The Warriors hopes for getting off to a fast start this season were dealt a devastating blow, with a 75-42 opening game loss to Toyota of Clifton Park.

Turnovers proved extremely costly and led to a lopsided differential in fast break points. Sloppy ball handling, telegraphed passes and the inability to get back on defense quickly made the margin to large to handle.

Early on the Warriors looked good, grabbing the lead in the games opening minutes. Jason Norton drained a couple of treys in the early going to help kick start the Warrior offense. However, with the score tied at 13-13, Toyota erupted for a 19-0 spurt, leading the Warriors 32-16 at halftime. The Warriors never threatened from that point on.

Player Quotes

Paul Todd

On why the Warriors lost

“We were out husseled[sic] at both ends of the floor. We turned the ball over 90 times and gave up a lot of fast break points. They also had 4 to 5 extra chances on every shot because we failed to rebound the ball. Defense, protecting the basketball and getting open looks. On offense we need to move the ball better…. Toyota was very good at moving the ball and finding the open man… they must have averaged 4 to 5 passes minimum before taking a shot. We were around 1 to 2 passes.

I know this was the first time many of us have played together.. so I know it will get better. I see a lot of talent on this team.”

Jay Norton

On why the Warriors lost

“Hustle is what killed us more than anything. Im guilty of that myself as by 10 minutes in i felt like i had nothing left in the tank.”

“We werent sticking with our guys in man. I think we have to try at the beginning of the game to match up better with our strengths.”

“We need to switch and call out the picks that are set on us. Screens under the basket need to be used more and i did notice that a bunch of us werent[sic] seeing the open guys under the basket on a few occasions. We stood around alot[sic] on offense watching the guy dribbling the ball instead of moving around to get open. We cant run to the guy with the ball alot[sic] of times there would be three gold jerseys bunched up on one side of the floor whereas they were great at spreading it out. We can do much better im[sic] sure of that.”

Dan Todd

On the Warriors defense

“There seemed to be a lot of confusion about who was guarding who. That lead to a lot of open looks on the perimeter and way too many right underneath the basket for easy layups. Can I suggest a zone defense to fix that problem? 2 guys underneath and 3 guys around the perimeter (or some variation of that). If not, then we need to better communicate who we’re guarding when a sub comes in. My general rule on defense is that if there’s more than an arms-length between me and the guy I’m guarding, there’s too much space for him to work.”

Justin Lajeunesse

On the thought of utilizing a zone defense

“(Zone) couldn’t be nearly as bad as last night giving up points. The thing now is that since we were all nearly drained of energy for the majority of the game a zone would be easier for us to spread and cover until we find ourselves in better shape. Man cover is not the way to go until we can run the floor the entire game. I think that would take the focus off of the ball more and allow us to cover the board more effectively at least giving us a chance to get our composure as a team that has not really played together.”

Mike Pacella

On the large margin of defeat

“If we communicated better, weren’t quite as rusty…that’s at least a 15-20 point turnaround right there”

On the 19-0 run

“It felt like the entire team hung its’ collective head and felt sorry for itself when we fell behind by 10 points. We get in a spot like that again, we need to call timeout regroup and get our heads out of our asses. Not using either of our 2 first half timeouts while watching the other team score 20 straight, won’t happen again.”

Sweet 16 Sleepers (seeded 8 or higher)

none. I really don’t think any of the teams seeded 10 or higher have much of a chance making the Sweet 16 in this region.

Final 4 Sleepers (seeded 4 or higher)

none. The top of this region is just too tough.

Regional Final Prediction

North Carolina 83, Tennessee 75 - UNC takes advantage of playing in it’s home state, and moves on to the Final 4. Easy region, in my opinion.

Midwest

Sweet 16 Sleepers

10 Davidson - gritty team, played a very tough early season schedule, could prove awfully tough for the Hoyas.

11 Kansas State - Michael Beasley, games being played in nearby Omaha. Extremely reasonable to see them in the Sweet 16.

12 Villanova - Power conference team can be awfully good when knocking down 3’s. Bad calls proved costly during the season, otherwise this team is seeded higher.

13 Siena - In my opinion, this is the most legitimate chance for an upset by a 13+ seeded team. They pass well, shoot well, and take care of the basketball. Weakness is their size, but they won’t face “big” teams until the Sweet 16

Final Four Sleepers

5 Clemson - On the one hand, they could lose in the first round to Villanova. On the other hand, when that press is working, they can beat anybody in the nation. This team is the essence of risk/reward in picking your brackets.

Regional Final Prediction

Wisconsin 67, Kansas 64 - By far this is the most difficult region to pick. You can make a case for so many of these teams making the Final 4. You can make a case for so many of the 10-13 seeds advancing deep into the tournament. My gut says Wisconsin, a strong defensive team that dominated the Big Ten this year, and, perhaps, feels a big slighted by the committee for only receiving a 3 seed. Kansas often seems to underachieve as a 1 seed in the tournament. The Badgers are the pick.

South

Sweet 16 Sleepers

12 Temple - Won this years toughest “mid major” conference, playing extremely well at the end of the season. A tough road though as both Michigan State and Pittsburgh are tough opponents.

Final Four Sleepers

4 Pittsburgh - This team has the talent and defensive tenacity to beat Memphis and take it all the way to the Final 4.

Regional Final Prediction

Memphis 83, Texas 77 - Ultimately I believe this region will be all chalk. Memphis could, however, be done in either by free throws, or the fact that the regional final will be in Texas.

West

Sweet 16 Sleepers

12 Western Kentucky - I love their first round matchup with Drake, and they could certainly provide a lot of trouble for UConn in round 2. Watch out for the Hilltoppers.

Final Four Sleepers

7 West Virginia - Bob Huggins has gotten this team to play some great defense this year. I like them to upset Duke, and at least get to the regional final…

Regional Final Prediction

UCLA 55, West Virginia 50 - In the end though, UCLA is the best team in this region. Collison and Love make an amazing inside out combo.

Final Four

Semifinal Predictions

North Carolina 65, Wisconsin 63 - In an extremely tough game, Hansbrough wills the Heels to victory.
UCLA 76, Memphis 70 - Free throws, free throws, free throws. UCLA knows this, and will exploit it.

Championship Game

UCLA 75, North Carolina 72 - In a classic game, the Bruins knock off the Tar Heels.

Let me first start this by saying, if these two teams had met 10 times this year, I believe that the Giants would only win 2 out of those 10 games.  Right now, however, they are playing their finest football of the season.  This isn’t a pick that’s analyzing matchups (the Patriots are arguably better than the Giants at every offensive position).  This pick does not use any true logical deduction.  No no, this pick is purely a hunch.  I have a feeling this will be an all time classic Super Bowl.  Much like Super Bowl XXV, with a slight twist - Lawrence Tynes making the game winner as time expires.

• Eclipse Setup
• Configuring CFEclipse
• ColdFusion 8 Extensions

Eclipse Setup

1. Download Eclipse - Choose the latest version of Eclipse Classic (currently 3.3.1.1 as of 1/28/2008).
2. Unzip the zip file into a directory of your choosing. Typically, I like to unzip this into C:\apps\. Whatever directory you choose, when you unzip this file the root for the install will be the “eclipse” directory. So, in my case, this would be C:\apps\eclipse.
3. Open up C:\apps\eclipse\eclipse.exe. This is the executable file for the Eclipse IDE (it is a good idea to create a shortcut to this file on your desktop or toolbar).
4. When you launch Eclipse, it will ask you what your Workspace will be. This is of more use for Java development than ColdFusion. I typically accept the default here, check the “Use this as the default and do not ask again” checkbox, and click Ok.
5. You can close the welcome page by clicking on the X next to Welcome. This will show you the default perspective of Java. The next steps entail configuring the CFEclipse plugin for Eclipse to work on your ColdFusion applications.

Configuring CFEclipse

1. Go to http://www.cfeclipse.org and click on the Download link.
2. Following these directions, you should be able to easily configure the CFEclipse plugin.
3. To use the CFEclipse perspective, inside of Eclipse, go to Window -> Open Perspective -> Other. Choose CFEclipse and click OK.
4. To create a new CFEclipse Project (similar to a Dreamweaver site):
   • Go to File -> New -> Project.
   • In the Select a Wizard dialogue box, expand CFEclipse, click on CFML Project and click next
   • Name the Project (similar to a Dreamweaver site name), and browse to the local/network directory where the project is contained (i.e., C:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\myapp\).

ColdFusion 8 Extensions

1. Go to the ColdFusion downloads section of the Adobe website.
2. Download both the ColdFusion 8 Extensions for Eclipse and the ColdFusion 8 Help Files for Eclipse.  Follow the simple instructions on the page for installing the ColdFusion 8 Help Files.
3. To install the ColdFusion 8 Extensions for Eclipse:
   1. Go to Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install
   2. Search for New Features to Install and click Next
   3. Click on new archived site, and find the file that you just downloaded (it’s named: cf8_extensions_for_eclipse.zip).  Click OK.
   4. Make sure that cf8_extensions_for_eclipse.zip is the only one that is checked, and click Finish.
   5. For Select Features to Install, check the box next to cf8_extensions_for_eclipse.zip and click Next.
   6. Accept the License agreement, click Next, then click Finish.  When prompted, click Install All.
   7. Once it is finished installing, you will be prompted to restart Eclipse.  Click Yes.  Eclipse will reboot, and you will be all set.

This would probably be as monumental of a championship game upset as we would ever see.  That is not going to happen.  New England will win by plenty and move on to destiny…

Giants 17, Packers 15

Again, this just has all the makings of a classic.  The Giants have found their stride and continue to play the role of Cinderella.  The Packers resilience this season has been extremely surprising.  This will go down to the wire, and right now, the Giants are wearing the lucky shoes.

Last Week: 3-1 vs spread, 3-1 outright.

Consider this cfform, with the server side validation code:

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<cfform action="myform_action.cfm">
   Name: <cfinput type="text" name="fullName" required="yes"
                  message="Your name is required" validateat="onserver" />
   <br />
   Email: <cfinput type="text" name="emailAddress" required="yes" validate="email"
                  message="You must enter a valid email address" validateat="onserver" />
   <br />
   Confirm Email: <cfinput type="text" name="confirmEmailAddress" required="yes" validate="email"
                  message="You must enter a valid confirmation email address" validateat="onserver" />
   <br />
   <cfinput type="submit" name="save" value="Submit" />
</cfform>

Very simple, very neat. However the problem is with the output:

This post deals with customizing the output, so that it shows up on the same page as the form, in a typical validation fashion.

We are going to tackle this by utilizing the onError() method of the Application.cfc. First, let’s start out with an extremely basic Application.cfc, to understand what happens when we implement the onError() method.

Consider this first rendition of the Application.cfc:

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<cfcomponent name="Application">
   <cfset this.name="form_validation_app" />
 
   <cffunction name="onError" returntype="void">
      <cfargument name="exception" required="true" />
      <cfargument name="eventName" type="String" required="true" />
 
      <cfdump var="#exception#">
   </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

When an automatic validation error is triggered, it is now caught by the onError() method (in fact, all application errors are now captured here). Let’s analyze the output.

Below is the dump of the exception object (internally, it’s actually not a struct), triggered by failing form validation:

Let’s analyze each key of this structure:

Detail

This is the exact output we saw on the default validation error page (the ugly grey error). Completely useless to us.

Message

This is the message that we see on the ugly grey error page. We could use this to determine if there is a validation error, however, if future versions of ColdFusion modify this message, our code would need to be updated.

StackTrace

Extremely long, ugly, gives you an idea about how CF is built on top of Java. But, actually, fairly useful. The first entry in the trace is coldfusion.filter.FormValidationException, which is the exception object thrown by ColdFusion when a form validation error occurs. It is highly unlikely that the name of this would ever be modified, so we could test to see if exception.stackTrace contains “coldfusion.filter.FormValidationException”, and trap a validation error using this.

Tag Context

Not applicable here

Type

Type of Application is extremely common, therefore, useless here.

errors

This is a key that is particular to this type of error. It is a bunch of <li> tags, or list items, which could be used in a list to display the error. This will be very useful to us, however, it would have been much more useful had CF provided us with an array of structures, with 1 key representing the name of the field in error, and the other key representing the message (this way our display of messages would be unlimited). However, this will suffice, so we will use it.

Now let’s modify the Application.cfc.

1. We will trap validation errors, while throwing all other errors up to the next level of error handling (either a site-wide error handler or the ugly grey message).
2. If we catch a validation error, we need to capture the exception.errors field, and forward the user to the page they came from (we can use cgi.HTTP_REFERER). Since we need to use cflocation to forward the user, we must put exception.errors into a persistent scope - we’ll use the session scope for this and delete the key immediately after we display the errors.
3. We will also create a method to display these validation errors, right in the Application.cfc (you could certainly put it elsewhere; this is simply for ease of implementation.)
4. Finally, we need to be able to pre-populate the form, using the submitted data (depending on business rules, the actual population can vary, i.e., we likely won’t populate password fields). To do this, we will simply create another temp session variable, and a function in the application.cfc to access this (and destroy it).

The new Application.cfc:

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<cfcomponent name="Application">
   <cfset this.name="form_validation_app" />
   <cfset this.sessionManagement = "true" />
 
   <cffunction name="onRequestStart" returntype="boolean">
      <cfargument name="targetPage" type="String" required="true" />
      <!--- Capture this instance of the Application.cfc into the request
      so that other pages can call custom functions on the Application.cfc --->
      <cfset request.app = this />	    
      <cfreturn true />
   </cffunction>
 
   <cffunction name="onSessionStart" returntype="void">
      <cfset session.validationError = "" />
      <cfset session.stFormData = structNew() />
   </cffunction>
 
   <cffunction name="onError" returntype="void">
      <cfargument name="exception" required="true" />
      <cfargument name="eventName" type="String" required="true" />
 
      <cfif isDefined('exception.StackTrace') AND isDefined('exception.errors')
      AND exception.StackTrace contains 'coldfusion.filter.FormValidationException'>
         <cfset session.validationError = exception.errors />
         <cfset session.stFormData = duplicate( form ) />
         <cflocation url="#cgi.HTTP_REFERER#" addtoken="false" />
      <cfelse>
         <cfthrow object="#exception#" />
      </cfif>
   </cffunction>
 
   <cffunction name="displayValidationError" access="public" returntype="void"
               output="true">
      <cfif len( session.validationError )>
         <ul class="validationError">#session.validationError#</ul>
         <cfset session.validationError = "" />
      </cfif>
   </cffunction>
 
   <cffunction name="getStFormData" access="public" returntype="struct">
      <cfset var stRet = duplicate( session.stFormData ) />
      <cfset session.stFormData = structNew() />
 
      <cfreturn stRet />
   </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

And we now add 2 lines of code to our form page, above the cfform:

<cfset variables.stFormData = request.app.getStFormData() />
<cfoutput>#request.app.displayValidationError()#</cfoutput>

We can now reference variables.stFormData, to prepopulate each of the form fields that need to be prepopulated.

Now, our output upon an error is as follows:

We could further extend this now, to even perform custom validation in our action page, by simply using cfthrow (for example, when the email address and confirmation email do not match), and catching this cfthrow inside of our cferror. Of course, I leave that for you to do

The Packers have won with an amazing defense this year, and a running back (Ryan Grant) who basically came out of nowhere.  Oh, and that Favre guy, he still has something left in the tank.

New England 38, Jacksonville 17

Seriously, do you really think the Pats have come this far just to lose to the Jags.  I love the Jags running game, but the Pats strength defensively is against the run.  I know Garrard has had a good year, but I don’t think he can single handedly win this game.

Indianapolis 30, San Diego 27

This has all the makings of being the best game of the Wild Card weekend.  In a back and forth game, I’ll take the Colts for two reasons (1) they’re at home, (2) Adam Vinateri can be all the difference in close playoff games.

NY Giants 27, Dallas 25

Well, maybe Indy/SD will only be the second best game of the Wild Card weekend.  The Giants have hit one hell of a stride in recent weeks, and if Eli Manning can continue to play like he has the last two weeks, mixed with the running attack of Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs, this will certainly go right down to the wire.  The big factor: what percentage will TO be for this game?

Tomorrow, I will be in the process of migrating to my own server, which will hopefully allow me to more easily control the UI, plus integrate with other applications besides simply Wordpress.

For my Fast Track class, if I have problems during the migration, I will be emailing you a set of resources to use in your ColdFusion/Web Application development.

Thank you.