Ecuador: Best of Dance Music

i listened to the orignal "ecuador" track by sash in 1997... 11 years ago. and now i got a copy of one of the latest remixes, "ecuador 2007" -- one of the best, i repeat, one of the best, dance music tracks i've ever heard. already, i would have listened to it 20+ times ;-)

you can download the track here: Ecuador 2007 (Electro Remix)

sascha lappessen aka sash, is the man behind the original "ecuador" track. i started listening to sash since 1997, when i first got hold of "encore une fois." it was different, a new type of music, and i liked the change.

i'm sure all the dance/trance/electro fans will love this new track :-)

Excel Formula: Second Occurance in a vlookup

the vlookup function in microsoft excel is very useful. however, it only returns the first occurance in a range. here i have written a complex formula that will extract the "n"th occurance.

it's easy if you can use named ranges to define the range. defining only the first column is enough as the range for the vlookup is specified through an offset.


=VLOOKUP(J5,OFFSET($A$1,MATCH(J5,$C$2:$C$200,0)+(K5-1),M5,COUNTIF($C$2:$C$200,J5),N5),2+(L5-2),FALSE)

where:
J5 - Lookup Value
K5 - Required Occurance
L5 - Required Column
M5 - Start Column Number in Range for vlookup (Offset from $A$1)
N5 - Number of Columns in Range for vlookup
$C$2:$C$200 - Lookup Range (This need not be the full range, only the column where the lookup value can be found is enough)

note: this is a vector formula; so you should use CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to get it working, if not it will return an error.


i wrote this for one of my projects and may be i havent explained the process clearly; so if you find an issue, or if it is not working, post a note or email me. i can explain how to make it work :-)

Bye Bye tx1000!

i sold my hp tx1222au tablet two days ago, and now finding it a bit difficult to deal with work without it :-( actually, it was really a good tablet -- one of the best i've used -- and the only reason to sell it was to go for an upgraded version of the same series.

the hp tx series of tablets are very populat among users, according to www.tabletpcreview.com. however, there were a couple of drawbacks i noticed in the tx1000 series:

1. the touchscreen does not meet the expected standards; it's hard to write, and write-recognition is really bad. i couldn't use it to draw in photoshop; but finally managed to use it by doing a couple of tweaks -- still i had to draw slow, giving enough time for the processor to recognize the strokes.

2. the sound quality is no that satisfying. eventhough it comes with altec-lansing speakers, my n70 was better at times ;-)

3. hp doesn't provide the most optimized drivers for windows xp. it comes originally with windows vista, which is ofcourse a failure. and if you try to downgrade to windows xp, you will end up without optimized drivers. fortunately, i found third party drivers for all the components online.


besides the drawbacks mentioned, i found it a really good tablet, and it helped me a lot in organizing my files, and synchronizing between office and home.

i'm still contemplating between the "hp tx2500" and the "dell latitude xt" (which i'm not sure if is available in the market yet). if any of you guys have any idea of the two, please fill me in.

JavaScript: Loading an External File to a DIV

this script will let you load an external text file to a DIV container in the html file.

first, put this code in the 'head' section of the html:
<script>
<!--
function ReplaceText(container,content) {
document.getElementById(container).innerHTML = "<iframe src='"+content+"' width=600 height=400 frameborder=0 scrolling=auto>";
}
-->
</script>

and then use this in the link:
<a href="#" onClick="ReplaceText('base','sample.txt')">Load Text</a>

the container div should be something like this:
<div id="base"><div>

happy coding :-)

JavaScript: Simple Buttons

well, here is a quick way to replace the images on an html button:

put this code in the 'head' section of the html:
<script>
<!--
function ReplaceImage(image,imgfile){
document.images[image].src = imgfile;
}
-->
</script>

and then use this in the link:
<a href="home.html" onMouseOver="ReplaceImage('home', 'home_down.gif')" onMouseOut="ReplaceImage('home', 'home.gif')"><img name="home" src="home.gif" border="0"></a>

you can also use the 'onClick' attribute to use a JavaScript to load the link; in such case replace the value for 'href' with "#."