integration will be in the next product release cycle (Approximately 12-18 months).
• At this time, all products from both companies will continue to be sold.
• Some Macromedia developers have proclaimed their happiness at finally being able to "come out of the closet" about their Adobe product usage habit. (I've been known to open Photoshop from time to time -- usually related to photo optimization. But Fireworks is my very favorite web vector program and I've got my fingers crossed for it still.)
• If you happen to be an Adobe CS user as well as a Macromedia Studio user, you can upgrade both packages as one combined "Adobe Web Bundle" at a discounted rate over what they would cost separately. It's $1899 -- but let's face it, that's a lot of products.
• Adobe will continue to maintain and run "all websites, tutorials, forums and other resources formerly run separately by Macromedia and Adobe."
• Many developers are unimpressed with the new Flash banner and tagline, "Revolutionizing how the world engages with ideas and information."
• Lynn Grillo (Application Engineer for Adobe) is an Italian from New Jersey and is not a quiet person. ;)

There's an informative FAQ on the Adobe site with more information and links.

I have hope for the future of my favorite products (and friends), but it's still a sad empty feeling to watch the changes as they happen. It's like when your best friend is moving out of state. You watch them pack up the truck and you're not sure when/if you'll ever see them again. I realize Macromedia still exists on some level -- enveloped within the larger Adobe corporation -- but I don't know if I'll have the same contact and connection I've enjoyed over the past few years.

Goodbye Macromedia, my friend. I'll miss you.

In my last post I talked about Beyond Compare and using it to replace the Dreamweaver synchronization feature. It got me thinking about a missing feature in DW. I've been using file comparison programs for quite a while, but only recently discovered Beyond Compare. I used to use Windiff and had my own extension for Dreamweaver MX that allowed me to use Windiff to compare two files. Now that Dreamweaver 8 has the feature, the extension is no longer needed. . .or is it? Dreamweaver 8 has many cool file compare features, but lacks one I like to use: compare a file in your site with a file somewhere else on the system. I reworked the extension to address this. As an added bonus, it works back to Dreamweaver MX and DW MX 2004 (and maybe earlier.)

Find it in my list of extensions at http://www.tom-muck.com/extensions/. It's a free download. I have not tested on the Mac. If anyone runs into issues, please let me know.