Susie’s Thoughts

I have to write an essay for an academic writing course and suddenly my mind is blank. Even though I write a blog and therefore am able to at least once in a while come up with subjects to posts about, I have found that writing a paper or an essay at school is a lot easier when the subject is given by the teacher. I could write an essay about the same subject as my thesis, but my thesis will be written in Finnish and the essay should be written in English, which means I would have to try to find the right English terms for many terms I only know the Finnish words for.

I think I will write something about the E-words and the acronyms used in modern business, but I’m not sure. I need to make up my mind before Monday, and here I am changing my mind all the time. Have to admit it is a lot easier to hand out subjects as a teacher than to find one as a student.

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished someone would just tell you what to write about instead of giving you free hands to write about anything?

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I promised to post soon, but every time I try to something or someone needs my attention. I’ve read probably a hundred books, reports and papers the last couple of months, and I still got a lot more to read. I’m trying to get 2 years of studying done in one year and I’m going to write my thesis during the summer too; all this while I work full time. I would like to post more, but there is not enough hours in the day for me to do that.

There are days I’m amazed of the amount of words you can fit in one head, especially since I’m not that young anymore. Well, I have noticed I have to take a lot more notes than I used to, but I type faster now, so I don’t mind. They say it’s harder to learn something new when you get older, but I doubt it. I found it to be a lot easier to learn new things now, than when I was younger. I might not remember everything as easy I used to, but I understand it better. And I’m more disciplined than I used to be.

What do you think! Is it a myth that it’s more difficult to learn new things when you get older? Or does it only require different study methods?

I upgraded Worpress to the new 2.5 version. If something looks funny it might be the plugins I use. Hopefully everything will work fine though. I’ll be back with a new post later.

Haven’t posted for awhile, sorry about that. Time flies when you are busy. Time flies in other ways too… I just can’t believe how much my grandson’s grown, he’s even got his first taste of real food!

Great ideas are like a path into the unknown you walk down to get to something new. Sometimes we think we know which path to take to get where we want to go. The funny thing about great ideas is that if you say them out loud, they get wings, and they start flapping around whispering sweet words into the ears of others. Suddenly you realize you’re not alone walking your path. You look around and you notice happy, smiling people filled with energy willing to walk with you. The path has changed… it’s a little wider, it’s a little lighter and it’s a little easier to walk on. I think, that every time we get a great idea, we should say it out loud… give it wings… let it whisper sweet words and embrace the people willing to listen to those words… embrace the people willing to walk down the path with you!

I once heard someone say that clean shouldn’t smell anything and therefore there is no need for cleaning products with fragrance in them. This might be true, but there are certainly some smells that smell clean to me. Lemon and green apples are smells that get me thinking of something fresh and clean. The smell of a warm sauna and newborn birch leaves does makes me think of clean, newly washed hair and light summer nights. And then there is the smell that no fragrance have ever been able to reproduce;  the smell of the first spring day and a newly made bed with clean sheets. We have a clothes wringer in our laundry room and I love the smell and feeling of wrinkle free bed linen.

Do you think there is a special smell for clean and what smell is that?

In my Open source and business strategies post I mentioned that we have planned to only use open source software for managing our business processes. I teach at a business university who partners with SAP and therefore we offer courses on how to use that software. At the same time I work on projects with many small and middle-sized businesses that still use Excel or a simple database in Access to manage their customer relationships. Well, to tell the truth, there are still some business owners only using a small black book filled with addresses and notes. Many of these businesses are small family businesses and when I talk about CRM or ERP, they have no clue of what I’m talking about.

As a teacher I’ve learned to not assume people know what I mean, so I will start this post by shortly describing what ERP is and what type of software I need. ERP means Enterprise Resource Planning, and Wikipedia says ERP systems attempt to integrate all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple modules of computer software to help integrate what used to be stand alone applications into one integrated system. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a database to store data for the various system modules. ERP systems attempt to cover all basic functions of an enterprise, regardless of the organization’s business type.

Examples of modules in an ERP are: Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Financials, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resources, Warehouse Management and Decision Support System.

Doesn’t matter what type of business you do, without a customer there will be no business. That means storing information of our customers will be the most important part. I don’t know yet for sure, but for now it looks like we will have both consumers and businesses as customers, so we need to be able to categorize our customers. And even though we are planning only a web based business, we haven’t ruled out a brick and mortal store. My sister owns a hair saloon and our products could easily be sold at her saloon.

With sales both in Europe and in US we need to be able to handle different currencies. We also need to be able to track sales in US and in Europe separately. I don’t know who will do the accounting yet, both me and my daughters have the proper education for taking care of the accounting in Finland, butwe have no knowledge of how to handle accounting in US.

There are a lot more we need to figure out before we decide which system to use, but these are to most important parts.

In a comment to my previous post Compiere was mentioned, I have already installed another open source system called OpenBravo. There are others I haven’t checked out yet, like Adempiere, ERP5, TinyERP, OFBiz, and Opentaps. There are probably even more systems than this. The Enterprise category on SourceForge returned 1772 projects out of which OpenBravo was the most active with ADempiere Bazaar on second place.

I was lucky enough to find a blog called Open Source ERP Guru with a lot of information about different ERP systems. I’m going to check the blog out before I decide which system to check next. I recommend everyone who’s out there looking for an ERP system to check out the blog too.

This tutorial was originally created in Finnish and therefore the picture names are in Finnish. The instructions are in English though.

Part 1

In this part you will learn how to

1. Remove a background with the Select by Color Tool
2. Select a part of an image with the Free Select Tool
3. Copy an image to a new layer
4. Rotate with the Rotate Tool
5. Select a part of the image with
6. Use the Quick Mask mode
7. Use the Ellipse Select Tool
8. Use the Clone Tool

Save kuva2.jpg and open it in Gimp. Erase the background with the Select by Color Tool.

Instructions for Part 1

Part 2

In this part you will learn how to

1. Select a background with the Fuzzy Select Tool
2. Invert a selection (Select -> Inverse)
3. Copy an image from one file to another
4. Change the order of layers
5. Scale an image
6. Use the Overlay Blend Mode
7. Copy a layer to a new layer
8. Desaturate a layer using the luminosity option
9. Use the GIMPressionist filter and the canvas preset and paper

Save kuva1.jpg and open it in Photoshop.
Select the background with the Magic Wand Tool.

Instructions for Part 2

Part 3

In this part you will learn how to

1. Pick a color from the image
2. Create a new layer filled with the foreground color
3. Create a drop shadow
4. Resize a drop shadow
5. Copy an image from one file to another
6. Invert the colors in an image
7. Use the Value mode
8. Change the opacity of a layer

Save kuva3.jpg and open it in Photoshop.

Instructions for Part 3

Part 4

In this part you will learn how to

1. Create an elliptical selection
2. Add text to an image
3. Add text to a path
4. Convert a text path to a selection
5. Add color to the text
6. Add a drop shadow to text

Instructions for Part 4

This tutorial was originally created in Finnish and therefore the picture names are in Finnish. The instructions are in English though.

Part 1

In this part you will learn how to

1. Remove a background with the Magic Eraser Tool
2. Select a part of an image with the Magnetic Lasso Tool
3. Copy an image to a new layer by pressing keys CTRL + J

Save kuva2.jpg and open it in Photoshop. Erase
the background with the Magic Eraser Tool.

Instructions for Part 1

Part 2

In this part you will learn how to

1. Select a background with the Magic Wand Tool
2. Invert a selection (Select -> Inverse or SHIFT + CTRL + I)
3. Copy an image from one file to another
4. Scale an image
5. Change the order of layers
6. Use the Overlay Blend Mode
7. Change the opacity and fill settings for a layer
8. Use the Graphic Pen filter
9. Create an adjustment layer
10. Pick a color from a part of the image
11. Add a Drop shadow

Save kuva1.jpg and open it in Photoshop.
Select the background with the Magic Wand Tool.

Instructions for Part 2

Part 3

In this part you will learn how to

1. Copy an image from one file to another
2. Invert the colors in an image
3. Use an adjustment layer
4. Change the opacity of a layer

Save kuva3.jpg and open it in Photoshop.

Instructions for Part 3

Part 4

In this part you will learn how to

1. Create an elliptical path
2. Add text to a path

Instructions for Part 4

 A tutorial showing how to use the Color Range selection tool in Photoshop.

You need to have the flash player installed on your computer to be able to view the tutorial.

Tutorial opens in new window