History of the project Math Identities Proofs

I've been nerdy enough to have an obsession for well over a decade now - meth. I mean, math. I took 12 hours of calculus & analytic geometry in college, and diffyq. Then I taught myself linear algebra out of a textbook on my own sweet, silent, lonely nights. Linear algebra is cool as shit, because it teaches you all of the stuff that was left out along the way that definitely should have been taught right along side it. Every facet of the complex plain and what you can do with matrices, and it gives you a much better understanding of logic and problem solving in general. Easy, trust me. Math is the ONLY thing I'm exceptional with.

Why? The biggest thing, I had flash cards for every identity, even obscure ones. Going through at least two categories of it every night kept it fresh and me ahead of the game. I checked them often online out of doubts, and to my amazement I'd find wrong ones frequently, or at least with specific things or rules or generalizations left out. These were equalities I copied straight out of textbooks, so I'd get pissed off every time I found one. This happens because math classes and textbooks wash over details when giving you stuff to work with. I realized I needed proofs to verify what I'm memorizing is correct.

Organizing the flash cards were the key for the nascence of a new project. It took me a night to carefully consider how to order them. I had OpenOffice, but trying to get equations into it from the equation editor program they had separate was a nightmare - fuck that shit. Then I illegally installed MS Word and Excel 2007 without paying for it. Boom shaka boom. It changed my life. The equation editor on Word was fluid even back then, and I started keeping a budget in Excel. There's a statute of limitations stolen property, by the way. Plus, the computer is busted.

The next computer I got, I installed the same thing the same way, because I'm not paying for that madness. This is when I actually started going through the flash cards and putting the equalities in a document. At first, it was small, just a concept, with jump links in the word document. But as it started to grow, I started to feel accomplished. Well fuck, better get to work then. Of course it was all scattered and looked hit and miss, but I didn't care. Following, there were times where I would work on it a year on, years off. So it just sat there a lot, but not being lost.

I thought about it often enough, and wanted to get serious about sharing it, in case anybody else, you know, cared. So it was time to start solidifying it and publishing PDF by category. Dropbox sucked and inserted ads in the document itself. Google drive sucked and made it difficult to share. It was actually the driving force for me creating a profile on another myspace copycat so I could link to it. That was cool for a while I guess, but I needed a website or something.

Playback speed x4

So I made a Neocities profile. That was especially cool. It teaches you how to control html by hand a lot better than stylizing a profile. I was able to upload and share the PDF files directly onto it. In steps I finished through the derivatives section. Then I realized PDF was outdated.

So why not put it in html? The first html format I had was experimental with collapsible headers. It bombed because I never got the multilayered headers to work with onclick. But I did get a lot of content fucking done, and it is much easier to go back over and edit. I hand coded everything all over again using Katex this time. Then I decided it would be in the best interest to have separate pages than trying to get the headers to work. That part took some time too. Then I graduated to an actual domain which my guardian angel and I now share. That took some time too.

It remains far from finished, and only gets additions when I have the time, but I have a sense of pride in working on it. It continues to progress and before I die and rot, it will be finished with continuing improvements. It's actually already getting a surprising number of views in its unfinished state, and that also gives me a sense of fulfillment.

TL;DR summary of formats

Flash cards → .odt → .doc/x → .pdf → multilayered .html → multipage .html

Math Identities Proofs