I got a nice surprise this week, my boss bought me a new 15 inch Macbook Pro. It's been several years since I've developed on a Mac and being back on one for the past 2 days I wonder how I did it.

I must say Macs have come a long way since I had one, but the over all feel is still the same. Clean, simple, and powerful, oh and the pad short cuts rock. I'm still working on getting my development environment setup for developing ColdFusion applications. So if any one has any suggestions on must have apps pay or free I just shouldn't develop with out, please post a comment and let me know.

P.S. Thanks Boss!!!

So it's still early but you can now submit topics. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out a topic, something new, but I have no clue =/. If anyone wants to suggest some ideas that would rock.

Any way here is the link have fun...

So it's been a couple of weeks since CFUnited, catching up on emails and work was rough. So I'm finally taking the time this morning to talk about my experiences at CFUnited.


Since this was my first time I was little nervous, I didn’t personally know anyone other than through the community and really didn’t think I would have anyone to hang out with. That lasted about 20 min after I got off the plane, I started meeting people in the van to CFUnited. Once I checked in by that evening I met more and more very friendly people. Me and Garrett Johnson another first timer, who I met in the van, ended up hanging out and just saying hi to anyone we saw. I was pretty surprised when I would introduce myself “Hi, I’m John Ramon” and get the “Oh, John Ramon I know you”, I guess my involvement in the community does help. All in all I met some great people at CFUnited and want to thank them all for making me and of course Garrett feel welcomed.


This year CFUnited was at Landsdowne resort in VA, and it was very cool place to have a conference. I loved the fact that I could go from my room to a session in 5 min. Plus having a bar down stairs where everyone hung out and drink was cool too.

I do have to say a real quick thank you to all the sponsors. If you go next year stop by and see them all you never know what kind of relationship you can build with other comapnies. I know we have a few new companies to refer clients to now.
 

Other than meeting some kick ass people I call friends now, and the wicked cool resort, the sessions rocked. There were so many cool sessions this year. When I first registered I filled out my schedual with things I felt comfortable with, but after I saw this post from Ben Nadel I changed it up and went to things that scared me, lol. So how did it go, well when I got back I bought three new books and have a notpad full of ideas and things I want todo and learn. Truly inspirational in advancing my love for ColdFusion.
 

Just a quick mention the food kicked ass.
 

Finally I want to thank Stellr. Thank you for putting on a great conference, you guys did an amazing job. Also for working with my company to get my co-worker in on Thursday, he loved the sessions he went to and of course has new ideas for our company.


So if you haven’t been and are thinking about going next year don’t wait start planning now, I’ll see you all next year!!!

So far this has been a great conference. I've seen some great sessions that have gotten the creative juices flowing, plus I got to see my co-worker for the second time since I've been with my company. I wanna thank all the presenters I have seen so far. I wanted to add more blog posts but there is just so much going on and I know a lot of my fellow CF developers are posting detailed blog posts already.

I'm in my last session before dinner and the Adobe Pool Party.

I went to two sessions on jQuery. The first one I saw was with Ray Camden. He went through all the basics and show some powerful stuff on what it can do. I started looking into it a few months ago but with my work load and not having a project to use it on it took a back burner.

Funny thing is the day before I left for CFUnited my "boss" asked me to look at something a client sent. After a few min of looking at what they sent we both thought this was the best time to get into jQuery.

Right now I'm in  Scott Stroz's session on CF and jQuery Perfect Together. He's talking about how CF works so well with jQuery.

I got my publisher account and setup my site, but I dont think I'll posts the giant badge on my site. I really wish you could change the look of if it but you can't. I'm sure if anyone wanted to subscribe to my blog they would subscribe to ColdFusionBloggers.org wave. My site is indexed there and any new posts popup on it's Wave.

I have the whole front end almost done, you can see it running here. I have no backend yet, which I will start after CFUnited. The software allows you to post messages from your phone, you can do just plain text messages or picture messages. I will be testing it a lot at CFUnited and making sure I have no bugs before I start on the admin section.

Some cool features to be brought online are:

yfrog and twitpic support for picture messages. You will be able to pick which one you use and any picture messages will be sent to your twitter account through one of them. If your message is just a text message you can post it to twitter with a shortened url link to the blog post. (haven't decided which one to use).

I have a lot to do but I'm hoping the beta release will be ready by September for download.