Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

I mentioned before that I had to pick up something from the post office that was too big to fit through my letterbox last week, well, I picked up another item from my wish list this morning, a Bodum cafetiere! The people at Anodyne.com a company in Laurel, MD which does Credit Card clearing services as well as web development, design and hosting (sorry if I missed anything else you do!) have been kind enough to get me an item off my wish list! So a big thanks! It will definitely be well used! Now to find out who sent me The Godfather for PS2, which I finally managed to start playing yesterday, and got totally hooked... its a great game, without the "usual" key configuration (of pressing X to punch etc) but instead you use the right joystick to "power" your punches and also to shake people to push them into giving you protection money. I can tell I am really going to be getting into this game!

I am not sure if people out there are reading Peter Bell's Application Generation blog, but if you are not, and you are doing ColdFusion OO programming this is a MUST. He is working through how to build frameworks, in other words generic code that is required for a number of applications. This isnt a "how do I connect to a database" type of thing, instead he has been going through how to create page controllers, iterating objects and Generic getters and setters (e.g. ModelGlue's getValue()) amongs other things. This is a great blog and one to keep your eye on.

I just wanted to say that I have now done over 200 posts in this blog, I have been blogging for nearly three years and have recieved (acording to the blog stats) over 50,000 visits to my blog. Wow, I know its not a lot compared to say Mr Corfield's or Mr Camden's blogs but I am still proud of this little milestone! So here, I raise my coffee cup to another three years of blogging and another few hundred posts and thank you all my readers!

I added the ASK MD pod on my blog so people could get in touch with me easily, the idea being that I could write them back as a blog post (hence I dont ask their email etc) but I noticed that by having "ASK MD" I have been getting some rather strange questions of a medical nature. Now, I am quite knowledgeable in ColdFusion, CFEclipse, Java, Web Development in general and other random things (like Lost plotlines etc) but some of the questions I cant answer. So sorry folks, if you have come here to ask me how many quaaludes it takes to get you high or other much more *intimate* questions... I am not your type of MD. And seriously... dont you read *anything* on the blog before posting?!

Rob started the CFEclipse project a while back and he has done an awesome job. He has since left the CFEclipse project but I still tap him for info and a chat nearly every day and apart from coming up with good ideas he is a pretty dammed cool guy. He has written a post about Open Source Life Cycle, Slight Rant which really has just echoed my feelings over the last few days. There have been a number of threads (well, one in particular) over in the cf-talk mailing list that actually got my blood up a little. Before people start asking for features for CFEclipse or bemoaning it doesnt do something they want it to do or does something different, I beg of you to read this post.

So, I added some more features to make sure that people are actually human when they submit a post to me, so "Bill" from Canada, is sending me spam. For goodness sake, dont be idiots. I just delete the spam, and it has nothing to do with anything I am interestted in. Dont go to all that bother since I wont click on it! I mean, I would understand if you are working out of eastern europe or something but you are from Canada and Texas, you understand me... stop it!

I have updated the Ask MD pod as I got annoyed with people sending me spam, I mean it wont help them at all since it wont give them my address, so at least now you have to do a little step between sending me a question, so apologies if this is an inconvenience to real posters, but its simple enough to answer . Let me know what you think!

A great day for updates to the blog! I have added a new pod underneath the recent entries that allows you to submit any questions you have about Coldfusion, CFEclipse, Macs or anything else that comes to your mind. I know Ray Camden does this and I dont want to step on his mighty toes, but also wanted a way for you (if you like) to submit your questions and comments.

As I posted previously about spamming through my subscribe pod here on my blog, sure enough, a few days later, I am starting to get nice emails from those Nigerian 419'ers. Of course I can send them my bank details so I can hold their supposed millions.

Now, the email I am talking about I dont put out there, its just used to recieve comments to this blog and things related behind the scenes on this website. So its amazing that they got the exact email huh?

I sure hope something comes along to stop them, in the meantime there is 419Eater

Andy Jarret  posted yesterday about strange spammers using his blog's susbscribe by email functionality.

I am not sure why you would do this then it hit me, what other good way to get "genuine" emails, since as soon as you post you will be sending these scum a genuine email.

I have removed all the subscribers from my database, and also removed the subscribe by email functionality (no one has yet actually subscribed to my blog via email anyway).

I have also got an email from supposedly nat west asking me to come in and login to their system to veryfiy against phishing attacks. Riiight... so why are they using a domain that isnt Natwest's?

I hate this kind of stuff since I was "nearly" taken in, it has the same font etc as natwest and the link showed the proper email for natwest, but as usual (I always do this) I looked at the source code and the domain was www.natwest-banking *dot* com. A nonexistent domain and definately not the natwest bank.

Nigerian scammers, then this... its getting so that you just cant use email anymore!