Ponderings

10 Feb
2012

Getting My Feet Wet With Ruby On Rails

As a developer, I am always trying to add languages to my tool belt. One of the most popular languages on the web today is Ruby. Ruby on Rails is a powerful framework and the more I have learned about it has become clear why it has been the obvious choice for many of the most used apps on the Internet such as Basecamp. I have recently rewritten my corporate website using a popular Ruby on Rails CMS tool called RefineryCMS, I have been incredibly impressed. I will be blogging more about my experiences with Ruby and RefineryCMS.

Programming, RefineryCMS, Ruby On Rails | No Comments » |

6 Jan
2012

Need Help??

I am never sure how many people read this blog, but I thought I would put this out there. I currently have some extra bandwidth to work on contract projects or am open to a telecommuting position.

I have extensive experience in web application development on multiple platforms. I have done consulting work on my own for almost 12 years and would be interested to see how my skills and experience might be an asset to your team.

You can view my resume at: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/joshuascott

Feel free to contact me via e-mail or twitter.

ColdFusion, General, Programming | No Comments » |

4 Jun
2010

ModelGlue 3.2 Scaffolding

Time to be honest. Up to this point, ModelGlue scaffolding was a cool trick, but for me the code that was generated requires a lot of styling to make it presentable to a client. Last night though, something changed for me. Dan Wilson (@DanWilson) and I were talking and he asked if he could send me something to take a look at. He encouraged me to blog about it after I looked.

So I looked it over and followed the example and was absolutely BLOWN AWAY. It was the difference between going 75 mph in the HOV lane and going warp 10. I was really impressed. Here are a few screenshots:

I have not dug into the guts of how it works yet, but the forms look to use a jquery form styling library.

Areas that could be improved:

I have recently seen a framework called Django for the Python language and the generated code and styling of the interfaces is better than where we are here, but remember it is only in Alpha.
Maybe this is in there and I have not found it yet, but I think making the styling more easy tweak and having some themes.
Me. I need to get back involved in the ModelGlue beta process. In the first two versions of MG, I was active on the lists and giving suggestions etc… Lately I have been too busy, and I really need to get back involved because exciting things are happening.

I will continue to look into this, but I am incredibly impressed and blown away by what a huge jump this framework had taken.

General | No Comments » |

30 Sep
2009

ColdFusion 7 and the PayPal Web Payments Pro API

After working happily for a year or so, a client’s donation engine that uses the PayPal Web Payments Pro system started throwing errors. Upon closer inspection it was giving a “Connection Failure” error and not even completing the SSL handshake. After talking with PayPal and digging around on the Internet I found the solution.

Go to: https://www.verisign.com/support/roots.html and download roots.zip file.
Copy and rename the “Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority – G2.cer” file from the root certificates zip file provided by VeriSign to c:\vs-g2-import.cer to remove spaces from the filename.
Issue the following command: C:\CFusionMX7\runtime\jre\bin\keytool.exe -import -keystore c:\cfusionmx7\runtime\jre\lib\security\cacerts -storepass changeit -noprompt -trustcacerts -file c:\vs-g2-import.cer -alias vs-g2-import-09-09-30
Restart ColdFusion.

Works like a champ now. Thanks PayPal for the advance warning.

Additional Information:

http://www.pdncommunity.com/t5/blogs/blogarticlepage/blog-id/mts_updates/article-id/456
http://www.pdncommunity.com/pdn/board/message?board.id=nvp&thread.id=5557

ColdFusion | No Comments » |

4 Aug
2009

Reflections on CFBuilder

I have been using CFBuilder now everyday since it was in beta and have a few reflections:

1. OBVIOUS – It is not as developed as CFEclipse and as such has some irritating bugs that will be worked out in time.
2. Needs to have tighter Aptana tie in.
3. Should include a SVN client.
4. Server management ROCKS.
5. Tag insight and introspection show be a little quicker.

More later…

ColdFusion, ColdFusion Builder | No Comments » |

4 Jan
2009

Microsoft SQL Script to update BlogCFC 5.92

I just upgraded tonight to the latest release of BlogCFC, (what runs this blog) and realized that there is not an upgrade script for mssql. I edited the one provided for mysql and here it is:

ALTER TABLE tblblogcomments
 ADD killcomment varchar(35) NULL

ALTER TABLE tblblogcomments
 ADD subscribeonly int NULL

ALTER TABLE tblblogentries
 ADD summary varchar(255) NULL

ALTER TABLE tblblogentries
 ADD subtitle varchar(100) NULL

ALTER TABLE tblblogentries
 ADD keywords varchar(100) NULL

ALTER TABLE tblblogentries
 ADD duration varchar(10) NULL

ColdFusion, Database, Microsoft SQL, Programming | No Comments » |

4 Jan
2009

VMware and Linux

I have been a functional Windows bigot for most of my programming life. No more.

I had a server crash that happened to host the Resonant Media Technologies website. I took the time this time to really set it up right. I installed CentOS 5.2 and VMware 2, I will blog more, but the experience was incredible.

General, Linux, VMWare | No Comments » |

12 Nov
2008

Simple SES

As I was deploying the latest version of the Resonant Media site (www.resonantmedia.com). It was important to do as much as possible to make it search engine friendly. I opted to use a custom 404 page that processes the the URL via simple CFC that I built.

I will be posting more about the way it works in a future post.

ColdFusion, Programming | No Comments » |

12 Dec
2007