Recent Web Log Entries By Ben Nadel

How To Create GStrings In Javascript By Extending Core Data Types

Posted: February 8, 2010 at 3:17 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Javascript / DHTML

This morning, I was looking at a tutorial on how to extend built-in Javacript objects by altering the Prototype of native Javacript classes. In doing this, you can add your own methods to Javascript String and Array instances (for example). The down side to this approach is that this affects every new and existing instance of the altered data type... read more »

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What Happens When A ColdFusion CFLock Timeout Is Exceeded Without Error?

Posted: February 8, 2010 at 9:25 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion

Last week, when I was working on my jQuery Photo Tagger plugin (for Flickr-style photo annotation) , I was using CFLock to create thread-safe cache updates in the ColdFusion aspect of the code. As I was doing that, it occurred to me - I wasn't 100% sure what would happen if the timeout (indicated by the CFLock tag) was exceeded and no error was t... read more »

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Programmatically Uploading Images To JING At ScreenCast.com Using ColdFusion

Posted: February 5, 2010 at 9:00 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion

Here at work, we use JING all the time to share ideas; it's by far the easiest way that I've ever seen to quickly take screen captures, annotate them, and then share them with other people. When capturing part of your screen using JING, you have the option to upload it ("share it") to ScreenCast.com. Doing this uploads the image to a unique URL ... read more »

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Update: jQuery Photo Tagger Plugin For Flickr-Style Photo Tagging

Posted: February 5, 2010 at 10:26 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion, Javascript / DHTML

This morning, I worked on updating my jQuery Flickr-Style Photo Tagger plugin to get rid of some of the limitations with the initial release. I'm still kind of feeling my way through the plugin "best practices", so bear with me. Today, I made the following changes (the latest code can ... read more »

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jQuery Photo Tagger Plugin For Flickr-Style Photo Tagging

Posted: February 4, 2010 at 10:21 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion, Javascript / DHTML

A few days ago, I programmed a little proof-of-concept for Flickr-style photo tagging using jQuery . I did it as an exploration in mouse-based event binding; but, it was a lot of fun and I wanted to see if I could take it a step further. So, yesterday and this morning, I packaged the jQuery code up into a jQuery plugin (phototagger.jquery.js), bu... read more »

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Wrapping The Window Object In A jQuery Wrapper

Posted: February 2, 2010 at 8:21 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Javascript / DHTML

This morning, when I was building my Flickr-style photo tagging demo using jQuery , I got totally stumped trying to debug a variable problem. From what it looked like, the Window object appeared to be undefined within the context of my document-ready event handler. After picking apart the code and commenting out bits of it for like 10-15 minutes,... read more »

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Creating Flickr-Style Photo Tagging With jQuery

Posted: February 2, 2010 at 2:38 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Javascript / DHTML

Lately, I've been experimenting with a lot mouse-move event-binding , which has led to some really cool internal stuff here at work. Building on top of some of that recent learning, this morning, I wanted to see if I could create a Flickr-style photo tagging effect using jQuery. I've never actually used the Flickr-photo tagging system, so the act... read more »

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Calling jQuery's Data() Method Without Arguments

Posted: February 1, 2010 at 10:10 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Javascript / DHTML

With jQuery 1.4, I was very happy to see that they finally gave us the ability to invoke the data() method without arguments. Calling the data() method in this way returns an object containing all of the keys stored using the data() method on this object. When I was working on my jQuery image zoom experiment , I made heavy use of this feature to ... read more »

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Is Simulating User-Input Events With jQuery Ever A Good Idea?

Posted: January 30, 2010 at 3:20 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Javascript / DHTML

The other day, I was having a discussion with Ryan Jeffords about programmatically simulating user-based input events with jQuery. Ryan was in the middle of building a very rich, very dynamic user interface for an eCommerce system's price adjuster module when he hit a bit of snag trying to programmatically simulate a user's click event on a che... read more »

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Project HUGE: Deadlifts At 385lbs And Natural Hamstring Raises

Posted: January 29, 2010 at 6:08 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Health / Fitness, Project HUGE

After deadlifting 365lbs two weeks ago , I was eager to try and push myself a little harder. Today, I built up to three work sets at 385lbs. After I hit the first set, I was super tempted to jump up to 405lbs (my new years resolution weight); but, it's a good thing I didn't - my form at 385lbs definitely leaves something to be desired. In the fol... read more »

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Converting An IP Address To An Integer Using MySQL (Thanks Julian Halliwell)

Posted: January 29, 2010 at 8:30 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion, SQL

The other day, as an exercise in bit-manipulation, I tried using bit shifting to convert IP address values to integer numbers . In the comments to that blog, Julian Halliwell mentioned that MySQL has built-in functions for performing these conversions. I had never heard of these functions before, so I thought I would do a little playing. In the... read more »

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Putting Your Geolocation iPhone Photos On A Google Map Using ColdFusion And jQuery

Posted: January 28, 2010 at 2:20 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion, Javascript / DHTML

I've been playing around with Google's map API lately and I have to say that I'm just blown away by how easy it is to use. And, not only how easy it is to use, but how easy it is to use in the context of your own applications. I've been looking for ways to play around with mapping and this morning, I started to think about my iPhone photos. I know... read more »

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Delaying ColdFusion Session Persistence Until User Logs In

Posted: January 27, 2010 at 10:42 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion

In the past, I've dealt with creating dynamic session timeouts in my ColdFusion applications. I've typically done this to minimize the memory footprint created by site traffic spikes caused by bots (such as the GoogleBot) that spider the web site. Sometimes, however, I see that people want to delay session persistence in their ColdFusion applica... read more »

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Converting IP Addresses To And From Integer Values With ColdFusion

Posted: January 26, 2010 at 9:02 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion

I've been playing with my bits a lot lately, parsing RGB colors and embedding secret messages inside image data ; but, bit manipulation is still something that feels somewhat awkward to me. I guess I live in a base10 (decimal) world and it's hard for me to think in terms of base2 (binary). As such, when a conversation about IP-to-Integer conver... read more »

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Script Tags, jQuery, And Html(), Text() And Contents()

Posted: January 26, 2010 at 2:00 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: Javascript / DHTML

The other day, Matt Olson left a comment on my jQuery and ColdFusion rating system post that the jQuery script I had was not working in Internet Explorer (IE). I confirmed this on my local copy and eventually narrowed it down to a discrepancy in the way IE can access the contents of a non-Javascript Script tag. Originally, I had been using the t... read more »

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February 2010 Entries »

Previously Posted

ColdFusion 9 CFScript Comments Handle Name-Spaces... And Just About Anything - Posted Jan 26, 2010
Using jQuery's SlideUp() and SlideDown() Methods With Bottom-Positioned Elements - Posted Jan 25, 2010
Java Matcher's QuoteReplacement() And Java 6 vs. Java 1.4.2 - Posted Jan 25, 2010
Project HUGE: Trying Barbell Front Box Squats For The First Time - Posted Jan 22, 2010
Creating An Image Zoom And Clip Effect With jQuery And ColdFusion - Posted Jan 22, 2010
Creating An Image Zoom And Clip Effect With jQuery - Posted Jan 21, 2010
Learning jQuery 1.4: Remove() vs. Detach() - Posted Jan 20, 2010
Creating UI Elements With Low-Coupling And Conditional Event Handling - Posted Jan 19, 2010
Maintaining ColdFusion Query Data Type Integrity Throughout The Serialization Life Cycle - Posted Jan 19, 2010
JSON Files As Temporary File Storage In ColdFusion Applications - Posted Jan 18, 2010
Project HUGE: Barbell Deadlifts - 365x5 With A Concentration On Form - Posted Jan 17, 2010
jQuery Custom Selector Execution Exploration - Posted Jan 15, 2010
Project HUGE: Barbell Back Squats - Shaky Form, But Getting Stronger - Posted Jan 15, 2010
jQuery 1.4 Released - Hella Sweeeet! - Posted Jan 14, 2010
Using A ColdFusion Method Closure In Regular Expression Replace Logic - Posted Jan 14, 2010
Invoking A ColdFusion Function With A Closure-Like CALLER-Based Variable Binding - Posted Jan 14, 2010
Ben Nadel Will Make You Code - Thanks Dave Dugdale! - Posted Jan 13, 2010
ColdFusion 9 Script-Based Method Definitions Work Inside CFScript - Posted Jan 13, 2010
Creating A Sometimes-Fixed-Position Element With jQuery - Posted Jan 12, 2010
Making SOAP Web Service Requests With ColdFusion And CFHTTP - Posted Jan 11, 2010
Thoughts About Salaries And Raises As Motivated By Daniel Pink's Book, Drive - Posted Jan 11, 2010
Project HUGE: Waking The Beast And My First Video Of 2010 - Posted Jan 9, 2010
Embedding Secret Messages In An Image Using ColdFusion - Posted Jan 8, 2010
jQuery Events: MouseOver / MouseOut vs. MouseEnter / MouseLeave - Posted Jan 8, 2010
Pixelating An Image With ColdFusion - Posted Jan 7, 2010
Creating A Bidirectional Infinite Scroll Page With jQuery And ColdFusion - Posted Jan 6, 2010
Java's AtomicInteger vs. ColdFusion Named-Locking For Incrementing Values - Posted Jan 5, 2010
Creating An Infinite Scroll Effect With jQuery And ColdFusion - Posted Jan 4, 2010
Thoughts And Goals For 2010 - Posted Jan 3, 2010
Ask Ben: Using jQuery To Act On A Click Event Based On The Target Element - Posted Dec 30, 2009
Using Multi-Part Class Paths With CFScript-Based Argument Types - Posted Dec 29, 2009
Do Complex User Interface Modules Necessitate Complex CSS? - Posted Dec 29, 2009
Javascript Array Methods: Unshift(), Shift(), Push(), And Pop() - Posted Dec 29, 2009
Ask Ben: Using ColdFusion Components As Return Types, Argument Types, And Property Types - Posted Dec 28, 2009
Ask Ben: Showing Related Form Fields Based On A Given Selection - Posted Dec 28, 2009
Project HUGE: 2009 Fitness In Review - Posted Dec 27, 2009
Happy Holidays From Ben Nadel And BenNadel.com - Posted Dec 24, 2009
Playing With Finite State Machines And ColdFusion Components - Posted Dec 23, 2009
CorMVC - My jQuery-Powered Model-View-Controller (MVC) Framework - Posted Dec 21, 2009
NYC + Snow + ColdFusion + jQuery = Winter Wonderland - Posted Dec 20, 2009

Recent Blog Comments
Feb 8, 2010 at 4:47 PM
How To Create GStrings In Javascript By Extending Core Data Types
@Garrett, Very interesting. I'll have to give that a look. I don't think I have seen that before. ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 4:43 PM
How To Create GStrings In Javascript By Extending Core Data Types
Sick stuff Ben! Ironically there is an interesting project called fusebox that takes on the idea of "safely" extending JavaScript. http://github.com/jdalton/fusebox ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 4:19 PM
Converting An IP Address To An Integer Using MySQL (Thanks Julian Halliwell)
@Rob Yes, as I said it's CF9 that seems to return byte arrays from this and certain other MySQL functions such as GREATEST(). To run Ben's code as is you just need to enable multiple queries in you ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 4:04 PM
Creating Microsoft Excel Documents With ColdFusion And XML
@Ben, Thanks for the tip regarding your XML article and using BufferedInputStream instead of FileInputStream. I wish excel files were written in plain text just like your XML example. Unfortunately ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 3:51 PM
How To Create GStrings In Javascript By Extending Core Data Types
@Robert, Thanks my man. This is the first time I have ever tried to extend a core Javascript object. Technically, I have extended the "Object" class (pretty much how all prototypal inheritance work ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 3:37 PM
How To Create GStrings In Javascript By Extending Core Data Types
This is some impressive solution. I've to try it myself to understand the concept better and say more about it, but nice job! PS: Wicked pictures! ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 3:20 PM
Converting An IP Address To An Integer Using MySQL (Thanks Julian Halliwell)
@Julian, I book marked this post so I could make a very similar post. A few years ago I experimented quite a bit with the INET functions and BaseN conversions in MySQL after finding coldfusion lim ... read »
Feb 8, 2010 at 1:44 PM
Creating Microsoft Excel Documents With ColdFusion And XML
^ Nevermind that question. I figured out it has nothing to do with the way the file is created. It's caused by the program I'm using to get the files. ... read »