Monday, 1 September 2014

Bizarre behaviour of LinkedIn and other social media thoughts.

This page is written in response to the lies that +Phil Daintree  has written about me, and spread on the internet. Despite years of searching he has been unable to find anything I have written that is untrue, and he has had to resort to vague generalities, faked emails, and badly fabricated screenshots (you can see the joins if you zoom in using any bit mapped image editor). +Phil Daintree  is welcome to make any comments to these pages, as he has done in the past. If I agree with what he says I will amend my writings, if I do not agree I have allowed his comments to stand next to mine so that people can make their own judgements. I have every confidence in the intelligence of readers to make a sensible judgement based on the facts. +Phil Daintree  will not allow me the right of reply to any of the lies he has told about me. It seems to me significant that he realises that if people see both sides of the argument they will see through his lies.

I recently received an email from LinkedIn that told me that user +Phil Daintree had complained that I was using a logo supporting  the work I do in Africa instead of a photo of a person and that they had removed that logo.

Now this got me thinking. Not just about how +Phil Daintree  ought to find more constructive uses for his time, but also about the fact that LinkedIn have no idea of what I actually look like, so would have no way of knowing whether the picture I put on was me, or a picture of any of you who are reading this. All of the information about me on my profile is accurate and there was never any prospect of anybody accidentally believing tricked into believing that logo was actually a picture of my face!

So LinkedIn are happy for me to use a photo of a random person, but not happy for me to use a logo of an open source project supporting Africa. Come on LinkedIn that is a nonsense.

Social media should be about empowering me to share information about me that I want to share.

People should also be aware that +Phil Daintree has written a blog pretending to be me, and another blog pretending to be on behalf of the KwaMoja project. People should be aware of this as it is typical of the dishonest way that +Phil Daintree operates. Too cowardly to write under his own name.

Friday, 11 July 2014

KwaMoja / webERP hospital extensions

I am pleased to announce that we have brought our hospital extensions in line with the latest code, and that it is now available for testing. It can be downloaded from my github site at https://github.com/timschofield/KwaMoja/tree/KwaMoja-Medical.

This code by itself can be used in small clinics where it is just necessary to track what treatment a patient has had, and do the financials, or it can be used together with Care2x (http://www.care2x.org).

On installation you should find that you have another module called "Hospitals" installed. 

This module contains all the options for billing patients, dealing with the insurance companies, and reporting on the hospitals activities.

Using these extensions will provide a great help in tightening up a hospitals financial activities, and considerably help to reduce fraud. A brief description of how this works is given below.

Each cashier has a petty cash account that is just for their use, and which can be restricted to just them and a senior accountant/cashier to use. 

The Hospitals module contains options to bill from various hospital departments.

When a patient presents themselves at the cashier for say, the Laboratory, the cashier just has to select the option for "Billing For Laboratory Tests". They will then see a screen for helping them find the patient:
This is the same for whichever billing option the cashier chooses. As can be seen the cashier can search on many different ways, including the name, address, phone number to establish the right patient. Once the patient has been selected the cashier will see the billing screen:
If the link to Care2x is active then all the unbilled laboratory tests for that patient
will be shown, together with the total amount to be paid, so that all the cashier has to do is to collect the cash from the patient, and click on "Make Payment".
If the Care2x link is not activated then the patient should present the cashier with a document to show what Laboratory test they have been prescribed. The cashier then selects this as follows.
When the lab test is selected the price for that test is automatically pulled from the system. This depends on what price list was selected for that patient. Any number of price lists can be setup and selected for the patient. The cashier can select as many tests as needed, and the total amount payable is automatically entered in the "Amount Received" box.

When the cashier clicks on the "Make Payment" button all accounting and stock transactions related to this payment are automatically done using pre determined parameters.

At the end of the shift the cashier prints out a transactions report for their cash account, and the total of that list must agree with the total amount of cash that the cashier has collected. This list together with the cash is then taken to the chief accountant/cashier who verifies that the cash agrees with the report, and then does a transfer of cash from the cashiers account to the main account, which makes the balance of the cashiers account zero, in preparation for their next shift.

The chief accountant, or other authorised person then produces a report of any laboratory tests that were prescribed but have not been billed, and any items shown on this report need to be analysed to see why they have not been billed.

 There are various other reports and configuration options available which there isn't space to go into right now, and I will try to publish another article on these.

Friday, 27 June 2014

A new partnership - Making your network more secure

I am pleased to announce that I have entered into a new partnership with a Ugandan company to deliver a variety of Network security services to Ugandan companies and organisations.

If you want to stop the government, or cyber criminals attacking your network - or just better manage your users' internet traffic, then drop me a line on tim@weberpafrica.com and I will be pleased to get you a quote for your network.

Barely a day goes by without news of further security issues with our data. If it is not governments spying on us it is criminal gangs in search of our valuable data, or just to hold your data hostage.

The network security services we offer which include:
1.    Penetration tests, security risk assessments and audits tailored your needs, including:
•    Network security architecture review
•    Network penetration tests & assessments
•    Web application penetration tests & assessments
•    Wireless network penetration tests & assessments
•    Physical security assessments & penetration tests
•    Code review

2.    Threat Mitigation Services
•    Firewall deployment
•    IDS Roll-out
•    OS Hardening
•    Security Policy

3.    Rapid, effective, and discrete incident response services
•    Incident Response
•    Forensics
•    Expert Witness

4.    Supply of both virtual and hardware appliance Firewalls.  We deal with Barracuda and Check Point for:
•    Anti-phishing, Anti-spam, Anti-spoofing, Anti-spyware and Anti-virus
•    Cloud protection layer
•    Denial of Service (DoS) protection
•    Directory Harvest Attack protection
•    Email spooling and quarantine
•    Outbound email protection

Friday, 23 May 2014

Phil Daintree and kwamoja.org

This page is written in response to the lies that +Phil Daintree  has written about me, and spread on the internet. Despite years of searching he has been unable to find anything I have written that is untrue, and he has had to resort to vague generalities, faked emails, and badly fabricated screenshots (you can see the joins if you zoom in using any bit mapped image editor). +Phil Daintree is welcome to make any comments to these pages, as he has done in the past. If I agree with what he says I will amend my writings, if I do not agree I have allowed his comments to stand next to mine so that people can make their own judgements. I have every confidence in the intelligence of readers to make a sensible judgement based on the facts. +Phil Daintree will not allow me the right of reply to any of the lies he has told about me. It seems to me significant that he realises that if people see both sides of the argument they will see through his lies.

Ever since +Phil Daintree  fell out with me over keeping a history of purchase orders on the system I have grown used to the torrent of lies and abuse he has thrown at me, in an attempt to stop me developing webERP and KwaMoja. I have a thick skin, and anybody who knows me can see through his lies easily enough, so it hasn't unduly bothered me. He is after all well known for his lies and his bullying behaviour.

However his constant attacks on my African colleagues and our African projects do annoy me. His hijacking of the kwamoja.org domain name in order to push his personal vendetta is typical of him. I was not even involved in the project when he purchased the domain. The full details of this pathetic saga can be read in a post by Martha here.

He has told my African colleagues on the project he does not believe they are real Africans as the work is too good for them to have done it. I have offered Phil their phone numbers so he can tell them in person that they don't exist, but curiously enough he doesn't want to do this!

Persuading African friends to work on open source projects has been a struggle, as I have documented elsewhere. When they do help on open source they shouldn't have to face attacks from people such as +Phil Daintree 

When he first tried to ban me from the webERP project I set up a separate webERP repository so that I could continue to make my code available to others as the license requires. +Phil Daintree launched numerous public attacks on me for this, and said I should call my branch something else. When I then started committing code to the KwaMoja repository he launched numerous public attacks on me for donating code to a "rival project". There is no such thing as rival projects in the open source world, all projects can take code from each other. Open source is about collaboration not rivalry. So Phil is basically going to attack me whatever I do. That is fine as I have said, but I would ask him to leave off our African projects and my African colleagues.

Tuesday, 6 May 2014

Looking for KwaMoja consultants in the Arusha area

I have the need to recruit several ERP consultants in the Arusha area. This will entail working closely with a Christian faith based organisation and applicants need to be sensitive to that.

Preferably some or all of the following would be nice:
1 An understanding and experience with ERP systems.
2 A Knowledge of bookkeeping and accountancy
3 Some knowledge of programming PHP/mysql
4 A desire to learn and to work hard to create a career in the ERP industry

If you feel you would qualify and are interested in working in the Arusha area then please send your resume/CV to tim@weberpafrica.com with the words KwaMoja Consultant in the subject line of the email.

Tim

Sunday, 20 April 2014

Filing a bug report in KwaMoja

It appears from above that the administrator of webERP is shutting the project to new contributors, so it seems like a good time to run a series of articles on how to contribute to KwaMoja. Here is the first in that series:

image02Many people are nervous about reporting problems with open source projects. They fear that the developers will see it as a criticism. However all developers know that there is no such thing as "bug free" software. Any help they can get in tracking down and fixing these bugs is always appreciated.
KwaMoja uses a system called the bug genie to track any bugs in the software. We thought it waould be useful to write this short guide to filing bugs in KwaMoja using the bug genie.
Ok, so let's imagine that we have found a problem that we think may be a bug in the General Ledger Journal functionality (this will be an imaginary bug, I am not aware of any at the moment). The first thing we will need to do is to create an account for ourselves on the bug tracker. This is necessary firstly as it prevents spammers, secondly it enables you to track your bug, and for the developers to discuss the issue with you, enabling a dialog between you. Click here to enter the bug reporting section. You should see something like this:
If you already have a login, or you want to use one of the openid methods then
you can login from here. If you wish to create a new account then click on the tab marked "Register new account". You should now see a screen looking something like the one on the left.
image02Filling out this information and submitting it should give you a new randomised password. You should now login with the user and password combination that you have. You should consider changing the password at this point to one that you will remember.
You should now be taken to your dashboard page, giving you a summary of all your activity on bug genie. Obviously at the moment there won't be much on it!! If you are not taken to your dashboard, then click on your name in the top right hand corner and you should be taken there.
You should now see a menu bar at the top of the window looking like the picture
on the right. To enter a bug report select the "Bug Report" option and you will be taken to the main bug reporting screen. This has been kept deliberately simple. There are just three sections that you need to fill in.
  • Short Description
  • Description
  • Reproduction Steps
The short description should be brief but sufficient so that a developer browsing a list can quickly identify what it is about. Compare "KwaMoja doesn't work properly" with "General Ledger Journal gives the wrong total amount". Clearly the second is going to be easier for a developer to immediately understand the issue being reported.
The main description should contain as much information as you can about the issue being reported. You should include what version of KwaMoja you are using, what operating system and version you are using, a description of your server, and what browser you are using to view KwaMoja. Include any further information that you feel may be of use to the developers.
Finally there is the steps to reproduce the issue. Make sure you put everything no matter how obvious it may seem to you. Also include the results of what happens for each step.
Once you have submitted the report you should keep an eye out for feedback from the developer. It is likely you will get asked for more info, or be given a fix to test. Please reply to this feedback to help improve KwaMoja.

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Med-e-Tel in Luxembourg

Thanks to the sponsorship of Advanz of Luxembourg we had a great time at Med-e-Tel 2014.
The major aim of our presence was to promote the use of our open source solutions in developing countries. It was great to see other open source health systems present as well to help promote the concept of open source in hospitals.

There was  stand devoted to open source solutions, which was very well attended all week.

We had a lot of interest all week from all corners of the globe. We presented a paper on an implementation of Care2x in a large tertiary hospital. You can read the full paper here.


The presentation was part of the open source in health care session of the conference, and was very well attended with much interest in the various open source solutions for health care being presented.

I came away from the conference with the belief that we are on the right track with our solutions, and that open source really is the future for ICT in health care.

I have come away with renewed vigour to push forward with Project Mtuha and KwaMoja/Care2x solutions, despite the attempts by some to wreck the projects.

Again, much thanks to Advanz for their sponsorship and support without which our presence at the conference would not have been possible.