Working at a small university changed my code because the university hosted its own sites.

I knew just enough about the hardware setup to see where problems might occur for me and started adding 'just-in-case' code.

Then I read a ColdFusion book that suggested using a simple database query wrapped in a cftry/cfcatch tag just to see if the database connection was up and running.

I laughed because I thought I invented that. My code used a cfmail tag to emailed me so I could go and nag the database guys.

A lot of people are passionately involved in the "one way or the other" debate surrounding Flash and HTML5. Some people contest that Flash is, and will be for some years to come, the most popular and accessible form of bringing media to the masses. Others have put forward the argument that Flash is outdated and incompatible with some modern devices, and HTML5 offers many improvements over Adobe's antiquated format.

What's the right answer? It's simple, if you're a user: it doesn't matter what the answer is Whether you're watching YouTube, a client presentation or a tournament on Partypoker, it's not going to make a huge amount of difference to you as long as the media is brought to your fingertips with ease. A lot of people forget that not everyone is a web developer, so whether that embedded funny video is in Flash or HTML5 isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference to them.

That isn't to imply that the average user is stupid and only enjoys funny videos - that's a generalisation that's only too easy to wield, much to the unhappiness of those being stereotyped. Ironically, it's also this demographic that will ensure your sales keep going up, so not pandering to the PEBKAC, "read the manual" mindset is probably for the best.

If you're wondering which to choose, ask yourself this - which do you enjoy most? Do you like working in Flash, whether everything is familiar and easy to do, or do you find the challenge of a new format with new capabilities exciting? Either way, it's worth being knowledgeable about both, as a HTML5 switch-over is a reasonable possibility.

Looking into the future, there's a lot of turmoil for those who live designing for the web the way it is now. But at the end of it, some of you will adapt, and some of you will die stubbornly. HTML5 and Flash won't take your souls, and neither will those who debate with you. Learn as much as you can, and experiment - and good luck doing so. See you on the other side.

Line 169 of Entity.cfc from Blade 0.62 (an ORM example):

evaluate('this.set#local.property#(arguments.properties[local.property])');

Even with all the CF9 conventions this is still the only way to do it?

My install of the Blade demo has survived an upgrade http://www.markireland.com.au/stepbystepblog/step4/index.cfm

This is just a test post to see if the move to CF 9.0.1 is all good.

I am checking out cfScaffold and Blade both examples using ORM.

This is a little counter-intuitive so I am quoting Ben Nadel here:

"ColdFusion applications do not really exist. At least not in the way you might think of a traditional desktop application that has a running process. ColdFusion applications do not have a constant process. Instead, they have memory scopes. Each application has its own name which ties it to a chunk of memory somewhere. Every time you define an application through the Application.cfc (or CFApplication), what you are really doing it associating the current page request to the chunk of memory that is associated with that application name.

When you start to look at ColdFusion applications this way, it becomes a little more clear why you cannot explicitly kill an application or a session; there simply is nothing to kill. An application doesn't run unless you have a running page that requests to be associated with it."

So how is a count of sessions calculated? Is it simply not gone until 8 hours (the default setting in the servers xml) has passed? Add it, wait 8 hours and subtract it?

Here is a nice use of the deepliquid Jcrop jQuery plugin by Matt Gifford

If you like this check out RaphaelJS

The fckEditor is now a jQuery plugin called ckeditor.

Would it be worth it to stop using returnType="query" with ajax and jQuery?

I could try to standardise the way the data returned uses JSON. I would prefer a structure that always has a key that I can use as an index.