I once heard that a wise man learns from his mistakes and a happy man learns from the mistakes of others. While I wouldn't say Ray Camden made a mistake in buying a Mini Cooper, he has certainly been suffering as a result. I feel his pain and fear looking at our Mini someday in the way he looks at his.

He is not alone in this, I have heard others complaining about trouble with their Mini Coopers as well.

So, since we were needing a more practical car soon anyway, we decided to trade in our Mini Cooper while we still have fond memories of it.

We traded it for a new Honda Element. Among the best features is an auxiliary input which (once I get an iPod) will allow me to listen to ColdFusion Podcast and ColdFusion Weekly on my way to and from client meetings.

The removable back-seats and wipe-off floors aren't bad either.

Here is the before and after:

Are all your users stupid? Do you take pride in the volume of code you produce? Maybe you are a crappy programmer.

Damien Katz identies signs that you are a crappy programmer (and confesses that many have applied to him from time to time).

I confess that I am guilty of "You think no function/method should have multiple return points". I'll even concede that I may not have a great argument to support that behavior.

A more interesting item for me, however, was "You are adamantly opposed to function/methods over 20 lines of code". Comments cover limitations on lines of code and levels of idention.

My general guideline on functions/method is that you should be able to describe what it does in one sentence that doesn't use the word "AND" or the word "OR". If you can't, consider splitting it into multiple functions. It doesn't mean that you MUST split your function/method, but it is a good sign (better, I think, than lines of code).

If you are using any of the three major ColdFusion frameworks (Model-Glue, Mach-II, Fusebox), Massimo Foti has put together a Dreamweaver extension to make your life easier.

As I am not currently using any of the major frameworks (I am a recovering Fuebox addict), I haven't tried the extensions. Massimo has been responsible for plenty of other good work, however, so I am confident that these won't dissapoint.

You can find them on the Dreamweaver Extensions portion of his site, or use the following URLs for direct access to the extension of your choice.

http://www.massimocorner.com/dreamweaver/coldfusion/model-glue.mxp
http://www.massimocorner.com/dreamweaver/coldfusion/mach_ii.mxp
http://www.massimocorner.com/dreamweaver/coldfusion/fusebox.mxp

As I said, Massimo has done plenty of good work. If you go to his site, I recommend that you take the time to peruse his other free ColdFusion offerings as well (be sure to read the license first though).

The free Mailer.cfc component makes it easy to send email from components with minimal dependencies. Watch presentations on this as well as installation and instantiation and sending personalized notices.

If you are using Mailer.cfc to send email from your component, then you won't have to pass in a bunch of email-related variables and you won't have to change your component if you change your mailserver or if username and password become required to send email.

Watch Presentations

Although not yet officially a 1.0 release, I have been using Mailer.cfc in production since December of 2004 (unchanged since March of 2006), so it is pretty stable. Come to think of it, I am not sure why I haven't labeled it as 1.0 yet. I should get around to that sometime...

Anyway, feel free to check out the presentations and try out the component. Free for use in commercial or non-commercial projects.

I was asked recently how my DataMgr presentations are created, so I thought I would cover that briefly.

I use Captivate as my primary tool for the creation of the presentation.

Although Captivate allows you to record your actions, I often just take individual screenshots and put them together in a presentation. When I don't need mouse-movements, this actually seems easier.

For my last presentation, I started using Snag-It to get my screenshots. This has saved me a lot of time (well worth $40). TechSmith, the makers of Snag-It, also produce Camtasia Studio, which is a competitor to Captivate.

I considered Captivate and Camtasia Studio before deciding that Captivate was right for me. Both result in swf movies. I read that Captivate 2 will output to Flash 8 for editing as well.

Although it is rare that I do any sound editing, I use Audacity when that need arises.

My sound quality is low because I use a very cheap headset for recording. If anyone can recommend a better headset, I would certainly appreciate it.

Feel free to watch my presentations.