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Blogs » Archive for August, 2004
CFC Documentation Tools
Cool post over at CFCzone.org which talks about alternatives to the built in CFC documentation tool.
Comment Adder Panel for Flash MX 2004
Download Comment Adder for Flash MX 2004 >>
View the Interactive Movie of Comment Adder in Action >>
Anyone for another timesaver? This time, I’m attempting to save you some time when adding comments to your ActionScript by way of the Comment Adder for Flash MX 2004.
It has the following features:
Dynamically add comments at the click of a button, including the following types of comments:
Comment Block, To Do, Bug, Kludge, Tricky
It also has the option to optionally include your signature and a date/timestamp
NOTE: Due to limitations in the API, you are only able to add comments at the end of the current ActionScript in a selected frame rather than inline at the selected cursor point
Pop Quiz: What are the sources of this year’s revenue?
Take a moment to list all of your projects from this year. Then list the source of each of the projects. What does that tell you about:
- Marketing that is working for you?
- Marketing that isn’t working for you?
- Business development activities you should expand?
- Business development activities you should de-emphasize?
- Business development activities you should continue, but in a more effective way?
I did this exercise while walking the dogs today and realized the following:
1/3 of my business this year has come from one excellent referral source. I need to cultivate more relationships like this one.
1/3 of my business has come from my web site — pure passive income based on an automated marketing system. I should expand my investment in this type of marketing.
1/3 of my business has come from former clients who have called me for more work — including many from a consulting practice I no longer market. Good for me! Perhaps I need to re-open that practice.
What do you learn when you do the same exercise?
Linear Dodge in Photoshop
A quick review of my entry about Linear Burn reminds us that Linear Burn was similar to Multiply mode — just “darker.” So, surprise, Linear Dodge is similar to Screen mode — just “lighter.”
Let’s start again with my rose picture:
Add a pawprint layer:
The lighter the area on the pawprint layer, the brighter the rose layer becomes:
Just as Linear Burn results in a darker image (save for pure white blending areas), Linear Dodge will usually result in a lighter image. This means that we can add another method of quickly lightening images into our growing list of techniques! Let’s start with the baby hand image that I used in the Screen Mode example:
One duplicated layer, set to Linear Dodge, results in a much lighter image:
You can always play with the opacity of that layer to tone down the brightness.
SimpleTest 1.0RC1 is out
SimpleTest, a unit test framework for PHP has reached 1.0RC1. Marcus has a (terse) announcement up here describing changes. This also marks the road to a stable, 1.0 release (although it’s been pretty solid around the mainstream functionality for quite some time now, IMO).
One thing I’ll have to try in due course is comparing SimpleTest’s web testing functionality with similar tools in other languages, such as HTTPUnit. Starting to get the impression that SimpleTest may stand on it’s own as an excellent tool for web testing, even if you’re not using PHP. Now if someone could magicallly produce a PHP extension based on SpiderMonkey…
There’s also a chance that SimpleTest may be integrated with a well known PHP IDE. Nothing concrete yet so I’ll keep quiet for the time being but great if it happens.
Anyway, thanks and congratulations to Marcus, who became a father recently, so this is all the more impressive (time management? No time for that!)
Update: by nice coincidence, PHP Magazine have published an article Marcus wrote a little while back, free for all: Coding a Login Box Shouldn’t Hurt – looks at SimpleTest’s web testing features.
ASP.NET 2.0 Security : New Article
Another superb article by Zak is up and available on SitePoint giving a great explanation on how to use some the new security features within ASP.NET 2.0.
This week, I’ll work on combining the single sign in article I wrote last month with the features outlined by Zak in this new article to expose these features through a web service.
Anyway, read and get excited about 2005 people!
Powerpoint; PHP/XUL style
Via David Sklar – Creating Rich Applications with Mozilla, XUL, and AMP Technology (you need a Mozilla browser – ideally Firefox 0.9x+).
Not only is it a nice walk though of XUL and how to hook it up with PHP via XML-RPC, the presentation viewer itself is xool (just don’t click “load slides” more than once ;) ).
QA for SQL Express 2005?
One of the features lacking in the SQL Express 2005 package is a Query Analyser. Of course, Microsoft have big plans for frontends to SQL Server 2005, however, I want something now!
QA Replacement Program is the first step towards building a free Query Analyser for this release of SQL Express. Its still got a way to go, but it might help alleviate the GUI blues until the next releases of SQL Server are available to all.
ColdFusion MX 6.1 Updater RELEASED!!!!
Finally! no more battling tons of hot fixes and bugs “workarounds”.
Macromedia released the CF MX 6.1 updater today!
So if you have a server (production or development) Click on the link above to grab your copy.
What’s in the new updater? Check out the release notes for full details, and here are a few highlights.
- Updated JDBC drivers (Data Direct 3.3 Build 31)
- Updated JRUN (Jrun Updater 3)
- Updated version of Jintegra (1.6.1)
- All security fixes through July
- Over 60 bugs fixed in ColdFusion.
As always test before you release this onto a production system.
Thanks to Tim Buntel’s Weblog for bringing this to my attention.
Battle of the Books
As mentioned here there’s posse of PHP types headed to Zurich, end of September for OSCOM.4.
To set the scene Christian and Hannes have been busy organising Usergroup meeting headed: “The Battle of the Books” (Christian has an English version here) which will be taking place on Tuesday 28th, 6pm at the etoy.TANK-PLANT4, before the conference.
Battle of the Books will be a showdown between PHP de Luxe (Christian and Hannes being co-authors on the latest edition) vs. PHP für Fortgeschrittene which is the German translation / update to The PHP Anthology, worked over by Sandro who’s joining me in the “Battle”. Quite what the rules are I’m not sure – perhaps there’s more entertainment value for the crowd if we just get down to beating each other over the head with our respective tomes – winner is the last team able place the needles and haystacks in order for in_array() and substr_compare().
Following the warm up, Derick Rethans, fresh from Skien in Norway, will be taking the crowd through some high impact, Roaring Regex’s while Bård Farstad will (hopefully) be somewhere around to pose eZ …
