After trying a number of automated backup utilities for my new ReadyNas DUO backup drive, I found a solid winner: http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.php

The website doesn't do the product justice.
This is the first backup utility where the interface is just polished enough but not cartoony, the options are clear to see and understand but not overwhelming, and most importantly it runs in the background with no interruption to running programs, no obtrusive memory hogging and, once I had all my schedules set up how I want them, no maintenance or attention from me at all.

more...

Just seen on Lifehacker: http://lorem2.com/

More than just your standard Lorem Ipsum, this one has long paragraphs, short paragraphs, and long and short list items. Nothing overly amazing but i can see where this would be useful... not your grandma's Lorem Ipsum site!

A client gave me a long page of addresses and links, a directory of manufacturers for his industrial-based site.

Converting it to html, my markup ended up something like this:

and so on for the various states, about 35 of 'em.

Now, I needed a list of links at the top of the page, one for each state, that would allow the user to click a state name at the top, and get scrolled down to the relevant section below.

I had two choices.. go through the code and manually make an anchor link, or come up with a dynamic solution (not a hard decision).

more...

In the effort to make posting to this blog as quick and easy as possible, I decided to take a shot at a jQuery/CF automatic login routine...

Not wanting to mess with the built-in authentication (and looking for a quick easy fix), I took the most simple approach I could think of - put the user name and password in the url as variables, put those values in the form fields with ColdFusion, and then submit the form with jQuery.

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I've been busier than ever with the expansion of my web design company and CF programming services, as well as a massive total upgrade (and renaming) of our ColdFusion web hosting company -  all very good things, no complaints about having enough to do, but things like this humble blog have fallen by the wayside.

I've had lots of neat ideas or things to share (don't we all!) but somewhere along the line, I decided to upgrade to the newest blogcfc version, and instead of posting, have been spending my precious little 'blog time' working on the site itself. (Actually really easy to upgrade - thanks again to Ray Camden for making it so smooth!)

In addition to the new look and simpler layout, I put a heap o' tweak on the back end, including tinyMCE, a nice image resizer/uploader, and a bunch of other little things designed to get me back to posting and sharing tiny tidbits as quickly and easily as possible. ( so far so good... the new tinyMCE is really slick, and I've set it up to switch between plain text and a text editor with a single click, depending on the need... more on that later - I'll share it here once i get a few more miles on it!)

Building two businesses, raising a family, and being a code-obssessed project-mongering CF/jQuery nut-fan doesn't leave a lot of time for sharing and discussion, but I am gettting a grip on all that is required of me at this stage of life and career, and coming to see not only an outlet in the social web community, but also beginning to noticeably realize the return from all the time I've spent over the years on various web developer newsgroups and forums, as well as this and other web developer blogs. Instead of taking me 'off track', the interchange of ideas, tools and time-saving suggestions has led to a noticeable increase in my efficiency and a new spring in the step of my general workflow, not to mention quite a few very nice paid projects (thanks especially to the CartWeaver crew for all the props this past year).

If anything, being part of a larger community of web developers and other like-minded folks, even if virtual, has been a very real part of keeping me 'on track' all this time.

At the risk of sounding overly sentimental, I just want to give a smathering of thanks and praise to the CF community at large. I've seen a lot of great ColdFusion ideas and renewed enthusiasm on a lot of levels as more and more people get the bug of <cf_connectedness>. Great ColdFusion resources like ColdFusionCommunity.org, riaforge.org and of course CFbloggers.org seem to be steadily picking up speed, and the general willingness to share and discuss all our little brain-children concepts and widgets is what keeps this business fun. As long as I am still learning, I am still doing what I love for a living.

http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=51FDF

Just online...
This portion outlines all of my spam-blocking techniques rolled into one powerful script.

The attachment samples give you everything you need to drop a working CF contact form into ANY page of your site, and start collecting spam-proof website submissions right away. (Please DO download and test the samples, and my instructions, and let me know what you find!)

Features include:

    * Trapping automatic form submission (junk mail bots) with a "Honeypot" field
    * Preventing html characters '<' & '>'
    * Blocking a defined list of words and phrases, including common spam terminology and nasty words we don't want in our email

...all in one simple file that you can insert into any page!

Part 3 will put some finishing touches on things, with jQuery inline validation, and a cleaner approach to the code and all the variable parts of the form.... coming soon...

p.s. - CMX has put up part 2 as a paid article (part 1 is free), but you can get a free trial and grab a few key articles, there is a lot in there to peruse.

Note: CommunityMX just posted a help wanted notice.
If you have CF / PHP / DreamWeaver / Photoshop / other knowledge above the average tutorial-reading beginner-or-higher-level CMX member, this is a great chance to earn a few bucks, share what you know, and get some nice credits.

Found this little snippet for adding a css file <link> tag to the head of your page with jQuery.

Presumably you could use it for other things too.

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('head', document).append('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
media="screen" href="css/mysite.css" />');
   });

Like CFHtmlHead, for javascript!

I finally got it changed! For those that may be wondering how to get rid of the default signature ( Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry ), here is your how-to...

First, with Verizon, you can't change this on your BlackBerry. You also cannot change this in your normal Verizon control panel. Instead there is a special admin for the email accounts, here
http://www.blackberry.com/go/vzw

apparently when you set up an email account on your blackberry, you also are setting the same options here... but this has options the BB can't control directly. Odd.

The next challenge - to log in to that magic vzw control panel, you need a password. I had to contact Verizon by phone to get mine.

Then, once logged in, it was very simple ... click 'edit' on the existing account and enter a new signature. 

For me, I don't always want people to know I am not at my desk when answering or sending email. Turning off the annoying mobile confirmation messages and then changing the signature to one similar to my usual outlook email footer, I am now officially BB-cloaked.

This little project is two things in one...  a thumbnail gallery creator and a neat jquery gallery display
...both of which I am proud to show off and share after a long day of tinkering

I have a client who wants 'a bunch of photo galleries' on her site.... and she likes a flash gallery with a sliding row of thumbs at the top, large image below.
So - I built a CF tag to make galleries on the fly (in several ways.. .keep reading... ) AND a jQuery gallery that behaves just almost exactly like her flash example.

1)  // instant coldfusion photo gallery creator! //
 
First, I have created (and today, cleaned up and bundled) a coldfusion custom tag that automatically generates entire galleries of resized photos with thumbnails, and several options.

The same tag also displays the galleries for every folder inside a given location, creating thumbs on the fly.

more...

After a long time of planning to check it out 'soon', I finally have a paying project that requires I dig in and learn more about the <cfpdf> tag.
What I see so far, I really like.

For the current task - I have a folder of single-page pdf files that need to have a nice 4 line footer added to the bottom of the page. The trick is, the footer needs to be different, depending on a set of variables in the 'request' scope.

( In this case, my client is another developer who has commissioned a rather large and complex site based on my ColdFusion CMS.
One aspect of the system allows him to upload pdf files to a master directory - these are medical fact sheets which are accessed by a number of other websites on the same server - the whole websites are actually being created via the cms as well... but that's beside the point).

more...

Thanks to the good folks at communitymx, I have now joined the ranks with a simple 3-part tutorial of my own - " ColdFusion Contact Forms in One Easy File "

Part 1 of 3 explains, very simply, how to create a single include file, containing a basic contact form that submits to the same page, and processes email, with a custom auto-responder message, using ColdFusion. This little widget can be dropped into any page for an instant contact form, and of course can be modified to contain any fields you like.

Part 2 will focus on preventing spam (not much point using the form without this stuff in place - time to get busy on the next segment!), and Part 3 will explain how to replace the standard CFmail form validation with custom jQuery in-place validation on each field.