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This article at O’Reilly mentions open source ERP solution, Compiere. I didn’t even know there was such a thing! I am certainly skeptical, though, because the decision about which ERP system to use is - in my experience - a very political one. Plus, the decision is generally made by the less-than-savvy management types. And, as a rule, the deciding factors tend to be integration and support—rather than price and features. So, if your company uses Oracle… guess which ERP system you’re going to use.

From the Compiere website:

Compiere provides a comprehensive solution for small-to-medium sized enterprises…

Of course, that makes more sense. This isn’t targeted at Fortune 500 companies. I feel very strongly that Open Source has great potential in small-to-medium enterprise. But, it seems to be a little bit harder to make in-roads there because of the perceived risk. Often, small businesses don’t have a dedicated IT department (or person for that matter). Therefore, small business often look for a pre-packaged, all-in-one technological solution, rather than a services solution (e.g. don’t buy the software, buy the development, training and support). I certainly wish Compiere well.

While I’m on the subject, I’ve seen ERP projects become huge quagmires. Why is that some companies will spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on software then turn around and spend even more money paying people to make it work? And this approach is picked over “in-house development”! This is mind-boggling to me. Would you buy a new car if you knew you would have to pay your mechanic $60/hr to make it work? If so, let me know, I know a great Oil Change Consultant.

It’s hard to know: were all these singles the “Top Songs” on iTunes before Pitchfork’s Top 50 Singles came out? If not, they are now. Oh, and congratulations, Britney: you’re #3. We are so proud of you.

Update: I second the vote for #44: Mclusky’s “She Will Only Bring You Happiness”. If you like Fugazi or Minor Threat, treat yourself to Mclusky.

Note to invading aliens: avoid this town…

I have once again updated nextimage, this time adding keyboard shortcuts. Shift-RightArrow and Shift-LeftArrow increment and decrement, respectively. Enjoy.

Download: [nextimage.xpi]

Just a couple random music notes:

• My favorite, The Decemberists, have just added a forum to their site. Very nice! They already had a blog—so savvy! The forums are great: already found some good live photos.
• The Morning News just posted their Top 10 Albums of 2004. It’s always worth a look; I’m still enjoying many of their entries on the 2003 list.
• I know I mentioned it in passing before, but the Sonoma Aero EP is really worth checking out.
• Looks like Pitchfork is kicking off a week of Top Everythings starting with Top 50 Best Reissues, followed by Top 50 Singles and Top 50 Albums. Definitely worth checking out! On a side note, when will Pitchfork give us RSS feeds? I know there are “unofficial” ones, but how about the real deal? My guess is that their issue is advertisements… but, hey, I’d tolerate ads in an RSS feed for you, Pitchfork. Please? For Christmas? Think about the Children.

p.s. I am so sorry about the pun.

I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner… I’ve updated my nextimage Firefox extension for Firefox 1.0. Here’s the blurb:

A handy little extension for automatically incrementing (numerical) image URLs, allowing you to make your own “ad hoc” image gallery.

As many have noted, this functionality in fact works for any numeric URL. I have sent multiple emails to the Extension Room regarding this and my other extension, but have yet to receive a reply. So, in the meantime, here it is:

Download: [nextimage.xpi]

I have added my TODO list to the front page. I added it to help keep track of the things on which I’m working. But… I mostly added it for fun. I hacked the Todo part out of phpicalendar. I only had to extract and modify a handful of phpicalendar files to do this. And, with one very small exception, it required no changes to the phpicalendar install. They peacefully coexist. I’ll be the first to admit, though: I am a total PHP novice. There may be a better way to do this, of course. I was already using phpicalendar to upload my personal iCal calendars—this just seemed like it might be fun.

So, anytime I update my TODO list in iCal, it will be automatically uploaded and displayed on the front page! If anyone is interested, I can post instructions on how to hack add this to your site.

Couple of small updates:

1. Re-enabled del.icio.us plugin after a bug fix. Thanks!
2. I am now using a Creative Commons license. So, as of now, mrchucho.net is Some Rights Reserved. This is the right thing to do.
3. I’m trying out the Textile plugin for WordPress. It is a very cool ”... Humane Web Text Generator”, similar to Markdown. While Textile is highly intuitive, it never hurts to have a Cheat Sheet.

Unfortunately, one side-effect of using the Textile plugin is that it makes some of the older non-Textile posts appear a little funky. Oh well.

I have a couple other things in the queue: namely upgrading WordPress. I’m also working on hacking the wonderful phpicalendar so that I can upload my TODO list from iCal and display it on the frontpage.

Updated: WordPress Upgrade complete!

There’s a pretty funny “article” over at Java.net. It is worth reading, if only for the part about Santa’s elf, “G. Nome”.

All joking aside, I think the article highlights a pretty common thread with Java developers: Use Java for Everything. I think that is mistaken and probably detrimental to the Java cause. Santa uses Cocoa for his current applications, but now he needs something for his PDA (a platform that Cocoa obviously does not support). So, he looks to Java. That’s great! But, why should using Java for one application precipitate a changeover to “a Java only environment”? I don’t think it should (and maybe it won’t), but I have seen it happen too many times… Trying to force a Java solution on a problem that is better suited to something else (e.g. like Perl or PHP). This generally happens after Java has been successfully implemented elsewhere. It’s like some sort of Java buzz that no one wants to wear off…

Sometimes I think there is a fear - that increases going up the IT ladder - of mixed environments. But, there shouldn’t be: many technologies can co-exist (and even interoperate) and talented developers needn’t be pigeonholed. I think Java has great coverage—there’s a Java version of just about everything. So, when there is a new problem, Java developers look for a Java tool, not the right tool. Is this catastrophic? No. Does it harm the Java cause? I think so: because it is dogmatic. I’m going to mix metaphors and explain it thusly: Java developers end up trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and the messenger (Java) gets blamed for the message (failure)!

So, to all Java developers out there: Let go a little, maybe Java isn’t the right solution for everything. Having said all that, I sure hope I don’t end up with a Coal icon next to my name!

I have updated my old Firefox extension, “thiswindow”. Here’s a quick blurb:

A pretty trivial extension that adds the ability to force a window to open in the current window. This is helpful if you don’t want to open another browser window.

Behold, a screenshot:

The main issue was making it compatible with the new Firefox extension scheme—which it now is. I sent an email to the Extension Room with the update, but in the meantime:

Download: [thiswindow.xpi]

Note: you may have to “Allow” mrchucho.net to install software

One of my favorite things about Firefox is support for autoproxies via a javascript file. I don’t know how well-known this feature is (and when I see extensions like SwitchProxy, I worry that it is not). Basically, you can use javascript to examine a URL and decide whether or not to proxy requests to it and, if so, how and where. Below is an example that I use. Note that I use an ssh tunnel (listening on port 8080) to port-forward to my machine at home. My machine at home, in turn, runs TinyProxy.

<pre><code>
function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
    if  (dnsDomainIs(host,"mail.yahoo.com") ||
        shExpMatch(url,"*mail.yahoo.com*") ||
        dnsDomainIs(host,"gmail.google.com")) {

        return "PROXY localhost:8080; DIRECT";
    }
     else {
        return "DIRECT";
    }
}
</code>

The code (API here) basically does comparisons on the URL and host and, if there’s a match, sends it to the proxy (or tries to connect directly on failure), otherwise it makes a direct connection. To use this in Firefox, put the code in a file called “autoproxy.js”, then go to “Connection Settings…” under the “General” preference and put your entry in the “Automatic Proxy configuration URL”. The format is like so:

file://<directory>/autoproxy.js

This works well in conjuction with this hint. For my local ssh tunnel, I use the autossh to keep the link alive, like so:

autossh -M 20000 -NnqxT -L 8080:127.0.0.1:8080 home