I'm on the road this week in Philadelphia doing a Flex presentation at a conference. We took in the sights on Tuesday afternoon and checked out the Liberty Bell and some of the other historic spots. Independence Hall was right across the street and was quite recognizable as one of the locations from the movie National Treasure where Nicolas Cage made one of his many fantastic discoveries. Made me wonder how many people that saw the movie went looking to find loose bricks there to find something similar. Tonight we ventured out to Pat's King of Steaks for a real Philly Cheesesteak (as seen on the Food Network). The sandwich was as good as advertised and the Cheez Whiz was strangely good.

The second and third days of the Macromedia MAX weren't as exciting or eventful as the first, but I kind of expected that. By the time a conference wraps I'm always ready to high-tail it home and sleep in my own bed again.

The thing that still excited me the most was Flex. MM has setup a Macromedia >labs< site for previewing new releases to the developer community. Currently Flex 2 is the main focus, but I'm sure they will add other product previews when available. I think it is a great idea, as it will allow them to shake out bugs better and get early feedback from developers which will improve their products as well.

They showed some upcoming things for other products in a Sneak Peek on Tuesday, but none of it measured up the the new Flex. CFMX 7.0 released not too long ago and so I didn't expect much from the ColdFusion Sneak, and thus wasn't disappointed. I do expect there to be major enhancements in the next version of CFMX though, and if I had to make a totally uninformed guess it will likely be things to improve enterprise integrations, such as easier use of JMS and portal deployment. But that is pure speculation on my part. Those are things I would vote for.

All in all, it was a great conference. I've heard that it doesn't rain in southern California, but I'm here to tell you that is total bullshit. It rained almost the entire time we were there. Maybe next year they can have the conference in Denver...

I'm attending Macromedia MAX at the Anaheim Convention Center this week. The conference kicked off this morning with one of (if not) the largest turnout I've seen (3000+ developers). This is my 5th Macromedia conference (San Francisco, Orlando twice, Salt Lake City and now Anaheim) and they seem to get better each time.

The big focus this year seems to be on Flex and related topics for Rich Internet Applications (RIA's). Flex is a tool for creating web applications with a Flash client to overcome the mostly crappy HTML interfaces we've been doing since the web came about. I was glad to see such a push for Flex, since we just bought it and I'd just started developing an app with it. The current version (1.5) is good, but the new version coming out (2.0) looks to be even better. They've vastly improved the Flex Builder, basing it on Eclipse, providing drag and drop authoring not dissimilar to what you'd see doing Visual Basic development (drag and drop components). Prior to Flex you could do the same sort of stuff using Flash (with remoting), but I always found the Flash IDE to be painful to use. The Flash IDE is very intuitive to a designer, but to a coder the timeline metaphor is kind of maddening. Flex makes Flash components available in a code-centric (XML) way that are easy to use for coder-monkeys like me.

As a ColdFusion coder, I remember all of the fear-mongering in the developer community when Macromedia bought Allaire. Almost everyone was predicting the death of CF, but they couldn't have been more wrong. ColdFusion is stronger than ever and will continue to be. The role of CF is definitely changing though, with its focus moving from the client and server, to mainly the server, with RIA's taking over as the client. With the stuff I'm seeing being done in Flex, it is a change for the better. Big kudos to Macromedia for their vision. Looking forward to the rest of the conference. Updates to follow...

I'm on the road this week at the Macromedia MAX Conference in sunny Anaheim, California. A colleague and I decided to schlep our clubs out a day early and hit the links. He has family out here and we were joined by his uncle, who has a good bit of game to accompany his great demeanor. We played at Anaheim Hills golf course which was quite hilly and had about 6 holes with blind tee-shots or blind dog-legs. I took the risky path on each of those holes and paid the price for it. You'd think that I would have learned after the first or second time, but NAH! No guts, no glory (not that I achieved any glory anyway). I shot an 89 anyway, which fits my trend back down towards a respectable handicap.

I'm in a Web Component Development with Servlet and JSP class this week in downtown Atlanta at the Equitable Building. Here is a shot from where my class is on the 18th floor.

We used to be located in Equitable, so it is a blast from the past to come down here and hit my old haunts for lunch. My favorite place to go is Ali Baba's, which is a Turkish joint with great Lamb Gyros, Babaganoush and Hummus. Whenever I come down here this is the place I eat above all others. I only make it down here once or twice a year now, but the owner always remembers me immediately. I've always enjoyed places like that, as they make you feel like an old friend.

A little known fact about the Equitable building is that one of the tenants is the lawyer for John & Patsy Ramsey (parents of Jon-Benet if you've forgotten), Lin Wood (who also represented Kobe Bryant's accuser, Richard Jewel and Gary Condit). During the whole Ramsey debacle there was never a shortage of reporters lurking around the building.

Flew into Newark, New Jersey, on Wednesday night for a gig on Thursday. This was my first visit to "the garden state" and now I'm wondering where the gardens are. I'd probably rename it "the toxic waste state". It was very gray, cold and rainy which likely flavored my perception. If you look at my picture very closely you'll see Manhattan in the background. We arrived so late that we weren't able to do dinner in SoHo as planned. Maybe next time...

Turns out that Allan has been doing a gig for Houghton-Mifflin in Boston so we got together for dinner tonight at Grill 23. It is a classic steak place with floor to ceiling wood walls and steaks any and every way you can imagine. I opted for the 3 pound lobster however and it was awesome (the dark camera phone pic doesn't do it any justice). If you know me, then you know I'm all about a good meal with friends. We closed out the night with drinks at Whiskey Park Bar. Whiskey Park is a stylish bar owned by Cindy Crawford's husband.

Our conference is in a very modern building which sticks out to me as looking like it should be somewhere in Germany. The reception after todays session was held on the 32nd floor which is the view you see below. To the left is Logan Airport which is where two of the three 9/11 flights originated from. Kind of weird to think about.

After spending a great weekend in Las Vegas (pics on their way soon) for J.B.'s bachelor party, it's off to Boston for a conference. I've never been to Boston as an adult so I've been looking forward to partaking in their renowned seafood. I'm here until Friday so my plan is to eat my weight in shellfish. More pics to come...

I've been in St. Louis for the past couple of days doing a CMS (Content Management System) implementation and figured I should put up a pic of a notable landmark from here. The NCAA Final Four is going on at the same time and my hotel is about two blocks away from the tournament venue. Needless to say there are a lot of people here and it is pretty crazy. There were two games on Saturday night and the streets were trashed on Sunday morning not unlike a scene from "28 Days Later". The championship game is tonight but I'll be on a flight home before they tip off.

Here is a pic of the St. Louis Arch taken from my hotel window.

A bad day at the golf course is better than any day at work. And with weather like this I may never come home;) Now that I see it off of my phone this is a really crappy pic which does no justice to the golf course (don't bother to pop open the big one it is just blurry). I played golf yesterday at the Disney Magnolia course, which is where the PGA holds the Funai Disney Classic every year. The course was quite underwhelming and my play was even worse. This (blurry) pic is the number one hole on the Disney Osprey golf course, where I played this morning. It was a cold and blustery morning but warmed up to be a beautiful day. The course was much nicer than their PGA course and my game accordingly flourished. They say the best courses on Disney are the Magnolia and Osprey, but I'd totally favor the latter for its beauty and playability. I can see why they do the tour stop at Magnolia however, because Osprey is completely un-walkable (they won't even let you walk it). It is a 5 mile in and out layout which would be the death of fans.

Currently I am attending the Gartner Application Integration & Web Services Summit in Orlando. The conference is at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Conference Center. The resort is way nice but the conference is a snooze so far. Gartner is like a pundit for the IT industry, sort of a weather man, so the sessions are really blah blah. Not unlike statistics, their research can be twisted to sell whatever agenda big vendor or management is currently enamored with, but the real implementation truth for coder monkeys like me is far different.

Now that I'm the proud owner of a camera/video phone it seemed the next logical step was to start mobile blogging (moblogging). I'll be able to blog remotely from anywhere at any time without sitting at a computer.

Here is my first post from the phone, Winston doing what he does best (and most often), hanging out in the chair.