Array.prototype.binSearch = function(needle, case_insensitive) {
    if (!this.length) return -1;

	var high = this.length - 1;
	var low = 0;
	case_insensitive = (typeof(case_insensitive) !== 'undefined' && case_insensitive) ? true:false;
	needle = (case_insensitive) ? needle.toLowerCase():needle;

	while (low <= high) {
		mid = parseInt((low + high) / 2)
		element = (case_insensitive) ? this[mid].toLowerCase():this[mid];
		if (element > needle) {
			high = mid - 1;
		} else if (element < needle) {
			low = mid + 1;
		} else {
			return mid;
		}
	}

	return -1;
};

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I still need to add support of internationalized TLDs and HTML. So, although it only works with plain text for now, I think it’s off to a good start. Check out the demo or download the source.

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After getting feedback from some helpful beta testers (thanks Marjolein and Børge!) and making a few tweaks I was happy yesterday to release the LongURL Mobile Expander Greasemokey script and Firefox extension which use the LongURL API to expand shortened URLs on any web page. I haven’t had much feedback from others yet, but for me personally, the extension tremendously improves my user experience. Sorry guys, no more rickrolling me!

Also, with the release of the incredibly awesome Ubiquity extension from Mozilla Labs, I started work on a LongURL command which I hope to finish/release in the next day or so I just released. You can subscribe to the command from the LongURL Tools page. Does that sound like something that would be of interest to you? Have any ideas on how you’d like it to work? If so, leave a comment.

I would like to mention too that this has been the first time I’ve really used the launchpad.net platform for managing my project. It’s been a super experience; I don’t know why I didn’t start using it sooner, especially since I’ve been so close to it. And bazaar? Well, let me just say that I’ll no longer be using Subversion as my VCS of choice. Bazaar rocks, and if you haven’t given it a try, I strongly suggest you do so. You won’t regret it.

A final note: as you can tell, I don’t always get around to blogging about cool stuff I’m working on right away (if at all), so if you’d like to get updates as soon as possible I suggest following me on Twitter (iamseanmurphy) and/or identi.ca (seanmurphy). 140 characters just seems so much more digestible to me.

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1. LongURL Integration For Your Website

The situation for me is similar to lurking on IRC channels. But IRC has been around much longer than Campfire, and IRC client developers are familiar with the problem. Thus, many IRC clients allow you to specify keywords, that, when present in other users messages trigger some form of notification, like a sound or Growl message. Well, this clearly is the feature I needed to solve my Campfire problem.

Greasemonkey to the rescue! I stumbled across this userscript that allows you to set triggers for Growl notifications. Boy was that a welcome find. There were still some problems though. For one, I noticed that the chat window wouldn’t always detect that it had lost focus correctly, and as a result, I would miss some of my notices. Two, I wanted the same functionality for sound notifications. Three, it would be nice if at least some of it would work in Firefox, not just Fluid.

Thus, a new userscript was born: Campfire Notifications. As expected, it aims to solve the problems mentioned above. Growl notifications of course won’t work in Firefox. I’ve read, however, that Firefox 3 has added support for Growl. If I can get more information on that I may get it working in a future version.

On a related note, the guys at collectiveidea came up with an interesting way of writing Campfire plugins for things like post_commit VCS hooks. It’s called Tinder. Enjoy!

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After a little research I came up with a working solution: /^(?!word).*/

This post by Jeff Atwood helped: Excluding matches with Regular Expressions

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--- sparks.php	2008-02-16 14:14:22.000000000 -0500
+++ sparks.php.mine	2008-02-16 14:14:58.000000000 -0500
@@ -63,13 +63,13 @@
 			// Clean up control form submission options
 			$newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['Sparks-title']));
 			$newoptions['text'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['Sparks-text']));
-		}

-		// If original widget options do not match control form
-		// submission options, update them.
-		if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
-			$options = $newoptions;
-			update_option('widget_Sparks', $options);
+			// If original widget options do not match control form
+			// submission options, update them.
+			if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
+				$options = $newoptions;
+				update_option('widget_Sparks', $options);
+			}
 		}

 		// Format options as valid HTML. Hey, why not.

Download the patch: SparkStats Widget Patch

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1. Binary Search for Javascript Arrays