Frequently asked questions.
°   What does "Nun.Me.Shu" mean?
°   Sometimes a page is completely blank. What's up?
°   Sometimes a page has header information displayed on the top. What's up?
°   Sometimes a page looks like no stylesheet was applied. What's up?
°   Sometimes I get javascript errors. Don't you test your site?
°   Why do the pages have these weird font sizes?
°   Why did the first page take a long time to load?
°   Some pages have this floating index, but when I look at the XML source of such a page I do not see any indication of it?
°   How can I contact you?
°   Who handles the order processing and product delivery in your store?
°   Why do bicycle riders have this piece of chamois in their pants?


Nun.Me.Shu is a concatenation of three old Sumerian/Akkadian words:

	NUN: "he who can decipher"
	ME: "scientific knowledge" (actually: "tablet-like object on which scientific data are inscribed")
	SHU: "supreme, high"

The Nun.Me.Shu logo shows the Akkadian cuneiform signs for each of the words. The background of this page shows a faint image of a Sumerian clay tablet.
The Sumerian words and their translation are derived from the books of Zecharia Sitchin. The cuneiform signs are from an introduction to the Akkadian language by John Heise.


I'm not sure what the issue is here (it seems to be a Java memory problem but I haven't tested that hypothesis). Hit the refresh button of your browser (once or twice), and the page should display correctly.


I'm not sure what the issue is here either (Could be an Apache, or a Tomcat or a Cocoon problem - I haven't made an effort yet to figure this out). Hit the refresh button of your browser (once or twice), and the page should display correctly.


I'm not sure what the issue is here either (sigh). When this appears it is often times combined with the previous mentioned problem. Hit the refresh button of your browser (once or twice), and the page should display correctly.


Somehow this problem is related with the previous two. Hitting the refresh button of your browser doesn't generaly solve the problem because the (external) javascript file gets cached in your browser. I guess I might conclude that the host environment of my web site is not optimal:(.


You must be using a browser that does not fully conform to the www standards. This site is build according to the XML1.0, XSL1.0, HTML4.0 and CSS1.0 standards (admittedly with one or two MS-specific CSS additions -like a.hover because it's such a nice and functional effect-, but they will simply be ignored by non-MS browsers). If your browser does not conform to these standards (like NS4.x for instance) you might see incorrect font sizes or other anomalies.


Occasionaly you might arrive at this site when the server has just been restarted. (Since I share the host machine with a number of other -mostly experimental- sites, this might happen more often than I would like). Each time the server is restarted, Cocoon2 has to recompile its sitemap, configuration files and my stylesheets. That usually takes a few seconds. Each subsequent page should be served quicker. If not, then there is probably some congestion on the Internet. In general, performance is as follows:

Serving page from Cocoon2 cache:	few milliseconds
Rendering page by Cocoon2:	few tens of milliseconds for simple pages, to few seconds for pages that implement web services
Cocoon2 initialization:	several seconds

That is one of the examples of the beauty of XML/XSL, the strict separation between content and layout/styling, and my Zen-like approach to web development. The XML source only contains pure content. The floating index is defined in the stylesheet, and is automagically generated whenever an <indexedlist> element is found in the XML. (Additional conditions are that the browser must have JavaScript enabled, and the browser width must conform to certain minimal width requirements with respect to the effective web page width.)


Please use my contact form.


Products in the online store are offered in association with amazon.com. Amazon handles the order processing and shipping of products you buy. Any questions about your order should be directed to Amazon. Nun.Me.Shu assumes no responsibility about information provided by amazon.com.


Hmm yeah, I have often wondered this myself. It doesn't make sense from a "let's make a bicycle as light as possible and thus reduce the saddle to a bare minimum" point of view, because as soon as a bicycle rider steps on his bicycle, all that counts is their combined weight. So why not pad the saddle of a bicycle with some nice comfy foam and leave it out of the rider's pants??