Jan Leow's Blog Page

Format FAT32 big partition using Linux

I was attempting to format big partition size >100GB for a FAT32 file system for the WD My Passport portable hard disk. Turn out to be very tedious because the FAT32 format utility provided by Western Digital could not work in Windows Vista. So I tried to find alternative way, but to no avail, until...

There is limit to the FAT32 partition on your hard disk. It cannot exceed more than 32GB. To format larger than 32GB I will need to use the manufacturer software. Turn out it cannot run in Windows Vista. So I searched around for alternatives.

I found one software called SwissKnife, but turn out that this too was outdated and could not run in Windows Vista. It could only run in Windows 2000.

There were many post in forums about using command prompt to format large size partition. Many said it was very slow, you can't do a quick format, and there seem to be limit to the format size. NOt sure about the actual limit, but I believe it could not exceed 100GB. Since I need it bigger than 100GB I decided not to try this way.

In the end, I have to fire up my old PC running in Windows XP to install the WD FAT32 formatter program. It requires at least the dotNetFx 2.0 version so again I have to take time to install a .Net software. Than installed the WD FAT32 formatter. Finally got them all installed.

But... it wouldn't allow me to partition it!

So in the end, I used Ubuntu Linux Gnome partition manager. Before using it, I have to delete the partition using Windows Disk Manager. For some unknown reason I couldn't delete the partition in Gnome partition manager. Using the Ubunto Linux Gnome partition manager, I could partition the WD My Passport portable hard disk and format a FAT32 partition bigger than 100GB size.

Thank goodness for Linux!

Expandable Post

Finally it was done. It wasn't too difficult to understand and implement expandable post in Google Blogger. Now the post functions just like those Wordpress websites. ie the front page will show a teaser of paragraph, if the visitors likes it, can click the "Read More" link to expand the the teaser to a full post for further reading.

Now the frontpage don't have to be a looooong page of many posts, it just shows short teasers, making the page neat and tidy.

Initially the steps were a little bit confusing in that the Google help files do assume you know you know something like where to put those codes. Those were a matter of trial and error to get them into the correct location to insert the codes. Once done, it was a matter of tweaking the display to make it look nice and functional.

There are plenty of help topics too about customizing your blogger templates from the old classic templates to the new layout version. Should be enough info there to get you started to build your own free web site using Google Blogger. There was even a chapter on how to make the site look like a book. Could be useful if you want to make your own web site into hierarchal format rather than a chronologically linear type web site.

Not too bad for a free web site.
Cheers!

Can always use this like Twitter

I can always use this blogger like Twitter minus the 140 character limit. Instead of calling it micro blogging, just call it mini blogging! Plus you can tag it to and with more options! Yeah!

Got to figure this out

Rfwk has done it, guess I will have to figure it out. Blogger can't break long post with the use of breakers like or

Comment spoilers

Lately I get a few bad mouth comments in my blogs and various other sites. I don't know whether it is the stress of the current economic downturn or it is just a coincidence of bat attitude people passing by my web site and deciding to leave bad unconstructive criticism.

Perhaps I myself am also having a bad mood or something because usually I just shrug my shoulders and leave those distasteful comments alone, but this time I was compelled to flame back. It was an unwise decision. Because that would rile them up and they will shoot back to you again.

That should teach me something. That's how wars are started. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And before long, it is all out war. Sometimes it is better to have a thick skin and just shrug your shoulders and leave it as that. Take the good and the bad. Jesus did say if someone slap you on the cheek, give the other to him too. Tough call. Not easy to stomach. Sometimes it is the best.

To not fight back doesn't mean you are weak. Sometimes you have to see the situation to know when to leave it alone, when to strike back. Just the other day I was watching a movie call "Defiance" about Jews deciding to fight back during WWII. Most movies usually show them being hunted down and killed with no resistance (like Schindler's List, Diary of Anne Frank, etc). This time round, in this movie the Jews decided to hide out in the forest and strike back when necessary. Better to live free then to slowly die in the ghetto.

And so, I shall hold my peace to these comment spoilers and just shrug them off. Of course I could just delete them if I want to and I think that should be the way to go.

Simplepie multifeed sorting by date is working

Finally got the simplepie multifeed to sort various RSS feeds by date. According to Simplepie it should work, and the reason it didn't work was because there wasn't any date or proper formatting of date in the RSS feed. Turn out my manually made RSS had date formatting errors. Now it is working like a charm!

Decided to re-use blogger

Playing around with CNAME, I think I found another use for blogger. Even though I'm already using my Wordpress websites software on my own domain, I found that I could use CNAME to map a subdomain onto Google's blogger service and make the blogspot software as part of my main web site. Cool!