Random

How to center text vertically without using padding in CSS3

I was having a lot of problems with centering text vertically without using padding. The issue is that when I used padding it displayed differently for different size text and text lines. In my case I had child and parent div elements displaying prices of items. The parent simply displayed a circle border.

I’ve tried many different options but settled on this one:

#parent {display: table;}

#child { display: table-cell; vertical-align: middle; }

It might not work in old versions of IE. But who cares really?

JSON Safari Invalid Date Range Error

I ran into a strange problem with JSON stringify throwing an invalid date range error on Safari. Everything worked fine in Firefox and Chrome, just not in Safari. The issue is that Safari can’t read the default formatting set by the Date constructor.

The solution was to use the moment.js library : http://momentjs.com

It allows you to create a date variable using moment().format();

Example:

var someDate = new Date();

var newMoment = new moment(someDate).format();

You can then pass this newMoment variable to JSON without complaints. Hope this works for you too.

Jimmy John’s Bread Wasting Ways

Ok this one is not related to software or experience but is just a plain bad design and a horrible waste of resources. Jimmy John’s has been making sandwiches since 1983 at over 2000 locations and it’s safe to say they are stuck in their ways. They still prepare their sandwiches by scooping out the bread in the middle and throwing it in the trash. Yes, their sandwich making algorithm includes throwing part of the sandwich in the trash.

Screen Shot 2015-07-15 at 2.48.09 PM

How many subs were hollowed out to date? Estimate math:

2000 locations * 100 subs a day (guesstimate) * 365 days * 30 yrs

= 2 190 000 000 subs

We can’t know how many subs they sell on average day but I suspect it’s higher than 100.

Now this is a lot different than throwing away old food that wasn’t purchased. This is throwing away food every time someone makes a purchase! Wow.

This scooped out leftover bread could be used for things like making croutons for soups or salads, salted bread chips or pretzels. But instead it’s thrown in the trash by design.

The other solution would have been to bake the bread with a mold so it caves in the middle right out of the oven. Either way, please stop.

ESPN Video Player Ads Suck

Unlike YouTube, when you’re on ESPN it doesn’t matter how many ads you’ve seen in a row, you always have to watch an entire ad for each short video. And even if you click on a video that is less than a minute long you’ll still get an ad that is sometimes just as long as the video you’re trying to see. All in all you end up spending as much time watching ads as you do sportcenter.

Screen Shot 2015-07-14 at 2.10.07 AM Screen Shot 2015-07-14 at 2.07.59 AMThis seems more like a software bug than a money move, but it’s been around forever so I’m leaning towards the latter. Just fix it.