Sugar by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
We define a "sugar" as either of:because these are small carbohydrates, and they taste sweet to humans.
Sun Erniang by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Erniang is way more popular than her ranking in the 108 Stars of Destiny.
This is of course in part because she is one of the only 3 108 Stars of Destiny women. But her story about making human mantou is particularly fun!
She's also quite seductive, which gives directors a good opportunity for a bit of fan service. See e.g. kknews.cc/history/6epp2pp.html for a still from The Water Margin showing some good cleavage for example.
Sun Microsystems by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Although Ciro Santilli is a bit past their era, there's an aura of technical excellence about those people. It just seems that they sucked at business. Those open source hippies. Erm, wait.
Bibliography:
Video 1.
The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems by Asianometry (2022)
Source. One of the main inspirations for the creation of their workstations were CAD applications.
SuperCollider by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
domain-specific language unfortunately, but at least it's on GitHub, looks promising.
How to play scores and save them to files is discussed at: doc.sccode.org/Guides/Non-Realtime-Synthesis.html
Sample composition with custom synths + notes: sccode.org/1-5cl
leanpub.com/ScoringSound looks like a decent tutorial, it is basically the Csound FLOSS manual for SuperCollider.
Non-linearity is needed otherwise the input energy would just make the state go to higher and higher energy levels, e.g. from 1 to 2. But we only want to use levels 0 and 1.
The way this is modelled in by starting from a pure LC circuit, which is an harmonic oscillator, see also quantum LC circuit, and then replacing the linear inductor with a SQUID device, e.g. mentioned at: youtu.be/eZJjQGu85Ps?t=1655 Video "Superconducting Qubits I Part 1 by Zlatko Minev (2020)".
However superconducting qubits have a limit on how precise their parameters can be set based on how well we can fabricate devices. This may require per-device characterisation.
Superconductivity by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Experiments:
Video 1.
20. Fermi gases, BEC-BCS crossover by Wolfgang Ketterle (2014)
Source. Part of the "Atomic and Optical Physics" series, uploaded by MIT OpenCourseWare.
Actually goes into the equations.
Notably, youtu.be/O_zjGYvP4Ps?t=3278 describes extremely briefly an experimental setup that more directly observes pair condensation.
Video 2.
Superconductivity and Quantum Mechanics at the Macro-Scale - 1 of 2 by Steven Kivelson (2016)
Source. For the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. Gives a reasonable basis overview, but does not go into the meat of BCS it at the end.
Video 3. . Source. Lacking as usual, but this one is particularly good as the author used to work on the area as he mentions in the video.
Media:
Transition into superconductivity can be seen as a phase transition, which happens to be a second-order phase transition.
We know that superfluidity happens more easily in bosons, and so electrons joins in Cooper pairs to form bosons, making a superfluid of Cooper pairs!
Isn't that awesome!
Superfluidity by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Alfred Leitner - Liquid Helium II the Superfluid by Alfred Leitner (1963)
Source. Original source: www.alfredleitner.com.
Video 2.
Ben Miller experiments with superfluid helium by BBC (2011)
Source. Just quickly shows the superfluid helium climbing out o the cup, no detailed setup. With professor Robert Taylor from the University of Oxford.
Super Mario 64 by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
And as a result, adult Ciro really enjoys tool-assisted speedruns of the game.
OMG, both of those just fucking work on Ubuntu 20.04 with README instructions, it is unbelievable, those people don't have lives. And it builds the ROM byte by byte equal from source!
There are a few different versions:
Tested with the USA ROM at sha1sum 9bef1128717f958171a4afac3ed78ee2bb4e86ce (you need a ROM to extract assets, which the project automates), which is also documented in the project itself: github.com/sm64-port/sm64-port/blob/6b47859f757a40096fedd6237f2bc3573d0bc2a4/sm64.us.sha1. Disclaimer: Ciro Santilli owns a copy of Super Mario 64.
The only dependency missing from Ubuntu packages is the IRIX QEMU user mode which they need for their tooling. The project also has a QEMU fork for that, and provide a working deb.
From this project it was also noticed that certain ROM releases were not compiled with optimizations enabled, presumably because as a release title the compiler had optimization bugs! www.resetera.com/threads/so-apparently-the-ntsc-build-of-mario-64-didnt-use-any-compiler-optimizations.166277/ But now they do have a working compiler, and by turning that switch FPS increases in certain levels!!!
It is good to know that this game will "never die".
Some quick stupid patches:
  • jump really high:
    diff --git a/src/game/mario.c b/src/game/mario.c
    index 5b103fa..83c9f40 100644
    --- a/src/game/mario.c
    +++ b/src/game/mario.c
    @@ -826,7 +826,7 @@ static u32 set_mario_action_airborne(struct MarioState *m, u32 action, u32 actio
             case ACT_JUMP:
             case ACT_HOLD_JUMP:
                 m->marioObj->header.gfx.unk38.animID = -1;
    -            set_mario_y_vel_based_on_fspeed(m, 42.0f, 0.25f);
    +            set_mario_y_vel_based_on_fspeed(m, 200.0f, 0.25f);
                 m->forwardVel *= 0.8f;
                 break;
Interesting entry points:
  • src/game/game_init.c
TODO: enable the level select debug feature! tcrf.net/Super_Mario_64_(Nintendo_64)/Debug_Content#Classic_Debug_Display They actually shipped quite a few debug features into the retail game, and they have been reversed too. I tried this but it didn't work (or I don't know how to enable the level select menu):
diff --git a/src/game/main.c b/src/game/main.c
index 9e53e50..b7443a8 100644
--- a/src/game/main.c
+++ b/src/game/main.c
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ s8 sAudioEnabled = 1;
 u32 sNumVblanks = 0;
 s8 gResetTimer = 0;
 s8 D_8032C648 = 0;
-s8 gDebugLevelSelect = 0;
+s8 gDebugLevelSelect = 1;
 s8 D_8032C650 = 0;

 s8 gShowProfiler = FALSE;
The enhancements/ folder contains a few sample patches.
Figure 1.
Screenshot of mupen64Plus running on Ubuntu 20.04 emulating Super Mario 64 with the title screen hacked by Ciro Santilli based on the Super Mario 64 reverse engineering project
. The title was on a string, so the hack was trivial! The patch used was:
diff --git a/include/text_strings.h.in b/include/text_strings.h.in
index 749179b..626f87e 100644
--- a/include/text_strings.h.in
+++ b/include/text_strings.h.in
@@ -131,7 +131,7 @@
  */
 // Main Screens
 #define TEXT_MARIO _("MARIO") // View Score Menu
-#define TEXT_SELECT_FILE _("SELECT FILE")
+#define TEXT_SELECT_FILE _("HACKED BY CIRO")
 #define TEXT_CHECK_FILE _("CHECK FILE")
 #define TEXT_COPY_FILE _("COPY FILE")
 #define TEXT_ERASE_FILE _("ERASE FILE")
Some tutorials of hacking it:
Video 1.
FIXING the ENTIRE SM64 Source Code by Kaze Emanuar (2022)
Source. Now that we have the source, modders like this are going nuts.
SuperTuxKart by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
It is a shame, but this game just doesn't feel good. The controls are just not as snappy as Mario Kart 64, the levels are too wide which limits player interaction, and the weapons feel clumsy weak and unexciting. These are all aspects that the closed source smashkarts.io gets pretty well.

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