Thursday, June 17, 2010

Peter Landgren enjoys the sights and sounds of Cleveland as director of Baldwin-Wallace College's Conservatory of Music: My Cleveland | cleveland.com



Is it possible for a musician to make a living in Cleveland?


I'd like to broaden the question and say that it's more possible now than in previous decades to make a living in music anywhere in the country. A musician, however, has to be more than a good player or teacher. They must have an entrepreneurial spirit and serve as an advocate for their art.


Music is one of the easiest art forms to give away for free. B-W teaches all college students how to be contributing citizens in today's world, and in the conservatory, we not only teach students to be intelligent and sensitive performers, but we also guide music students on how to create their own unique career in music.




Mr. Landgren (fondly named PL by his students) is my former horn teacher of three years in college (Johns Hopkins in Baltimore). As a music major at a great conservatory, I spent a lot of time each week preparing for my lesson with PL. It was really exciting to see this piece in the newspaper about Big P's new adventures at BW (I was known as Little P in college). Take a moment to go read the whole article which is very interesting insight on the music "mecca" in Cleveland.


Top Five Tips for Evaluating Employee Performance (via GreatBizTools Blog)


Investing Time in Employees Puts Money in the Bank

The following situation represents an age-old challenge facing many managers when it comes to helping employees improve their job performance:



I work in an organization that doesn’t use a standard performance management system. Managers are given some general guidelines, which are a bit confusing, but everyone seems to be using a different approach. Employees tend to get feedback only when they do something wrong. What is the best way to evaluate my employees and provide feedback regarding their performance?




Our team at work has been blogging some great information on HR questions and advice. Be sure to follow the link to read the entire article!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

OpenBD (CFML) on Google App Engine - Live Meeting June 8th, 2010 at 7pm ET

Just wanted to quickly blog that Matt Woodward and I are presenting on OpenBD on Google App Engine tonight at the Mid-Michigan CFUG at 7pm ET (about 30 minutes from the time of this posting).


Where: http://breeze.msu.edu/mmcfuggoogle  (Enter as guest)


When: June 8th, 2010 - 7pm ET


Description:



If you want to take advantage of the power of cloud computing but want to focus on applications instead of server infrastructure, you owe it to yourself to check out Google App Engine. Google App Engine lets you deploy applications to Google's infrastructure with the push of a button, and the best part is that for many applications it's entirely free of cost.


In this presentation we'll discuss both the benefits and downsides of living in the cloud, outline how Google App Engine differs from other cloud solutions, and demonstrate how to build and deploy a simple CFML application to Google App Engine using Open BlueDragon, which is the only CFML engine compatible with Google App Engine.


If you're interested in running your CFML applications in the cloud come get in on the ground floor, because with a few simple tips and tricks, it's all clear skies.


Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Unofficial CF bug database mirror setup = wake up Adobe


This website is an live unoffical mirror of the Adobe ColdFusion Bug Database created by Elliott Sprehn.



I was created because the Flex based UI that was provided by Adobe is a real pain to use, specifically lots of text is not selectable, the Bug Areas dropdown is a mile long with no scrollbar, and it won't work on something like an iPhone.



This website is not affiliated with or owned by Adobe, Inc.




There is definitely something wrong with the idiotic bug database for ColdFusion at Adobe. The Flex interface is horrible. It's meant as no offense to the developers of the Flex interface but the user experience is painful at best. I can't even use it on my netbook because the there is no way to resize boxes or popups to maximize the lower resolution. Then there is mobile access (iPhone / Blackberry).

I understand the intentions of Elliot are good, but having to mirror the bug database should be a wake up call to Adobe to fix their issues. However, I don't believe it's totally the Flex interface. I would guess it's the out-dated issue tracking software they use.

Flame away at me if you want - it won't do any good...