Matt Woodward's Blog

I'm working on an application with a friend of mine and we're taking full advantage of all the great new functions and features in Open BlueDragon. One of the new functions I wasn't sure I'd use all that much is QueryRun(), which lets you run a query in a CFSCRIPT block like this:

<cfscript>
  QueryRun(datasource, sqlStatement, queryParams);
</cfscript>
Let's look at a concrete example. Assume a table called "user" with fields of id, email, first_name, and last_name, and a datasource named "myDSN". To pull all the users, you'd do this:

<cfscript>
  getUsersSQL = "SELECT id, email, first_name, last_name FROM user";
  users = QueryRun("myDSN", getUsersSQL);
</cfscript>
Now if you want to pull a specific user--let's say by email--you can parameterize your queries by using an array of structs that represent the CFQUERYPARAM tags, where the key in each struct is the attribute name from CFQUERYPARAM, and the …

Today sees the release of some much awaited support for both implicit array/struct creation and a whole host of operators. The cfscript and expression parsing engines have been rewritten, switching from the javacc based parsers to a cleaner and leaner ANTLR based one.

via blog.openbluedragon.org
Check out all the details on the OpenBD blog!

If you're in the Seattle area and interested in Groovy and Grails, make sure and join us at next month's Seattle Groovy/Grails Meetup on February 11. We get together every month at the Elephant & Castle, and it's a casual mix of Groovy, Grails, other technology, and whatever else comes up. All are welcome so even if you're not using Groovy and Grails yet, come join us and we can all learn from each other. See you there!

I was installing ColdFusion 8.01 on a new Windows Server 2003 VM yesterday, and since the application that will be running on this box needs access to network shares I had our network admins create a new domain service account under which to run ColdFusion. This is pretty commonplace for a lot of our apps, but for some reason when I switched the CF service to run under the service account I started getting a 500 error with the following details when any .cfm page was hit:


java.lang.NullPointerExceptionat jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:285)at jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:543)at jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:203)at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:428)at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)


This was even after I had assigned "full control" rights to the service account user to the application directory.
I…

I was configuring a new Windows Server VM yesterday, and the first thing I do on a blank Windows server is launch IE once and once only to download Firefox. To avoid what I call the "trusted site dance" with Mozilla's mirrors since IE doesn't let you add a trusted site and then continue the download you started, I go into IE security settings and make the following setting changes to the Internet zone:
Enable file downloads"Prompt" for launching applications and unsafe files"Prompt" for launching programs and files in an IFRAMENote that these are the settings you need to change if you get the "Your current security settings do not allow this file to be downloaded" error. This time I decided to be a good boy and change these settings back to disabled after I was done, and then I launched Firefox to download Java and some other things I need to install on this server. This probably shouldn't have surprised me, but when I tried to downlo…

Might the trademark "NBC" be retired and the TV network become just another cog in a large, empty capitalist apparatus -- one that plops out leisure-time product with the slick, chilly efficiency of an assembly line? It's possible that Comcast could be even more tightfisted an owner than GE and that NBC might be the first network to prove that the whole idea of broadcast networks really is over. It could prove it by dying.

via washingtonpost.com
One of the networks has to be the first to go, and the most likely candidate is NBC. I was watching "Modern Family" the other night and one of the storylines (if you can call it that on a 22-minute sitcom) was about how no one in the house other than the Dad knows how to use the remote. (Tired gag, but well done in this case.)
So Dad is trying to convince Daughter to let him teacher her how to use the remote to show up Mom who says no one can learn it. Daughter exclaims, "Dad, this is stupid. I watch TV on my computer…

This came up yesterday in a discussion with a friend of mine. He had two arrays and he wanted to see if they were identical in terms of order and value of the elements. His first thought was to loop through the arrays and compare each element, but since CFML arrays are really Java arrays, there's a much simpler way.

<cfscript>
arrray1 = ArrayNew(1);
array1[1] = "foo";
array1[2] = "bar";

array2 = ArrayNew(1);
array2[1] = "foo";
array2[2] = "bar";


arraysAreEqual = array1.equals(array2);
</cfscript>
The equals() method on the array returns a boolean and tells you whether or not the arrays are identical in terms of the values and ordering of the array elements. Note that if the values are identical but in a different order, the arrays will not be considered equal, so sort before doing this test if there's a chance things might be in a different order between the two arrays.

A while ago, YouTube launched a simple demo of an HTML5-based video player. Recently, we published a blog post on our pre-spring cleaning effort and your number one request was that YouTube do more with HTML5. Today, we're introducing an experimental version of an HTML5-supported player.HTML5 is a new web standard that is gaining popularity rapidly and adds many new features to your web experience. Most notably for YouTube users, HTML5 includes support for video and audio playback. This means that users with an HTML5 compatible browser, and support for the proper audio and video codecs can watch a video without needing to download a browser plugin.

via youtube-global.blogspot.com
Two words: Freakin'. Awesome. I probably wouldn't care so much if Flash didn't suck such copious amounts of ass on 64-bit Linux, but I can't wait to give this a shot.

The new stable release of Tomcat 6.0.24 represents six months of open source software development. Version 6.0.24 includes a small number of new features, plus a large amount of important bug fixes and enhancements. This release is an incremental bug fix release, but the number of fixes included in this release is high.

via blogs.mulesoft.org
Some very nice stuff in Tomcat 6.0.24, particularly surrounding memory leak handling. I haven't run into issues with memory leaks on 6.0.20 in my own applications, but they did a lot of work in that area.
And a biggie--a native installer for 64-bit Windows. Halle-freakin'-lujah! No more grabbing the exes from SVN and overwriting the ones that come with the 32-bit installer.

Domestic travelers have become familiar with intrusions and searches at Transportation Security Administration security checkpoints. But as the ACLU has recently discovered, international travelers are not only having their laptops seized and searched by Customs and Border Protection, but agents are making copies of files and giving them to third-party agencies. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government, which turned over hundreds of pages of documents revealing startling information about how much access—and how little oversight—agents have to your gaming laptops when you travel.

via gamepolitics.com
I'm not quite sure why this is even remotely acceptable in a free society. Maybe I'm being naive, but from a legal standpoint why can't people simply say "hell no" if some jackass from the TSA starts copying files from your hard drive to give to a third party? Have we really lost this much freedom?

In one of our Grails applications we had to run a number of batch jobs. Nothing unusual and Grails supports it quite well with the excellent Quartz plugin.But when we deployed application in production, we noticed that after running for some time, it consumed a lot of memory and JVM was spending all the time running garbage collection. The reason for it was that our jobs were quite long-running, taking several hours to complete, and Grails wasn’t really designed for such kind of use case.

via componentix.com
But "not designed for" doesn't mean it's not possible, of course. Great info about how to clear out some of the things that will eat up memory over time in long-running Grails processes.

Open
Source for America (OSFA) represents more than 1,500 businesses,
associations, non-governmental organizations, communities, and
academic/research institutions who have come together to support and
guide federal efforts to make the U.S. Government more open through the
use of free and open source software.

via opensourceforamerica.org
I'm beyond pleased to see this taking shape. You can hit the link above and contribute to the discussion. The open government initiative should be based on open source software wherever possible, otherwise it falls short.

However, what if you wish your services to be consumed by a Javascript function outside of your own domain? Cross-domain scripting will prevent this. So how do the likes of delicious.com offer such Javascript integrations for their services?

You achieve this by using JSONP (JSON with Padding) and this lets you achieve cross-domain data fetching.

JSONP requires a little assistance from both the server and the client inorder for it to work. JSONP works by wrapping the returning JSON packet in () and prepending a name to make it into a Javascript document.

The majority of Javascript libraries support JSON from their native core. JQuery supports it using $.getJSON method, which simply asks that you append the URI parameter "callback=?" to the end of the remote URL and it will do all the marshalling of data for you.

via blog.openbluedragon.org
Another extremely slick addition to OpenBD! It's available in the nightly build. Read more at the full blog post (link above).

I finally got a chance to put some time in on a Twitter plugin for Open BlueDragon, and I'm happy to report it's coming along very nicely! The plugin API for OpenBD is really easy to dig into so I thought a Twitter plugin would be as good an exercise as any to get my feet wet. I'm planning a series of blog posts illustrating how to write plugins for OpenBD using the Twitter plugin as an example, so look for that before long. If you aren't familiar with the plugin API for OpenBD, this is a really slick way for you to add tags and functions to OpenBD that become available natively within your OpenBD instance. The plugin code is written in Java (don't worry, it's not daunting at all), and you then drop a JAR file into your WEB-INF/lib directory. When OpenBD fires up it detects the plugin, registers the functions and tags contained within the plugin, and they're then available for you to use in your CFML code. You can learn more about the plugin API on the Open…

YouTube's latest blog post indicated that some changes are on the way. Google has opened up a call to submit and vote on ideas. HTML 5 open video with Free formats has dominated the vote, maintaining over twice as many votes as the next-highest item almost since the vote opened up. You may vote here (Google login required).

via tech.slashdot.org
Really interesting to see the huge number of people who want to see Flash gone from a revamped YouTube. I'd love to see Theora personally.

In software, we are often faced with things that can seem intimidating. We may be assigned a project that we know nothing about. We may have to use a new tool or environment. We may be working with people who can seem intimidating. The natural temptation is to retreat to a place of safety, but that won’t get the job done. So how can we, as software developers, overcome the instinct to cower when projects seem daunting? I’ll go over a few things that have worked for me under these circumstances; your mileage may vary

via boxuk.com
This is an absolutely fantastic post outlining how to get your lazy self (hey, I'm including myself here) outside your comfort zone. When I first started working with Grails I tweeted something like, "I have no idea what I'm doing and it's a great feeling," and this blog posts captures that same sentiment in a more practical way. I really love the "do it scared" mantra. Words we developers should live by more often than we do.

I'm working on a Grails project and we're using the very slick Google Chart Plugin to handle the charting aspects of the project. If you aren't familiar with the Google Chart API be sure and check it out; even if you aren't using Grails it's a really simple way to add charting to any application. You just call a URL on Google and in return you get a very nice looking chart, and it supports just about any type of chart you can think of. Cool stuff. One of my tasks today was to get a line chart up and running, and I was having a bit of trouble getting multiple datasets working on a line chart when using two separate Groovy lists. The solution turned out to be simple but since it took a bit of head banging to get there I figured I'd share in case others run into this. The data I have is simple integers in two Groovy lists (let's call them dataSetA and dataSetB), and in my controller I'm putting the lists in the model for the view so they're already ava…

A week or so later, it clicked. When I want an option that isn’t already visible, I hit the dedicated ‘Menu’ button just beneath the screen. Need to jump to a previous screen in an app or the web browser? Hit the dedicated ‘Back’ button. In some ways, these are actually better than the soft buttons located in iPhone apps, because they’re always in the same place. It also saves some screen real estate. Using them has become totally second nature to me. But they aren’t the reason why I’ve decided I prefer Android over the iPhone.

via techcrunch.com
First time I've seen someone make this point, and to me this is dead on. Having used my Droid for a while now, when I go back to using apps on my iPod Touch the lack of dedicated, single-purpose buttons is frustrating, and in some cases even within Apple's much-lauded app store, it's easy to box yourself into a corner and have no way to get back to a previous screen. This is because it's up to the app to provide navigation…

via img.thedailywtf.com
Why did I think of Windows when I read this? ;-)

So often I see companies create job specs for engineers where the key requirement is to hire someone who can hit the deck coding like mad using whatever tools have been selected. To that end they load the specs up with endless tech hubris and at interview ask the details of this or that bit of syntax or API call. But what about the next project within the company where the tech is different? All those engineers that just got hired are now useless, they don’t have the skills and we lose time whilst they learn. Or we could fire them and hire another lot?

via dancres.org
Couldn't agree more. The longer I'm in this business the more weary I grow of one-trick technologists. Yes, I think it's important to spend a lot of time with a few select tools so you don't fall into the "jack of all trades master of none" camp, but frankly better that than complete inflexibility or unwillingness to try new things.

via boxee.tv
This looks REALLY intriguing. I read someone's take on it in which they said it has the potential to compete with Apple TV, which made me think either that person doesn't know what they're talking about, or they've never used Apple TV.
I loved my Apple TV for a while, but with the latest software update that was the last straw. I've never seen a product get increasingly worse with each update like Apple TV did, and it's more or less unusable now.
The other difference of course is that Apple TV doesn't let you watch much of anything for free. The whole point of the Boxee Box is to let you watch free Internet content on your TV without having to futz around with a computer and a browser to do so.
This is also the promise of PlayOn (http://www.playon.tv), which once my Moxi arrives I'll be experimenting with.
This is the wave of the future of TV, and paying per-episode for everything like you have to with iTunes and Apple TV is going to go the way …

"The knave abideth." Sweet baby Jesus, the attention to detail in this sucker is just mindblowing! What a thing of beauty. Here's the carpet-staining scene:
WOO: Rise, and speak wisely, man--but hark; I see thy rug, as woven i'the Orient, A treasure from abroad. I like it not. I'll stain it thus; ever thus to deadbeats.
[He stains the rug]
THE KNAVE: Sir, prithee nay!
BLANCHE: Now thou seest what happens, Lebowski, when the agreements of honourable business stand compromised. If thou wouldst treat money as water, flowing as the gentle rain from heaven, why, then thou knowest water begets water; it will be a watery grave your rug, drowned in the weeping brook. Pray remember, Lebowski.
THE KNAVE: Thou err'st; no man calls me Lebowski. Yet thou art man; neither spirit damned nor wandering shadow, thou art solid flesh, man of woman born. Hear rightly, man!--for thou hast got the wrong man. I am the Knave, man; Knave in nature as in name.
BLANCHE: Thy name is Leb…

My recent foray into MongoDB got me thinking about using it to serve files. You can do just that with MongoDB's GridFS specification. When a file is stored in GridFS, it is represented by a metadata object and one or many chunks which store a subset of the data. Chunking the files helps with searching but could help replication and sharding presumably. Files in a GridFS store are just like any object in the database. You filter by any of the metadata properties and get chunks on demand or out of order.

via jameswilliams.be
Very slick use of MongoDB with Grails.

I'm proud to announce I'll be doing several sessions at cf.Objective() 2010! I was on the content advisory board this year and the schedule is looking absolutely amazing. Here's where you can catch me at cf.Objective() 2010:

Polyglot Goodness: CFML on Grails (this will be a full unveiling of the CFML Plugin for Grails I've been working on)
Living in the Cloud: CFML Applications on Google App Engine (co-presenting with Peter Farrell)
Simplicity, Integrity, and Velocity: What's New in Mach-II (co-presenting with Peter Farrell and Kurt Wiersma)
The Duct Tape Programmer vs. the Architecture Astronaut (a rather non-traditional presentation with Simon Free, Peter Bell, Dan Wilson, and potentially some other folks)

I'll have session details before long but I'm really excited about all these topics, not to mention what else is on the schedule this year. Register now--the early bird ends on January 29!

via system76.com
I have the previous version of the Serval and have never been so happy with a laptop. If you're looking to free yourself of the Microsoft or Apple tax when you buy a new machine, I highly recommend this one or any of system76's offerings.

In my ongoing revamp of my A/V and networking setup in my house I recently added some Netgear MCAB1001 MoCA Coax to Ethernet adapters into the mix. This is a great way to get wired networking into rooms where you have a coax connection but no ethernet, and is preferable to Wi-Fi for high-bandwidth operations like streaming video because MoCA is much faster. They claim up to 270 mbps and while I haven't done any specific speed tests myself, I can attest to the fact that it's blazing fast based on using a computer hooked into the MoCA adapter. I did have an interesting thing happen with my setup that I figured I'd share in case anyone else runs into this. If you're on Verizon FiOS and have both internet and TV, chances are you already have MoCA. Typically if you have both internet and TV they give you an Actiontec router that has both ethernet ports and a coax port on the back of it. You plug the coax from the wall into the coax port on the router, and this allows the Fi…

The follow-up letters I receive from those prospective Ph.D.'s are often quite angry and incoherent; they've been praised their whole lives, and no one has ever told them that they may not become what they want to be, that higher education is a business that does not necessarily have their best interests at heart. Sometimes they accuse me of being threatened by their obvious talent. I assume they go on to find someone who will tell them what they want to hear: "Yes, my child, you are the one we've been waiting for all our lives." It can be painful, but it is better that undergraduates considering graduate school in the humanities should know the truth now, instead of when they are 30 and unemployed, or worse, working as adjuncts at less than the minimum wage under the misguided belief that more teaching experience and more glowing recommendations will somehow open the door to a real position.
via chronicle.com
This, in one succinct paragraph, is why I bailed on my …

New Query Functions released

Published: 2:01 PM GMT, Friday, 1 January 2010

We've justed finished the a whole new set of functions to help with the manipulation of Query objects and their respective datasources.

The following table highlights all the current functions within the Query category available in the OpenBD (nightly build) release:



DatasourceCreate
Adds a new datasource to the system for use with any database functions. This does not persist over server restarts

DatasourceDelete
Removes the given datasource. Note, it will not remove any datasource that was registered with the underlying bluedragon.xml file

DatasourceIsValid
Checks to see if a given datasource has been previously registered using DataSourceCreate()

QueryAddColumn
Adds a new column of data to the exist query object, returning the column number

QueryAddRow
Adds the specified the number of rows to the end of the query

QueryColumnArray
Returns all the data in a query for a given column

QueryColumnList
Returns all the dat…