Illequipped - Experiments in Futility

AspectCrop added to imageUtils

2008-03-01T11:54:00-04:00

I'm a little late posting this. Ben and Ray added AspectCrop to imageUtils yesterday. If you've ever needed to resize and crop images to specific dimensions then this one is for you. Go check out the example. Then download it and make that ultimate photo gallery app you're always talking about.

Welcome Silk Panty Lovers!

2006-07-21T18:51:00-04:00

I'm glad you've taken the time to visit my blog and learn a little about coldfusion and other non silk panty related ramblings. Imagine my delight when my usual coldfusion related traffic was toppled by silk panty lovers from all around the world. What impresses me most about you, my most beloved silk panty aficionado is your discerning taste in selecting this very site above all others, in fact, above all nine pages of silk panty related Google results that came before it. When you typed "silk panties" in Google you had the entire world at your fingertips and you selected me. I am humbled and honored. You, my friend, are indeed the crème de le crème of silk panty connoisseurs. Welcome to the world of coldfusion. Enjoy your stay.

Caramelized Grilled Pepper Roast

2006-07-04T16:49:00-04:00

Other than CF I have 2 other real passions in life, Snowboarding and BBQ. This Fathers Day my lovely wife presented me with a brand new gigantor stainless steel Ducane grill. Usually on the 4th its burgers and dogs all around. Well not this time. This is what the adults are eating. Modified over the last 2 years or so. 2-5 lb roast or london broil. Any beef cut will do really. Even steak. Adjust any rub measurements to your taste. The Rub
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon cracked black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teapoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2-3 crushed cloves of garlic
The Baste
1/2 cup of Apple Cider
1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 cup Water
1/4 Cup Bourbon
1 tablespoon worcestershire
1 tablespoon lemon juice
*** brewed coffee makes a nice substitute for the water. Highly suggested. Mix the rub and massage into the meat. Set aside for an hour at room temperature Mix the baste and put in a spray bottle. Something with a mist setting. I get mine at walmart where the mop refills are. They have measurments on the side which is nice. Fire up the grill If your using charcoal, push all the hot coals to one side and open the vents. If your using gas, just fire up one side and put the grill on low. Place the meat on the unheated side of the grill and slow cook. If you get your temerature right this should take about 2 - 3 hours to cook. While cooking spray the meat with your baste every 10-15 minutes. Use a meat thermometer. You want to get the meat to 160 degrees and keep it there for as long as you can control the temperature. When your ready to finish it off bring it directly over the heated side of the grill and cook til it hits 170 degrees. You shouldnt need to flip the meat at all during the entire cooking process until the very end. You'll have a nice juicy tender piece of meat with a great tasting edge.

Ouch! * 3

2006-07-04T15:46:00-04:00

If your one of the many out there who likes to kick back with a cool 40oz and wonder "hmmm... I wonder what part of my body would hurt the most when stung by a wasp." This blog post is for you. When comparing a sting to the face, ankle and mid back you might be surprised to learn the ankle hurts the most. If your wondering the order of the unpleasantry. 1. Ankle
2. Cheek
3. Mid Back
Now you may want to disagree with me just for the sake of argument. However, I do suggest you take my word for it, no matter how unscientific my methods may bee. get it. bee. The moral of the story... Treat a holiday like a holiday and stop wasting it on yard work. Grill some meat, drink some beer and enjoy your 4th of July.

Hangovers and Persistance

2006-07-03T15:29:00-04:00

I've been meaning to comment on my thoughts about CF United this year. Although I havent had time to put my kudos and critisisms in a coherent post I do need to say hey and give thanks to everyone who made my stay so damn fun. In no particular order...
Cutter
Aaron West
Mark Drew
Ray Camden
Kola Oyedeji
Honorable mention goes out to Josh Adams for the entertainment at Houstons and almost taking us seriously about picking up the tab. There was also Friday nights dinner at the hibatchi grill. I was almost as entertained by the 13 of us as I was watching the waiter deal with 13 seperate checks. Thanks for the invite Ray. I didnt think we were gonna get out of there alive. Other than Ray who I allready knew, I only caught Scott Stroz's name. If you were there, drop me a comment. I'd love to put some names to the faces. Sorry if I forgot anyone but my recollection is a little blurry still.

Beatin the street like its 1984!!!

2006-04-10T09:29:00-04:00

Several months ago i caught the nastalgia bug. I had it bad. Im not talking about a new computer virus or some cruise ship disease. Im talking about the sickness that infects many of us when we get settled in our careers, family and life in general. The need to go back to our childhood. It all started one late night while watching Terminator on the USA network. It wasnt Ahnolds catchy one liners or his cool shades that did it to me. It was the moment Reese breaks into the department store and slips on the coolest pair of shoes ever made. A fresh pair of Nike Vandals. I was suddenly transported back to school cafeteria dances, first kisses and my pre coldfusion passion for breakdancing. I could hear Vincent Price in the back of my head chanting "Find those shoes, Find those shoes!!!" After that a loud bell began building. It was familiar. It was the first few bars of Beat It. I was being transported back to the eighties whether i liked it or not. Over the next few weeks I constantly had one bad song or another stuck in my head. This was getting bad and I needed to stop it. I needed those shoes. I needed them before Paul and Michael started collaborating again in my head.

After months of searching, my new pair of kicks arrived friday fresh from the UK. A size 11 gray and blue canvas pair of Nike Vandals. The exact match for the ones I owned. I can't remember a purchase that brought so much satisfaction. I'll post more pictures once i get my fat laces in em. Anyone want to battle? I'll bring the cardboard.

IE side by side fix SOLVED!

2006-04-06T11:31:00-04:00

A while ago I posted an issue where IE was opening every page entered in the address bar in Firefox. This happened just after i installed uninstalled IE7. eeesh. Reinstalling SP1, removing and reapplying hotfixes didnt seem to solve the issue. After a while I finally gave up and decided the IE plugin for firefox was suitable for my IE testing. Then all hell broke loose... IE would occasionally spawn off 30-50 or so blank windows now and then for no apparent reason. I was back on the hunt for a fix. I found it here. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/12/16/504864.aspx Apparently all you have to do is delete the following key from the registry. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\ {c90250f3-4d7d-4991-9b69-a5c5bc1c2ae6} It worked like a charm and everything is back to normal.

IE and Firefox. Together at last... Sorta

2006-02-08T13:43:00-04:00

No this isnt about the cool plugin for Firefox to open IE as a tab. Its about my IE's new behavior of opening everything in Firefox no matter what I do. To be more specific. If I type anything in IE's adress bar it opens up firefox. It all started when I couldnt resist installing the beta IE7. Unfortunately my online banking (IE Only) doesnt like IE7 so I had to uninstall it. Thats when this new sordid love affair between the 2 browsers began. I've tried everything. Resetting the default browser, uninstalling MS updates, reinstalling MS updates and lighting insense. Has anyone else had this happen yet?

Terminal Services tips and tricks

2005-07-31T15:20:00-04:00

I regulary admin a mix of Win2k and Win2003 servers using Terminal Services through XP remote desktop. Unfortunately both only allow 2 sessions and have a tendancy to get used up when a user forgets to logout. Heres a few tricks to get you back in. The easiest method is installing the adminpak.msi locally. You can find it in either servers system32 folder. This will add some new server utils in your Administrative tools folder. Just open Terminal Services Manager and connect to the machine in question to terminate the stale sessions. Problem with this method is that it only works if your local machine exists on the same domain as the server. So lets move on to the more realistic real world solutions. Win2k, 2003 and XP all include some command line tools to get you through. The first work as a team. qwinsta (Query WINdows STAtion) and rwinsta (Reset WINdows STAtion). To query a server you would use the following command.

>qwinsta /server:192.168.0.1 (use the server IP)

It will return the rdp-tcp session ID's like so.
rdp-tcp#470 Emmet 2 Active rdpwd
rdp-tcp#471 Tony 3 Active rdpwd
So now we see that I am occupying session 2 and Tony is occupying session 3 Now I need to log out my old session using

>rwinsta /server:192.168.0.1 2

Now I'm ready to log back in. Another method is using tsdiscon. If you want to just disconnect a session and just make it inactive you could use...

>tsdiscon 2 /server:192.168.0.1

The last option is a Win2003 option only. You can use console mode and remote into the desktop. Just type the following command line...

>mstsc /console

This will bring up remote desktop and you will now log in as console on the desktop regardless if the 2 session are filled or not. Then you can go to terminal services manager and reset or disconnect the old sessions. Thats all for now. Hope this helps.

Scrobble Scrobble

2005-06-06T17:21:00-04:00

I had to take down the the Audio Scrobbler pod after discovering the site was on error all nite. Since I rarely miss a day of playing music I didnt take into account what would happen when the xml feed is empty. Woops. Code has been updated. Pod is back. I've also noticed audioscrobbler can be pretty damn slow sometimes. If you dont want your site affected by the response of their site, you might want to just schedule it to run every 5 minutes.

CF_AudioScrobbler

2005-06-04T17:36:00-04:00

I added caching to the Audio Scrobbler RSS parser thingy. I posted it for download on the right. It's now officially called CF_AudioScrobbler. Let me know if you have any suggestions or improvements.

XMLParse is not Da BOM!

2005-06-03T23:42:00-04:00

The other day I mentioned our hiring dilemma and gave an example of a simple solution to a simple problem. It was easy, but I guarantee a few of you wouldn't have come up with it on the first try. When it comes to coding, sometimes our brains try to take the path of most resistance. At least mine does. A perfect example is a problem I had today with parsing an XML document. I like to play Halo2. Nothing caps off a stressful day like senseless violence. Usually after a night of killing I go to Bungie's site and check out my stats. The first time I went there I immediately noticed the RSS link. Sure enough, my stats were there for the taking. The idea of writing a statistics app was born. Today I finally got a chance to start writing the app. As I typed the first line of code I was already thinking ahead. I could finally back up all my shit talking with colorful graphs and pie charts. I quickly grabbed the feed with cfhhtp and sent it through coldfusions xmlparse function and... Error Occurred While Processing Request
Document root element is missing. I looked at the XML for any indication of why it wouldn't parse. I ran it through some XML validators and compared it to other documents I had parsed in the past. Everything looked fine. I was stumped. Then it came to me. Instead of looking for something I could see, I started looking for something I couldn't. It was time to break out the HEX editor. Sure enough, a byte order mark (BOM) was sitting in front of the XML declaration. In UTF-8 it would be EF BB BF. Technically, a BOM can exist in any UTF-8 document so I found it surprising the CF's built in parser would choke on it. I spent the next several minutes trying to figure out how to strip the BOM out with CF. If I could just convert it to HEX i could do a find replace on the BOM then convert it back to a string. The entire time I'm thinking of how to do this I'm talking to my programmer friend ritchie. Suddenly he suggests I just find a starting point and strip everything away before that. DOH! I just failed my own test from a few days previous. I ended up stripping away everything before the root element including the XML declaration and voila!... there was my array. So the final code looked something like this. So simple I couldnt see it.

<cfhttp url="http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo2rss.ashx?i=697888&k=30743151" method="get" resolveurl="No"></cfhttp>
<cfset begin = Find("<rss version=""2.0"">",CFHTTP.FileContent)>
<cfscript>
begin = begin -1;
xml = RemoveChars(CFHTTP.FileContent,1,begin);
xml = XMLParse(xml);
</cfscript>
<cfdump var="#xml#">

You and I are just the same. Unless you listen to MTV that is.

2005-06-03T12:49:00-04:00

Miles Rast over at the Rasteroids turned me on to Audio Scrobbler last night. Apparently everyone and their grandmother has known about this site for a while. Drats! I hate not being the first on the scene. The playlist tracking is cool but the part that interested me the most was what other people that shared the same taste in music listen to. They pretty much define your musical tastes within 20 individual tracks or so. In the blink of an eye my individuality was thrown in the pen with the rest of cattle. MOOOO! Like all good geeks I quickly noticed the RSS feed at the bottom. A quick click of the keys and I had myself a playlist pod. Bottom right if your curious. Here's the code. Come join the herd.

<cfhttp url="http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/rdf/history/renhack" method="get"></cfhttp>
<CFSet xml=CFHTTP.FileContent>
<CFSet xmlDoc = XMLParse(xml)>
<cfset song=xmlDoc.rdf.item>
<cfloop from="1" to="#ArrayLen(song)#" index="i">
<cfoutput>
<strong>#ListFirst(song[i].description.XmlText, "-")#</strong> - #ListLast(song[i].description.XmlText, "-")#<br>
</cfoutput>
</cfloop>

Do you swing both ways?

2005-06-01T00:06:00-04:00

Found a neat app tonite called Synergy. Lets you stick your mac and pc side by side like a dual monitor setup. Move your mouse to the edge of the pc screen and presto chango! Your using the mac. For me the feature that puts it over the top is the shared clipboard. Awesome. Time to get rid of the KVM and get another monitor. Check it out

Were Hiring! if only we could...

2005-05-31T17:11:00-04:00

The company I work for is currently hiring an inhouse developer. We've been under a heavy load for quite a while now and there appears to be no end in site. In most areas of the country you'd have pleny of talent out there to choose from. Unfortunately we're located in a tourist town and most of the population is transient seasonal workers looking to earn some tips and get drunked up. My initial hope was to find an intermediate CF'er with a working knowledge of photoshop. No takers. Next I decided to settle for a beginner cf'er whos heard of photoshop. No takers. Now I'm stuck looking for the first person who can write a table in notepad without using FrontPage. Guess what? NO TAKERS! While still in the hopes of finding an entry level CF'er I did settle on a simple test of logic. Maybe someday we'll find someone who can answer it. The question was this... Display the alphabet with each letter linking to an anchor of the same letter in three lines of code or less. The answer...