Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

As I hope nearly everyone has heard by now, Railo finally went open source yesterday, you can check out the new Open Source Railo site at http://www.getrailo.org and as well that Railo Technologies has started up http://www.getrailo.com

But this post isn't about that. I have been involved with the guys at Railo for a long time and been very impressed with the work that they have been doing, so much so that I have decided to buy join them.

So, as from today I am the CEO of Railo Technologies UK.

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Check out http://www.getrailo.org

It has been a while in the making but finally I can announce that Mark Drew Consulting will be up and running as from the 9th of March.

Mark Drew Consulting is a little firm based in London specializing in CFML development, ColdFusion and Railo administration and deployment, process, development tools, ajax, frameworks as well as training and support. If you have any needs why not come and talk to us, we are friendly, and have cookies.

The new website should be going live before the 9th so you can have a look at some of the offerings and if you are interested you can always email me or use the contact form!

It has been a long time coming and I am sad to be leaving the guys at Design UK, if you have design, ecommerce, emarketing or content management projects you should definitely go talk to them! The smartest people I have worked with in my career and the most fun.

There are a number of projects I am looking forward to taking off the ground, some that I want to devote more time too and other ideas and developments that I really look forward to sharing with you all in the near future!

I have been so excited about this for the last few weeks, I can tell you that the future is bright!

Would you like to own a Railo 3.0 Enterprise license all of your own? I am sure you would!

All you have to do is answer the question posed during Episode 3 of the CFDocs podcast and send your answers to podcast at ukcfug.org

You can get it via: iTunes , RSS or download the episode directly

In a record breaking time, I managed to edit the latest episode of the CFDocs podcast for the UKCFUG. This time with a new "refreshing" intro tune and as per listener requests, I have shortened the intro (I mean sheesh! Was 30 seconds TOO long?)

I am looking at getting a couple of microphones for the next recording, but the problem is doing multi-track recording and getting it all setup. Some listeners (and in fact Brian Meloche from the CFConversations podcast) have recommended the Blue Snowball but alas, it is not available in the UK yet. So I might have to see about some other nice microphones, of course, any suggestions are warmly welcome!

My current workflow is as follows, we record on multiple laptops using Audacity, I then get those recordings and merge them into one recording and edit out all the bits, do some enveloping and trimming and then export an uncompressed file that I can use in Garageband. I then split the podcast track adding whatever images are required and URLs and export that.

The next part which I might change, depending on costs, is to upload it to Libsyn, which allows for FTP uploading and you can then put the title and description etc, and it will then publish an RSS feed and publish it ready for iTunes to publish out.
Although I have been using Linsyn for a while and it's pretty cheap at $5 a month for 100Mb fast access storage, I am thinking I might move all of the stuff over to Amazon S3 and use a Railo Amazon EC2 image to publish it out, so I shall let you know how that goes!

You can check out this month's edition, with myself, Kev McCabe, Andy Allan and Gert Franz from:
iTunes , RSS or download the episode directly

A quick heads up about next week's ColdFusion User Group in London, UK. It's going to be an awesome event!

Our main speaker will be Gert Franz from Railo presenting, of course, Railo! But that is not all, we shall also have some very special guests turning up. I can't mention their names yet, but they are very big in the CF world and its an event not to be missed!

We shall also be doing a live recording of the CF Doc's podcast where we will be interviewing Gert as well as getting opinions from our very special guests on "2009 and all that Jazz" with what will be hot in the upcoming year!

As always send us your questions either to myself or call in your question via skype (UKCFUG).

This will be an event not to be missed and as you know seating is limited so get in early by emailing your attendance to reservations at ukcfug.org

For details about the event and how to get there, check the ukcfug.org site

I have just posted the news to Digg that Railo is going Open Source. I am surprised that this wasn't dugg before! So that we can get more exposure for both CFML and that Railo goes open source, I urge (nay! Plead!) that you Digg this article! Exciting times ahead!

Next week, CFUnited DC gets on the way, and what a busy conference it will be! Having checked my schedule it looks like it will be a real marathon for me. Here is my schedule: Wed 1:30 - 2:30 : ColdSpring: Better living through configuration Wed 8:30pm - 9:30pm : Improving quality through code reviews and mentoring Thurs 9:30 - 10:30: Fresh Air: Getting to grips with Aptana and AIR applications Fri 9:45-10:45: CFEclipse Reloaded Fri 11:00 - 12:00: Jing Demo (5 mins) Fri 11:00 - 12:00: Railo Demo (10 mins) Sat 9:45-10:45: CFEclipse Reloaded Sat 2:45-3:45: ColdSpring: Better living through configuration You might ask what the Jing and Railo Demo's are about, well, you are just going to have to turn up and find out! :) Hope to see you all there!

I am not sure if this news has spread through the CFML community, but a couple of weeks ago I stepped down from the OpenBD steering committee. Rather than going into all the details here I am just going to post my resignation letter that hopefully explains my reasons behind it.

Dear Gentlemen I have realised that since joining as a member of the steering committee I have contributed bugger all. This should not come as a shock to people that know me, since I am a lazy bugger but I think its inappropriate for me to take up space on the committee that could be assigned to someone more intelligent and vocal to contribute. I have a number of projects (outside my 9-6 day job) that I need to concentrate on, some that you know and some that you will hopefully know soon enough but this leaves me little time left to give OSBD the attention I would like to give the project. Rather than sit around like a silent lurker on the list I am going to make space for a better (not handsomer) person to take my place. Of course, I shall keep on lurking in the background... and probably looking at the code going "aint that clever.. yessum!" and wishing the project the total success it needs! Finally I would like to thank you for having though of me highly enough to invite me in the first place! And sorry that I couldn't make a bigger contribution

Tonight's UKCFUG meeting will be presented by Railo, a CFML rendering engine which has some nice benefits for all. Come and check out the Railo funkyness! (now Gert can tell me WHY he is still using CF Studio!)