Aaron West's Technology Blog - Blogging

Push My Tweet Buttons

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:42:00 -0400

I've added Twitter's new tweet button to all posts on this blog. If you are reading a post that you like or that you think others will find useful in some way, I'd very much appreciate it if you'd use the button to tell your Twitter followers. All you have to do is press the tweet button and a pop-up window will display with twitter.com loaded. If you are signed into Twitter's site you'll be able to submit the tweet immediately. If you aren't signed into Twitter, you'll need to enter your username and password first.

Interesting Site Statistics

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:05:00 -0400

Yesterday, Dan Wilson blogged about his Web site statistics and how Linux was less than 1% behind Macintosh in his visitor stats. He asked what trends others were seeing so I thought I'd post the same stats he did. After the break you will see a screenshot from Google Analytics of the operating system statistics for aaronwest.net from June 19 - July 19, 2010. [More]

Welcome to My New Site!

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:24:00 -0400

Two weeks ago today I brought aaronwest.net live bringing all my content from trajiklyhip.com and trajiklyhip.com/blog to a brand new, consolidated interface on a new domain. Before I talk about my new site and what I like about it, I want to give a (somewhat) brief overview describing my sites evolution over the last 8 years. Keep reading after the break. [More]

Follow My Digital Bytes on Tumblr

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:37:00 -0400

This is just a quick post to let everyone know I've been posting content - what I'm calling "digital bytes" - on Tumblr. A friend recommended I use Tumblr a few months ago and I've been posting content ever since. I like how easy Tumblr is to use and how there's an iPhone app (iTunes link) I can use to post photos, videos, and links. The reblog feature of Tumblr is also quite nice. If I see something someone else has posted that I really like I can reblog their content, placing it on my Tumblr page, with a few clicks of my mouse. I view Tumblr as sort of a mini-blog and will continue to post content I think is relevant and interesting. Check it out and be sure to follow me if you also use Tumblr.

Upgrading to BlogCFC 5.9.3 - The Tools, The Process, The Result

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:00:00 -0400

Yesterday I posted about upgrading my blog to BlogCFC 5.9.3. How I went about the upgrade process is probably just as important as getting on the latest version. What follows is a run-down of how I upgraded, what tools I used to make it painless, and the SQL scripts I wrote you can use to get your own blog upgraded. Hit the more link for all the goodness. [More]

Now Running BlogCFC 5.9.3

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:00:00 -0400

I haven't upgraded my blog software (BlogCFC) since 2006. I've written several customizations that until recently have made it a huge burden to migrate to Ray's latest enhancements without losing my own additions and changes. Last weekend I decided enough was enough and I made a personal goal to get everything running on 5.9.3 before Monday. It wasn't easy but with the help of some nice tools I was able to reach my goal.

I'll post a later entry on the tools I used that made the upgrade process painless. I'll also provide custom MySQL scripts I wrote to upgrade the database architecture, just like I did before. In the meantime, here's a short list of what has been added and changed: [More]

A Short Review of 2008 and Happy New Year!

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:27:00 -0400

In just a few hours 2008 will come to a close and I'll ring in 2009 with my wife, son, and inlaws. This past year has brought some real challenges into my life many of which were unexpected. Fortunately, most of those challenges were met head on, were turned into opportunities, and then accomplishments. I played a major role in a very large datacenter migration project, one that involved months of planning and careful execution. That project, which migrated several thousand Web sites we host at Dealerskins was one of the most detailed, scary, and involved projects I've ever worked on. In the end it went very smooth. As they say, spend 80% of your time planning and 20% executing. Well, something like that anyhow. There were several other major projects at work, some that took a matter of weeks and some that took over four months. During one part of the year I was managing over seven simultaneous projects involving four full-time Web developers, one DBA, two SQL Programmers, and one designer. It was super hard and I'm still learning while making a ton of mistakes. Many many thanks to the great folks that work with me at Dealerskins! It's been a pleasure working through the obstacles and challenges (and easy stuff). Outside the office I was able to work on a few small consulting projects and create two new Web sites. The Nashville ColdFusion User Group site was a reincarnation of our previous site, and my wife and I launched a family blog at aaronandlindy.com. I continued to function as the user group manager for the NCFUG for the third full year. During the last half of the year I had the pleasure of speaking at the BFlex conference in Bloomington Indiana, I wrote one article for the Fusion Authority Quarterly, and one article for the new magazine Flex Authority. Lastly, I served as an Adobe Community Expert for ColdFusion (Team Macromedia back in the day) for the sixth straight year. I traveled to nine different cities spanning the east and west coasts of the United States including San Francisco, Cancun Mexico, and Norfolk VA. The year seemed incredibly busy to me but not when I compare it to other friends and developers (some who are both). When I peer into my crystal ball I see 2009 being much the same as 2008. My travel kick starts again in a few weeks when I head to New Orleans for the NADA conference. Projects at work are more numerous than I've seen in a long time and we have plans to do some really great things for our customers (some of which have launched in the last two weeks). On a personal front I plan to blog more, continue writing for magazines, and I hope to speak at more conferences next year. I also want to launch a new personal Web site, one that will replace trajiklyhip.com and trajiklyhip.com/blog. It's shaping up to be a fun and busy year. To everyone who reads this I wish you and your family all the happiness and success you can stand. Happy New Year!!!

Yearly Blogging Stats

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:08:00 -0400

I took Ray Camden's lead and created a new BlogCFC stats page that allows me to display stats for the current year (year-to-date) or any previous years. You can pass a URL parameter called statsYear in order to filter by a specific year, or exclude the parameter to see the current year. Looking through my blog stats over the past few years I was a bit suprised to see my blogging has tapered off since 2006. From 2002 through 2005 I posted 34 entries or less each year. In 2006 I ramped up quite a bit with 119 entries. 2007 saw a drop to 105 and this year I dropped even further to 89. My excuse? For one, having a child (late 2006) really threw off my evenings. It wasn't uncommon for me to come home and code for hours or write a few blog posts a week. Now, I spend most nights hanging out with my son. I also attribute my lack of blogging to the insane work hours I've kept. I took on a management role in 2006 that I thought was going to make my life less stressful. I was totally wrong. I find myself working 15-20 hours more a week and the type of work I'm doing is definitely more stressful. I've been twittering lately about my vacations encompassing hours and hours of work (examples here, here, here, and here). All of these things taken together mean I'm pooped at the end of the day and the last thing I want to do is sit down and code or blog for hours. In 2009 I need to find a way to cut the stress. This will not only allow me to blog more but also provide a better overall quality of life. To that end, my goal for 2009 is to increase my post percentage by 224% by posting 200 entries. This is an insane goal but I thrive on really difficult challenges.

Comments Are Now Moderated

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:02:00 -0400

I've waited as long as I could before turning on comment moderation here, but due to the amount of spam comments that have ramped up over the last few months it's now in place. My Inbox gets flooded with each spam comment notification and I'd hate to think other folks who subscribe to this blog or specific entries are receiving the same crap. So, until I get my site/blog moved to the VPS each and every comment will have to be approved before it shows up in an entry. This shouldn't present a problem for valid commenters as I will typically approve comments within minutes or a few hours at most. My iPhone and access to my blog will certainly help me stay on top of it.

Ed Sullivan Is Now Blogging

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:24:00 -0400

For those of you not "in the know," Ed Sullivan is the man behind the user group program, the Adobe Champion's program and more at Adobe. If it weren't for Ed and his hard work there wouldn't be the 300 plus Adobe user group's in the U.S. today. Ed's now blogging alongside Jonathan Wall (Ed's boss) over at Jonathan's blog. You can check out his first post here: http://jonathanwall.blogspot.com/2007/08/let-games-begin.html

Search the Blogosphere with Google

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:44:00 -0400

I'm terribly embarrassed I didn't know this (until yesterday) but you can run blog-specific searches on Google using blogsearch.google.com or selecting the Blog option from the "more" context menu on Google's homepage. Like everything else at Google, Blogsearch is in beta. However, I found it to be really useful when targeting a post I had read several months ago but never bookmarked. Thanks Google.

New E-Mail Feature in BlogCFC

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:32:00 -0400

This morning I spent a few minutes updating my own BlogCFC codebase to support more e-mail functionality. The current incarnation of BlogCFC (5.5.003) has a drop-down menu where authors choose whether or not to e-mail a new entry to their subscribers. I've taken this a bit further by adding the ability to re-send blog posts to subscribers when editing existing posts. This is a nice feature to have if you make a significant change to an entry. Adding this new feature also fixes a bug in BlogCFC where subscribers would not be e-mailed when releasing a previously un-released entry. Since Ray added the released flag, I find myself starting blog posts even when I don't have time to finish them. This keeps me from forgetting about my planned posts and allows me to play "catch up" when I find more time. However, knowing this workflow meant my subscribers would not be e-mailed made it less than desirable. After today that's no longer a problem. I've sent these changes to Ray for inclusion in the next minor release of BlogCFC, which should be coming pretty soon.

Site Downage

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:35:00 -0400

This evening, between 5:33pm CST and 6:05pm CST, my blog was down due to network issues with HostMySite. According to HMS...

...the service governing the authentication protocol on the server where your website is located became corrupted. Our infrastructure team immediately responded to this incident, and corrected the problem. We are continuing to investigate the initial cause of this issue.

For those that tried to view entries during this time I apologize. On a less important note I pulled Ray's new files from SVN and upgraded the blog to 5.5.003. Thanks Ray!

3 Days Old and a Version Behind

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:06:00 -0400

It figures I would spend the time to get my blog up to date with the latest BlogCFC and then Ray would release a new version. This time I'm going to try and keep up with the releases instead of getting behind. So, tonight I'll be upgrading things to 5.5.003 which includes several bug fixes (one of which has been plaguing my Inbox) and some new features like Contribute support. I'm using this post to test another potential bug where blog subscribers are not e-mailed when an un-released post is finally released. We'll see what happens.

Supercharged on BlogCFC 5.5

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 11:29:00 -0400

I spent the better part of the entire day yesterday upgrading my blog from BlogCFC version 3.9 to the latest and greatest 5.5. I've been meaning to upgrade for some time but knowing the amount of work that was going to be involved I put it off. While the process went smoother than I expected (always good), it was a major time commitment. It took several hours to create a staging environment to perform all the work, which included getting all my production data pulled down and working in a new 3.9 instance. I already had my blog running on localhost but I wanted to isolate the upgrade in case I ran into issues along the way. The next step involved getting Ray's latest and greatest code from his Subversion repo and creating a vanilla 5.5 install. Super easy. Now that I had a 3.9 database and a 5.5 database I went about comparing the architecture of the two and writing scripts that would bring my 3.9 database up to par. This consisted of several ALTER TABLE statements needed to add columns to existing tables, some UPDATE statements to bring my existing data into compliance with new columns, and Ray's CREATE TABLE statements for tables that weren't in the 3.9 version. It wasn't a big deal, but I went slow and was very careful to document every single change I made and test all my code against the staging environment. I did this by pointing the staging DSN (for the vanilla 5.5 install) to my newly upgraded 3.9 database. Everything worked flawlessly. At this point I had my production data on localhost, I had written scripts to migrate my production database, and I had tested the scripts pretty thoroughly. My next step was to merge all the 3.9 customizations I had made - including styles - into the vanilla 5.5 codebase. This step was by far the most time consuming taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 hours. Ugh. I had applied the aura styles and cleaned them up significantly, not to mention shoe-horned my own custom background images into 3.9. While working with all the styles I recalled how many pain-staking hours it took to originally create the graphics and styles. Not being a designer and certainly not being good at cutting up graphics for a Web site, the work took at least a day and half. To get things right this time - in 5.5 - was not as bad but it's not the kind of coding I really enjoy. With the database migrated and my customizations in place it was time to load everything up to production. It only took 20 minutes to run the scripts against the live database and upload the new codebase. However, in this small amount of time over 1500 RSS error e-mails were generated. My application level CFABORT and maintenance message stopped no telling how many e-mails, but before I had that in place several minutes had passed. The errors were thrown due to the 5.5 code residing on the server before the database changes were made. Just goes to show, that Ray's blog software works amazingly well if I can get 1500 error e-mails in about 5 minutes. I can't even imagine what my Inbox would look like if a major error was introduced to production code and left unresolved. So, 5.5 is up and so far is running well. I'll be watching it closely over the next few days; if you notice anything funky please let me know. In an effort to help anyone else upgrading from BlogCFC 3.9 to BlogCFC 5.5 I've zipped all my SQL code and made it available as a download. Use the Downloads pod to the right or simply click here.