Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

I thought I would share the fact, that even though it isn't christmas, and nearly february, it snowed relatively heavily last night. Maybe I didnt keep up with the weather man, but I woke up to find the streets covered in snow! I took some pictures just to remind myself how beautiful it can be (before it all melts)

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Alistair Davidson just put a blog post about a fed-ex scam, now, I leave the details up to him but has anyone in the US ever had to give the recipients date of birth when sending a Fed-Ex package? And if someone phoned you claiming to be from FedEx would you give them all your details just like that? Another part that sounds dodgy is the "cash on delivery" for a package you don't know who its from. This sounds as dodgy as can be, so watch out for scams like this. I have a feeling the world is changing with regards to the lengths people are going to scam other's identity.

I just had to upgrade to BlogCFC 5.5.1 which caused a few errors (partial uploading was the error rather than anything else). Hopefully everything is back to normal. I have also been thinking I might do a bit of a re-design of the blog... what do you think? Any ideas?

Just thought I would say that comments seem to not be working on my blog at the moment. I am heading out of the office, but I shall try and fix it tonight.

I thought I would join in the meme that I think Simeon Bateman started and that Sean Corfield had done years ago (he would have wouldn't he, he is ahead of the curve in everything else!) by displaying our workplaces to each other... well... here is my little pod in the center of London. Nicely annotated too! enjoy!

I saw the Secret Policeman's Ball over New Year's and saw the funniest mime by David Armand. I thought I would share with the rest of the world... this makes me giggle and break up totally. enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TM3GbxaNLI

I have had enough. It has been a couple of years and I am sick of it. The complaints, the cost, everything! I have decided to quit. Thats right, I had made a plan that on January 1st, 2007 would be my last day, or maybe the first day (depending on your point of view) that I would do this to myself. What am I talking about? No, not CFEclipse! Smoking! Thats right, I have packed the packet in, kicked it in the butt, my smokes have gone up in smoke (actually, I ripped up my last pack and every single cigarette within). Oh, and happy new year you lot. I am in a grumpy mood. Catch me in a week when I am not trying to bite people's heads off.

I know my recent posts have all been thanks for the donations to repair my laptop, but I got an email today from the guys at Integral, more commonly know as the developers of FusionDebug and FusionReactor. They emailed me to let me know that they had got me a few items (very important ones if you develop Eclipse plugins) from my Amazon Wish-List, namely: Eclipse Modeling Framework: EMF is about how to develop model driven plugins, which will (when I read it) allow us to do some crazy stuff with re-factoring and UML generation (when tied into GMF) Head First Object-oriented Analysis and Design: Since I am developing some CF frameworks in my day to day life as well as doing CFEclipse, I thought I would brush up again on the fundamentals. I have the Head First Design Patterns book and that is amazing. This book was recommended by Peter Bell, a guy that does know his noodles! The last book was: The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFace: Now, I am fairly competent with Java, but the GUI stuff is just infuriating. No, really. I NEEDED this book to do any of the interfaces. Eclipse has some handy classes and shortcuts for this but if you want anything out of the box, I am usually left stranded and googling. This will hopefully bring some nicer looks to CFEclipse in the coming year. THANK YOU GUYS! I really should mention (I am sure I was going to do a blog post about this a while back, probably got side tracked) that FusionReactor has saved my bacon a number of times over the last few months and has recently been nominated for a CFDJ Most Innovative Application award, and richly deserved too! Also, if you haven't heard about it (where have you been???) FusionDebug is the must have plugin for Eclipse (even if you don't use CFEclipse*) and has also been nominated by CFDJ as Best Web Development Tool. I know this sounds like advertising but really, get these tools, I cannot recommend them enough as part of your toolkit. If you are running any sort of CF server you will thank me (well, thank them really!) A quick update, FusionDebug 1.5 is coming in January, you can sign up for the beta over at the FusionDebug website! *What do you mean you dont use CFEclipse? You want me to come round there and set it up for you PERSONALLY? sheesh! Should I code it for you too? :)

So, right before Xmas, when everything is closed et-cetera. My laptop keyboard and mouse for my MacBook Pro has bust. It doesn't work. If it was just the mouse it would be ok since I recently got a Wireless Mighty Mouse which is damned neat. But no, its also the keyboard. So, I am carrying my Bluetooth Keyboard from work home and back every day. Before our office Christmas party I made an appointment at the Apple Store's Genius bar through the Apple website. After a bit of a wait they finally managed to see me, and even though I am within the warranty period, because my laptop has a dent (that I mentioned recently) none of it is under warranty and thus, when I get it fixed is going to cost me a cool ?335.05 (or USD 659.30 so you know). So, not a happy bunny for Xmas, and thus you will all have to wait till I get it fixed (yeah, like I have the cash after Xmas!) till you start getting CFEclipse updates... sorry! Edit: Did I mention I have a donate button on my blog? ;)