Experimenting with Joomla!

As part of a major new video blog project we have started I needed to set up a massive database architecture. Unfortunately my experience with databases is limited and I don't really have the time to learn this advanced technology from scratch. Fortunately my brother pointed me towards a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla!

This system is open source and completely editable and customizable and can be installed on any server that allows for MySQL databases.

So far I've only scratched the surface of this application but I am already both humbled and impressed at it's capabilities and the ingenuity of the Open Source community.

Once the project is closer to completion I will be posting more info on the setup and of the system as well as my experiences designing graphics and layouts with CSS and Dreamweaver.

How to format large drives to FAT32

Over the Christmas holidays we came across a sale at a major retailer and ended up getting a massively discounted XBOX360 for our living room. The machine was purchased as much out of curiosity for it's extended multimedia features as for it's gaming capabilities. The 360 can work as a media extension that can display images and video and play music from our extensive archive right out of the box.

As part of the setup we also decided to attach an old IDE hard drive that's been lying around unused for a while. We purchased a $20 external cabinet for it and hooked it up to the 360 through the USB 2.0 connection only to discover that it wasn't recognized. A few hours of research later told me that for some unknown reason the XBOX 360 does not recognize drives formatted for NTFS. To be able to use an external drive on the 360 it has to be formatted for FAT32.

Some short background info on NTFS and FAT32 can be found at Wikipedia.org

The fact that the 120GB drive had to be formatted for FAT32 was a major headache because the native formatting option in Windows XB only allows you to format volumes up to 32GB which again meant I'd have to split my drive into 4 partitions to be able to utilize the entire space. Although this is an option it is not an optimal one. The only other option (or at least so I thought) was to purchase some partitioning software like Partition Magic but these are both slow and unreliable.

Then I came across a site that claimed to have the perfect solution: A small DOS-based program that would format "any size drive" to FAT32 in a matter of seconds. The program was aptly named "fat32format" and provided by Ridgecorp Consultants Ltd..

I was not immediately convinced that the claims of lightning fast formatting were accurate but decided to try anyway. To my surprise formatting my 120GB drive with this program tool less than 1.4 seconds and left 112GB of usable space. Not believing my own eyes I then tried to format another external drive I have - this time a 500GB drive. This process took about 2 seconds and left about 470GB of usable space. In short this program is the real deal.

So, for anyone who wants to format large drives external or internal to FAT32 I have found the solution for you. Fat32Format.

The Ducklows are on line

Counselors Paddy and Carole Ducklow from West Vancouver approached us in November with a request to update and modernize their web site. The old site was based on a simple full page layout and had a confusing navigation structure. Our job was to come up with a warmer and more welcoming layout and colour scheme as well as a more intuitive navigational structure.

The end result was a site based on a frame structure to ensure that it remains centered no matter what the visitor's screen resolution and setup and to ensure that all relevant information can be easily accessed. We utilized two sets of menus - one main menu on top and one category specific menu on the left side.

You can view the new Ducklow & Ducklow site here.