Rob Brooks-Bilson

Steve Bryant started a meme encouraging those involved with ColdFusion to post their personal story of how they got involved with the language. Here's mine.

I first fell in love with computers during the summer of 1982. I was 10 years old and my parents signed me up for a summer program to teach kids Basic programming. I spent that summer learning to hack Basic on a terminal connected to a mainframe. The following year my elementary school got a dozen or so Apple IIe computers and I was hooked. From there I got my first home computer – a Commodore Vic 20 with 2.5 k of RAM. I still remember sitting in my room painstakingly typing in game code from the latest issue of Compute magazine. I'd often leave the computer running for days as I didn't have any way to save the programs at the time and retyping everything would take me hours. I'm pretty sure this is where my debugging skills were forged as I hunted through program code trying to find the typos I had made while transcribing from the magazines. It wasn't long before I scraped enough money together to buy a tape drive, allowing me to save my programs. As technology marched forward, so did I. My next home computer was a Commodore 64. I must have spent thousands of hours on that machine programming, playing games, and immersing myself in the world of computers.

When I got to high school, Apple was out and IBM was in. My high school didn't allow freshmen to take computer classes, so I had to wait until 10th grade for any more official instruction. That year I learned Pascal. In my junior year, my computers teach got me an after-school job with a local engineering firm. They were looking for someone to build and maintain some applications for them. I interviewed and got the job. I still remember my first day – sitting down at the leased 286 with an orange monochrome screen. My boss dropped off a big box of discs and manuals for something called Ashton Tate dBase IV. He then said he wanted me to build them a database for all of their pumps and related devices. After looking through the manuals the rest of the day, I stopped in to my boss's office to let him know that I thought I might be in over my head. "Nonsense", he told me. "Why don't you take a few weeks to read the manuals and play around with the software, and if you still feel the same way, then I'll understand and we can part ways with no hard feelings." Turns out dBase wasn't so hard to work with after all. That job lasted me the rest of my time in high school and provided a lot of great programming experience as I built and maintained several networked client-server applications for the company.

As much as I enjoyed computers, I still couldn't see making a living working with them. I had considered doing a degree in computer science, but everyone I knew who had gone that route hated it (granted most of my friends were only a year or two older than I was, so most of them were still working through the fundamental classes). I had this idea of writing snippets of large programs as part of a team of people with little satisfaction. I'm not sure exactly where I got this idea from, but it's something that I just wasn't interested in doing. Computers were always fun for me and I just couldn't bear the idea of taking all the passion out of something I loved by making it into a full-time job for the rest of my life. So instead of computer science, I forgot all about computers for a few years and pursued a double major in political science and sociology. I also enlisted in the Air National Guard as a means to pay my way through school.

Toward the end of my time at the University of Delaware (around 1993) I saw my first web page. I was instantly hooked. From there I started spending more and more time online and eventually started a small consulting company with two other guys I knew. Our main focus was web design and development for nonprofits. Looking back, we were way too early for the market we were primarily targeting. Most of the nonprofits we talked to were just learning about the web and had no idea how to really take advantage of it, let alone a budget to work with. Luckily we had a few small business clients that kept things going and allowed me to develop my skills. I was also working construction at the time to make ends meet.

By 1996 it was clear that the consulting company wasn't going anywhere. My two partners had full time jobs and families and the business just wasn't a high enough priority for them. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife), seeing that this was the case finally told me "you need to find a real job." I started looking in the newspaper the next day and found several promising leads for companies looking for someone to work on the web. After several interviews I happened on an ad for a small electronics company in West Chester, PA looking for a Webmaster to build and manage their corporate web site and intranet. I applied, had an interview, and was hired shortly after. This was early 1996.

I got to work immediately building out their website and intranet with a combination of static HTML and Perl for handling basic tasks like emailing form content. This worked well for a while, but it was only a matter of time before I was asked to add some dynamic content--the request was to "web enable" our corporate address book, which was stored in a Microsoft Access database. My first reaction was to develop the application in Perl. However, at the time, building an application like this in NT Perl (all of our web servers were NT based) wasn't feasible, so I began looking for other solutions.

I first tried a product called DB Web, from a company named Aspect Software that had just been acquired by Microsoft. After a bit of experimentation, I realized that DB Web wasn't what I was looking for. It was more of a tool for querying data from Microsoft Access databases (it wrote VB code on the back end) than a real application development platform. (As a side note, Microsoft stopped supporting DB Web shortly after I evaluated it and rereleased it as ASP (Active Server Pages) a few months later.)

Frustrated, I decided to look into another product I had been hearing about on a web development discussion list. The product was Allaire's ColdFusion (Cold Fusion at the time), a rapid application development platform for creating and deploying dynamic server-based web applications. Within hours of downloading the trial version of the software, I had created a proof-of-concept for the corporate address book application.

Fast forward 15 years and it's almost funny to imagine that I fell in love with a programming language that had just over 30 tags and functions in the 1.5 release. At the time, though, ColdFusion had enough power to handle any web programming task thrown my way. And as the tasks have become more complex, ColdFusion has kept pace. Although I no longer develop as part of my day-to-day responsibilities, I'm still heavily involved with ColdFusion and the ColdFusion community and I can honestly say that with each new release, ColdFusion contains features and functionality that seem to show up just as I find myself needing or wanting them.

Beyond what I think of ColdFusion as a technology, though, is what ColdFusion has provided me personally. Not only has it enabled me to earn a living, it's also been the catalyst for a lot of personal growth. Because of ColdFusion I have had the opportunity to write two books (on ColdFusion, of course), speak at countless user groups and conferences around the world, and literally meet hundreds of passionate, smart people who share my love of technology. Thanks ColdFusion!

As you might have heard, Terracotta -- the makers of Ehcache, the Terracotta Server Array, Quartz Scheduler and Big Memory recently announced their intent to be acquired by German software company Software AG. If you're wondering who Software AG is, you're probably not alone. Until recently, Software AG was a relatively little known company in the US. Although they've been in business since the late 1960's, their main market had been Europe. That all changed in 2007 when they acquired WebMethods, one of the largest providers of integration systems and services. This more than doubled their North American customer base. They continued to fuel their rapid growth from their mainly through acquisition. After WebMethods came IDS Scheer in 2009, Data Foundations in 2010, and now Terracotta. Each of their acquisitions has succeeded in growing their customer base, and in most cases, their revenue as well.

So, why Terracotta when Software AG is known as a business process and SOA infrastructure company? The first reason is for the technology itself, mainly Ehcache, Terracotta, and Big Memory. Software AG has big plans for the cloud, and in-memory capability and scalability play a huge part in building out their PaaS infrastructure. There are other potential benefits as well. Open source Ehcache claims an install base of over 500,000 with a sizeable open source community to back it. Although Software AG has little experience in the open source market, they've committed to the Ehcache and Quartz communities going forward. There's also the opportunity to improve job scheduling within the existing WebMethods suite. If you've ever used their existing scheduler, you know that it leaves much to be desired.

The company I work for has been a Software AG customer for close to 7 years now. We started with their ESB (Crossvision Service Orchestrator) and Tamino XML database, upgraded to WebMethods Integration Server after the merger, and have added capabilities around Business Activity Monitoring and SOA Governance since then. All along the way, Software AG has worked closely with us to meet our often challenging requirements. I think in that respect, Terracotta customers are in good hands. I've also spent considerable time working with Ehcache and Terracotta over the past 3 years now – writing articles and blog posts about their caching technology as well as speaking at several conferences. Although I didn't see the acquisition coming, I think combining the passion and talent of the folks at Terracotta with the resources and track record of Software AG will be a win for everyone involved.

While that last statement might sound like rainbows and unicorns, there is one area where I hope Software AG can learn from Terracotta, and that's community. Having been involved with various technology communities over the years, I feel that the Software AG community could use some help. With the exception of a few sites, there's little evangelism that happens outside of Software AG branded properties. Sure there are official Software AG blogs, and Software AG forums, but what I don't see is a vibrant community outside of Software AG writing about and talking about their products. Contrast that with Terracotta, and especially the Ehcache community and you'll see exactly what I mean. Let's hope that Software AG makes the most of the community they're getting along with the technology.

Due to the amount of comment spam getting by the captcha these days, I've decided to remove the captcha and instead turn on moderated comments. I hate to have to do this, but the amount of comment spam was starting to get ridiculous, and I really hate to see people who have left legitimate comments on the blog get hammered by spammers.

So, please stick with me while I transition to moderated comments. I'll try to get legitimate comments approved as quickly as possible. If your comment doesn't show up right away, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you, and I certainly won't censor non-spam comments.

I've seen a lot of discussion around pricing for the upcoming Tuning Adapter being developed for Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD boxes to allow for access to channels delivered via SDV, but nothing official has been announced - until now.

I just received a letter from Cox Communications in Phoenix stating that the tuning adapter is expected later this year (no official date), and that it will be provided by Cox at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE. This is excellent news for Tivo owners concerned about access to programming.

PDF scan of the front of the letter is linked below (enclosures).

In all, Cox is moving/adding a total of 51 channels to SDV, all of them standard definition for now. Included in the list are DIY, Fuse, Fit TV, G4, and several sports, Spanish language, and public safety channels.

I had an issue with my new T-61 recently where I would put the laptop in hibernate mode, only to have it start back up about 5 seconds after shutting down. At first I thought there was something defective with my docking station, but trying the laptop on a separate on yielded the same problem.

After a little more digging, it turns out that the problem was the result of BIOS and driver settings. You see, for some reason the Network setting in my BIOS had Wake on LAN set to Yes. This meant that when my laptop was connected by cable to a network (such is the case with my docking station), any network traffic coming to my machine would cause the laptop to wake up from hibernation. Simply turning Wake on LAN off, however, didn't solve my problem entirely. I also needed to go in to the properties for my network adapter (via Window's Device Manager) and turn off Wake on LAN there as well (for me, it was under the Power Management tab). Once I took care of this, my hibernation restart problem went away.

Slightly off topic, but I was wondering if anyone could recommend a decent Bluetooth enabled GPS logger? I want to purchase a relatively simple and inexpensive GPS logger that I can use both as a GPS receiver with my Blackberry Pearl/Google Maps and as a GPS logger for my digital photography.

I've seen a bunch of units discussed on various websites, but I was hoping someone might be able to give me a personal recommendation. I can't say that I have a preference for the MTK vs. SiRF star III chipset, but I do plan on using the device heavily overseas, especially in Asia.

This post is more a self-reminder as I find myself having to manually remove multiple ColdFusion instances setup as Windows Services while I troubleshoot an installation issue. Simply uninstalling ColdFusion often leaves behind orphaned services which must then be manually removed, and I'm always forgetting the command to do so. For future reference:

I'm out in San Jose this week at the Microsoft Global High Tech Summit (I was part of a team that authored a whitepaper on secure collaboration for the conference - more on that later). I'm currently sitting in on a session by Pete Thompson, the GM for Microsoft's Surface Computing platform. I had a chance to talk with Pete a bit last night at a cocktail reception and have to say that Microsoft has some fascinating work going on around the space. The team is currently up to 170 people, with plans to grow it to 250. That's a lot of people working on a very innovative platform.

If you aren't familiar with surface computing, it's essentially using sensing and display technology embedded in everyday surfaces (like tables) to interact with digital content. Microsoft's first product is called appropriately enough, Surface. It has some distinct characteristics, as defined by Microsoft:

• direct interaction
• multi-touch (currently can handle 52 simultaneous - think poker)
• multi-user
• object recognition

Pete feels that the killer feature is object recognition - things like painting on the table with a brush, placing a camera or cellphone on the table and having it recognized and interacting with it.

Essentially it works like a rear projection TV flipped on it's back with an embedded (custom) version of Vista. It has several cameras mounted underneath along with an IR light source. There were 80+ prototypes before the final design was finalized.

Right now, Surface is being rolled out at hotels and restaurants around the country. The idea is to get it out there for people to start interacting with before it's fully commercialized (like plasma tv's were). Microsoft is working with an Harrah's in Las Vegas on a Surface project (I'm wondering if it's an interactive card game)??

Microsoft is treating Surface as a platform, and plans to release an SDK for developing custom solutions (late '07 / early '08). There's already a lot of interest in both the platform and product, with a consumer version of the product eventually to be developed.

Having a chance to have played with the Surface table being demonstrated at the conference, I have to say that the technology really is exciting, and I can see a lot of potential for the platform. The demo apps they have really only scratch the surface of what's going to be possible once the SDK is out there and people start developing for the platform. Interaction via touch, visual recognition, RFID, wireless, and more.

Right now, Surface is built into a table. Wait until it's built into other objects like walls, floors, refridgerators, etc. Sure it's going to take time to get the components down to a size to make this possible, but they will get there, and when they do, look out.

Coinciding with the launch of ColdFusion 8 today, Adobe posted a short video on their website highlighting customer reactions to the new release. When I was in San Jose a few months ago, Adobe asked me to participate in the video shoot. It was a lot of fun, and pretty lighthearted.

Here's a link to the video where you can see me showing off my juggling skills (you'll see what it has to do with CF in a moment).

Just how popular is ColdFusion? At least in Shanghai, China, it's popular enough to make it to a market for fake/pirated goods. A co-worker and I were browsing through the market last night when he spotted several copies of ColdFusion, along with the other expected Adobe products.

I should have taken a picture, but that might not been the best move given the subject matter.