Enter through the narrow gate Updated 2025-07-16
Gospel of Matthew 7:13:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
Ciro Santilli really likes this one, because he feels that where many people go, it is useless to go again. It is much better to explore that which few can do, but which many will need.
Also known as being hipster.
LMMS Updated 2025-07-16
Very easy to use and pretty powerful MIDI creator!!!
One of the rare audio applications actually works with PulseAudio on Ubuntu 20.04 out-of-the-box, so you don't have to turn off every other audio application!!!
Has lot's of plugins built-in just working out of the box, e.g. ZynAddSubFX out-of-the-box without doing a gazillion complex setup connections.
Most plugins are just simple toys however, ZynAddSubFX is the only super powerful one. The others are more LMMS integrate however, and seem to use a more dedicated LMMS GUI style.
If you open vmpk, you can then right click on a piano track, and go MIDI, Input and it just shows up there, and it does produce sound as shown at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpeP2th08ak
TODO: what about recording the input MIDI? Yes, there is a record button on the piano roll!
Heinrich Hertz's main initial experiment used a spark-gap transmitter. It is not something that transmits recorded sounds like voice: it only transmits noisy beeps. And as such was used for wireless telegraphy.
Video 1.
Hertz Experiment on Electromagnetic Waves by Ludic Science (2015)
Source. Simplified recreation with cheap modern equipment. Uses as transmitter power source both:and the signal is observed on the receiver with a neon lamp
Video 2.
Hertz and Radio waves Explained by PhysicsHigh (2016)
Source. Simple schematics showing the basics of the experiments. No choice of components rationale.
MacOS Updated 2025-07-16
Nice looking and expensive operating system by Apple. Ciro Santilli believes that:
MongoDB-based.
So once you install MongoDB, run with:
MONGODB_FEATHERS_REALWORLD=mongodb://localhost:27017/mydb npm start
Tests can be run with:
MONGODB_FEATHERS_REALWORLD=mongodb://localhost:27017/mydb npm run test
but there were 10 failures and 55 passes: github.com/randyscotsmithey/feathers-realworld-example-app/issues/3
Magnetic dipole Updated 2025-07-16
A tiny idealized magnet! It is a very good model if you have a small strong magnet interacting with objects that are far away, notably other magnetic dipoles or a constant magnetic field.
The cool thing about this model is that we have simple explicit formulas for the magnetic field it produces, and for how this little magnet is affected by a magnetic field or by another magnetic dipole.
This is the perfect model for electron spin, but it can also be representative of macroscopic systems in the right circumstances.
The intuition for the name is likely that "dipole" means "both poles are on the same spot".
Figure 1.
Different macroscopic magnets can be approximated by a magnetic dipole when shrunk seen from far away
. Source.
Making the Cisco connection Updated 2025-07-16
Nothing phenomenally new on the early days to add on top of Video "Nerds 2.0.1 excerpt about Cisco (1998)", but a few new good points:
Manhattan Project Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Historic, unique Manhattan Project footage from Los Alamos by Los Alamos National Lab
. Source.
Mostly the daily life part of things, but very good, includes subtitles explaining the people and places shown.
Marked with identifier "LA-UR 11-4449".
Raspberry Pi Pico Updated 2025-07-27
Some key specs:
Some generic Micropython examples most of which work on this board can be found at: Section "MicroPython example".
Pico W specific examples are under: rpi-pico-w/upython.
The examples can be run as described at Program Raspberry Pi Pico W with MicroPython.
Raspberry Pi Pico W UART Updated 2025-07-16
You can connect form an Ubuntu 22.04 host as:
screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200
When in screen, you can Ctrl + C to kill main.py, and then execution stops and you are left in a Python shell. From there:
but be aware of: Raspberry Pi Pico W freezes a few seconds after after screen disconnects from UART.
Facebook Updated 2025-07-16
Quantum electrodynamics Updated 2025-07-16
Theory that describes electrons and photons really well, and as Feynman puts it "accounts very precisely for all physical phenomena we have ever observed, except for gravity and nuclear physics" ("including the laughter of the crowd" ;-)).
Learning it is one of Ciro Santilli's main intellectual fetishes.
While Ciro acknowledges that QED is intrinsically challenging due to the wide range or requirements (quantum mechanics, special relativity and electromagnetism), Ciro feels that there is a glaring gap in this moneyless market for a learning material that follows the Middle Way as mentioned at: the missing link between basic and advanced. Richard Feynman Quantum Electrodynamics Lecture at University of Auckland (1979) is one of the best attempts so far, but it falls a bit too close to the superficial side of things, if only Feynman hadn't assumed that the audience doesn't know any mathematics...
The funny thing is that when Ciro Santilli's mother retired, learning it (or as she put it: "how photons and electrons interact") was also one of her retirement plans. She is a pharmacist by training, and doesn't know much mathematics, and her English was somewhat limited. Oh, she also wanted to learn how photosynthesis works (possibly not fully understood by science as that time, 2020). Ambitious old lady!!!
Combines special relativity with more classical quantum mechanics, but further generalizing the Dirac equation, which also does that: Dirac equation vs quantum electrodynamics. The name "relativistic" likely doesn't need to appear on the title of QED because Maxwell's equations require special relativity, so just having "electro-" in the title is enough.
Before QED, the most advanced theory was that of the Dirac equation, which was already relativistic but TODO what was missing there exactly?
As summarized at: youtube.com/watch?v=_AZdvtf6hPU?t=305 Quantum Field Theory lecture at the African Summer Theory Institute 1 of 4 by Anthony Zee (2004):
That video also mentions the interesting idea that:Therefore, for small timescales, energy can vary a lot. But mass is equivalent to energy. Therefore, for small time scale, particles can appear and disappear wildly.
QED is the first quantum field theory fully developed. That framework was later extended to also include the weak interaction and strong interaction. As a result, it is perhaps easier to just Google for "Quantum Field Theory" if you want to learn QED, since QFT is more general and has more resources available generally.
Like in more general quantum field theory, there is on field for each particle type. In quantum field theory, there are only two fields to worry about:
Video 1.
Lecture 01 | Overview of Quantum Field Theory by Markus Luty (2013)
Source. This takes quite a direct approach, one cool thing he says is how we have to be careful with adding special relativity to the Schrödinger equation to avoid faster-than-light information.

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