Because Erik

is at the Macromedia DevCon 2002, and I’m not, I thought it might be a good time to make sure my ColdFusion/Macromedia MX skills are sharp and ready for intellectual battle for when he comes back. Actually, I don’t see so much of a battle occurring. I’m sure Erik is going to share a lot of cools things he’s learning, and I want to make sure my feeble mind is capable of understanding his new doctrine.

My approach to obtaining new skills or learning something new is usually the same. Total and complete immersion. I can’t do things in little bits, it goes against my nature. If I don’t consume it all with one giant bite, it goes in one ear and out the other. The new information has to clog up between my ears before I can make real sense of any of it.

In the past couple of days I’ve allowed this total immersion, or overload to occur, and it spawned at least two thoughts:

1. I’m not all that interested in talking about really technical things on my blog. I use my blog currently as a way to share stories and gives hints to my family as to what I’m up to. Talking about CFMX and J2EE, web services and all that nonsense doesn’t help in this venture.

2. Total immersion for me includes becoming an evangelist about the subject. The best way for me to learn is to teach, and by gum, that means I have to blab about what I’ve learned. Carrie is a very patient listener, but you can only expect non technical types to withstand so much.

The natural idea that occurs from those two thoughts is to start a ColdFusion or MX specific blog. But this of course requires a +1 to the list of projects I currently have set for myself. I’m posed with the internal dillema, to begin a new project or not. It’s a painful moment, and one not to be taken lightly now as my current activities outside of work are focused on helping raise a new child.

I think I need to take the cheap route. I need to use templates and ready built tools. I know, it tears my heart in two thinking of the prospect of not rolling my own, but I’m getting lazier. Get ready for www.mxdeveloper.com, but don’t ready all that fast. It takes me about three years to finish or trash a project. Luckily, almost a year has passed on this idea, so we’re two thirds of the way there.