General

Dec 28 2011

B.C.’s First Scramble Intersection

The City of Richmond recently opened the first scramble intersection in the province. A scramble intersection will allow pedestrians to cross the road in any direction, including diagonally. The $600,000 crossing can be found at No. 1 Road and Moncton Street. I go to Steveston frequently and never really understand what this intersection was until it was pointed out to me.

There is just one button to press to stop all traffic to cross the road in any direction.

There are more plans for scramble intersections in B.C. They are definitely a great idea since it makes crossing roads considerably safer for pedestrians.

By Johan • General • 0

Dec 24 2010

The Real Meaning of Christmas

With all of the commercialism of this “festive holiday”, the true meaning of Christmas seems to be ignored by many people. Christmas isn’t about spending money on gifts, or taking a vacation from work, its all about Jesus. Linus, in a Charlie Brown Christmas, reveals the true meaning of Christmas:

Linus was quoting from Luke 2:8-14,

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

Amen. God bless you and your family this Christmas.

By Johan • General • 0

Dec 19 2010

Well Water at Levity Artesian Spring

Water is essential to life. Unfortunately, most of the water we drink is treated heavily with chemicals and transported long distances in decaying pipes. Water filters are common in household to eliminate the dangerous elements that flow through our taps. Another problem with water filters is that they remove minerals which we need for optimal health.

When the world was a smaller place, people traveled short distances to get their water. This water was typically from a well and the quality was high and rich in minerals. I recently discovered find a spring.com where I found a well, Levity Artesian Spring, just 23 minutes from my home.

You can find the spring at Burns Bog near a truck stop. GPS coordinates are approximately N 49.112125, W 122.906776; these were taken from the truck stop since its unlikely that a GPS would work properly in the forest. You can find also get information on the site locate at the findaspring.com page.

NOTE: The city of Delta has recently closed the spring due to the large number of people that were illegally crossing the train tracks from the truck stop. From what people have reported, the spring has been blocked. Join the Save the North Delta Watershed Park Artesian Spring FaceBook page to re-0pen it. If you decide to contact the Delta municipality regarding the spring, BE POLITE when speaking to them. Rudeness rarely attains a positive outcome.

The following are a couple of photos of what you’ll see around the spring:

The Levity Artesian Spring! Its a 12 inch high pipe with water spraying out near the top. I always thought a well should be a large hole in the ground with a bucket that you lower, but we get a pipe instead. There isn’t much room for collecting water so you should be using a small water jug.

I collected a small amount of water just to try it out. Once home, my family tried the water and it tasted great. The water did taste different from tap water and from water from my Brita filter.

Well water is among the healthiest water that you can drink. Do we really need this kind of water? In Richmond, BC, our water comes from lakes in the mountains and the water is the cleanest in the world, but the journey from the lake to my cup does add contaminants. This isn’t a problem when your cooking with it and if you filter it, minerals may be removed from it as well. Well water doesn’t have these problems, other than the trip to get it and the effort to collect it.

I recommend that you go to findaspring.com so you can find a well. You may be surprised by the quality of the water.

By Johan • General • 0

Mar 25 2010

Case Study: A Printer Switching to a CMS

I recently upgraded a web site for a printing company from static HTML pages to a content management system (CMS) using Joomla. They originally built their web site with hand-coded HTML back in 1994, and eventually hired a web designer who redesigned the site in Dreamweaver. While hiring an outside designer allowed them to free up resources internally for managing the web site, it did create new problems.

Managing Content

A more serious issue that developed was that the designer was not readily available to make quick updates to the web site. Changes were submitted to them, and it typically took 1 or 2 weeks before they were implemented. Critical changes were done quickly but required a phone call to express the urgency in them. Most changes were minor which were not high on the list of priorities the designer had while working on other client’s jobs.

An outside designer also doesn’t really understand your business, and it can be difficult and time consuming defining requirements with them.

The main advantage to switching over to a CMS was that the printing company now had control over their web content. They no longer needed to submit changes to their web designer and wait before they get uploaded to their web site. New content and edited content are now made instantly by the employees and the quality of content is also improved because the employees can spot problems that an outside designer would miss.

Changing the Web Site Design

With Joomla, its very easy to change the appearance of the entire site or portions of it with a different template. In a static HTMl site, you would have to change every page when you made major changes to a web site. I remember spending 3 hours making changes to an old web site of mine even for minor editing. Document Web Templates (DWT) that major web development tools like Dreamweaver allow global changes to a web site, but if you change the template, you would either have to use the same name in the web page, or edit each page with the new template. This would still be a time consuming task that Joomla users wouldn’t have to deal with.

Buggy Web Sites

No matter how hard you try or how efficient your quality assurance is, there will almost always be bugs in your web site. When bugs were found, they weren’t always instantly fixed by the web developer. Using a CMS built by a large community, bugs are found fairly quickly and minor updates to software are released to make updates to web sites. Bugs in HTML sites may also never get fixed depending on the skill level of the web designer. A community driven application tends to be used more heavily so problems will be found and fixed.

Extending Functionality

Installing a widget on an HTML site means modifying every page, assuming that widget exists. If not, the web developer would be required to create or find it. There is a large library of extensions available for Joomla, and quite probably the largest of any CMS in use today. You should be able to find any extension that you need and even find things that you never thought of while browsing Joomla’s extension directory.

I installed a module to display local weather and a countdown clock for the 2010 Winter Olympics’ start date. Both were existing widgets that required minor work for use in Joomla, but implementing them here was much easier than doing it on their earlier HTML site.

Creating forms in Joomla take some effort, but I used its libraries to save form data to a database and perform other functions with it like sending notifications. All of this could be done in a static HTML site, but it would require writing all of this code yourself. I was able to use Joomla’s libraries in creating forms and other custom components.

SEO Friendly Web Pages

The URL a static HTML site can look like www.website.com/about.html. The same page in Joomla would look like www.website.com/about. While this is a simple example, a URL in an HTML site can become very long and have pages that don’t have meaningful names. In Joomla, you can control the name of the page that appears and can make it so that its relevant so that its optimized for search engines.

Metatags are also easier to edit in Joomla. Google ignored metatags, but other search engines may use them. This information can now be editing by the employees and adjusted during an SEO campaign.

The Verdict

The printing company is happier with the site now that its a CMS instead of static HTML pages. They have more control over the site and don’t have to rely on outside sources for changes. The site can grow with the company and new content can be created by people internally who actually understand the business they are in.

By Johan • General • 1