Coding Cogitations: Converting Cold Fusion to .Net

Well anyone with an ounce of coding will recognise the misnomer title for this post. You convert Cold Fusion to .Net like you convert grass to diamond earings. There are a few steps in the journey from Point A to Point B.

Here's how the game played out:

1. Luckily the backend is SQL Server 2005 so only some minor tweaking required to make use of it in this case. (Hail Mary full of grace)

2. Run a code generator over the Database to create my Data Access Layer. Luckily the previous developer (God bless his soul) broke up his Cold Fusion into seperate pages for the various data access methods. This gives me a great set of code to run a parser through to recreate the calls in my extended DAL

3. He also created seperate pages for the various business requirements though one for every single method, but god bless his little cotton socks his incode comments left nothing to assumption.

4. The GUI was pulled apart in no time. Carved into a variety of objects and recreated with Master pages.

This all seems pretty straight forward Jayson I hear you say. It was! So why blog about it? Because the real message here is that great coding in the first instance on any project makes updates, transitions and complete rebuilds a joy to undertake. Thank you previous developer - your spirit now lives on in .Net....

Technology Tidings: Redflow Advanced Energy Storage

RedFlow is a privately owned technology development company, located in Brisbane Australia.

RedFlow has pioneered the development and packaging of zinc bromine flow batteries into practical electricity storage systems that meet real market needs.

The patented zinc bromine flow technology is a breakthrough for kilowatt-scale electricity storage.

It combines RedFlow's proprietary battery technology with an integrated electronic interface using 3G-based remote communications and control capabilities.

Their management has strong technical backgrounds and extensive international links.

We also designed and developed their new website! ;)

Movie Mumblings: Hornblower TV Series

I have to say that I have never been so beautifully and deliciously drawn into a tv series as I was with this gem from British broadcaster Meridian Television.

It is based on the series of novels by C.S. Forester and majestically brought to life by the talents of Ioan Gruffudd as Horatio Hornblower, Robert Lindsay as Captain (and later Commodore and Admiral) Sir Edward Pellew, Paul Copley as Matthews the Bosun and Sean Gilder as Styles the Bosun's Mate. Ok there were others in there as well but these four really made this series for me.

The series consists of eight made-for-television movies though their high production values are obvious with beautiful scenery and the mouth watering galleons and frigates that grace the waters. My recommended episode would be The Frogs and the Lobsters in which Lt. Hornblower and his crew are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France. The french royalists are played wonderfully by Antony Sher as Colonel Moncoutant (a tad bloodthirsty) and John Shrapnel as General Charette. Samuel West as the firstly pompous and ultimately likeable Major Edrington, commander of the British regiment sent to support the French. This episode overflows with espionage, intrigue, bloody murder, war and heroics, romance, prison breaks, you name it!

I highly recommend this series. Each episode is about an hour and a half long so you have 12 hours of fantastic period settings and did I mention the mouth watering galleons and frigates....

Technology Tidings: The Orion Project

The Orion Project is an organization created to transform the current energy, environmental and social crisis into a world of sustainability and Enlightened Abundance.

http://www.theorionproject.org/en/index.html

Technological progress in the areas of advanced physics and electromagnetic systems, if appropriately supported, will enable humanity to live on the Earth with a minimal footprint with genuine long-term sustainability.

For over 100 years, these advanced concepts in energy generation have either been ignored or actively suppressed due to the power of fossil-fuel based economic and industrial interests.

Imagine a world where every home and village has its own clean source of electrical energy, free from the cost of fossil fuels, nuclear power or a centralized electric grid.

Imagine every means of transportation running off of clean power plants, using no source of fuel and creating no pollution.

Imagine the developing world blossoming with these new technologies and the equatorial rain forests protected from slash and burn subsistence farming and logging.

Imagine all inter-city transportation above the ground and the millions of acres paved over with highways freed for productive agriculture and recreation.

Imagine all manufacturing being clean-fuel sourced, using no-cost or low-cost energy.

Imagine the possibility of 100% recycling because the energy cost of transporting recycled materials, processing them and scrubbing pollution out of the air and water approaches zero.

Imagine...

This is no mere pipe-dream, but a world that is well within our grasp to create- in our lifetimes. Imagine... and see that it is a reality.

The Orion Project is dedicated to:

• Supporting the world's most accomplished engineers, physicists, and inventors who have developed innovative solutions to energy generation.
• Cleaning up the fossil fuel power sources currently in use.

Medieval Musings: The City State

"For I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars."

Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight', 1797

In ye olde days, before globalisation and industrialisation mass produced human experience and made every main street look and feel the same, there were the independent city states that flowed with the flavour of individuality. These weren't the mega cities you see today of 25,000,000 plus people but rather great big country towns of 50,000 to 100,000 souls.

From the 12th century on these great cities become self-governing democratic havens, free of intrusion from nobles. Multitudes of people fed up with the restrictions of feudal existence and "to the manor born effeteness" congolmerated to escape the rule of nobles and create an ideal working and creative community in which fairness and equality were the main driving principles. It was the adventure of cooperation at its most effective. They were centers of humanity bursting with schools, hospitals, baths, workshops (in the sense of the artisan working at his chosen trade not the toxic factories or human slave lines we know today) and wonderful community inspired architecture. Guilds controlled the fairness and expression of individual trade and cathedrals rose to celebrate the glory of god and the energy and abundance of the people. Walls were their own form of self enforced limitation to growth and over urbanisation.

These free cities existed all over the known world from the coasts of the Mediterranean to the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean, down the fjords of Scandinavia through Russia, Hungary, France and Spain. A mighty fraternity of spirit rose from the compost of feudalism.

I imagine a time not to far in the future where the same organic human spiritual emergence rises from the remains of capitalism and globalisation...

Gardening Goings On: The Vege Patch Extension Project

Stage 2 of the vege patch has now entered the formal planning stage. To the left are some photos of the existing gardens with the new ones in sight and for those not suffering from any eye issues, the string for the new fence is vaguely visible around the edges.

We currently have 21m² of vege garden space. This doesn't take into account the sandy loam garden at the end of the chicken coop as it is only really suitable for watermelons at the moment.

We are adding an additional 12m² of gardens in. We are also putting rabbit/hare/fox/overly diggy chocolate labrador proof fencing around the whole area and river pebbling the areas between the gardens to try to get on top of the grass which incessently marches, leaps and underscores the gardens themselves.

We are going to put thin gardens in around the fencing itself which will add an additional 5m² of vege space bringing our grand total to 38m² of deliciously abundant soil. This is a little over 409 sq ft for you imperials out there. In “How To Grow More Vegetables”, intensive gardening guru, John Jeavons, says you’ll need about 100 sq ft. per person, to grow enough vegetables to feed them for the whole year. With a family of five we need 500 sq ft, but as the boys are all under 8 I think we have time to add that critical 91sq ft or 8.5m² at a later stage.

FYI - The bottom picture shows our Asian vegetables coming through - there are a couple of Bok Choys, a couple of asian lettuces and an as yet unidentified one (Im hoping not some form of triffid).

People Ponderings: Arthur Schopenhauer

From Wikipedia (I know I've blown any academic cred utilising the great plebian knowledge cave but hey - therein lies revolution itself!)

Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788–September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of Buddhism and Vedanta.

I recently revisited the works and ideas of Schopenhauer on one of the various audios provided by various friends. In this case it is Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy". What I loved about Schopenhauer was his focus on the individual will as opposed to the collective will or more the subjugation of individual will to the will of the whole. His philosophies are inherently pessimistic as is anyone's that focus on the basic desires as the root motivater for human action. It can only be depressing to consider ourselves simple monkey's that react to basic, organic stimulus both internal and external. We want to be bigger than that, made in the image of gods, the highest form of evolved sentience, capable of great and noble things of universal significance. But what if anything outside of ourselves is simple illusion. The creation of willful monkeys, hell bent on not being simple willful monkeys. Schopenhauer's response was a withdrawal of sorts from earthly pleasures to a fairly austere existence. The theory being that to not partake in the pleasure/pain existence would free the mind to perhaps be more than simply will or desire.

He also had a combative discourse with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and any robust debate is a good thing I think... as long the competition is in the joy of discourse and not the eventual conquest and destruction of an opponent. An example verbiage from Schop - "If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right. ". Got to love it.

In a realm where death is a choice and to not die is a force of will I think Schopenhauer reigns supreme though he would not perhaps have accepted the hat.