Monthly Archives: December 2009

Great Green Question

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My parents introduced me to global warming when I was 9 years old. For me it’s obvious, sensible and practical. As with all science; that could all be changed by one proof, one moment, or one idea that proves that it isn’t true. It’s easier to prove a negative.

Having said that. What are the upsides and downsides of going green without the global warming debate.

Upsides

Power of Positive Intention

People like positive things. By behaving in a sustainable way people will repect you for it and appreciate your passion.

Less Carbon Dioxide

For me this means less horrible fumes, smells and gases as I walk down the street. This also means people with asthma can breath more easily, and die less often.

People who drive stupid cars are perceived as stupid

When people drive a 5 litre V8 engine, in the modern world they should be embarrassed. Really Really embarrassed. Formula 1 cars go at 200 miles per hour, do 0-60 (0-100Kph) in 1.9 seconds,  making your eyes pop out the back of your head.  Formula 1 cars are 2.5 litre engined. 5 litre engines are *rightly* an embarrassment.

Less Consumption becomes a positive

I was born in the 80′s where the money-money-money culture fuelled a consumption culture. Now things are on there heads a little bit. Buying local, fuel efficient seasonal foods is being drilled into peoples heads. Where I got married this year, all the food came from within 50 miles.  Proving your affinity with your locality is now positive. Although things cost more, you tend to buy less of them. Buying less, but quality things that last is one of the reasons the rich get richer.

Downsides

Price

Things that have the green label, “energy efficient” are given a premium. This could be marketing, or just technological. Green energy is more expensive.

Conclusion

What ever you think of the green debate I can’t see a downside, other than money, why we wouldn’t want to go lower-consumption even if Global Warming didn’t exist. As current evidence strongly suggests that it does, all the better.

What am I doing?

I dont drive for distances of  less than 10 miles without a very good reason.

I travel by public transport everyday.

Smarticles a digital creative agency I founded with my friends, uses an environmentally aware datacentre.

I try to recycle as much as I can.

I know it’s not perfect, but hopefully, every little helps.

- Joel

Coldfusion with Wheels gains traction

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Version 1.0 of coldfusion on wheels was released in late November.

I’ve been watching, and recommending this framework for a while. I recommend everyone taking a really good look at it.

There has been lots of speculation about it not gaining traction. In large organisations, or in large projects, people forget that frameworks can only be replaced when the existing application is redeveloped. In traditional risk-averse environments it can be many years between re-developments. Couple that with some really good frameworks like Coldbox, and Mach II and traction for Wheels could be pretty slow.That isn’t the frameworks fault, its just the way things happen. Sometimes a tipping point has to be reached before community projects explode into life.

All of this can only be aided by the release of the 1.0 release. Beta releases (except by Google) put people off, and hopefully this will mark a step change in peoples attitudes to wheels.

Joel – Smarticles

implicit getters and setters using CF

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A few notes on implicit vs explicit getters and setters.

1) Coldfusion support in CF9 is enabled on the property tag as an attribute – not on by default
http://www.danvega.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/10/6/ColdFusion-9-Implicit-getters–setters-change

2) Coldfusion onMissingMethod
http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:868.view
Although Ben Nadel seems to dislike the thing ( it was a while back so maybe he changed his mind?) – and he’s being convinced in the comments. The performance affect was exceedingly marginal (<20ms).

An implementation of what I was talking about is here:
http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2007/8/5/Warning-about-onMissingMethod – the warning relates to using the right arguments. Comments suggested changing find to comparing the first 3 characters to improve performance.

<cfcomponent name="entity_auto" extends="ColdFX.entity" output="false">

<cffunction name=”onMissingMethod” access=”public” returnType=”any” output=”false”>
<cfargument name=”missingMethodName” type=”string” required=”true”>
<cfargument name=”missingMethodArguments” type=”struct” required=”true”>
<cfset var key = “”>

<!— this includes arguments with set —>
<cfif left(arguments.missingMethodName,3) eq “set”>
<cfset key = replaceNoCase(arguments.missingMethodName,”get”,”")>
<cfif structKeyExists(variables, key)>
<cfreturn variables[key]>
</cfif>
</cfif>

<!— this includes arguments with get —>
<cfif left(arguments.missingMethodName,3) eq “get”>
<cfset key = replaceNoCase(arguments.missingMethodName,”set”,”")>
<cfif structKeyExists(arguments.missingMethodArguments, key)>
<cfset variables[key] = arguments.missingMethodArguments[key]>
</cfif>
</cfif>

<!— everything else still throws an error —>

</cffunction>

</cfcomponent>

If you want to turn on auto magic dynamic proxying all you do in your component is

<cfcomponent name="car" extends="ColdFX.entity_auto" output="false">
<cfproperty name="wheels">
<cfproperty name="engine">

<cffunction name=”init”>
<cfargument name=”wheels”>
<cfargument name=”engine”>
<cfset this.setWheels(arguments.wheels)/>
<cfset this.setEngine(arguments.engine)/>
</cffunction>

</cfcomponent>

HTML5 forms with jQuery links

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I found some interesting blogs. One with an alternatives to the javascript forms library I linked to in my previous post.  This one is written in jQuery, so if I’m building a jQuery app I know what to use.

jQuery plugin for html5forms, including browser support detection

http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/nmcformhelper

Styling post for html5forms

http://24ways.org/2009/have-a-field-day-with-html5-forms

If you find anything out there (prototype?) – let me know

Joel

Google Translated Search

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I am in Belgium for my job, and sometimes searching the internet for stuff is annoying. If you search with English words, you are given a small fraction of the results that you would expect. I find myself translating, either in my head or on-line, the keywords into French and Dutch and then sorting through the results in the different languages until I find what I am looking for.

Therefore I was pretty happy when a new feature of Google search was announced. Google translated search was released this week, all you have to do is a normal search, click on Show Options and then choose Translated Search.

Search is then in multiple languages, interlaced by relevance.

I found it really useful, I wonder if I could use it as my default firefox search.

Joel