And do 5 big queries instead of hundreds of smaller ones.
For example, a README.ciro document that references another document saying:needs to fetch "speed-of-light" from the ID database (previously populated e.g. by preparsing light.ciro:to decide that it should display as "Speed of light" (the title rather than the ID).
The \x[speed-of-light] is fast.= Light
== Speed of lightPreviously, I was doing a separate fetch for each
\x[] as they were needed, leading to hundreds of them at different times.Now I refactored things so that I do very few database queries, but large ones that fetch everything during parsing. And then at render time they are all ready in cache.
This will be fundamental for the live preview on the browser, where the roundtrip to server would make it impossible
Ciro's Edict #4 The table of contents shows across different files via
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
\Include by E.g.:
README.cironot-readme.cirothe table of contents for
= My website
== h2
\Include[not-readme]= Not readme
== Not readme h2index.html also contains the headers for not-readme.ciro producing:This feature means that you can split large input files if rendering starts to slow you down, and things will still render exactly the same, with the larger table of contents.
This will be especially important for the website because initially I want users to be able to edit one header at a time, and join all headers with
\Include. But I still want the ToC to show those children.This was a bit hard because it required doing RECURSIVE SQL queries, something I hadn't done before: stackoverflow.com/questions/192220/what-is-the-most-efficient-elegant-way-to-parse-a-flat-table-into-a-tree/192462#192462 + of course the usual refactor a bunch of stuff and fix tests until you go mad.
Ciro's Edict #4 Further improvements to the website's base technology by
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
github.com/cirosantilli/node-express-sequelize-nextjs-realworld-example-app contains the same baseline tech as OurBigBook, and I have been use to quickly test/benchmark new concepts for the website base.
I'm almost proud about that project, as a reasonable template for a Next.js project. It is not perfect, notably see issues on the issue tracker, but it it quite reasonable.
The side effects of ambitious goals are often the most valuable thing achieved once again? I to actually make the project be more important thatn the side effects this time, but we'll see.
Since the last update, I've made some major improvements to the baseline tech of the website, which I'll move little by little into OurBigBook. Some of the improvements actually started in OurBigBook.com. The improvements were:
- got a satisfactorily comprehensive linting working at: this commit. Nothing is easy, not even that! Part of the wisdom extracted to: stackoverflow.com/questions/58233482/next-js-setting-up-eslint-for-nextjs/70519682#70519682.
- fully rationalized directory structure to avoid nasty errors that show up in Next.js when accidentally requiring backend stuff on the client. Commit. A detailed explanation of this was extracted to: stackoverflow.com/questions/64926174/module-not-found-cant-resolve-fs-in-next-js-application/70363153#70363153.
- create an extremely clean and rationalized way to do API tests from a simple
npm test. These now actually start a clean server, and make full HTTP requests to that server. Commit. Wisdom extracted to: stackoverflow.com/questions/63762896/whats-the-best-way-to-test-express-js-api/70479940#70479940. - greatly reduce the number of SQL queries, fully understood every problem
- more intelligently using JOINs where I have managed to get Sequelize to do what I fucking want. This also led to several sequelize Stack Overflow answers as usual: stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=user%3a895245%20%5bsequelize%5dEverything that I didn't manage to do because of crappy sequelize is documented at: github.com/cirosantilli/node-express-sequelize-nextjs-realworld-example-app/issues/5
- better understanding Next.js/React/useSWR do avoid doing double API queries
Ciro's Edict #4 Enable reference features into ourbigbook.com by
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Every invertible matrix can be written as:where:Note therefore that this decomposition is unique up to swapping the order of eigenvectors. We could fix a canonical form by sorting eigenvectors from smallest to largest in the case of a real number.
- is a diagonal matrix containing the eigenvalues of
- columns of are eigenvectors of
Intuitively, Note that this is just the change of basis formula, and so:
- changes basis to align to the eigenvectors
- multiplies eigenvectors simply by eigenvalues
- changes back to the original basis
I've finally had enough of Nvidia breaking my Ubuntu 21.10 suspend, so I investigated some more and found a workaround on the NVIDIA forums: stackoverflow.com/questions/58233482/next-js-setting-up-eslint-for-nextjs/70519682#70519682.
Thanks enormously to heroic user humblebee, and once again, Nvidia, fuck you.
At github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/738 a user made a comment about gang raping my mother (more like country-raping).
As mentioned at github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/739, ally Martin then reported the issue, and GitHub took down the wumao's account for a while using their undocumented shadowban feature, until the wumao edited the issue.
Based on the discussion with Martin, I then recommended at github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/blob/41b4741a4e6553f44f5f1ef85cf63c55eb7b8277/CONTRIBUTING.md that we do not report such issues, and that GitHub do not delete such accounts, with rationale explained on the CONTRIBUTING.
Some further comments at: Section "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead".
The Kennelly–Heaviside layer, also known as the E layer of the ionosphere, is a region in the Earth's upper atmosphere that is characterized by a high concentration of ionized particles. This layer is located approximately 30 to 100 kilometers (18 to 62 miles) above the Earth's surface and plays a significant role in radio wave propagation.
Goes along: if you could control your life multiple times to be perfect, you would eventually get tired of paradise, and you would go further and further into creating uncertain worlds with some suffering, until you would reach the current real world.
Very similar to The Matrix (1999) when Agent Smith talks about the failed Paradise Matrix shown at www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qs3GlNZMhY:
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your "perfect world". But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.
Mnemonic is as follows: consider we have an initial basis . Now, we define the new basis in terms of the old basis, e.g.:which can be written in matrix form as:and so if we set:we have:
The usual question then is: given a vector in the new basis, how do we represent it in the old basis?
That is the matrix inverse.
Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) is a radio communication technique that uses high-frequency (HF) radio waves to establish communication over relatively short distances, typically up to about 600 kilometers (373 miles). The technique involves transmitting radio signals at a near-vertical angle, which allows the signals to be reflected off the ionosphere back towards the Earth's surface, effectively facilitating local communication.
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite, which is designed for relaying datagrams (packets of data) across networks. Here are some key points about IPv4: 1. **Addressing**: IPv4 uses a 32-bit addressing scheme, which allows for approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses (2^32).
"Iranian biophysicists" refers to scientists from Iran who specialize in the field of biophysics, which is the study of biological processes through the principles and methods of physics. Biophysicists often explore the molecular mechanisms of biological systems, studying aspects such as the structure and function of proteins, nucleic acids, and cellular processes.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer and a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq in the late 1990s. He is known for his controversial views on various military and geopolitical issues, particularly concerning Iraq and the possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was an Iranian physicist known for his work in the fields of particle physics and nuclear science. He was a professor at the University of Tehran and had been involved in various research projects. Tragically, he became widely known after he was assassinated in January 2010, an act that many believe was politically motivated and linked to his involvement in Iran's nuclear program. His death sparked international attention and raised concerns over the safety of scientists in politically sensitive environments.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. - Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact





