2024-04: got two backpacks "for free" with the Lenovo reward points from buying the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen4 amd, not bad, that was already cheap and now I got some extra swag:The sport backpack has a fatal flaw: no strap to hold laptop in place, wo it just tumbles back and forth as you walk.
Neither of them have very good padding below the laptop, but at least the Elite one has a slightly elevated inner bag which woudl likely help a lot in case of a drop.
Made four blisters on back of foot on first two days after walking a few hours on them, but then put on some tape on foot, and stopped hurting after that, so the shoe broke quickly.
Amazing shoes! Wore them to their destruction.
Shoestring length: 1.185m
Replaced with after bicycle ate it: 1.0m, also worked but at limit.
Size: EUR 45.
2020-12: large-ish chicken, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJeUb8ToRIw worked very well. Just that after 1 hour it was slightly uncooked in the middle, and 10 minutes later, the top skin burnt a little bit. So next time, use some aluminium foil.
All with olive oil and salt mixed up before roasting.
2021-04-05 180C:
  • chestnuts: 1.5x 200g: 3x 6min, this was a bit too much
  • hazelnuts: 1.5x 200g: 3x 6min, seemed fine
  • pecans: 4.5x 200g bags: 5x 6 min, a bit uneven roast because too much on tray
2021-02-06 180C:
  • almonds: 2x 200g: 3x 6min, slighted burnt taste
  • Brazil nuts: 2x 300g: 3x 6min + 3min
  • chestnuts: 1x 400g: 3x 6min, perfect
  • pecans: 3x 200g bags (previously had done just 2 bags at a time): 3x 6 min + 2x 3min, perfect
2021-01-04:
  • almonds: 190C, 8 min, they started burning on top! What? I put olive oil abundantly this time. 170C 5 min
  • chestnuts: 180C, 6 min, stir, 6 min, stir, 4 min, they became very good, dark brown
  • pecans: 180C, 6 min, stir, 6 min, stir, 3 min while preparing chestnuts, very good
2020-11-21:
  • mixed nuts: 180C, 10 minutes, did not reach the point. Then 7 more minutes on 190C: pecans completely burned out
  • almonds: 190C, about 25 minutes, opened several times, in the end had a slight burnt taste, but did not get black, just darker brown. Not as crispy as the ones we buy roasted, but pretty good
  • pecans: 180C, 13 minutes, opened 3 times to stir, became great
Sponsor updates by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Previously, updates were being done with more focus to sponsors in the format of the child sections to this section. That format is now retired in favor of the more direct Section "Updates" format.
Video 1.
OurBigBook Web error reporting starting to look amazing.
Source.
Ciro's Edict #8 by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This month included several exciting extremelly user visible web developments.
I can't help to feel how the speed of developments reflects my relative mastery of the stack, I'm very happy about how it went.
This is a major feature: we have now started to inject the following buttons next to every single pre-rendered header:
  • "Like"
  • "By Other On The Same Topic"
  • "Discussions", i.e. the issue tracker for the header
  • "Create my own version" or "View my version of the page" or "Edit" button depending on wether the user can edit or already has a version of the article or not
This crucial feature makes it clear to every new user that every single header has its own separate metadata, which is a crucial idea of the website.
Figure 1.
Screenshot showing metadata next to each header
. The page is: ourbigbook.com/donald-trump/chemistry. Note how even the subheaders "Chemical element" and "Hydrogen" show the metadata.
Limited the number of articles, and the size of article bodies. This, together with the reCAPTCHA setup from Email verification and reCAPTCHA signup protection should prevent the most basic types of denial-of-service attacks by filling up our database.
The limits can be increased by admin users from the web UI, and will be done generously when it is evident that it is not a DoS attack. Admin users are also a recently added feature.
Editor. As last time. And the one before. But now it is for real.
I guess ended up doing all the "how things should look like" features because they clarify what the website is supposed to do, and I already have my own content to bring it alive via ourbigbook --web upload.
But now I honestly feel that all the major elements of "how things should look like" have fallen into place.
And yeah, nobody else is never going to contribute as things are! WYSIWYG is a must.
I was really impressed by Trillium Notes. I should have checked it long ago. The UI is amazing, and being all Js-based, could potentially be reused for our purposes. The project itself is a single-person/full trust notetaking only for now however, so not a direct replacement to OurBigBook.
Added this basic but fundamental protection layer to the website.
The email setup will of course be reused when notifications are eventually implemented.
Currently using SendGrid as the email provider. Very easy to setup, and has a free plan.
Adding reCAPTCHA immediately after email is a must otherwise an attacker could send infinitely many emails to random addresses, which would lead to the domain being marked as spam. I was pleasantly surprised about how easy the integration ended up being.

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!
We have two killer features:
  1. 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-calculus
    Articles 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/derivative
  2. 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.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    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.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
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