barry.beattie

Recent Blog Comments By barry.beattie

• Finally Finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Audio Book

  Posted on Apr 5, 2010 at 12:26 PM

  @Steve, fair enough. The trouble about social or political theory is that that's all they are - theories. if you let them play out then the theory turns into "history" proving or disproving certain points. The trouble about letting scenarios play themselves out is that a lot of people can get hurt ... read more »

• Finally Finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Audio Book

  Posted on Apr 5, 2010 at 11:14 AM

  @Steve, your comments sound like someone who lumps any government involvement as "socialism". viewing the culture of the U.S of A from the other side of the world can be a laugh sometimes -a black comedy. On the one hand the gun-toting nutcases are afraid of anything to do with the government (and... read more »

• Finally Finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Audio Book

  Posted on Nov 15, 2009 at 11:17 PM

  be careful - of "anecdotal evidence" that sounds good to support a theory (eg: "all ABC's are XYZ") but can't hold up to scientific evaluation and real analysis. - of idealised viewpoints that just don't work in reality. - of gods with feet of clay. we are complex animals. We build complex s... read more »

• OOPhoto: VARIABLES vs. VARIABLES.Instance - When And Why?

  Posted on Sep 16, 2008 at 6:47 AM

  I always use the area after the opening <cfcomponent> tag, and sometimes even use cfparam just to make it clear what's happening.... read more »

• OOPhoto: VARIABLES vs. VARIABLES.Instance - When And Why?

  Posted on Sep 14, 2008 at 7:09 AM

  @Henry meh, personal choice rules, OK? I understand what Ben is doing and why and have similar thoughts. an extra hashmap lookup, not a bit deal in the scheme of things. "cause isn't DSN usually stored in the APPLICATION scope anyway?" IMHO, NEVER. or rather, unless there's special circumstances... read more »

• OOPhoto: VARIABLES vs. VARIABLES.Instance - When And Why?

  Posted on Sep 13, 2008 at 7:25 PM

  why? I do (or did) something similar to Ben. for me loose keys in VARIABLES scope are plumbing - stuff to keep the component itself going. the instance key is really internal data - important to that instanciation of that component instance. it all comes down to having sufficent namespaces to park... read more »

• OOPhoto: VARIABLES vs. VARIABLES.Instance - When And Why?

  Posted on Sep 13, 2008 at 7:09 AM

  seems like what you're really after is a static scope for the dsn, esp when multiple Bra.cfc's are instanciated in a request scope (or similar). well, maybe not for the DSN, but something to share across all instances perehaps. sure there are work-arounds in CF if you juggle the architecture, but I... read more »

• What Does It Mean To Be A CSS Class?

  Posted on Feb 11, 2008 at 5:33 PM

  what I'm getting at is the conflict between needing to add semantic context on one hand and styling and behaviors on the other. out of the available "tools" there's only ID's (and like Highlander "there can be only one") or classes. Some examples: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-authoring ) ... read more »

• What Does It Mean To Be A CSS Class?

  Posted on Feb 11, 2008 at 4:09 PM

  what about needing to add microformats? esp in div's? different raison d'etre, same tag attribute.... read more »

• Finally Finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Audio Book

  Posted on Jun 18, 2007 at 8:58 AM

  yes, it would seem so. it would also seem contrary to a guy speaking wise words about two thousand words ago... (note: I am NOT religious and abhor organised worship but that doesn't mean that there's not good ideas there - lets keep to society and humanity, OK?)... read more »

• Finally Finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Audio Book

  Posted on Jun 16, 2007 at 7:14 PM

  if you liked Atlas Shrugged you might appreciate the Canadian three-piece band "Rush" who draw inspiration from Rand's work. Personally, I find her philosophy a bit grating - it smacks too much of Margret Thatchers "There is no such thing as society". Wait until you have children, Ben, you might ... read more »

• The Dip By Seth Godin (Thanks Jack Welde)

  Posted on Jun 16, 2007 at 12:21 PM

  the theory is not for everyone. I'm in "the dip" at the moment - it has some positive aspects where I'm "lining up the ducks" to dive headlong into the reward "slope" on the other side. and great "obsessive" rewards they'd be. but the trouble is I'm running out of time: through organisational chan... read more »

• ColdFusion UDF For Retrieving Surrounding Dates

  Posted on May 8, 2007 at 7:01 AM

  good on yer, Ben, the next step is submitting the UDF to cflib.org so it'll spread around the world for evermore (well, that's perhaps going a bit far but you get the idea...) just a thought... read more »

• Does Mentoring Exist Any More?

  Posted on Oct 23, 2006 at 7:13 PM

  so what happens if you do take a job at (what you thought at the time) was a real go-ahead institution... ... only to find that - you're the only one that cares about "doing things the right way" (not because of project deadlines, but because of sheer lazyness, ignorance or not giving a rats in le... read more »