Web Designer Mag has featured a number of ColdFusion tutorials by myself, and Issue 144 and 145 have the fourth and fifth tutorials in the series.

Issue 144 covered how to build an administrative interface using the CF8 Ajax Datagrid, whilst issue 145 takes the Ajax integration that bit further by showing how we can us FCKEditor (which is included in CF8), and how we can implement our own "Autosave" feature, ultimately leading to a basic Web mail interface.

The 5 tutorials so far have really focused on targeting those new to ColdFusion, or those who are just a tad intrigued by what the fuss is all about. Hopefully I'll be writing some new tutorials for Web Designer that will take our focus that bit deeper.

Issue 146 of Web Designer Mag features a review of this years Scotch on the Rocks.

Go pick up a copy!

We'll be out in force at Scotch on the Rocks next week, meaning we won't be manning the phones, though calls will be forwarded to mobiles. However, as this is "our" conference, we'll be somewhat busy.

I'm really looking forward to catching up with guys like Doug Hughes, Scott Stroz and Joe Rinehart, all of whom I met a few years back at CFUnited in Washington.

It'll be nice to see the Adobe crew again, including Jason Delmore, Kristen Schofield, Adam Lehman and Ben Forta.

There's a bunch of new folk that I can't wait to meet, such as Luca Mezzalira, Peter Elst, Neil Middleton and Neil Webb.

And last but not least, Gert Franz. We took Gert and the Railo crew out for lunch last year after the conference and introduced them to Haggis so I'll need to see what I can subject them too this year.

For everyone attending, make yourself know to me - I'll be the main idiot wearing the kilt - and who knows, maybe you'll end up with some extra swag, free drink or even some free training or consultancy. I get generous around conference time, so who knows .....

The third in my series of ColdFusion tutorials for Web Designer magazine is now available at a newsagent/bookstore near you.

This tutorial is on PDF Generation and Form Manipulation, Image Manipulation and Presentations on Demand.

May's edition will revisit the CF8 Ajax grid, and building a CRUD interface, whilst June will tackle the CF8 PDF features in more depth, and how you can build an online order system.

Alan Williamson announced earlier today the folks who will make up the steering committee for the Open BlueDragon (OpenDB) project.

Having known Alan for 4 years now, since I first asked him to present at the ScottishCFUG, I was aware that OpenBD was on the cards.

The members of the committee should be known to most of the community, and as Sean Corfield points out, not all of them have enjoyed a "friendly" relationship with New Atlanta in the past. However, that just goes to show the level of interest and commitment to the OpenBD project, and ultimately what it could achieve.

If you want to get involved in the project, then please join the community mailing list, which can be found at http://groups.google.com/group/openbd

If you want to experience OpenBD firsthand, then the initial release of OpenBD should take place at this years cf.Objective() conference, and 6 of the Steering Committee will be at Scotch on the Rocks;Alan Williamson, Andy Wu, Sean Corfield, Matt Woodward, Mark Drew and myself

We're planning something special for Scotch, so stay tuned!

I'm heading out to Dublin on Friday for the ScotchOnAir event.

This is a half day event put together by Scotch on the Rocks and MMUG Dublin.

Dublin was originally part of the Adobe onAir tour, but due to "unforeseen circumstances", the Dublin date was cancelled and Scotch's very own Kev McCabe jumped into organise something.

Kev has managed to arrange for Adobe's Ryan Stewart and Ted Patrick to come along and give talks on Air and Flex respectively, whilst Kev will be talking about ColdFusion and Flex.

I'll be doing my damnedest to plug Scotch on the Rocks and in addition to the swag Adobe have given us to raffle off, we will also give away a full 3 day pass to Scotch, There may also be a few other Scotch bits and bobs kicking around, and maybe some Fuzzy Orange swag too.

Now, if I can just survive my flight with Ryanair!!!

The March edition of Web Designer, features the second in a series of ColdFusion tutorials by myself; The Basics of ColdFusion Coding.

Not very interesting for the seasoned ColdFusion developer, but then these tutorials aren't for you (though be sure to pick up the mag anyway, and give it support. If we want ColdFusion to have more exposure in the non-CF press, then we as a community need to increase their sales. No, I wasn't paid to say that heh).

These tutorials will hopefully tap into some of the other development communities, and at the very least, offer some exposure of ColdFusion to them. If a few decide to give ColdFusion a go - not to necessarily dump their existing skills in favour, but more to give them another tool in their belt - then it's a job well done.

My third tutorial, due April, exposes some of the new features of ColdFusion 8 including; PDF Interaction, Image Manupulation and Presentations on Demand.

I'm up in sunny Aberdeen this Friday (which is also the last day of the early bird pricing for Scotch on the Rocks), giving a presentation on ColdFusion 8.

Fuzzy Orange will also be sponsoring the event so that everyone gets some food and a few beers.

Additionally, I will also be giving away a ticket to Scotch on the Rocks.

The presentation will be aimed at both experienced and novice ColdFusion developers. Heck, if you're a PHP/.NET/Java/Ruby/etc developer and want to know what the fuss is all about, come along.

See you on Friday.

This month saw the first in a series of articles by myself, published by Web Designer Mag on ColdFusion for Novices.

Issue 141 sees me showing easily and quickly, just how we can pull data from a database and display it in an Ajax grid. I think it takes around 28 lines of code. Real basic code.

Next month (issue 142) will see a more in depth look at programming using CFML - this should be on the way to the printers - and issue (143), well, I can't tell you what's going to be in that just yet.

In addition to the tutorial, I'm quoted on what we here at Fuzzy Orange think is "Hot for 2008". Scotch on the Rocks is top of our list, and it's very encouraging to see Web Designer agree with us, as it's number 51 in their list.