Musings on: ColdFusion, Fusebox, Cascading Style Sheets and Accessibility http://www.shayna.com/ Been a long time since I've blogged, but I've been busy. Fusebox.org the new Website, officially launches tomorrow at CFUNITED. Check it out! I'm very excited about it. I'm at the conference now. Looking forward to seeing old friends, meeting new ones and learning lots of cool stuff. Both my talks are on Thursday night! Hope to see you there! http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=178 2007-06-26T20:11:00--05:00 Hi, my Name is Sandy Clark and I'm a tech-addict. ("Hi Sandy!") I come before you a tired, hungry and driven woman. My story is like so many others and while I admit I have a problem, I am not sure I'm ready to break my addiction. I hope my standing before you and coming forth on this issue will help me to see the error of my ways. I used to be somewhat reasonable when it came to music. I had a stereo, and I occasionally bought CD's to play on it. I'd listen to them while working mostly. New Age, instrumental stuff mostly. Then I discovered MP3's. I found out I could easily download them (the where I download them must remain a dark secret) and I started to accumulate. I could play the MP3's through my computer when I was working. That went well for a while, but I got tired of playing albums and discovered a nifty piece of software called MusicIP Mixer, which analyzed my music and let me create automatic playlists based on the music's signature. Suddenly I had playlists that could get me through an entire day. I downloaded more music to support my habit. When I moved into my townhouse last year, one stereo didn't suffice. So I kept my old one downstairs and bought a newer one for upstairs. This one played mp3's which I could burn on my CD. I could put 700MB on one CD. The music from one CD could last all day! Combined with the playlists from said nifty piece of software, this was wonderful. But wait, what about when I sewed, or meditated or was just on the top floor? My MP3 player, playing said playlists could be attached to a small pair of speakers in my upstairs room. Now I had music on all 3 floors! I was a happy woman! (or was I?) The old stereo on the bottom floor, my trusty companion for a number of years was not able to keep up with my addiction. It couldn't play MP3's and it was too masculine. So Thanksgiving Day, Circuit City had a sale and I got a nice Sharp Compact Stereo for under $100. It came the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Meanwhile my mp3 collection was up to 37GB. Burning CD's and listening to them was not really an option. How to listen to all this music I have on my file server through my stereo? I found my solution, its a wireless bridge that connects my stereo to my mp3's. Not only that, but I can get internet radio stations, podcasts and rss newsfeeds through this nifty device. It's called a Squeezebox, and it also works with my nifty playlist generator as well. Once I got it and set it up, it made no sense to keep my music on CD's. So now I must rip all the music on the commercial CD's I have, place them on my fileserver and analyze them with MusicIP Mixer so that I can play the files through my stereo, in the entertainment room. I'm noticing that ripping CD's is taking priority in my life. I MUST RIP THIS MUSIC (some of which I haven't listened to in years) and make it available to me. I'm going to bed later and later. My computers freeze up on me cause I'm asking them to do too much at one time. My MusicIP Mixer is working overtime trying to analyze all this new music (600+ files to be analyzed right now). But wait, that's fine for downstairs, but what about the main living area? How can I listen to these same files there? The solution of course is to keep up my addiction and purchase another squeezebox. If I do this. what's next? How far will I go down this technological ramp. We won't even talk about the yogatoday.com video's I download and want to watch through Tivo. Tivo is coming out with a desktop device that will do that, but its not there yet and I'm jonesing. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=159 2006-12-06T11:45:00--05:00 I've turned comments back on, I'd appreciate a few people responding to this post as a reality check. I've added a few more items in to hopefully send spam comments to the ether, and streamlined the process. If this is your first time posting, you will receive an email from me telling you that your post was received and I have to verify it (to make sure it isn't spam). The post will go up while I do verify. If I whitelist it, then the item stays up and goes to subscribers. If I blacklist it, then the post is removed (and other things happen as well which I'm not revealing). http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=148 2006-08-24T11:30:00--05:00 Since I decided to open my site up to some ads, I have been bombarded with spam comments. Coincidence? You tell me. Actually you can't tell me, since I've turned off comments right now, since it has been keeping me from posting. I'm working on a fix that of course doesn't include captcha's. (Since they aren't very accessible to the disabled). My current system, while it does work, is cumbersome with the amount of posts I've been hit with. I've got the data collected of the spammers, (over 1500 records) and I do see some things I can work with. Hopefully I'll have comments turned on shortly, but until then, I still want to blog, so no commenting. If you do have a comment for me, please send it to me through my comment page (or if you already know my email address, send it there). http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=146 2006-08-23T08:30:00--05:00 Ever wish there was a way of accessing everything that Google offers on one page? Google keeps offering new searches, tools, etc, and sometimes finding out about them means relying on word of mouth. Well, my wish at least has been answered, Simply Google offers all Searches, Tools, Fun Stuff, Sites and Blogs on one page. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=132 2006-07-17T11:30:00--05:00 I'm going on vacation this week, and then heading right to CFUNITED where I will be presenting two talks on CSS. I won't have internet access until next Tuesday, but I'll try to post some blog entries about the conference during it. CFUNITED is always a great conference and I'm really looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Come on up and introduce yourself if I don't already know you. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=129 2006-06-17T07:00:00--05:00 Found Whack a Guru on the CFUNITED Site. CF Gurus come up and you whack them. Some say "Ow",others are silent. The most hysterical part is that when you whack Michael Smith (the conference organizer), the "OW" is said in his voice! http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=119 2006-06-01T13:00:00--05:00 Last week, I was in Hartford, CT doing some CSS Training. (The class went really well by the way). While I was up there, I spoke to the local user group run by Jeffrey Houser. I know Jeffrey slightly from conferences where we both spoke and he and I ended up going to dinner on Thursday, where we ended up discussing Adobe, ColdFusion, general business practices and the CFUNITED conference. Earlier in the week, Jeffrey had decided to pull out of the conference where we were both slated to speak. You can read his reasoning at his blog post . Specifically, his reasoning involved the fact that Teratech had begun to sell the audio recordings of last years conference and has plans to produce and sell video from the conference to be held this year. Jeffrey's concerns when we spoke mainly had to do with control. He is a musician and as such, the quality of recordings of his voice and materials seemed to be his main focus in our discussion. As Jeffrey pointed out in his blog posting, starting with the 2005 CFUNITED conference (which was a bigger and much more professionally run conference than the previous CFUN conferences), speakers were required to agree to a speakers' agreement which included the following: http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=113 2006-05-15T09:55:00--05:00 I'm on my way to Hartford CT right now to teach a 4 day class. I'm looking forward to it. I'll try to post stuff from there, but if not, I'll be back, contributing to my blog next week. Also, for those who want to think about it. It looks like I'll be doing a CSS (4 days hands on class) in October in New York (midtown). If you are interested, sign up for the email announcements. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=112 2006-05-08T08:00:00--05:00 I's been over a year since I blogged or did much with my web site. I've been busy working and have gone through a lot of personal changes in my life that precluded me spending any extra time on any task that didn't have to be done. Luckily for me, things are now much calmer and I can concentrate on items that are important to me again, such as my web site and blog. The website has changed, not just the layout, but the entire internal workings. The last time I put it up so fast, most pages were fairly static and that made updating and maintaining the site harder. I've spent more time on the construction of this site, and pretty much everything is code controlled now. I'm hopeful that this will make updating it easier and therefore more likely to happen. Prior to the launch of this Web Site, I was using Ray Camden's CFC Blog. Due to my interest in accessibility and web standards, I had to make a lot of changes to the display code of his blog, which made it harder for me to upgrade when he released new versions. So, this time I've gone with a homegrown blogging effort. My blog is running on Fusebox 4.1, with Web Standards markup in an MVC design pattern. Additionally, it was easy to incorporate my fbsecure plugin for security purposes and will make it easier to both maintain and upgrade it as time requires. I have put in some spam filtering in blog comments, to try to get rid of spam in a more timely manner. Hopefully, this will negate blog posting subscribers from getting hit with those comments as well as enabling me to get rid of them more easily. You will notice if you comment that I did not go with Captcha's. There are problems with Captchas and accessibility so I will not use them. Instead, I've implemented a blacklist/whitelist system that does require some effort on my part, but hopefully it will result in a more robust and accessible system in the long run. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=73 2006-03-20T06:00:00--05:00 I've been going through some personal losses and also been very busy creating a Cascading Style Sheet Class that I am going to be teaching for a Fortune 500 company. I'm also getting ready to present two presentations: CSS for Better Sites and Accessible Web Forms at CFUN04 this weekend. I promise to start posting on my blog next week. Thanks for all who have been so patient with me.   Sandy http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=25 2004-06-23T06:30:46--05:00 Sorry for the lack of blog entries lately, but I'm going through some family emergencies and just don't have the time. Blog entries should commence more regularly in about 2 weeks. Sandy http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=43 2004-02-04T10:57:01--05:00 Since announcing the blog yesterday, it seems that everyone has an opinion. Some like the pink color some don't. In the interest of not letting other people's dislikes and likes affect the other, I've taken the power of style sheets (and ColdFusion) to implement a "Change the look" Function. In the last box on the right hand side, you will see a form (currently, there are only 2 choices). Choose the color scheme you want, and click the button. If you want, you can even make the color scheme permanent. Note that this will only work for those who have JavaScript turned on. But I figured anyone using a speech or screen browser to access this site won't really care about what the color scheme is anyways. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=10 2003-11-27T05:11:34--05:00 Yes, yet another blog entering the web world. What the heck, why shouldn't I have my own voice and space on the web? Anyways, I don't promise to post everyday, but hopefully somewhat. I'm using Ray Camden's MXBlog, however, erm. I hacked the display code so that everything is via web standards, no tables for layouts and no graphics in the code! I have to thank CSS Vault for the extremely clever boxes on the right side. In the weeks to come, I plan on posting stuff about Fusebox 4 (I'm one of the authors of the Discovering Fusebox 4 Book), Accessibility and Web Standards and ColdFusion. Right now I am VERY into accessibility, so for a while at least I am sure that the vast majority of my postings will be about that area. http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=5 2003-11-25T15:56:46--05:00