Tried out Alfresco, Uninstalled

Well I tried out Alfresco Document Management and then uninstalled it.

Why?

For a few reasons actually. First of all, it didn't do too well running on as a Windows service. There are some instructions online but that is just a dead end as it is written for an older version of Alfresco, and it appears that I am not the only one having that problem. I tried just about everything to get it to run as a service, pre-setting all the environmental variables in the tomcat service, adding more memory to the heap, and copied all the settings from the older tutorial. All of that to no avail.

It also is not very well documented in how to run everything. It does look like a good starting point and is probably awesome after you get it set up by someone that knows what they are doing, but for simple uses, it just wasn't the product for me.

Charting libraries for PHP

A new post on code-diesel piqued my interest as it deals with one of those more "business-like" applications of php. 6 excellent charting libraries for php : CodeDiesel is a post describing 6 excellent charting libraries for php. Really this is just one of those things that I want to remember and use for future reference. Here is a quick list.

1. Visifire
2. PHP/SWF
3. pChart
4. Open Flash Chart
5. AmCharts
6. eZ components

I have already used eZ components to make bar graphs and that was pretty easy and quick to set up.

Trying out Alfresco Document Management

I was interested in how other companies do Document Management so I decided to install Alfresco Labs 3 on my own machine and try it out.

Being that I run Windows XP with OpenOffice.org already installed, I ran into some problems right off the bat. The first thing that happend was that I thought I didn't have to install the JDK. That was a silly mistake on my part, so I just reran the installer again. The next problem I ran into was when I ran the startup of the Alfresco Server. I kept reading the log lines as it started up and noticed that it said something to the effect of "Cannot run C:\Alfresco\OpenOffice.org\programs\soffice". I thought "Wow, that's funny, that's not where I have my OpenOffice installed." So going through the startup program alfresco.bat, I noticed that it called another program SetPaths.bat. I looked in there and noticed that it set an environmental variable called OPENOFFICE_HOME. But the path was my CORRECT install directory. Great I was at a dead end. I ran through a search for the path it was trying to run but Windows XP and Windows Search 4.0 wasn't indexing all the right files fully so it wasn't returning anything. Then i saw that the Tomcat startup was looking at a .properties file. So I adjusted the Windows Search to fully index those files and got a hit. C:\Alfresco\tomcat\shared\classes\alfresco\extension\custom-repository.properties. These files are similar to ini files and had the assignment "ooo.exe=C:\Alfresco\OpenOffice.org\programs\soffice." I just changed that to the correct path and voila! it started up perfectly.

So far I haven't done much with Alfresco so I can't give a really good review. It does seem to be the best open source document management system out there at this time.

EU to Strike Another Blow to the "Evil" Microsoft

This is in response to an article on DailyTech, DailyTech - EU to Require Microsoft to Offer Competitors' Browsers With Windows. I am sick of the EU pushing around Microsoft and making them lower the quality of their products in order to make things more "fair." Taking a good product and pulling it down to the lowest common denominator. Sure, you can hate Microsoft for the way it was in the 90's and a lot of people do. But they way they do business now days is totally legit. Don't take away features that are included in the Operating System just because there are competitors. I mean, come on, if there are better products or better price points people will use those products.

I see some correlation between this and the way the US is headed. Socialism. Woops, did I really say that. Now me, I grew up as a Liberal and now days I am more of a moderate. You know, I can see what people like about socialism, the lowest common denominator is taken care of and everyone lives a "happier life." But what about the person that wants to change their position in life? The person that grew up in the lower or lower-middle class and has dreams of being rich. That person wants to work hard and change their life. Well Socialism works against that and won't allow for the outliers. Sort of like a bell-curve on life.

Seth Godin is the luckiest guy

In a new post, Seth's Blog: Luckiest guy, Seth Godin racked up his 3000th post. Well that certainly is a milestone and I just have to say congratulations. My blog which is just spewing nonsense and randomness, has less than 50 posts. I guess our goals are very different as he is a "marketing guy" and I am just an IT guy with no real goal, just to share my ideas and leave a few notes for myself to read.

Again, congratulations Seth Godin.

P.S. Posted with ScribeFire and hopefully no tracking bug :)

A caveat with MySQL and INNODB

While creating a new database using MySQL Workbench, I ran into a problem while running the "CREATE" script that it generated.

ERROR 1005: Can't create table (errno: 150)

There was no description of the error that I could use to fix it so I was stumped. So after doing a little searching, I came across this thread on the MySQL forums. Basically the problem was that the column for the referenced foreign key was not the same as the referencing column. It seems that a lot of people will forget the "Unsigned" property.

Another simple problem was

ERROR 1005: Can't create table (errno: 121)

This error stems from a duplicate foreign key name. Just be sure to name all of your foreign keys unique names.

Got my book in the mail

Just wanted to let everyone know that I got my book in the mail this past Friday. I just browsed through it so far but it does seem to have some very good tips on beginning a job as a freelancer or contractor. One of the most interesting things I've seen so far was a link to the Freelanceswitch.com rate calculator. It basically adds up some figures based on expenses, investments, and hours worked to come up with a rate that you should be charging. Of course it leaves out some basics such as taxes and such, but that is very difficult to deal with when you have a calculator that calculates internationally. Some other good mentions are certifications. Of course, coming from Php|architect, there would be.

I think the best part of the book is that it could be used across different languages. Most of the focus is not on php, but on the aspect of finding a job or running a business. I'd deffinetly recommend this book for anyone looking to get into the business.

Posting this with ScribeFire

Just got this neat little add-on for the Firefox browser. Being a web developer, I use Firefox, Internet Explorer and sometimes Opera and Safari. I thought I'd try this add-on out just to see how easy it is to use. The installation was very simple and adding an account was very fast. One of the nice things about it is that it has some tools to keep links to your past articles that allows you to link very quickly to them. Another nice thing is the ability to monetize your posts through ScribeFire's quick ads.

I'll continue using this to posts my entries and maybe post some updates in the future.

Update:
Alright, I just noticed that ScribeFire does something that will probably make me stop using it. That thing is adding a little 1px by 1px gif image that uses the Zemanta linking service. I didn't see any warning prior to using ScribeFire but did see a little empty square at the bottom of my new posts. The following is the example code:

<div class='zemanta-pixie'><img src='http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=2d26f023-deb5-4bb3-b6d1-6892a134c0ee' class='zemanta-pixie-img'/></div>

USDA Urges EPA to Increase Amount of Ethanol in Gasoline

Reading my morning dose of DailyTech, I came upon an article about the government wanting to INCREASE the amount of ethanol in gas. And just when I thought the economy was getting bad enough to STOP subsidies of corn ethanol, this comes around. Here in Hawaii, I haven't seen a gas station that doesn't have E10. I live with it because there is no other choice. But if the government wants to increase that amount, I say screw 'em; it's a horrible idea. Got the following quote from a user gstrickler:

Corn based ethanol is good for drinking (e.g. Bourbon), but it's a terrible fuel. In addition to the above reasons, corn requires huge amounts of water to grow and the increase in corn production for ethanol has accelerated the lowering of the ground water table in the massive Ogallala aquifer.

Corn based ethanol uses up precious farm land, uses huge amounts of water, and only produces about 30% more energy that it takes to produce (and that's considered a generous estimate, it may be closer to break even).

Stop the insanity! No subsidies for corn, corn based ethanol, or cornstarch/HFCS. Tell your congresspersons to end the subsidies on corn, end the taxes on sugar cane, and end or delay the ethanol blend requirements. That will affect the ethanol and alternative fuel markets as well as the sugar and sweetener market and food prices.

The corn growers and corn based ethanol distillers may not like it, but until they can demonstrate a viable way to make cellulosic ethanol, the only ethanol made from corn should be in liquor stores.

Complex Web Pages with the Zend Framework

Recently I have been looking for tutorials to use the Zend Framework to help me complete a complex site using modular views. I haven't been able to find that many, but did find one today. Well not only exactly one but a six part series. I don't know whether or not I'll use this pattern yet, but I will put it here for reference.

And if anyone has any good tutorials or thoughts, then by all means, post a comment.

http://blog.astrumfutura.com/archives/281-Complex-Web-Pages-with-the-Zend-Framework.html
http://blog.astrumfutura.com/archives/282-Complex-Views-with-the-Zend-Framework-Part-2-View-Helper-Pattern.html
http://blog.astrumfutura.com/archives/283-Complex-Views-with-the-Zend-Framework-Part-3-Composite-View-Pattern.html
http://blog.astrumfutura.com/archives/285-Complex-Views-with-the-Zend-Framework-Part-4-The-View-Factory.html
http://blog.astrumfutura.com/archives/288-Complex-Views-with-the-Zend-Framework-Part-5-The-Two-Step-View-Pattern.html
http://blog.astrumfutura.com/archives/291-Complex-Views-with-the-Zend-Framework-Part-6-Setting-The-Terminology.html