I've illustrated since I was knee-high to a grasshopper and I've never sold any of my original artwork - until now. I never sold them because my art and maintaining my portfolio has always been very personal and important to me. Now there's something that's more personal and more important.

Last year I received a neurologist's diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome (a form of autism) and since then I've discovered that the unemployment rate for people on the autistic spectrum is slightly over 80%. What would you do if 4 of your closest friends could not find jobs? I decided to do something about that. The past decade has been a living hell not just for me but for my fiance Tiffany as well, and not because of my autism, but because of the lack of understanding in the workplace. Very soon these kinds of stories will begin to change for autistic people in North America, thanks to the AutLabs project. Right now I don't actually need the money from my art, because I have other means, but my fiance has been helping me a lot, particularly in the past few months since I received my diagnosis, and we moved back to Texas to be near my three children (who all seem quite autistic and hopefully won't have to face the challenges I faced in the workplace). Things have been particularly emotionally challenging for Tiffany in the past few months. I want to do something special for her to show her that I appreciate all the work she's been doing to help me get the AutLabs project started. My trust is discretionary and is paying to keep me in an apartment and get me stable, it's not paying for me to have any extra money to do anything for Tiffany. So I'm selling my original ink illustrations to get some cash so I can take her on a short road trip. The truth is I would really rather not part with this illustration, but Tiffany is more important to me.

Here's my current eBay auction - ink on 11x17" acid-free bristol.

So the money from this auction won't be going toward the AutLabs project, at least not directly. In fact, no money has been raised for the AutLabs project yet, and we're not going to raise any money for a little while. Some of my own money has gone into the project, but right now we're just raising awareness and doing very well at that. But I did want to take the opportunity in this auction description as long as I was explaining my reason for the auction, to let people know about the project and recommend that you come join and help us create these jobs at http://www.autlabs.com. Also check out our project to raise awareness by bartering up to a book deal here.

I will also be auctioning more of my black and white original artwork here on eBay in the next week or so. You can see more of my work in my deviantArt gallery.

Thanks and God Bless. :)

The onTap framework is ugly. Yep. You heard me, I said it. The onTap framework is ugly, and I don't mind admitting that...

As a programmer I spend a lot of time thinking about the "most elegant" way to solve a problem. Although in reality it's not really the most elegant way, it's just what I feel is the most elegant way that I can think of and that's currently available to me with my resources. It's always possible that someone else might have thought of a more elegant solution, or that there might be a more elegant solution that's simply not available to me, often due to financial constraints. The release of recent versions of ColdFusion and the addition of application-specific mappings actually resolved a number of ongoing issues I had personally with code I felt was "ugly" or "inelegant". And that's not the only time a ColdFusion upgrade has helped me to clean up something I had always struggled with. The addition of onMissingMethod made possible a long time dream for me of having a lazy-loading function library that could load utility functions on-demand. And don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say "long time dream" -- I was trying to accomplish that with ColdFusion 5, immediately after CFSCRIPT was introduced and made custom functions possible in the first place. Yet with all the advancements to the core language, I still routinely struggle internally with this notion of "elegance".

Part of the problem is the way that people think. Scientists used to believe that humans followed a "path to action" like this: think -> do -> feel. So in this model, you would think about what you're going to do, do it and then afterward you would decide how you felt about that action. Was it good or bad? Should you do it again? This is a very logical way of handling the world, however, it turns out to be the opposite of the way we actually behave. Our actual paths to action (and this includes us programmers) looks like this: feel -> do -> think. This path is not rational, but it is very, very efficient, which is why our brains evolved this way. It's also the cause of what I've called opinion driven development (ODD). Andre Marquis explains how this works in this video here. In this model we have an emotional desire to do something like eat or play a game, we do it, and then afterward we rationalize that decision. Usually we create a "logical" explanation for our actions which is incorrect, because it assumes our actions were inspired by reason instead of our emotions. Even the belief that we behave rationally is inspired by our emotions -- it's uncomfortable to us to think that we might behave irrationally, regardless of how strong the empirical evidence is. And it's that discomfort, that very emotional discomfort, that makes it difficult for us to admit to irrational behavior. Although we can develop ways of thinking about things that allow us to entertain these ideas without that discomfort, specifically by developing a "growth mindset".

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I just posted this to the cf-jobs list and then it occurred to me that I might as well post it here, since this is a bit out of the ordinary. :)

I've been working on the web since 1994 and with ColdFusion since 1998, am twice certified advanced for ColdFusion and an Adobe Community Expert and former Team Macromedia member for ColdFusion. I've developed two complete-ish frameworks for ColdFusion, the onTap framework and the DataFaucet ORM. I say complete-ish, because it's like art, these projects are never complete (although they are sometimes abandoned). Although I do not have a college degree, I am a hard worker, a fast learner and I have a penchant for thinking outside the box (and a history of repeatedly doing things that people with more credentials than I, like Hal Helms and Ben Forta, have claimed to be impossible).

Okay, now that I've gotten the boring credentials stuff out of the way, here's the reason for my post. :)

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www.AutLabs.com

If equality is near and dear to your heart, like it is for me, you can also help by putting this video on your FaceBook or MySpace profile.

God bless.

So I've decided to give up computer programming to seek enlightenment in the Himalayas...

Heard that one before eh? Yeah, I know, yesterday was April Fool's Day. How ironic then that today is World Autism Awareness day or much less that the month of April is National Autism Awareness Month here in the US. I say it's ironic because people with Asperger Syndrome generally dislike practical jokes. ;) Anyway you're likely to hear a lot of talk about autism in the next few weeks. My recommendation? Talk to some folks who are autistic, who live with the condition every day. Find out how they feel about it and what they would like you to know about it. A lot of them will help you out here by blogging - including me. :)

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Have you ever considered the age-old nature versus nurture debate? You should. What is it that makes a person a great software architect? Is it an innate talent that some guys have and some guys don't, determined by genes and the size of your brain? Or is it determined by a person's passion and a persistent effort to seek challenges and overcome obstacles?

I used to think that I wanted to work with the best. I say I used to, because I've come to realize that this idea has caused some problems for me in the past, so now I've changed my mind about it. If you know me at all, you're probably at least marginally familiar with my interesting job history. Yet in spite of these challenges including not having a degree, I'm still an Adobe Community Expert today. This itself is only true because I continue to push myself and in the past few years, more specifically because I've started pushing myself in an area unrelated to software: personal development and communication skills.

Joel Spolsky obviously wants to work with the best. Who wouldn't, right? He's talked about this both on his blog and in Inc Magazine. If you read his articles on the subject, there's a particular way he talks about his new hires and the way he courts them that used to make me think "wow". However after reading Carol Dweck's book Mindset: the new psychology of success, now I'm thinking "uh oh".

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Last week an ambulance rushed my brother-in-law, Josh Davis, to the hospital for what they thought was a heart attack. At the hospital doctors discovered that he had four aneurisms on his aortic valve and rushed him to surgery where they gave him a synthetic replacement valve. He didn't wake from the anaesthesia. Josh was in his late 40s.

Early this morning around 6am my fiance's brother, George Singer, experienced coronary failure at the age of 39. Over the course of the week my fiance and I have also received news that four more of our older family members have been admitted to the hospital with serious health concerns, including my grandmother (on my father's side), my grandfather (on my mother's side) and both of my ex-wife's parents.

Although we live with mortality, I don't believe mortality defines us. I believe what trully defines us is how we respond to the events in our lives. Both of these deaths were trully unexpected and they remind me that the time we have is precious. None of us knows how many days we have left - today is the only day, now is the only time. We should always spend the time we have wisely, improving ourselves, improving the world, and reminding our loved ones how much they mean to us. Every day should be our Oscars.

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I just noticed that the downloads for the onTap framework topped 1,000 today. :)

Do you know someone who's life is affected by autism?

You can help!

Autelligent Laboratories needs a logo! Tell your friends about our design contest here: 99designs.

For more information about Autelligent Laboratories, visit our future home on the web at: www.AutLabs.com

Thank you!

Sean Corfield likes ColdFusion. He also likes regular expressions. Why is this important? Well, because Sean has said on various occasions that his first impressions of both of these technologies was rather different. Of regular expressions he said, "I always used to think regex was a bit of a hammer and that regex fans thought all problems were nails but as I've become more fluent with it, I've seen the light." Of ColdFusion he said, "I thought oh my god, what a horrible language, it's all full of tags." Yet today, Sean is an Adobe Community Expert for ColdFusion. Of course Sean's not the only one. We all learn from our experiences and our opinions about things do change over time. I was late to the party on dependency injection or inversion of control (IoC). So was Ray Camden. On the other hand I was very early on the scene with database abstraction, having started work on DataFaucet on CF5 before there were even CFCs available. At the time nobody really understood or liked the idea, but these days database abstractions are all over the place in ColdFusion, so obviously as a community we've grown to understand and like them.

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Many of you are already aware that I received a diagnosis for Asperger Syndrome this past year. What you may not realize is that less than 20% of us diagnosed with the condition are currently employed. This is awful, particularly when you consider that many more of us are not only competent, but develop expert-level skills in our areas of interest. Moreover many of us want to work, yet remain unemployed due to social challenges associated with the condition.

As you've probably guessed, a primary area of interest for me is software. :) I'm now in the planning stages of a new software company designed from the ground up to provide autistic adults with a positive work environment where we can excel! This company will also serve as a model for future companies.

What we need right now is a name.

You can help.

Please answer the poll at the link below, and forward it on to your friends and relatives.

Company Name Poll

Thank you!