RedTree Home

This site hosts projects and interests that my wife Christine and I, Craig wish to share with others. Everything on the site is free and non-commercial and is run out of our home in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Math Minion

Not being a fan of spreadsheets for anything but the simplest of tasks, I wrote Math Minion to make it easier to create and later follow math and engineering calculations. Over time it has evolved into something much more general that can be a powerful calculator, a sophisticated modelling tool, handle smallish databases, be a powerful text manipulator and more.

  • Since once upon a time I was a chemical engineer, Math Minion even has a fluid flash tool which implements the PR1978 equation of state. There is also a simple, but rigourous equilibrium stage column tool. You can view some processing examples using these tools here.

    • It is open source program and runs completely in your browser.

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    A Peng Robinson thermo package with flash and column tools allow for some simple process engineering.
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    Of course it can do math things like this surface plot.
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    It can also do small (say less than a million records) database chores, like this timesheet example.
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    Inputs and results can be arranged on the model view to easily create simple forms and reports.
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    Quite large strings or arrays of strings can also be processed. Here the function browser's javascript code is massaged into html for viewing in the HTML tool. The HTML tool can also be used for more elaborate forms and reports.
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    Of course there are math tools for things like integrating differential equations, such as in this classic predator/prey example, as well as optimizing, function solving and even a (seldom needed) iterator.
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    When things get more complicated, adding notes to the tools and grouping calculations into nested models can be helpful. Notes can also be displayed on the model view.
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    A simple natural gas processing example using the flash tool and the built in equation of state property package.
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    Chef Chris

    This is a recipe program Chris wrote for her own use. Everything runs in the browser without any communication with a server, beyond the initial download of files. It comes with her recipes included, but these probably won't appeal to most folks as we are vegetarians. However you can modify recipes or add your own and they will be stored in your browser's database or the whole database can be exported to a file and read in later.

    Photos

    These photos probably won't be of any interest except to family and friends, but we wanted to put them somewhere which wouldn't track everyone who visited. Currently they are mainly about trips we have taken in our campervan and the accompanying comments really make them more like blogs.

    Contact Us

    We would love to hear from you. Drop us a note using this form.

    Old Stuff

    This site has been around in one form or another since 1995 and so some stuff is listed below for archival purposes.

    • Fernie Alpine Resort
      My decidedly unofficial and now outdated take on the ski hill we used to live on.
    • Math Minion
      The web site for the discontinued app store version of Math Minion.
    • A Little Process Helper
      Unfortunately, Alph is no longer for sale.
    • Wilma and Wilbur
      My free disk indexing programs. Old and unsupported now, but some folks still find them useful.