May 2006 - Aarrgghh!!

Onyx Reserve Lonsdale

May 31, 2006

It's been awhile, but it's time for another cigar review. This is the second cigar I received it from Ryan Brown at buymycigars.com in exchange for some advertising.

I was excited because all Onyx cigars are maduro, and I was looking to get my maduro on. I left it in my humidor for quite a bit, but all of my other cigars which also were stored for the same duration were fine.

Construction: Like the other cigar from buymycigars.com, it held up very well to shipping. Also like the other cigar, it was thin and therefore a tough draw. It burned evenly and the ash was bright white.

Taste: It tasted like the maduro cigars I remember from my younger days. But I'm beginning to think I don't really like maduro cigars anymore. I don't want to get my maduro on anymore.

Stats: This cigar measures 6 3/4 inches by a ring gauge of 44. It's wrapper is from Connecticut, the binder from Nicaragua, and the binder come from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and a first for me, Peru. Buymycigars.com sells them by the box for $76.50 per 20, which comes to $3.83 a smoke. (But remember I got them for free.) Holt's is still the better value by the box ($63.75), but they sell their singles for $4.25 a pop.

Overall: The price, at either store, is not too shabby for these cigars. Granted, they aren't my favorite cigars, but when I factor in value, they're not too bad.

May 31, 2006 Posted by Terrence Ryan at 9:03 PM

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Cigar Reviews, Cigars,

Hiring in Philly Again

May 26, 2006

The Wharton School is hiring web developers again. I'm not the one doing the hiring, but I can get you in touch with those that are.

The position itself is for a ColdFusion/SQL Programmer with Flex work a possibility. Experienced web developers without knowledge in those areas will still be looked at though. (Considering that ColdFusion is pretty easy to learn when you already know how to program.)

All applicants must use the University of Pennsylvania HR system to apply. The referral code for the position is: 060118931. However if you are interested feel free contact me and I'll get you in touch with the hiring officer.

May 26, 2006 Posted by Terrence Ryan at 4:16 PM

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ColdFusion, Web Development,

My Life in 19 Inches Has Arrived

May 25, 2006

Well, not my life, but rather Craig Liggeons' life. My Life in 19 Inches is a one man show, written by the aforementioned Craig. It's about how Television has not just effected his life, but in some cases, has defined it.

It's coming to the Adrienne Theater in July (July 20-23).

I heartily recommend it. In fact it isn't the first time I've done so. You can check my first impressions when he test ran the show. ('My Life in 19 Inches' )

I can't say it enough: See this show.

Find out more at Craig's Site .

May 25, 2006 Posted by Terrence Ryan at 10:18 PM

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Entertainment, Philly,

Empirical Testing of Custom Tag vs. CFC for Output Part II

I got a bunch of comments on my previous post: Empirical Testing of Custom Tag vs. CFC for Output. A few of them stuck with me and so I went and tweaked my trials.

First Ray Camden pointed out that there's more to consider than just performance when evaluating coding practices. He is completelyright in that point and I completely agree. However I was interested in whether or not there was more than just a stylisticdifference between the methods (output using Custom Tags versus using CFC's) I was exploring. One of the attributes I was looking at was performance.

But Sean Corfield pointed out that maintainability was the chief attribute that leads him to prefer Custom Tags. Specifically, that CFC's couldn't be easily edited by traditional web designers. I buy that. .

Sean then went on to point out that my number didn't match what he was able to get on his laptop. Under his tests with Trusted Cache turned on, he was able to get Custom Tag performance to match CFC performance. I went back and noticed that my "production" instance didn't have the Trusted Cache turned on. So I reran the tests with Trusted Cache enabled.

Finally, Mark Fuqua pointed out that I wasn'tusing a realistic output function. Specifically, it just dumped the letter 'h'. So I created a simple navigation <ul$gt; and the code encapsulator disables the link for the current page. I then added an element of random selection for which navigation choice would be deactivated. (This will make more sense if you look at the code.) .

Continue reading "Empirical Testing of Custom Tag vs. CFC for Output Part II"

May 25, 2006 Posted by Terrence Ryan at 12:44 AM

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ColdFusion, Web Development,

Testing Word 2007

May 23, 2006

I just installed the Office 2007 Beta. I noticed that Word 2007 has a blog editing section. So I figured I will give it a try. No thoughts on it yet, other than it seemed to work pretty well.

Update: It doesn't handle categories, or setting the text formatting properly, but you can 'publish as draft' which might just work well enough for me to use it.

May 23, 2006 Posted by Terrence Ryan at 11:28 PM

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Meta Blogging, Web Development,

Empirical Testing of Custom Tag vs. CFC for Output

May 19, 2006

This is one of the drier posts I've ever written. And I've written some dullards. If you start to fall asleep, look at the pretty tables.

It is recommended to use CFC's for "business logic" encaspulation, and leave UI encapsulation to custom tags. This is based on what we've read out on the Adobe Blogs about the subject. There's one problem with that I dislike custom tags. I have no reason for it. I could argue that I prefer a few large files as opposed to many small files. This is probably why I jumped onto CFC's so quickly.

Consequently, I've been doing UI encapsulation in CFC's. Specifically, I put all of my reused UI components (headers, footer, navigation menus) in a single CFC named "interface.cfc." I then push that to the application scope, and call it from there. I will totally own up to the fact that this is my personal preference.

However at a code review, my coworkers and I got into a discussion of the pro's and con's of using such a memory resident 'output' CFC . The discussion of to Custom Tag or CFC came up again. At the end of the discussion, I was willing to leave it at "It is a stylistic concern and not a performance based concern. " But frankly, that was based on what I knew about CFC execution and gut feelings, but certainly not hard facts. So I decided to do some performance tests.

Continue reading "Empirical Testing of Custom Tag vs. CFC for Output"

May 19, 2006 Posted by Terrence Ryan at 12:27 PM

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ColdFusion, Web Development,