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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

I don't normally mention this stuff, but since you asked...

* I started at university when I was 13.

* I won the Putnam Competition.

* I hold a world record for computing Pi.

* My bsdiff binary patching tool is used on tens of millions of computers and has saved several hundred human-years of waiting for software updates to download.

* I found a security bug in an Intel CPU. (Osvik/Shamir/Tromer also found it, but I was first, by a few weeks.)

* I'm the Concertmaster of an amateur symphony orchestra which is performing the Verdi Requiem tomorrow.

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Whoa, respect to you Sir. It's funny how reading people's comments on HN makes me feel I "know" them. Your comments are usually excellent. But I would have never thought you were so good.

Ok, back to centering that bloody div.

> Ok, back to centering that bloody div.

    div.centered {
       width: *x*;
       margin-left: auto;
       margin-right: auto;
    }

i just went through this myself. that will center the content horizontally, but only if you can declare the width. why can't i just say "use the width of the longest element in the div?" and if you want to center vertically, forget it. might as well use a <table> instead.

oh, this isn't the css-bashing thread? whoops.

Here you go. Should work in all browsers except IE7 and earlier.

You can add as many column divs as you like.

Note that the html { height:100% } is needed when in HTML5 mode.

  <!DOCTYPE HTML>
  <html>
    <head>
      <style type="text/css">
        html, body { height:100%; margin: 0 auto; }
        body { display: table; vertical-align: middle; }
        .column { display:table-cell; vertical-align: middle; }
        p { text-align: center; }
      </style>
    </head>
    <body>
      <div class="column">
        <p>holy cow!</p>
        <img alt="shock the monkey" src="http://i.imgur.com/Pt9Pd.jpg" />
        <p>it worked!</p>
      </div>
    </body>
  </html>

holy crap. that's pretty good, man! when i was trying to get this to work a couple of nights ago, i would have gladly given you a hundred bucks for that code snippet, just to make the pain go away.

i was afraid that your method would screw up <ul> lists the way most of my attempts did, where the bullets would wind up stuck to the left margin while the text strings are goofily centered in the middle, but no, your way presents lists properly as well.

your code snippet is going into production for my iphone card game, to replace this awful hacked-together menu i made:

http://www.platinumball.net/hearts/png/orig_help_large.png

thanks!

Glad you like it. :)

when i was trying to get this to work a couple of nights ago, i would have gladly given you a hundred bucks for that code snippet, just to make the pain go away.

If you like, feel free to give a shout-out to @jjs in your game's credits. :)

That's interesting. I had no idea you were the person who did the pi calculation. My co-worker and I setup all of the computers in our development area to help the cause. Looking at the old stats, we were the #4 producer (Viper). Brings back memories. Thanks for putting that together!

For a hilarious usage of this stuff, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Partway through the thread, one of the dropbox founders tries to get him on board!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35095

You forgot "I started Tarsnap."

I don't really consider Tarsnap to be in the same category as those. Sure, I think Tarsnap is a fantastic online backup system; but that's rather subjective. If/when Tarsnap becomes wildly successful, I'll be able to make the objective claim of "I started a company which (is making $X/year profit | I sold for $Y | has N customers | etc. )" but until that happens, Tarsnap isn't really something to "brag" about.

Well "[You] started Tarsnap" is the one that has benefited me the most, and I think that's bragable.

excellent, I admire that you're so humble about it

I'm even more interested in trying out tarsnap!

> I'm even more interested in trying out tarsnap!

I'm even more interested in maybe considering trying out tarsnap!

but you didn't figure out about canadian sales tax yet ;) http://www.tarsnap.com/legal-why.html#NOCANADIANS

Uh-Oh.

You can't just say "I don't sell to Canadians" and therefore avoid GST and the CRA.

The last thing he should be looking for is an expensive audit.

Dude, I saw Dan_Sim's comment below and I think you're headed for a world of hurt pretending that you are GST exempt if you ignore Canadians.

You need to speak with an accountant - if CRA decides to audit you (as they would seeing that you are declaring income with no GST remittance) you could be in a world of hurt.

See here: http://blog.9thsphere.com/blog/are-you-billing-gst-correctly...

Oh, and your list makes me feel unworthy. :-)

Thanks for the warning, I appreciate it. I think I'm fine, though -- I have a friend who works at CRA doing GST, and he (unofficially) agreed that avoiding Canadian customers should be good enough, and also commented that the CRA is unusually reasonable about honest mistakes, so even if I did screw something up, the worst I'm likely to face is being asked to pay the GST myself.

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