Adam->Blog();

One of the things I’ve been struggling with at work lately is related to bizzare ColdFusion errors. Essentially what I am seeing is a page that normally works just suddenly throw an error stating that a specific variable cannot be accessed as an object because it is of type java.lang.String. The problem with this is that it is in fact a CFC instance, and works great for the most part. Then suddenly it will stop working, and logging off the software, and back in, is the only solution. This, of course, is problematic.

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Check out my new article on encoding files as base64 strings. Useful for sending binary data across the wire where sending such binary data may be difficult. Especially useful for webservices and sending files.

While working on my personal project tonight I finally got around to going over some of the new examples in the ExtJs documentation. In this case they are demonstrating having a form with a password field, and a confirmation password field, and how you can validate that the second password entered is the same as the first. That’s fine and dandy, but I did need it to do a little more. I need this validation to verify that the entered password is at least five characters, and contains at least one number or special character from a specific set.

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Howdy peeps! New little article talking about cleaning up file names in ColdFusion, useful for when processing a file upload, for example. Check it out!

Today I learned that the North Texas Toll Authority, affectionately known as NTTA, has requested that the speed limits be raised by 10 miles per hour on our major toll road areas, including the North Dallas Tollway and the President George Bush Tollway. It appears that the NTTA has not raised the speed limits, which currently stand between 55 and 60 MPH, because of a failure to conduct the state’s required speed safety tests, prohibiting the much desired raise in limit.

I for one am quite happy to hear this news. It pains me to know that I could get a ticket for going over 55 freakin miles per hour on a road that I HAVE TO PAY TO DRIVE ON!!! Good grief, and about time.

Yes, I know. I seem to have a hard time sticking to one theme. It’s just what I do. More importantly, however, I’d like to announce that I am on the latest, greatest, WordPress 2.5!

I’m not going to say too much, because you should probably check it out for yourselves, but I’m diggin’ it. The new administrative interface is way nicer than the older one, IMHO. I’ve heard some grumblings on the internet about some folks not liking it. I suspect these people fear change in the first place, ergo the grumbling. Sporting a tighter interface, new media management features, and better security, I’m sold.

Give it a look at http://wordpress.org/ and get yours today!

For those that enjoy the features offered by the Yahoo! Widgets you might at some point find yourself in a situation similar to what I experienced today. Somehow, perhaps with my two monitor goodness, and goofing that up by logging into our VPN, I tried to open up the Converter widget, and it never showed up on the screen.

After a bit of digging I at least found out how to reset the widget’s position, even though I didn’t find out why it disappeared. If you find that launching a widget gives you a non-visible widget, you may wish to try the following.

1. Open Regedit (Start -> Run -> Regedit)
2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\WidgetEngine
3. Find the folder with the name of the widget. Under this folder will likely be a folder named Windows.
4. Under the Windows folder there should be a main folder. Open this.
5. Delete the key named Positions
6. Restart the widget

Good widgeting!

New tutorial for C# about using XML data in a DataSet object for manipulating the data like it came from a database. See the Software Development section, or go straight to it here. Cheers, and happy coding!