I've not had the chance to pick up the new edition of Web Designer Mag, but as you'll see from the front cover, there is coverage of last months Scotch on the Rocks conference.

We (Fuzzy Orange) have been doing our damndest to get CF more into the general developer community here in the UK, and our monthly articles and now the Scotch coverage is hopefully helping to do just that.

I've been considering this one for a while, but because of Scotch on the Rocks, moving house and planning a wedding - well, Leanne has been planning and I'm just nodding in agreement - it's sort of slipped off the radar.

The plan quite simply is... one days free training on "something" ColdFusion 8 related.

Since CF8 came out, I've given a few presentations, I've been writing tutorials for Web Designer Magazine, I've been organising Scotch and now I want to lay on a days worth of training. To be honest, if I can find some assistance I'll increase that to two days. I potentially have a venue lined up free of charge, and I'm going to give my time for free as well.

I'm expecting those who would attend to primarily be members of the ScottishCFUG, but I've decided to blog about it as well, just in case we have anyone from further afield who is interested.

Ultimately, the big question I've been asking, is just what features of CF8 do you want to learn more about?

Additionally, I'm looking at lining up a second batch of free training, this time on something complimentary. There's been a lot of demand for a bit of training on SVN/Trac/Mylyn/Ant. I know I can't fit all of that into one day, so again, if I can find some sponsorship I'll look at doing this over 2 days.

If you're interested in either course, please leave a comment, and in regards the CF8 course, some additional information on what you'd really like to know more about.

update: I should point out that this training will take place in either Edinburgh or Glasgow.

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've only just managed to pick up March's edition of Web Designer, and it has the second of my ColdFusion tutorials; 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.

Oh yeah, CFEclipse also gets a good deal of exposure in the tutorial.

Next Friday (April 3rd) I'll be heading to Edinburgh for the one day Highland Fling conference.

The theme for Highland Fling is "The Browser and Beyond" and features speakers from Yahoo, Opera, and the one and only Aral Balkan. I'm looking forward to Aral's talk, and I'll also be catching up with him as he is also presenting at Scotch on the Rocks. More on that in a second.

I'm also hoping to jump across the water to Dublin to attend Scotch on Air. This is a half day event taking place April 11, being organised by the Scotch on the Rocks team to replace the cancelled Adobe OnAir, Dublin.

Adobe's Ryan Stewart and Ted Patrick will be presenting, along side Scotch's Kev McCabe. It's a free event and should be good fun.

Next, we have the biggie. Scotch on the Rocks. Three days, 45 sessions, 150+ delegates and more ColdFusion, Air, Flex and LiveCycle than you can shake a stick at!

After this, it will most likely be MAX Europe in Milan. With any luck I'll be back as a speaker, but regardless I'll be in attendance.

Today will see the last Windows native machine here at Fuzzy Orange shut down for good. Yes, today see us become Windows free. At least natively.

Whilst we will continue to run Windows in a VM environment - predominantly for clients - we are now exclusively running Linux on all our machines; Servers, Desktops and Laptops.

We're running a mixture of Ubuntu (desktop/laptops), Fedora 7/8 (for fun) and CentOS (CF/DB/SVN/Trac). All in all, it's been a smooth transition. Our next step is to bring our email in house, and get it up and running on Zimbra.

Happy days.

A little off-shoot of the Scotch on the Rocks conference will take place in Dublin, Ireland on April 11th.

Scotch on Air effectively replaces the cancelled date of the Adobe onAir tour.

Scotch organiser Kev McCabe, who was attending the Dublin leg of the tour, has taken the lead on putting together this little show, and we're delighted to say that Adobe's Ryan Stewart and Ted Patrick will be there to talk about Air and Flex respectively. Kev will be dicsussing ColdFusion.

Unless my schedule changes at the last minute, I unfortunately won't make it over, but if you can be there, make sure you are cause it will undoubtedly be a blast.

If you are flying into Edinburgh airport, please let us know at scotch@fuzzyorange.co.uk, with your planned date/time of arrival. If we have enough folks arriving at a certain time, we will book the Edinburgh Shuttle Service on your behalf, and at no cost to you.

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.