"Painting the Forth Bridge". This phrase was used to identify the fact that painting one of Edinburgh's iconic structures was a never ending job. The current painting of the bridge however, is slightly different in that a new approach has been taken that will see the paint work have an expected life of anywhere between 25 and 40 years, thereby eliminating the need to repaint continuously.

Organising Scotch on the Rocks (and I would imagine any conference) is somewhat similar to Painting the Forth Bridge. As soon as you're done, you start organising for the next year.

Now, we wouldn't persist in running the conference every year if we didn't enjoy it, but with anything in life, we're looking to streamline our approach so that we can spend less time on ... well, the time consuming areas. This was made a tad more difficult the last two years due to the economy and the fact we had to adapt or die.

I'm delighted to say that our 5 year plan, which was conceived in 2008 after things headed south, has proved to be fruitful.

Scotch on the Rocks 2011: March 3-4, 2011

2011 will see the conference head home to Edinburgh after 2 years traveling. Taking place at the Apex International hotel, in the Edinburgh Grassmarket, underneath the skyline dominating Edinburgh Castle, Europe's longest running ColdFusion conference will bring the best of the best from the world of ColdFusion, Flex, AIR, HTML5 and more to Edinburgh on March 3rd and 4th.

Tickets are already on sale, and in fact are already 50% sold out after just two weeks. For more information on the 2011 conference, and to purchase your ticket, head over to http://www.sotr.eu.

Our 3 year paint

Just like the painting of the bridge, we've managed to reduce some of the repetitiveness. One of the biggest tasks with organising a conference is finding a venue. For the next 3 years (2011-2013) we will be at the Apex International Hotel and this reduces our workload considerably. It also allows us to build up a good relationship with the hotel, and with that comes the opportunity to provide better deals with our delegates and sponsors.

Here's to a long and illustrious life, for both the Bridge and Scotch on the Rocks.

Adobe MAX, the annual showcase conference for all things Adobe takes place October 23-23 in Los Angeles, California.

Registration for the conference is already open, and this week the official Session Scheduler has been released.

I'm delighted to announce that Matt Gifford and myself will not only be there, but we'll also be delivering a BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) lab on "Search made Easy: Full-Text Document Search with ColdFusion".

In this lab, we'll be getting hands on and demonstrating ColdFusion and Solr; how to configure Solr, it's advantages over Verity, how to manage Collections, how to index files and query objects, and ultimate how to build a slick search interface.

You're going to love Solr once we're finished.

The Lab description says Windows, but we can guarantee it also works on the Mac as that's what we've built the code on. And there's no reason for it not to work on Linux as well, so not matter what operating system you're running, you'll be able to join in.

Scotch on the Rocks is now less than 5 days away.

If you haven't confirmed your place or purchased your ticket for the event yet, don't hesitate and secure one now from the official SOTR site: www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk

We <3 our sessions

Covering two days, with two tracks per day, there are currently a total of 22 sessions, bringing to you a wide range of content and topics covering ColdFusion, frameworks, working methodologies, Flex, AIR and HTML5.

We <3 our speakers

No conference would be complete without the experts and 'purveyors of knowledge' standing up and providing the content for the sessions. This year is no exception, and we are really excited about the 19 speakers we have lined up.

We <3 our badgers

moving on..

We <3 our Reachies

For the first time in SOTR history, we are holding what we hope to be an annual awards ceremony, 'The Reachies'.

The large number of EMEA developers work hard at what they do, and provide fantastic content, open source or not. The ColdFusion community across the globe is one of (if not) the best, open sharing communities, and we wanted to take the opportunity to highlight that fact and reward developers for their efforts.

There are five categories in this year's awards, and if you haven't voted, or are still unaware the awards even exist ( shame on you ), head over to the nominations page on the SOTR website to view the categories and place your nominations.

There ARE prizes for each category winner.

We <3 our sponsors

The Scotch on the Rocks events rely on the input and support from other companies and organisations in various formats.

It is with this important support that the conference has been able to grow and progress year after year, and attendees have been able to enjoy the wealth of knowledge and fun of the event. A massive thank you to the sponsors of the 2010 event.

We <3 the attendees

Most importantly, a conference simply would not be a conference without people turning up, and we're very lucky to have a fantastic group of developers and attendees who join us for each event.

Ultimately, SOTR has always been undertaken with the attendees in mind, and it will continue to cater for you/them at every turn, every year.

We <3 doing it again

I'm really excited about this years conference. A lot of work and planning has gone into the event this year ( whether the attendee's realise it or not :) ) and we've already started planning the event for SOTR2011. We must be mad, so why do it?

Simple. We love it.

Ever since SOTR was brought to life by Andy Allan and Fuzzy Orange in 2005, it's been a boost for the RIA and ColdFusion community in the UK and Europe. Bringing together like-minded individuals and developers is essentially what the conference is about.

Whether you are there for business reasons, development ideas, educational purposes, networking, or purely as a chance to catch up with old friends and colleagues and to enjoy a beer or five, Scotch on the Rocks has always been and will always be happy to have you.

We <3 choice

On a final note, yes, the bar at SOTR 2010 is open and drinks provided for you. There's nothing better than relaxing with a beer or two afterwards and networking, chatting, catching up with mates and having some fun. The only choice is what drink to order from the bar. :)

The ACME Guide is a fantastic document created by Stephen Collins, which lays out in easy to understand steps, how to set up and configure Apache, ColdFusion, MySQL and Eclipse on your local Mac or PC.

Unfortunately the document has been dormant for a while (only covering up to ColdFusion 7).

However, after speaking with Stephen, we've got approval to take over the job of maintaining the guide. And we're absolutely delighted.

We'll be honouring all of Stephen's hard work, but since the documents last update, a lot of things have changed, including:

* We're now on ColdFusion 9 * We have established alternative CFML engines in OpenBD and Railo * CFEclipse has been updated * ColdFusion Builder has been released

As such, we want to incorporate as much as we can into this document and therefore we'd like your suggestions.

What do YOU want to see in the guide? Leave a comment or Contact Us

The current version of the guide can be downloaded from http://www.acidlabs.org/public-speaking/goodies/

Fuzzy Orange are excited to announce a fantastic offer we will be running between April and May 2010.

If you purchase a copy of ColdFusion 9 Enterprise through Fuzzy Orange during this period, you will receive a copy of ColdFusion Builder at no extra cost.

ColdFusion Builder, the CF-specific development platform, is the perfect companion for ColdFusion developers, and has been created to help maximise the development workflow, increase productivity and improve integration with the ColdFusion servers. As such, it's ideally suited to be bundled in this package with ColdFusion Enterprise.

Please find below the price brackets for the CF 9 Enterprise licenses:

• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Full License - £3,300.00 + vat
• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Upgrade (from CF7/8 Ent) - £1700.00 + vat
• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Upgrade (from CF7/8 Standard) - £3,000.00 + vat
• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Upgrade (from CF9 Standard) - £2600.00 + vat

You will receive one ColdFusion Builder license for every copy of ColdFusion Enterprise purchased.

Licenses can also be purchased with maintenance or Platinum support. Contact Us for more details or to place an order.

This offer expires May 31st, so don't hesitate and get your copy now.

There's been a lot of posts about ColdFusion Builder since it's release, and a lot to do with functionality and features.

What I'd like to do is address pricing and licensing. Some of this information will be applicable only to the UK, as that's where we are based, although for those in Western Europe we can also sell the product to you.

So, as an Adobe Authorised Reseller, we need to know the ins and outs of the licensing for the Adobe products. To be honest, we only care about ColdFusion, and now ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder.

We've detailed a lot of information on our Reseller page, but hopefully this blog post gives you the opportunity to leave comments and questions.

So, let's get started.

ColdFusion Builder Editions

There are three editions of ColdFusion Builder:

• Trial
• Commercial
• Education

Let's deal with each one individually.

Trial

ColdFusion Builder has a free 60 day trial edition, which can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/go/trycoldfusionbuilder

We've seen a lot of debate over the last day about product pricing and we just want to emphasise that the trial edition exists and that it lasts for 60 days.

Commercial

ColdFusion Builder retails in the UK for £171+vat. Also included in the price is a complimentary copy of Flash Builder 4 Standard.

ColdFusion Builder is also bundled with Flash Builder 4 Premium, which has a Suggested Retail Price (SRP) of £397+vat.

In regards upgrades, there is obviously no upgrade available for ColdFusion Builder, but you can upgrade to Flash Builder 4 Premium from:

• Flex Builder 2/3
• Flash Builder 4 Standard
• ColdFusion Builder

Pricing obviously varies depending on the upgrade path.

Also, one little bit of information that's not been clearly publicised is the fact that your ColdFusion Builder license can be installed on a maximum of 2 computers, e.g. your desktop and your laptop. This is great new for those who half to do a lot of traveling.

As a Reseller we can always offer a better price than the SRP, so please Contact Us for more information.

Education

Just like ColdFusion Server, ColdFusion Builder is available at no cost to Educational facilities. To make sure you qualify, head over to https://freeriatools.adobe.com/cfbuilder/.

And that's all there is to it. If you do have any questions or comments, please leave them here on the blog or Contact Us directly.

Two in a week. We are on a roll.

Fuzzy Orange are (once more) proud to launch a new open-source project to the community.

Codenamed 'Hermes', the messenger of the gods and, amongst other things, God of flight, mischief and commerce, this project is a package of ColdFusion components providing instant access to interact with the Eventbrite Service API.

Fuzzy Orange have used the Eventbrite system for a few years now as a tool to manage, organise and sell our tickets for the Scotch on the Rocks conferences.

Hermes is ideally suited for anyone wanting an easy way to manage events and tickets through the Eventbrite system, and is perfectly suited for integration into CRM systems. You can easily obtain reports on event attendees, manage tickets and pricing structures, and specify venues, organisations and donation options.

The download contains an installation guide and documentation on the basic implementation of the code, as well as a list of the methods currently available to users to work with the API.

We will be working on upgrades and amendments to the code base to ensure you continue get the best application available. As always. feedback is always welcome, and if you use the codebase, drop us a line to let us know - we'd love to hear from you.

Hermes V1.0 is available to download now from RIA Forge: http://hermes.riaforge.org/.

Fuzzy Orange are proud to launch a new open-source project to the community.

Codenamed 'Rhea', after the mother of the Olympian Gods and Godesses, this project is a package of ColdFusion components providing instant access to interact with the Rackspace Cloud Servers and Cloud Files APIs.

We at Fuzzy Orange, a longstanding partner with Rackspace and user of the Cloud services, wanted a way to simplify the way we deployed to the Cloud server and provide an easier in-house method of managing the Cloud Files.

Having spoken to developers and after reading documentation, we noticed the need for a ColdFusion application to merge with the Rackspace API, and as such, Rhea was born.

Having built the system from the ground up, we now use this API internally to deploy dynamic content to our Cloud Servers and to upload and manage static content to the Cloud Files containers, streamlining and enhancing the way we work.

We have opened up the application and pushed it out to the community so that others can benefit as well, and we look forward to hearing from those that are using it.

The download itself contains an installation guide and documentation on the basic implementation of the code, as well as a list of the methods currently available to users to work with the API.

As ever, nothing is timeless, and we will be working on upgrades and amendments to the code base to ensure you continue get the best application available.

Rhea V0.99 is available to download now from RIA Forge: http://rhea.riaforge.org/

Being a ColdFusion company, we obviously like to stay as up to date as we can with the product, and we upgraded to ColdFusion 9 on the day it was released (the upgrade was actually performed whilst attending Adobe MAX).

Since it's release, we've also become a Rackspace partner, which was primarily due to the relationship we have built up with their team as part of a co-support agreement we have with one of our largest clients.

With this new partnership it made sense for us to move our platform to Rackspace from our existing hosting company. Additionally, with ColdFusion 9 being the first version to officially support the Cloud, we decided to migrate to Rackspace's cloud platform.

Rackspace have a number of options for the Cloud, including Cloud Sites and Cloud Servers (in addition to Cloud files, which to simplify things, is for storage purposes).

Cloud Sites is a "load and go" solution, whereby you upload your site, and it automatically scales by default. So if demand increases, you can set your account to automatically handle growth, at a cost of course.

Starting at $100 a month, this will get you either a Linux or Windows hosting account with enough oomph to get you going. Should you require additional power, you can pay for what extra you need. Full pricing can be found http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/sites/pricing

At this time, Cloud Sites do not support any kind of Java technology, which includes ColdFusion (although hopefully this will change soon). However, that's where Cloud Servers come in.

If you've used virtualisation software such as VMware them just think of Cloud Servers as the same thing, only instead of paying a normal hosting fee, the price you pay for your server depends on how much memory you want, starting from 512mb and going up to 16GB.

Right now, only Linux is supported with Cloud Servers, though Rackspace currently have Windows servers in beta.

As we're a Linux shop, we just needed to choose which distribution we wanted. Rackspace currently offer:

• CentOS 5.2
• CentOS 5.3
• Gentoo 2008.0
• Debian 5.0
• Fedora 10
• Arch 2007.08
• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 9.10
• Red Hat EL 5.3

Out of those distributions, the only one you have to pay extra for is Red Hat.

In regards official support from Adobe, only Red Hat is covered (Adobe support Ubuntu 9.04 but that's not available as an option). However, we've been running ColdFusion on CentOS (and previously Fedora) for a long time and we've never had an issue.

So our flavour of choice is CentOS 5.3, which we then upgraded to 5.4.

For memory we chose 2GB. Normally we'd run with more, but Rackspace only support full image backups (at this time) on Cloud Servers with up to 2GB of memory. Support for all memory sizes is coming soon.

So, for the servers that are business critical to us, we have pitched for the 2GB versions. For other servers, where a full image backup isn't as important, we've pitched for 4GB.

We can easily increase the memory allocation in the Cloud Management Portal, simply by choosing an increased amount of memory, and we'll do so when the additional backup support goes live.

Building the Server

Once you've picked your memory allocation, your operating system and provided your credit card details, you're transferred into the Rackspace Cloud Management system, where you can watch the progress of your server build. It maybe took a minute or two for the system to build our servers.

Once your server is built, you'll be provided with the root username/password to log in and configure your server. From this point on, it's just like managing any Linux based ColdFusion server.

You get your firewall up and running, lock it down, block remote root logins, etc, etc.

Next, you install ColdFusion.

So in about 20 minutes, we had a Rackspace Cloud server running ColdFusion.