MXDU Day 1 - afternoon sessions and more kebabs

Integrating Java with CFMX, presented by Daemon’s Brendan Sisson, was an overview of the basics of using Java classes in CF code. Very interesting, particularly the zip functionality, I can see lots of uses for that. One of the examples that Brendan used was Benoit Hediard’s ImageJ CFC. I’11 have to download and try it out, but so far I have not been impressed with the jpeg quality or file size of native java image resizing solutions when compared to our imageproc.

Next was one of the sessions I’d really been looking forward to - Sean Corfield on Mach II. Sean did a great job of sanely explaining how, where and why Macromedia are using Mach II and all the wildly digit gesticulating panic merchants on cftalk would really benefit from hearing it.

“Productising and distributing applications built with MX” was Grant Straker talking about the business experiences he’s had marketing Shado all around the world. That made a nice non-technical interlude before the Birds of a Feather session on design patterns…

…which made my head hurt. Actually, it was interesting, especially finding out that there are design patterns that describe what we do already a lot of the time, although the whole discussion was a bit more abstract and theoretical than I would have liked. It’s always good to immerse yourself in discussions that are over your head anyway, learning by osmosis actually does work.

And of course, after a couple of beers, the only logical choice for dinner was another one of those awesome kebabs. I’m sure my new mate Simon will agree that they are most excellent!

The weather was a bit disappointing - gray, rainy and miserable all day. Probably the only downside to an otherwise excellent day.

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