No such thing as a free lunch?

As we all know, there's no such thing as a free lunch, but fortunately there are free Mac minis! Along the lines of the free iPod offers you may have seen, Gratis.com is running a free Mac mini campaign. In case you're skeptical these programs aren't on the up and up, check out this article on Wired that confirms these are legitimate programs.

I'm more of a Windows guy but when I read of the cool things you can do with a Mac Mini I had to try to get one.

Here's how you can help me on my quest to get a Mac mini:

1. Go to http://www.freemacmini.com/?r=153988

2. Sign up with you email and address (spam shouldn't be a concern).

3. Sign up and complete one of the trial offers. The Stamps.com offer is probably the least hassle. If you don't already have a Netflix or Blockbuster Online account, the Blockbuster offer is decent as well. You have no committment and can cancel out of these programs.

Thanks for your support!

Portable CFML Development Environment

Now I wouldn't exactly call myself a "cheap stingy bastard" but I like a good deal when I see one. So, when I saw a great deal on a 64MB mini USB drive I just couldn't resist.

The first thing I did when I got the device was to install Portable Eclipse (with the CFEclipse plugin, of course). Well, what good is a CF IDE if you don't have a CFML server to develop against? So I created a stripped down CFEverywhere package that weighs in at about 14MB. Please note the 14MB package includes a database server. There you go, a fully portable CFML dev environment that fits on your keychain (or iPod)! Is that cool or what.

I'm going to write up a detailed article on how to create the slimmed down CFEverywhere package soon.

Enjoy!

CFEverywhere Part 1

Dick Applebaum and I have been writing a series of articles about CFEverywhere, how to package CFML applications to run on the web, CD and/or on the Desktop. The articles will appear in ColdFusion Developer's Journal and part 1 has just come off the press.

I hope you find the articles interesting and informative and that more developers will explore CFEverywhere as a deployment option. In order to provide a place where we can share ideas and techniques, I have created a CFEverywhere section on my web site. I have also created a mailing list to discuss all things CFEverywhere. I look forward to your questions, feedback and lively discussion.

CFC.Doc does PDF

I just posted a new build of CFC.Doc. This latest version adds PDF as a target output format. It also adds a "browse" function that displays a tree control to allow you to easily choose your directory of CFCs. You can see an example of the output by checking out the PDF of the Mach-II API documentation listed in the examples.

First CFUG talk

This Wednesday (1/5/2005)I'll be presententing at the San Diego CFUG. I'll be speaking about CFEverywhere, explaining how to package CFML applications to run from CD and/or the Desktop. If you're not able to attend in person, no worries. I plan to make the slides available online.