I moved!

BlogCFC is superior blogging software for people that post code, so I’ve started hosting the blog myself and am using that. I don’t have it as nicely customized yet, like I do here, but I’ve already moved my posts over
New Murloc Home

Music Reviews

In an effort to make sure this blog has as little focus as possible, here are some music reviews. I usually listen to my iPod all day at work, but I forgot it at home one day last week. So I streamed XM to my work laptop and jotted down a few songs I heard that I liked.

 

Papa Roach: The Paramour Sessions

I haven’t owned a Papa Roach CD before and I’m not impressed. This CD seems overall very stale. The singles are good, but the rest is better as background music than to actively listen to it.

 

Godhead: The Shadow Line

There are some extremely catchy tunes on this CD. “Trapped in Your Lies” was the song I heard that got me to look them up. “Goodbye”, “Through the Cracks”, “Push”, … okay, the whole CD is good. I’m shocked, there are so few CDs out there without a bad song on it.

 

Fighting Instinct: Fighting Instinct

“I Found Forever” got me to check these guys out. And goddamn this guy can sing. The last song on the CD, “The Call”, is amazing. I’m seeing tossed in a movie during a montage of the main character being depressed. Ben Affleck will probably be in the movie, so no one will see it unfortunately. Musically this isn’t as interesting as the Godhead album above, but the singing makes up for it.

Live+Collective Soul tour announced

The dates are out!  I got my tickets to the show at DTE this morning!  I wanted to follow the bands and make a road trip out of this, but looking at these dates and locations, I’m not sure how to do that. Maybe the August 14-18 shows?  I wanted to go West this summer, but to New England will work too.

• July 22 – Wilmington, DE
• July 24 – Eastlake, OH
• July 25 – Washington, PA
• July 27 – Dayton, OH
• July 28 – Comstock Park, MI
• July 31 – Erie, PA
• Aug 1 – Buffalo, NY
• Aug 3 – Louisville, KY
• Aug 4 – Indianapolis, IN
• Aug 14 – Aberdeen, MD
• Aug 15 – Frederick, MD
• Aug 17 – Manchester, NH
• Aug 18 – New Britain, CT
• Aug 21 – Altoona, PA
• Aug 22 – Lakewood, NJ
• Aug 24 – Pawtucket, RI
• Aug 25 – Wappingers Falls, NY
• Aug 30 – Ft Wayne, IN
• Sept 1 – St Paul, MN
• Sept 2 – Fargo, ND

Flex and Report Builder

I built a screen in Flex that lets you select what filters to have for the report. Date ranges, etc.  The CF Report Builder report just accepts a query.  The first thought/attempt was to pass all the filters through the URL to the report using navigateToURL().  This worked fine, but other filters were going to be complex variable types.  Not to mention the security hole it opened up and creating a very long URL.

So instead I passed all the filter information to a CFC function that stored the filter to the session scope.  When that returns, Flex calls the report, which creates the query based on session variables. A bit roundabout way of doing it, but it works!

Going Mac?

I just had a thought. Why don’t I get a Mac? I’ve been working on my HP laptop with WinXP for a bit over a year. Now the harddrive is making worrisome noises and it’s running slower, not always coming out of hibernation/stand by. Replacing/fixing the harddrive is an option, but I don’t want to format/reinstall everything on the laptop.  Any new Windows-based system I get will come with Vista. From my 3 day stint with Vista on my 64bit desktop, ending with a harddrive format and re-installation of XP, I know getting a new laptop isn’t the route I want to take. The simple fact that I can’t set Firefox as my default browser in Vista is enough for me to dislike it.

Two years ago, I could never make the switch to OSX, but now thanks to Google, it’s not such a problem.  Google docs and calendar have severed the death grip of Microsoft Office. All I really need is Flex Builder and some product combination from Adobe that includes Dreamweaver and Fireworks. I think if Ray Camden can switch to a Mac, little ol’ me can to.

“Dreamweaver site”?

In my “new” area at work (been here almost 5 months), I heard the terms “Dreamweaver site” and “Flex builder site” often enough. For a while I just smiled and nodded, thinking “WTF is a ‘Dreamweaver site’?” Turns out the folks around here equate a site’s technology with the tool they use to make it.  So a “CFML application” becomes a “Dreamweaver site” and a “Flex 2 application” becomes a “Flex builder site”. Interesting difference in thinking.

StarCraft II … !!!!

Blizzard finally released a mini site about StarCraft II!  I’m a bit shocked that Blizzard’s even bothering to make more games, since they’re raking in the loot with World of Warcraft.  There’s no date on it and the details are all very sketchy.  I saw an article in a recent Game Informer, suggesting other games “now that you’re board with WoW”  Guess it’s best to diversify your game base before your main source starts to decline.  Based on how long Blizzard usually takes to polish a game, I wouldn’t expect anything before Q1 2008.  What they have so far looks nice.  I’ll keep my eye on this!  StarCraft was one of the biggest games of all time, I would guess.  I’m guessing the sequel will be labeled as one of the most anticipated releases of all time.  StarCraft was released in 1998, but you can still find it on the shelf of any video game store.  How many non-MMO games are on the shelf for 2 years, much less 9?

cf_armory

Ben Nadel rocks. I’ve been wondering what PHP and ASP folks have such an easy time with pulling WoW Armory information, but I was returning the fully transformed XML with CF. So I asked for Ben’s help and he delivered the solution. It was so simple, but I still don’t fully understand the problem.

Anyway, now I can start my work on cf_armory. See an ugly prototype of a heroic key finder.

<cffunction name="makeHTTPCall" returntype="xml">
 <cfargument name="url" required="true">
 <cfset var strUserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1;   en-US;rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3" />
 <cfhttp
  url="#arguments.url#"
  method="GET"
  result="armoryXML"
  useragent="#strUserAgent#"/>
 <cfreturn XmlParse(armoryXML.FileContent)>
</cffunction>

Aldor loves me, who’s next?

I got to exalted with the Aldor yesterday, letting me upgrade my shoulder enchant. Next to get to exalted will be the Consortium for that sweet dagger. I’m only barely honored with them though, so the grind will stink. I’ll start farming the insignias, but not turn in anything until 2.1 is released. If there’s to be new Consortium related content, their might be new quests or instances to get rep in.

It seems that’s all WoW is at level 70. You grind for reputation, farm for materials, and every once in a while go into a dungeon, though only for more rep, quests, and materials.

Never thought I’d say this … BAD GOOGLE!

I love Google.  I’m hot for Google.  If I was driving downtown at night and saw Google on the corner, I’d stop and ask it if it wants to party, then drive to a cheap motel.

They’ve been pushing updates to the iGoogle homepage all day.  Now the web, image, video, etc searches are in a top control bar looking dealy. It’s the changes they’ve made today, or something to do with the things I have on my iGoogle page, or that I have a bunch of tabs on it.  It’s something.  But if I hit up Google, then hit “Back”, I apparently go nowhere.  Google’s requiring three back hits before you actually go back out of Google. I hope they fix this soon, can’t think of why they’d trap people in their site.