My phone-tic has had a severe impact on my wallet this week: I’ve decided to purchase the Sony Ericsson K850i in combination with my old mobile subscription.

I really like it, as it is better equipped than my old & trusty N73 and better looking. it is a shame it is not a smartphone though, nor has it capabilities to run TomTom.
The touch-buttons take some getting used to, but I’m expecting it to be a week before I don’t know better.

Really high-res pics are also available: Front & Back.

Edit: (2007-12-04)

I’ve also acquired a HPM-82, for some serious music-listening.
Knowing you can hear your music really well, without being a nuisance to others is bliss

Of course: the latter is also really high-res available.

As you could have been reading in a previous post: I’ve been busy creating a search-page to find music in my collection. It is still steadily growing, and searching it is very often one of few methods to find the track you wanted.

The auto-AND function is completed and fully functional now. The next thing on the menu is the exclusion of an item, the NOT-method. I’ve chosen to implement it the way Google does: to exclude a keyword, you have to prepend it with a "-" (minus-sign).
The phrase "uninvited -alanis" would find all songs with the term "uninvited", but without "alanis". Yes, it is that straight forward.

Below you’ll find the code once I’m back home. I’ve chosen to parse the search phrase searching for any exclusions, and create two sets of keywords. The first set are the inclusions (AND) and the second the exclusions (NOT). They both get passed through to the actual search-methods wich first searches for the inclusions, and after that for the exclusions.

[source=php]// insert some form-stuff

$haystack = file(”filelist.txt”);
$needles = array_reverse(explode(” “, chop($formData['needle'])));
$i = sizeof($haystack);
foreach($needles as $needle) {
if($needle{0} !== “-”) {
$haystack = searchStack($needle, $haystack);
}
}
$not = parseQueryNot($formData['needle']);
if(sizeof($not) != 0) {
foreach($not as $token) {
$haystack = searchStackNot($token, $haystack);
}
}
$j = sizeof($haystack);
if($j == 0) {
$sOut .= “Helaas is er niets gevonden.

“;
} else {
$sOut .= formatFound($haystack);
}
$sOut .= ‘
Found: ‘.$j.’ items.
Searched ‘.$i.’ files and folders.’;

function searchStack($needle, $haystack) {
$tempstack = array();
foreach($haystack as $straw) {
if(stristr($straw, $needle) !== false) {
array_push($tempstack, $straw);
}
}
return $tempstack;
}

function parseQueryNot($query) {
// find all needles with a trailing minus (foo bar -spam -> spam) and return the array
$query = strtolower($query);
$not = “”;
preg_match_all(”/[s]-[^s]+/”, $query, $not);
$not = preg_replace(”/[s]-/”, “”, $not[0]);
return $not;
}

function searchStackNot($token, $haystack) {
$tempstack = array();
foreach($haystack as $straw) {
if(stristr($straw, $token) == false) {
// if the token to exclude is not found in this track
array_push($tempstack, $straw);
}
}
return $tempstack;
}

function formatFound($haystack) {
$sOut = “”;
foreach($haystack as $straw) {
// do some magical tricks in modifying the filename & location to a URL
}
return $sOut;
}[/source]

I’m still open for any (better performing) solutions!

Being in an office for an entire day can be quite boring.
And it is, I can tell you. Unless there’s people to talk to, it can be quite tedious to be on your own without any interaction.
My best friend, not depicted, is the coffee-machine!

Below some pics of how it can be; but luckily it only is for a short while. There always are people working in the vicinity, so yay!

Pics were shot with my N73 (phone); quality-wise they’re very poor, so bear with me here.

This being an unwritten law in the world of retailing, I came to experience it first hand.

My desktop at home, is built with silence in mind. It nowadays houses 1.3TB in data, and my newly added DVD-writer. It is all built into one of the nicer cases around: The Antec Sonata. Yes, the original, not the Sonata II or III.
The flyer speaks of "Just What a PC Should Be – Seen, Not Heard." It is true, at least for me.

I bought my case nearly three years ago now, and it originally came with a built-in 380 Watt Antec TruePower powersupply. Last week, it suddenly died on me. When I pushed my power-button I got exactly no reaction. No power-led, no fans, no HD-spinup, no nothing.
Luckily I had an old power-supply somewhere just lying around and gathering dust. It was a no-name, unbranded powersupply, so I didn’t have my hopes up for it to last very long. I immediately searched for my receipt and found out I had a staggering three year limited warranty on the enclosure and it’s components.

Great! There’s only one drawback: in order for my powersupply to be replaced with a new one, I had to send it to Antec first. And they only have addresses in the US…
So I turned to the store I bought my case, and explained the whole story to the guy on the phone. He immediately replied with: "so why don’t you drop by to get a replacement supply?"
I even had a choice as to which one I wanted.
Great service!

I chose to take the new Antec EarthWatts 380 with me, and rebuilt my desktop the moment I got back home. It is happily purring away steadily now, and has been since the swap. Me happy!