Casting Out Nines has officially moved

A while back I announced that this blog was being folded into the Chronicle of Higher Education Blog Network. I’m pleased to announce that the move has officially taken place. You can check out Casting Out Nines v. 2.0 (or whatever version I’m up to) at

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/

I want to give the folks at the Chronicle a lot of kudos for the excellent visual design work they’ve done on the new site. It’s minimalist — which I like — but also has some very nice stylistic touches. I hope the content will match the quality of the look.

This post will be the last one made to this WordPress.com site. All future posts will be made at the new place. All the old content that is here at WordPress.com has been (as far as I know) successfully ported to the new site, with the exception of comments that have been made in the last week. I’ll be keeping this WordPress.com site open for archival purposes because it’s no cost to me. But I will probably close comments on all the posts at some point to make sure nobody’s comments end up getting “lost” on this site.

Just a few notes to close things out here:

• The Chronicle folks are working on having the URL for the WordPress.com site just redirect to the new site, but it turns out there are some issues with that. It’s probably best if you just change the URL in your bookmarks to the new one.
• Likewise, if you’re reading this blog via RSS, you probably need to change your subscription link. The new link is http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/feed/ for posts and http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/comments/feed/ for comments.
• There does not appear to be a way to subscribe to CO9’s by email at the new site. There are 33 of you who subscribe this way, and I appreciate that! If I were you, I’d switch to using an RSS reader — they are free and very easy to use.
• Finally, I want to give a big shout out to WordPress.com. I switched from a self-hosted WordPress site to WP.com back in 2007 after a maddening series of bandwidth issues that happened while I was on the road. I thought at the time that I was downgrading, but actually WP.com has been a fantastic service that’s only gotten better over time. Anybody considering a blog would do well to check this platform out to see what they have to offer.

See you on the other side!

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Thank you, and updates

First of all, you may have noticed I am again posting after a lengthy hiatus following the birth of our third child. He’s 5 weeks old now, and we are beginning to return to some kind of routine in our lives that includes him. For the first month, as all parents know, you’re basically in survival mode, catching sleep when you can and trying to get your work done elsewhere. He’s nowhere close to sleeping through the night but at least we’re managing better than we were, and I’m on top of things enough at work that I have the time now to write some posts and at least schedule them for future posting, so I have the appearance of posting once a day. Anyhow, I just wanted to say thanks for all your well-wishes and prayers and for your continued reading of my little slice of the interwebs.

Also, you’ve probably noticed some cosmetic changes here. I’ve changed themes to the new “Vanguard” theme and resurrected the header I used to use some years ago. I’ve removed some sidebar elements that weren’t functional, and I added a link to my Twitter page, which tends to be quite active both day and night (as I often am up in the middle of the night with a baby in my left arm and Twittering with my iPod using my right arm). Also, check out the comments — comments to posts can now be threaded up to three levels deep; just use the “Reply” link to start a comment discussion thread.

A math-blogging revelation

I’ve just made a major discovery: WordPress.com blogs, like this one, allow you to typeset LaTeX directly in your blog posts. For example:

You can put in LaTeX in the comment fields, too. Here’s the FAQ entry that explains it all.  I’m appreciating my switch to WordPress.com more and more each day.

I found this fact out in a comment left by  Terence Tao on the blog of Timothy Gowers, both of whom are not only Fields Medal-winning mathematicians but also WordPress.com bloggers.