How to develop Ciro Santilli's website before the OurBigBook migration by 
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16The website moved from AsciiDoctor to OurBigBook Markup in 2020, making this section mostly useless. But hey, history!
The source code is located at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io
Build locally, watch for changes and rebuild automatically, and start a local server with:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io
cd cirosantilli.github.io
bundle install
npm install
./runSource:
./run.The website will be visible at: localhost:4000.
Tested on the latest Ubuntu.
Publish changes to GitHub Pages:
git add -u
git commit -m 'make yourself look sillier'
./publishSource:
./publish.GitHub forces us to use the master branch for the build output... so the actual source is in the branch
dev.Update the gems with:
bundle update
git add Gemfile.lock
git commit -m 'update gems'His website was originally written in markdown, however those were deprecated in favour of AsciiDoctor when Ciro saw the light, rationale shown at: markdown-style-guideuse-asciidoc
GitHub pages is chosen instead of a single page GitHub README.adoc for the following reasons:
- Ciro will want some unsupported extensions, notably mathematics, likely with KaTeX server side:
- github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor/pull/3338
- stackoverflow.com/questions/11256433/how-to-show-math-equations-in-general-githubs-markdownnot-githubs-blog
- g14n.info/2014/09/math-on-github-pages/
- stackoverflow.com/questions/11256433/how-to-show-math-equations-in-general-githubs-markdownnot-githubs-blog
- www.quora.com/How-can-I-combine-latex-and-markdown-in-GitHub
- when GitHub dies, Ciro's website URL still lives and retains the PageRank!
This is how Ciro Santilli evaluates himself on the Big Five personality traits:
- Openness to experience; very high, see: Ciro Santilli's self perceived creative personality
- Conscientiousness: low, Ciro is driven very strongly by internal passion rather than external expectations
- Extraversion: high online, e.g. Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, but much lower in the real world, no patience for something he's not Googled for in the last 5 seconds
- Agreeableness: high, see e.g. Ciro Santilli's self perceived compassionate personality. But Ciro has built some tolerance disagreement online for it online during Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, you've got to fight for what is right.
- Neuroticism: medium high, Ciro does have some anxiety. It does help get things done sometimes, but it also sometimes gets in the way.
Give students answers to all questions.
Explain in extreme detail how each result was reached.
And when they've had enough, then can read answers and understand while the problem is fresh in their minds.
If you don't give answers, no one will be able to use your online material without you being there to hold their hands.
Forbidding students from publishing their answers also goes against let students learn by teaching.
Ciro Santilli's hardware 2019-12 Bikehut bicycle repair stand by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16Maybe I'm an idiot and should have bought a much smaller rear wheel stand, only thought of that later, e.g.: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00G7ZO3GE or www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SD7NL44
Rope attached to rear rack + door knob: www.youtube.com/watch?v=teUsJt1WL1g
2021-08 bedroom battery out, 7.29V out of 9V duracell duralock. Buying pack of 12 Energizer nine-volt batteries. Measurement on new battery: 9.68V.
I was trying to learn about how some types of quantum computers work, when I came across this pearl:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Paul#Scientific_results Wolfgang Paul, 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics winner, referred to Wolfgang Pauli, 1945 winner, as his "imaginary part".
Price fixing would require every single company selling something to cooperate. And if they do, another person sick of them can start a new company and undercut them. Price fixing would also destroy any goodwill towards these companies and many customers wouldn't patronize them even if they lowered their prices again.
Yes, most of the very rich have acquired their wealth through unfair means, be it through unfair government action like intellectual property, subsidies, bailouts, low-interest loans, etc., or violence, historic or current. Regarding pure socialism/communism, a war to fully redistribute the riches of the wealthy will likely never happen, and cause great devastation if it did.
In a libertarian system, even if everyone started out equally wealthy, some would end up richer than others, as people of differening competency and diligence should. But libertarianism makes things fair even if some are very wealthy.
One who owns a lot of resources can rent or loan it to others without much additional cost to themselves, and make a percentage return. But by making them compete with other rich people, assuming resources are plenty, the ones that offers it for the lowest price, ie., makes the closest to zero profit, will get all the customers.
As for why even partial wealth redistribution isn't preferred in a libertarian society, note that the company that provides the customer with the most value for their money wins. The riches of a wealthy person are assets to be used to finance their business, even if turned into houses or jewelery, since they can be liquidated when needed. Taking these away punishes the best company, which is counter-productive. If a lot of it is turned into stuff like parties and luxury vacations, the company isn't being very efficient, and will likely be replaced quickly in a free market. If not, that means people who can afford it are willingly transferring their money by overpaying due to their affinity for the entity, in which case libertarians would argue they have every right to spend that fairly earned money.
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