vmpk by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
VMPK is a virtual device that replicates what you would get by connecting a physical MIDI keyboard to your computer. It is not a software synthesizer on its own. But it does connect to a working synthesizer by default (Sonivox EAS) which makes it produce sounds out-of-the box.
TODO: then I messed with my sound settings, and then it stopped working by default on the default "MIDI Connection" > "MIDI Out Driver" > "Network". But it still works on "SonivoxEAS".
Reasonable default key mappings to keyboard covering 2 octaves.
3 multiple simultaneous keys did not work (tested "ZQI"). This might just be a limitation of my keyboard however.
When viewed as matrices, it is the group of all matrices that preserve the dot product, i.e.:
This implies that it also preserves important geometric notions such as norm (intuitively: distance between two points) and angles.
This is perhaps the best "default definition".
Note that:
and for that to be true for all possible and then we must have:
i.e. the matrix inverse is equal to the transpose.
Conversely, if:
is true, then
These matricese are called the orthogonal matrices.
TODO is there any more intuitive way to think about this?
csvkit by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Lots of features, but slow because written in Python. A faster version may be csvtools. Also some annoyances like obtuse header handing and missing features like grep + cut in one go: csvgrep and select column in csvkit.
There seems to be no way without a pipe, you seem to need to reparse the columns, e.g. the tutorial at: csvkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorial/2_examining_the_data.html#csvgrep-find-the-data-you-need does:
csvcut -c county,item_name,total_cost data.csv | csvgrep -c county -m LANCASTER
csvtool by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
A compiled executable under /usr/bin/csvtool, has an Ubuntu 23.04 package: manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lunar/en/man1/csvtool.1.html
There seems to be no sane filtering mechanism however: stackoverflow.com/questions/46540752/using-csvtool-call-to-filter-csv-in-bash
csvtools by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
A fast version of a somewhat subset of csvkit, written in C.
Build failed with undefined reference to pcre_config on Ubuntu 23.04: github.com/DavyLandman/csvtools/issues/18
Unfortunately it is lacking some basic options, like optional header + selecting column by index on csvgrep (though csvcut has it). The project seems kind of dead.
Also unclear if it allows to filter + print only selected columns.
Lie algebra of by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
We can reach it by taking the rotations in three directions, e.g. a rotation around the z axis:
then we derive and evaluate at 0:
therefore represents the infinitesimal rotation.
Note that the exponential map reverses this and gives a finite rotation around the Z axis back from the infinitesimal generator :
Repeating the same process for the other directions gives:
We have now found 3 linearly independent elements of the Lie algebra, and since has dimension 3, we are done.
JSON trailing comma by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The fact that you cannot have trailing commans in lists or dicts as in 3, at:
{
  "asdf": [
    1,
    2,
    3,
  ]
}
is one of the most infuriating design choices of all time!!!
jq by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Yet another awk-like domain-specific language to do things from the CLI in a ridiculously short humber of character? Oh yes.
echo '[{"a": 1, "b": 2}, {"b": 3}]' | jq '.[] | select(.a) | .a'
Output:
1
and no empty lines as desired.

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