I had my MRI appointment today. I have seen them on TV before, but I didn’t realize it was so loud. Basically, I had to lie still for 20 minutes or so inside this big machine (my head was sticking out). Periodically it would make clicking sounds and very loud buzzing sounds. I guess that’s what the “resonance” part is all about. Fortunately they gave me a pair of ear plugs. I think I nearly fell asleep. Anyway, I’ll find out the results when I follow up with the doctor a week from Wednesday. The MRI image on the right is not from my knee, but rather from Brown University…

I ended up choosing Joomla for the North Star project I am doing with Greg. We got a server set up and I’ve installed the basic framework for the site. I’ve also uploaded some graphics and content provided by Greg. I had to make some minimal modifications to the PHP and CSS code to change some colors and modify the layout a bit. I still need to install some modules for user blogs (Mamblog), forums (Joomlaboard), comments (AkoComment), etc. So far I think it’s going pretty well. I’ll probably install a better WYSIWYG editor as well, most likely JoomlaFCK. I’m still experimenting with other modules on my local Kubuntu system.

Ashish let me borrow his Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick. It’s a USB stick with a tuner built in. Unfortunately, my laptop is too slow to play back the HDTV channels. We’ve been talking about putting together an HD MythTV box, but haven’t really put any effort into it yet. He does have all the pieces for his carputer now, so I’ll be helping him install that one of these days. Some day I’ll try to get a Linux version running, probably based on the MythTV UI building on the work from Mazda3 CarPC.

I didn’t do much over the course of this past week. I worked on the North Star site a bit. Greg created a new banner logo for the site (see above). Ron and I may be taking an even bigger departure from our previous Review Summaries plan. I will update more on that when we make some progress in the new direction.

I played some PS2 with Ashish on Wednesday. We’re trying to finish up a hockey season on NHL 2007, then we’ll probably move to PS3 games. We also went out for Korean BBQ at a place in Milpitas called Korean BBQ House. I’ve been there a couple times before. I had a dish with a lot of kimchi and pork. It was pretty good.

We’re more than half way through the weekend now. We went for a walk at Don Edwards yesterday. There are a ton of gulls there. They currently dominate the park. We saw some avocets, but their heads are still white (picture on left). They will turn red during the breeding season (Mar. - Aug.). We also saw stilts, ducks, geese, pelicans, egrets, coots and rabbits. I posted a few new pictures on my Don Edwards SFBNWR Gallery. We’re looking forward to the return of the burrowing owls.

I didn’t get to play basketball yesterday. My knee is feeling a lot better, but it’s definitely not 100%. My MRI appointment is on Monday. Hopefully they will be able to fix me up good as new. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Another weeks is gone, and I’m not sure where it went. I guess I have been busy working these days. It has been a while since I’ve had that problem. You know what they say: “All work and no play…” Well, I’m not that busy.

I’ve been spending a bit of time on the website I’m setting up for Greg. Greg works at The Imaginarium, which is a science discovery center in Anchorage, AK. I am setting up the website for a new educational program they are starting, called North Star. I’m setting up the technical stuff for the site, and Greg is providing most of the content. Later, the site will be used by students in the program to communicate with the project educators and each other.

Ron and I are still moving forward with the Review Summaries site, but have not made any published changes lately. We’re planning to take the site into a slightly different direction by incorporating more “Web 2.0″ type features. Hopefully it wont take us too long to get it set up. I hope it will be even better than our original plan.

I played basketball on Saturday as usual. We had our best turnout of 2007. It was pretty fun, but my knee was bothering me a bit. I took some ibuprofen and a nap, and felt better. On Sunday, my knee was bothering me again, and had swelled up quite a bit. I had problems with this same knee a few years ago, which was why I has stopped playing basketball for a while. I suspect that this was just the resurfacing of that old injury. I went to see the doctor on Monday. He told me I could stop playing for a while, but most like the problem would come back as soon as I started up again. Otherwise, I need to go down a surgery path. So I’m scheduled for an MRI this coming Monday, and we’ll see how it goes from there. At least I have an excuse to skip the cardio portion of my gym routine for a while!

I managed to install Drupal on my test system. I installed the 5.0 version, which is newer than the one I had seen as a demo. The administration panel is a little better, and Drupal comes with a few more packages by default, including blogs and forums. On the other hand, Joomla has more structure set up by default. Of course either CMS can be extended, so the features are more or less a wash. So now I’ll have to decide between the two. I’m still leaning towards Joomla, but I’ll play around with both a little longer. Maybe I’ll end up flipping a coin to choose between the two…

I still haven’t made any moves on the Linux front. However, I may get started by proxy. My friend Ashish is working on setting up a MythTV box for HDTV. I’ll probably give him a hand with that. He’s also working on a carputer, but it seems like he’ll be going with Windows until I can put together a good solution under Linux.