More JavaScript and Sphinx Search

I've been working some improvements to my website recently. I have begun learning JavaScript and used it to make a nice drop-down menu for hte archive section of this blog. I could have implemented it with pure CSS except for keeping the menu visible when the mouse is moved away from it. JavaScript allows you to click the menu and move the mouse away from it without the menu disappearing. Not a huge development in the world of JavaScript, but I'm proud that I was able to figure it out by myself.

The other big improvement is that I have finally implemented the Sphinx search engine on my blog. Sphinx can speed up searching on complex data sets dramatically compared to a pure MySQL boolean search. It also lets you search for phrases shorter than 4 characters. It can be a pain to implement Sphinx, but the results are worth it.