Whilst they have served me well in the past and I may feel tempted to use Virtuemart for a customer who:

a) Will never ever need any customisations done to it
b) Already has a Joomla installation and is very comfortable using Joomla

What’s the issue with Zencart, OSC or Virtuemart you may ask?

The issue is this. First OSCommerce is a mess. Every single module you ever add to it is a hack, making upgrades a pain in the ass. Zencart, being closely related to OSC is not much better. It’s modularity is a bit better laid out and so you can actually create / install modules with very little hacking, if any BUT it’s template system still suffers from it’s OSC origins. It’s an effort to try and template for them..yes, it’s possible but does it really have to be that hard? Joomla’s concept is 1000 times better in regards to templating and Virtuemart excels in this area due to it’s Joomla foundations.

The big problem with them is when you need to make modifications to the core cart to implement a particular feature a customer wants. We have had situations where a small feature for the client required 144 changes in the files of Virtuemart. As soon as a XSS or other security issue comes to light, we have two options

1. Let it be, cross fingers and hope nothing happens (this really is not an option)
2. Inform customer, explain risks and give them compelling reasons to update (at their cost)
3. Our current solution is when we sign contracts with customers, we include a compulsory security updates fee, which means we update their site when new security releases come out. This has worked out best so far but still requires us to explain why we are giving a solution that isn’t inherently secure to begin with. Microsoft has made this easier to explain (daily updates anyone?) and for the most part, we can kill most XSS / SQL Injection attacks using Apache modsec rules but we really want to get beyond NEEDING to upgrade and therefore NEEDING to patch our mods into new releases of Virtuemart etc.

So, without further ado, there looks to be two better alternatives that have come to the rescue recently that look very, very promising though we haven’t done any work with them yet, so I will report on that later.

In PHP land, we have Magento. A very sexy, professional looking Open Source Ecommerce application that’s built upon the Zend MVC framework and claims to be able to develop extensions without touching core code. This, hopefully will fix our templating, modification and upgrade woes in a PHP solution. It has SEF URL’s built-in, google analytics built-in and a mini-CMS of sorts.

In Python land, we have Satchmo an open source ecommerce application built on top of the Django framework, with a reasonable feature set.

As part of my toolbox, my thinking at this point is if we have a customer that needs a standard shop with little to no development work, Magento will be our tool. If the customer has very unique needs, integration with other systems and customisations, we will work with Django.

This is because PHP deployment is so easy, that our only need should be to produce templates in Magento. If development work is needed, deployment and templating become a trivial matter in Satchmo in comparison to the ability to develop in Django & Python.

Would love to hear other’s experiences with any of the above… and of course any horror stories (or otherwise with OSC based development)

So this critique led me to the same authors notes on infoliberalism which led me to his notes on a monetary system which led me to the link to Ripplepay & Ripple Project.

So back to being ‘on the outside’ – The issue of homeless people has really been sticking in my mind lately. Once you are on the streets, and you have no phone, no address, no clean clothes etc and worst of all, once you have it in your mind “this is what I am” and you begin to look invisible to the thousands of people who walk past you each day without a thought (or maybe we do??), how do you get out of it? How do you change your mind about who and what you are, first of all because that is the biggest challenge of them all.

I had an experience on Friday night where I did ‘a bit more’ than usual for a homeless guy and I saw the look in the guys eyes and he reached out to shake my hand. He wasn’t an alcoholic, a drug user or visibly mentally ill. It was raining in Sydney, it was about 10pm and he had no shoes and was probably mid to late 30′s. All I have thought since then is that I didn’t do enough, that I could have done more. I have told myself, it’s a start. I’m sure Mother Theresa even questioned her own efforts at times.

If this kind of thing interests you, be sure to check out these links:

Street Kids in India run their own Bank
54 Ways you can help the homeless
Homeless.org.au and forums.homeless.org.au – A Sydney based home for the homeless run by a 31yo guy from Brisbane, which seems to have been originally self-funded. Some great stuff there.
The Homeless Guy Blog
GrandCentral – Project Care program – A phone number for everyone – I can think of a mini way of doing this in Australia using Oztell’s WebPABX or using Asterisk and using extension numbers with mailboxes where people can give out their phone number and their extension. They can collect their voicemail via a phone or have the messages emailed to them. You would just need one DID.

Obviously, a man living on the street in Australia has an experience far different to a child living on the street of South America, India or Africa. Here’s an NGO organisation in Peru started by a husband and wife in 2001 called BrucePeru – youtube video below. You can volunteer there starting at $395 US per month, including all your meals and accommodation. Prices decline depending on your length of stay.

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Technorati Tags: django, python, ripplepay, ripple project, microfinance, monetary system, lets, homelessness

Aah, also five part ipython series on showmedo.com

Technorati Tags: django, extjs, json, ajax

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As per some previous posts, I like to be able to jump seamlessly between platforms. I don’t want to be tied down to anything if I can help it. This is why I wouldn’t buy an Ipod and like Mark Pilgrim, I don’t get the iphone phenomena. I want to use my application online, offline seamlessly. I want to have the same experience, no matter where I am, what I am doing etc. Software like NoMachine’s NX server give me this ability. I have a ultra-portable laptop I bought for $280 on ebay, I have Three wireless, which means I can be a passenger in a car / train / ferry / bus nearly anywhere in metro-Sydney and still have access to my Ubuntu desktop.. that’s frikkin’ cool.

But what about when I don’t have internet access? Well, I previously used Ifolder to keep all my files in sync (which uses mono btw) but ifolder has to be the worst managed open source project I have ever used. Trying to keep a client / server combination that worked together proved to be a feat for me too many times and finally I went in search of something else. I then switched over to Mindquarry (I could have just used svn with some python scripts that watched folders and syncs when it sees a change, I guess) but Mindquarry actually offers a few more features than svn or Ifolder alone ie: Tasks, timeline, wiki and teams.

So, now we have our files synchronised and I use imap, so we have mail synchronised and I have used sitebar for bookmarks for a very long time but there’s something more. What about my feeds in opera? all my vim settings? my bash_profile alias? This is where I think Conduit will be able to help me out eventually (one of the reasons I looked forward to moving to Gnome)

Now, I am really raising two separate issues here. On one hand, I am talking about syncronising two separate computers and on the other, I am talking about a seamless experience between online and offline applications. I think the first is mostly being taken care of. The second issue has some solutions becoming available also. This is where I see stuff like Google Gears, Adobe Air and db4o especially their db4o replication systemproving to show their usefulness.

Sidenote: In the Enterprise Data Centre, Lefthandnetworks has some very similar concepts happening for data virtualisation for online / offline drs solutions as db4o has for persistance – and more importanly for me, their new VMware product looks very promising for high availability + drs soutions using vmware.

So, now I bring up my original point in my posting. Let’s say we develop a desktop applications using db4o (mono bindings available) and I think we could even do that using the .Net python-like language called Boo – the developer of said language happens to also be a developer of db4o. Now, we take said winForms application and deploy it to the web using Visual WebGui. Now, I know the web purists might find this all very freakish as I haven’t done a W3C Validation on it, but I am half-certain something will be wrong and it’s not the sort of thing you are going to be delivering to blind people. I am talking about applications with a specific user base, something like a Mobile Lender, Mobile Salesperson, Microfinancing in remote areas etc.

In my post A Case for Learning Python I put forth my reasoning for deciding to spend all energy learning a language in Python – I don’t think any other language can offer the same access to so much for so little (time investment) as Python.

I will add something to the original list: Windmill is a web testing framework intended for complete automation of user interface testing, with strong test debugging capabilities and of course, it’s written in Python and uses CherryPy.

Also, in the same vein are WebUnit and Twill (both written in Python)

Technorati Tags: python, ajax, winforms, mono, django, visual webgui, mindquarry, gnome, conduit

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Forgive me if I am blatantly missinged something (which is very likelyobviously), but since the unicode integration into django, I can’t seem to generate non-text images from a view, into a template ie: then django books says:

from django.http import HttpResponse

def my_image(request):
image_data = open(“/home/moneyman/public_html/media/img/main_bg.jpg”, “rb”).read()
return HttpResponse(image_data, mimetype=”image/png”)

Which works fine, but when you try and render it to a template ie:

def new(request):
image_data = open(“/home/moneyman/public_html/media/img/main_bg.jpg”, “rb”).read()
return render_to_response(‘loans/loan_reports.html’, {image_data:’image_data’}, mimetype=”image/jpeg”)

You end up with something like this:

UnicodeDecodeError at /somewhere/
‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)Request Method: GET
Request URL: http://www.somewhere.com/somewhere/
Exception Type: UnicodeDecodeError
Exception Value: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
Exception Location: /home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/context.py in __getitem__, line 38
Python Executable: /home/moneyman/bin/python
Python Version: 2.4.3

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in render_node
810. result = node.render(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in render
846. return self.filter_expression.resolve(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in resolve
577. obj = self.var.resolve(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in resolve
704. return self._resolve_lookup(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in _resolve_lookup
727. current = current[bit]
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/context.py” in __getitem__
38. if key in d:

UnicodeDecodeError at /somewhere/
‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

I don’t know if it’s me or a bug. I haven’t been able to get any decent feedback from #django IRC channel as yet

Technorati Tags: django, charts, python

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I came for the models, I stayed for the templates

While it’s not all been smooth sailing for me mostly due to my lack of python experience, the guys on IRC especially “Magus” have been tremendous. Is he paid to help people??? Someone should give him a fulltime position on the IRC channel.

The other part that tripped me up was newforms library as it’s still under development and isn’t fully documented as yet. This article at Big Nerd Ranch was a big help as was Colin Grady, once more. I often found myself overcomplicating issues that were much simpler than I was imagining.

Anyway – the more I use Django, the more I learn the true depths of it’s greatness even though I still feel as though I am skimming the surface. I have met Malcolm Treddinick face to face, a fellow Australian and mad hacker. His commits on the Django project have been somewhat impressive. I can’t wait to be able to add some value back into the community once I get over a few more stumbling blocks.

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Siddhi has some nice Django screencasts over at Showmedo.com

I was also reading the Trac / Babel website which ended up hooking me up to a great article from a guy who was thinking about succesful open source projects and came to the conclusion to how powerful api’s are in both open source and proprietary applications. The article pointed out how much having a good, documented api lowers the entry barrier for contributors, allowing a project to gain a community and momentum faster. I see this as part of the success of the Joomla project. People were able to go away and create modules, components and bots without having to submit or beg for features on the main project’s repo. I wish I could find the article now though!

Anyway, that led me to another worthy mention: Django Restful Interfaces project.

Beyond the django / python world, if you are into learning languages, I stumbled across Mango Languages today, which I am going to add to my use of Granule Flashcards for Spanish.

Technorati Tags: django, trac, open source, rest, showmedo

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