Yes, I know it's always the same story. Busy busy amd busy and no blog posts for months and all of a sudden I get the urge to blog again. Nothing different this time although I have a lot of catching up to do on what happend the last few months.

Goldrush Auction Platform 2.0

First of all the second version of the Goldrush Auction platform was released in fall 2009. Even though it wasn't finished for the full 100%, it was ready enough to get press the start button and start auctioning again after a period of downtime. We changed from the penny auction concept to a better and more fair for everyone free to bid concept. We did get a lot of negative publicity during the start with the first (penny auction) version. People were saying were discussing about us on national tv that the concept was gambling instead of a auction. After running the first version for a couple of months we gathered a lot of information about how online auctions in general run and how people react to certain products and offers.

The funny part of the story is that we were contacted by the justice department that we had to close down our operation because the concept was alegitly gambling. And getting a gambling license in The Netherlands is just impossible (you have to be a government runned company more or less to get that, fair trade huh??)

So then what?

So basicly we had 3 options.

1: Shut down the operation. Take our loses without compensation and get a new job
2: Continue the company in The Netherlands and get bullied by the government and hope to make a little money in the end after dozens of lawsuits
3: Rethink the concept, move to another country and use the knowledge we gained the last months for a better concept.

Yes, you guessed right, we went for option 3. We moved, rethought the concept to be more transparent and the result is now still running on https://goudkoortsveiling.com. The concept works much better for us and is more transparent for the user.

But if you don't innovate, you'll get killed by the competition.

So what's going on now?

I'm making the final preperations and choices for a new version of the auction system. Currently we run on Coldfusion 8, Wowza media server and Flex. The choices I'm making now are about going pure javascript or Flash (Flex). Depending on that choice, the type of push software will be chosen for all the real-time auction data (wowza flex, APE or CometD for javascript). Also, am I going to stick with Coldfusion? Is it going to be Adobe CF 9 or is it going to be Railo.

So a lot of technical choices need to be made in the next week or so. Hopefully I can have the beta version up and running at the end of the month as I created a lot of general purpose CFC's which would speed up the process.

Speaking about the beta

There is a signup form for companies that sell consumer goods, courier companies and also e-fullfilment companies. As soon as the beta is up and running, the signed up (and reviewed) companies will have a go with the new system to see the benefits of our auction platform as a extra sales channel or even get more brand awareness.

More details on the platform will follow as decisions are made final.

And besides work?

Enjoying life as it comes. Love the fact that I'm not living in The Netherlands anymore.

Really quick post about a simple but very effective component I use in Flex.

Get the component from HERE

I will be posting more in the next few days!

Finally! with the help of Maurice Crama and Erik-Jan Jaquet, CFUG NL Meeting #1 is planned and confirmed!

Meeting #1 will be all about Coldfusion 9 a.k.a. Centaur and the new Coldfusion IDE names Bolt.
Make sure to register today as seating is limited and the meeting is already in 2 weeks!

Thanks to everyone who helped to help start the CFUG NL!

Sign up here: http://coldfusionusergroup.nl

Cool so I arrived yesterday without too many issues. Got all my stuff, so that's a good thing. Relaxed a bit, played some blackjack, registered for today's event and had some room service before going to bed.

Today started really great. No jetlag, W00T! Went to the seatdrawing which took forever! And had my first match.

Key Hands Level 1

The guy was realy passive and took about 25% of his stack by min raising him every time preflop and when I had the feeling I could take it down, did so. No surprises there. At the end of level 2, the guy was kinda cripple and switched to a aggressive style, by reraising big preflop and moving all-in a few times. And that was the time I was card dead. So around halve way level 3 I picked up some hands, but the stacks were about 13.500 for me and 6.500 for him.

One key hand which I won was the following:

Me: 7 9 hearts, in the big blind
Preflop raise 3x BB (600) from me and a call from him

board: 6c 8c Js
I check and he makes a bet of 1200, I call
turn: Qs
I should have raised him on the flop, but I didn't just to keep pot control for any flush draw. But now there is a second flush draw and the guy was giving me all kinds of tells he was going to call any bet here. As I didn't want him to hit his draw on the river, I moved all in... Dumb move as I could have made more their, but I had the feeling he had a nut flush draw there...

He folds after taking a real long time to do so. He was thinking of calling me there with a A8 of diamonds and thought I was drawing... DAMN! So after that I was all set and done. About 3 hands later I had AQ off and he raised 3x BB and I 4 betted him.. He went all-in and a snap call from brought us to a showdown. JJ vs my AQ Coinflip!

Nothing on the flop, nothing on the river and luckely a Q on the river did the trick. End of Level 1.

Going to play again at 5pm for my level 2 match. And if the field is playing like the guy did for level 1, I could end realy deep!
 

I can't wait!!! I'm leaving home in 3 hours from now and I still need to pack. Yes I'm a last moment kind of guy.

Besides the CFUG NL announcements, the only thing you'll see here the coming 2 weeks will be poker, poker, strategy, poker, bad beat stories and uhmmm poker.

Everything is set... Cash CHECK, Tickets CHECK, Hotel CHECK... My brain with all percentage calculations, position strategy and more poker madness CHECK!

I feel so much better then last year WSOP. My main goal is to get to 1 final table and hopefully a deep run in one of the 2 Heads up tournaments. So let me know if you're from the Atlantic City area or going to be at Atlantic City between the 16th of June and 3rd of July, more then happy to have a drink somewhere and compare Vegas to AC :-)

Later all!

It's not the official first meeting of the CFUG NL, but this Friday there is a presentation at Rhinofly about Railo. This is an ideal afternoon to get to know people from the Coldfusion Community in The Netherlands and learn about Railo too!

Make sure to check out this link to sign up for this afternoon full of Railo goodness!

About the meeting #1

The first meeting will be held on the 17th of July. We still need to confirm the speaker and location, but write the date down.
As things look now, we'll be starting at 14:00 till the drinks are all gone. The exact schedule and location will be posted as soon as the CFUG NL site is live, that also counts for the registration form (somewhere this week, so keep this blog in your daily to read list!).

Meetings after meeting #1

We will hold a meeting every month on the 3rd Friday of the month. The first meeting will be a live meeting and meeting 2 will be a online event. The idea is to have a live event every other month. If you want to speak at one of the meetings, make sure to let me know!

So that's it for now. I'll post the link later on here for registration and meeting details!

Special thanks to Erik-Jan Jacquet from Toomba and Maurice Crama from People XS for helping me setting up the CFUG NL!

So I had the choice to go and plat the WSOP this year or play something else. I found out about the Borgata Summer Poker Open. I asked some other players about the Borgata and after some more research I made up my mind. I'M PLAYING THE BSPO!

I'll be playing these events for sure:

• Event 12: Heads up Single Elimination (16/6 day 1 or 17/6 day 2)
• Event 14: No Limit Hold'Em $200K Guaranteed (19/6 day 1 20/6 day 2)
• Event 17: No Limit Hold'Em 6-HANDED (23/6)
• Event 20: HEADS UP - Double Elimination (25/6 day 1, 26/6 day 2, 27/6 day 3)
• Event 21: No Limit Hold’Em $200K Guaranteed (if I don't make it to day 2 of event 20)
• Event 22: CHAMPIONSHIP EVENT - $1 Million Guaranteed (28/6 day 1, 29/6 day 2, 30/6 day 3)

Other events are also looking nice, but it depends how I'm doing during the other events. If I'm out early, I'll play some others, but lets hope that will not be the case! I really like the 2 heads up events that are planned and the 6 handed event! Those are my specialties and would like to see more tournaments bring in heads up events and especially 6 handed events.

I'm really looking forward to this trip as I think my chances on a deep run are much more likely then during the minefield of 3 WSOP events!

So I'm sorry if you're not interested in poker, but the next 2 1/2 weeks starting next week Tuesday will be all about poker.

I had to cancel my meeting with Adobe Benelux for the CFUG NL because of the madhouse here at the office. Meanwhile my application was approved for the CFUG NL on Adobe Groups. So make sure to sign up there until the CFUG NL site is live.

This Friday I have a meeting with Erik-Jan from Toomba to discuss how to set this CFUG up and running and see what they can help with.

Also I registered coldfusionusergroup.nl, but I haven't finished the site yet as I have little to no time to do my own personal stuff right now. But For the time being, make sure to register with the Adobe Groups online.

The first meeting will be scheduled somewhere mid July (really fast!) and will be about Centaur & Bolt. Centaur will be presented by Claude Englebert and the Bolt will be presented by me or somebody else if they can present about Bolt.

So good stuff is coming up! So make sure to sign up with the Adobe Groups site and we'll announce on there when and where the first meeting will be held!

A little personal post about one of my big hobbies, poker. So if you're not into poker, just never mind this post and come back later.

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First of all, thanks to everybody who is interested! I've had a lot of emails beside the comments and the current count right now is somewhere between 30 and 40 interested Dutch CF'ers. It's nowhere near the 2000 Adobe Usergroup members, but that is something we'll never reach in a few years (which is more then fine by me!).

I'm in contact with a few of you out there about the setup of the CFUG NL, but if you want to help as a one of the managers (or sponsors) and you didn't emailed me directly, make sure to email me (my firstname AT thisdomain or use the contact form on my blog).

Most of you said that you want technical meetings and not just marketing meetings like in the past. That's something I want to make clear, all meetings will be organised for the members, BY THE MEMBERS. So if you have a subject you would like to see during one of the first meetings, let me know. A few of the subjects I'm thinking of are:

• Coldfusion Gateways: Creating custom gateways (I'm planning on building my own Wowza Gateway)
• CF9 Centaur: The Next CF Release
• Bolt: All the new stuff in the new CF IDE
• CF & jQuery (or other JS frameworks)
• CF_Help! An evening about your development problems
• Code4Charity (More on that later)
• And lots of other good stuff...

These are just a few ideas and not a fixed list. So all ideas are welcome. If you have any good ideas or you can present about a specific topic, let me know!

Also keep posting those comments that you want to join! Don't do it here, but place those over HERE!

Since the start of my Coldfusion career, I've always wanted to have some sort of Coldfusion Usergroup in The Netherlands. Coldfusion is very underrated over here and it's hard to find people who have Coldfusion experience.

I remember the sneak peek session Ben Forta gave at the Macromedia Usergroup during the CF 7 beta's. It was packed! 80+ developers in the room and all interested in the new CF 7 capabilities. So by now the group should be bigger and I know for a fact that a few of the CF houses have grown during the past years.

So why not start a Coldfusion Usergroup? I have no idea why not! I was contacted today by someone from PeopleXS about starting the CFUG. But before we're going to spend a lot of time and energy in this, I would like to know if you (the Dutch CF developer) wants to join/attend any CF usergroup meetings.

Leave a comment to let me know if you want to be a member of the usergroup and if you can help in any way or only want to attend. Any wishes, ideas are more then welcome!

Sorry to everyone who is following my FeedBurner/RSS feed! I accidentally enabled the link splicer in my feed for an old delicious.com account I had. So you might see some weird and unrelated posts in my feed.

It's turned off now and hopefully the unrelated links in my feed are gone!

I had to do something "fun and simple" with Flex besides the current project I'm working on. So after downloading the "Now Playing" plugin for iTunes from Brandon Fuller, I wanted to create a now playing Flex pod for BlogCFC. Instead of using the xml directly, I use Flash Remoting instead so I can do stuff with the data later on (look at the points listed below).

The little app is far from finished. A few points I like to add/modify in the future:

• Running text if the text is too long for the label
• Update the data every x minutes/seconds or add some LCDS/BlazeDS magic to it.
• History management (save all played songs in a db for history)
• Buy now links (search for the song on multiple online stores and show their buy now links)
• Star rating (let people rate a song in conjunction with the history db)
• Link to the artist website or other sites like Last.fm

The pod is on the bottom of all the pods on the left. Let me know what you think and if anyone might want it released for their own use.

We were busy doing a system upgrade for our auctions. Adding new servers (Linux 64 bit) and because of the new setup we have, CF standard was enough for us to run on these boxes. As I know CF runs on 64 bit, I just went along and ordered 2 new CF 8 standard licenses. Meanwhile I configured all settings, added the applications, tested the apps and everything was set to go as soon as I had the licenses.

Today I received my 2 licenses (thanks again JEA for the quick help!) and added them to the servers. WTF Developer Edition??? That are some expensive developer licenses. After a quick google search, I found out that Adobe had put in a restriction for CF Standard to run on 64 bit OS with a standard license. That just sucked BIG TIME! We had to reinstall CF as a 32 bit installation and make all configurations again...

I understand Adobe needs to make money, but this restriction is a really bad one if you'd ask me. There are always discussions about why to choose CF over PHP or .NET or Ruby or whatever. This restriction doesn't help developers defend the position of CF in their organization. I know I just could try Railo, but I haven't worked with it yet, so to do all the tests for our system, that would even delay me more.

Hopefully Adobe will remove this very wrong restriction in the future!

Sorry... I need to test my twitter mod. Nothing to see here... Move along people!