ABOUT

Hummer's Hardware Links

Hummer's Hardware Links main theme is to provide a tool for users to search for reviews on hardware that are available on the internet.  Its goal is to be the comprehensive searchable database on motherboard, video card, and sound card reviews.  Other minor themes may include hardware and gaming reviews.  Editorials on 'How-to' may also be part of the minor theme.

Beta pages established on 27th. November 1999.

Search Engine

Motherboard Review Search Engine: This is the first search engine I developed in PERL5.  It is designed to take ONE word or TWO words keywords, depending on the chosen field of interest.  The execution of the CGI program occurs in a split second.  This is absolutely fast, since it reads the data from a file, determines the number of matches, sorts alphabetically, and depending on the number of matches, goes through a conditional 'if-then-else', and prints out the data.  The HTML output is dynamically generated.

Video Card Review Search Engine: This is the second search engine I developed in PERL5.  Very similar to the motherboard search engine.  The difference is that it reads from the data file with more columns.

Motherboard Feature Search Engine: This is the third search engine I developed in PERL5.  This is almost completely re-written to handle a different type of search mechanism.  Each field (column) is searched, and it uses the 'AND' operator to determine the results.  The objective of this engine is to find motherboard models that contain a certain feature.  On the other hand, it can also be used to search for motherboard features or to double check the features of a known motherboard model.

Links Search Engine: This is not really a true search engine, but it uses the search algorithm to determine which category the links should fall under and then displayed the 'fixed' query string.  The data structure of the data file is different, in which, it supports 'virtual' space character in between words.  'Virtual', meaning that it is not really a space character but I use '&+&' to denote the space character.  The other search engines mentioned above do not allow spaces to be used for each field, except for the last field.  It's a matter of convenience on my part.  (Imagine I had to enter '&+&' for spaces in Excel spread sheet: it would take time and hard disk space to store it).  It's different for the Links data file, since, the user is the one doing the data entry, and the Entry form CGI script automatically places a '&+&' for spaces. 

Data File Structure: Well, it's not a search engine, but it is the format in which the data is stored.  All data files are of flat-file type.  All, except for the Links data file, does not allow spaces in each fields, except for the last field. 

When will this BETA stage ends?

Hmm, its difficult to say when the BETA stage ends when I have a lot of ideas for this site.  So, rather than staying in BETA stage forever, I may officially launch this site once the video search engine is complete AND its database is about 25% complete.  Another thing that needs to be in shape would be Links.  Hopefully by then, all hardware sites would have been covered in the motherboard database.  I will have a review on a computer hardware on the launch day.

Webmaster

In brief, my name is Leslie Hum and I love computer hardware.  Academically, I have a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering.  I'm made in Malaysia, much like those overclockable Celerons; there's a good chance I am overclockable too.  For more information, please go to my homepage.  

Webmaster's Rig

Home built. [October 1998]