MathSciNet V12

We just released version 12 of MathSciNet. It’s not available unless you have purchased a subscription, but here is a screen-shot. My role was primarily layout, graphics, CSS, and HTML with a minor amount of Perl code.

Old Books

So often we fall prey to the tendency to think that anything modern is better. Quite honestly I think this is part of the fallacy that the devil (and the liberals) would have us believe. It comes from the whole notion that man has evolved rather than devolved. Even Christians (who should know better) fall into this trap. I myself fall into this trap, which goes to show how effective the devil’s strategies are.

In reality, there were some very smart and wise people (probably more-so than most moderns) in the past. In an attempt to expand my mind I’m going to start listening (during the commute) to books by authors of antiquity. The first I’ve just added to my Audio-to-Go queue is the Confessions of St. Augustine and The City of God.

There is a wealth of old Christian books at the Christian Classics Ethereal library. Many of these books are also available on Amazon.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. – Ec 1:09

Browser Testing

I’ve been going through the last stages of browser testing for our product release next week here at my day job. I’ve got to say that browser testing is one of the most annoying and tedious jobs ever.

Our clientele (Mathematicians) are a little bit unusual in that our statistics show 36% use some type of Mozilla based browser. Since I’m a Linux guy it’s easier for me to develop using Firefox. Now (using VMWare), I’m testing IE 5.5 and IE 6.0. I’ve also thrown Opera and Konqueror into the mix. I’ll have to find a machine to run Safari on before the end too. My boss is going to try IE 7.0.

So far, the absolute best browser to work with has been Opera. Things just work. It needs no special tweaks to get things working and most tweaks made to work around flaws in other browsers don’t seem to affect Opera. Very cool.

The absolute worst browser is actually IE 6.0. IE 5.5 seems to be better about some things than 6.0 for some reason. Firefox’s bugs almost all seem to relate to printing.

If it weren’t for all the cool Firefox extensions I use, I would consider switching to Opera.

Grain Mill

I’m a geek – even when I cook.

I just got this really cool grain mill off eBay for $10. New you buy this for $250 or more. It sits on top of the mixing bowl and engages the the drive unit on my Bosch Universal mixer/blender. It drops freshly stone-milled flour right into the mixing bowl. Sweet!

The flour isn’t as fine as what you would buy in the store or get from an impact mill, but it made some very good biscuits this morning.

Some research shows that significant nutritional value is lost within 72 hours of milling due to oxidation. It also tastes better fresh. I’ll try some bread this weekend.

Firefox Isn’t Perfect

I just spent about 3 hours trying to figure out a bug in Firefox. Pages on our newly redesigned site were not printable – they run off the bottom of the page without going to the next page.

The problem? Most of the document is contained within a div that has position set to absolute. Setting this to static solves the problem. The solution was to set up a separate CSS file for print media that overrides this setting.

IT Roundtable

Hey all of you guys out at the IT Roundtable at Granger today. I wish I could be there but I’ve got a tight deadline on an upcoming release of our main product and can’t afford to lose a day of work here at my day job. Have fun and I hope to hear about it on your blogs.