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.