Photo Date Finished Item Notes
N/A In-progress Add content to of www.edwardmstewart.com

Following the overhaul and cleaning of the site, it is time to populate it with some original content. With a lot of work and personal efforts in progress, I don't have much time to spend on content and instead reflect on what subjects I am best informed to write about and what content might help any readers.

N/A Complete Revamping of www.edwardmstewart.com

After 12 years, it is time for an overhaul of http://www.edwardmstewart.com. The primary goals of the update are (1) adaptation to a fluid grid layout for smartphones and tablets, (2) improvement in the visual appearance from what I did by hand in 2005, (3) greater adherance to standards and best practices for potential future expansion into more database-driven content and (4) opening an opportunity to capture, write and post some reflections and learnings from recent experience.

 

This time around, I'm working with the aid of (Adobe) web tutorials, the Gimp and Dreamweaver instead of doing it in a text editor. Cascading style sheets are new. The photo of Patience at the New York Public Library on the front page I took during the holiday season several years ago fits beautifully with a new favorite quotation.

 

The biggest struggle so far has been figuring out how to make the image of Patience on the home page span the full width of available pixels. After a lot of head-scratching around why pre-existing width=100% and max-width=100% property settings in CSS weren't working, I found a solution by also assigning this property to the default .col selector so columns fill the entire width unless told otherwise. Problem solved.

N/A Complete Checking of Quicken IRR Calculation

28DEC2017, For some time it has bothered me that I have been unable to replicate Quicken's IRR calculation. I put some earnest effort into this question in December 2017 and managed to get much closer than before using a definition which does not appear to match what is in the Quicken help manual. Debugging is still in progress, as I am currently stuck on how to export cash dividend amounts from Quicken, as documented at the ticket

15JAN2018, midday: The ticket offered a solution to the export problem: upgrade to the 2018 version. After looking around for better software, I decided to stick with Quicken for now, paid for the upgrade and found the transaction export issue corrected in the later software. I found another ticket which seems to share my concern about Quicken IRR and I now record effort and progress there, including my 2nd failed attempt to match the Quicken Annual Average Return (IRR) calculation

15JAN2018, evening: Good news. Support from the 2nd ticket cleared up what Quicken is doing. The final revision of a simple match is found here while a more comprehensive VBA-based method is found here.

N/A In-Progress Microsoft Edge on Windows 10, x64 Freezing and locking parts of taskbar

10DEC2018, Since upgrade to new computer I have started using Microsoft Edge more and find it freezes with some regularity. Symptoms: the window open and closes, but no browser tabs can be selected. The Windows start icon on the taskbar stops working. The "Cortana" search field on the taskbar does not function. When restart is request, the computer fails to shut down.

The issue seems related to browser cache not being well handled. CC cleaner may be helping some depending on the frequency of browser closure. The best Microsoft Answers forum post I have found on the issue to date is here, however I am still assessing utility of this information.