Chloe Wojin Updated 2025-07-16
The horrors of Sequelize Updated 2025-07-16
Sequelize example Updated 2025-07-16
To run examples on a specific database:
All examples can be tested on all databases with:
cd sequelize
./test
Overview of the examples:
Seemed to just work at 68bbadfd77f679f0df0fcd0de5bceb9c37b1144a Ubuntu 20.10, was forked from parent project in 2018.
Varun-Hegde/Conduit_NodeJS Updated 2025-07-16
Very raw. Easy to understand. Relatively well organiezd. But also very buggy at 3ab8d9f849a1cdf2985a8d123b1893f0fd4e79ab: github.com/Varun-Hegde/Conduit_NodeJS/issues/3, I just can't trust it. There must be several helper libraries that would greatly DRY up the repetitive CRUD. Ciro hates the style :-) 4 space indents, no space after commas, no semicolon. Not based on github.com/gothinkster/node-express-realworld-example-app which is essentially one of the reference implementations, so from scratch apparently, which is a bad sign.
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.
Then there are two appraoches:
Program Raspberry Pi Pico W with C Updated 2025-07-26
Ubuntu 22.04 build just worked, nice! Much feels much cleaner than the Micro Bit C setup:
sudo apt install cmake gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-newlib

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk
cd pico-sdk
git checkout 2e6142b15b8a75c1227dd3edbe839193b2bf9041
cd ..

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples
cd pico-examples
git checkout a7ad17156bf60842ee55c8f86cd39e9cd7427c1d
cd ..

export PICO_SDK_PATH="$(pwd)/pico-sdk"
cd pico-exampes
mkdir build
cd build
# Board selection.
# https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/c_sdk.html also says you can give wifi ID and password here for W.
cmake -DPICO_BOARD=pico_w ..
make -j
Then we install the programs just like any other UF2 but plugging it in with BOOTSEL pressed and copying the UF2 over, e.g.:
cp pico_w/blink/picow_blink.uf2 /media/$USER/RPI-RP2/
Note that there is a separate example for the W and non W LED, for non-W it is:
cp blink/blink.uf2 /media/$USER/RPI-RP2/
Also tested the UART over USB example:
cp hello_world/usb/hello_usb.uf2 /media/$USER/RPI-RP2/
You can then see the UART messages with:
screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200
TODO understand the proper debug setup, and a flash setup that doesn't require us to plug out and replug the thing every two seconds. www.electronicshub.org/programming-raspberry-pi-pico-with-swd/ appears to describe it, with SWD to do both debug and flash. To do it, you seem need another board with GPIO, e.g. a Raspberry Pi, the laptop alone is not enough.
Superconducting qubits are regarded as promising because superconductivity is a macroscopic quantum phenomena of Bose Einstein condensation, and so as a macroscopic phenomena, it is easier to control and observe.
This is mentioned e.g. in this relatively early: physicsworld.com/a/superconducting-quantum-bits/. While most quantum phenomena is observed at the atomic scale, superconducting qubits are micrometer scale, which is huge!
Physicists are comfortable with the use of quantum mechanics to describe atomic and subatomic particles. However, in recent years we have discovered that micron-sized objects that have been produced using standard semiconductor-fabrication techniques – objects that are small on everyday scales but large compared with atoms – can also behave as quantum particles.
History of polarization Updated 2025-07-16
Particularly cool is to see how Fresnel fully understood that light is somehow polarized, even though he did not know that it was made out of electromagnetism, clear indication of which only came with the Faraday effect in 1845.
spie.org/publications/fg05_p03_maluss_law:
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the only known way to generate polarized light was with a calcite crystal. In 1808, using a calcite crystal, Malus discovered that natural incident light became polarized when it was reflected by a glass surface, and that the light reflected close to an angle of incidence of 57° could be extinguished when viewed through the crystal. He then proposed that natural light consisted of the s- and p-polarizations, which were perpendicular to each other.
Malus' Law Updated 2025-07-16
Matches the quantum superposition probability proportional to the square law. Poor Étienne-Louis Malus, who died so much before this was found.
PuntSeq is a side project led by a few University of Cambridge PhDs that aims to determine which bacteria are present in the River Cam.
In July 2019, the PuntSeq team got together with the awesome Cambridge Biomakespace, an awesome biology makerspace open to all, to create a two day science outreach activity showing their procedures.
The data collected in this experiment, together with other collection sessions done by the organizers actually led to a publication on eLife: elifesciences.org/articles/61504 "Freshwater monitoring by nanopore sequencing" by Lara Urban et al. (2021), so it is awesome to see that were are actual being part of "real science".
Ciro knows nothing about biology, but since he is very curious about it, he jumped at this opportunity, and decided to document things as well as his limited knowledge would allow.
All participants chipped in some money to help cover the experiment's costs. Ciro suspects that this activity was done partially to help crowdfund the experiment, but it was a worthy investment!
The impressions you get from the experiment as a software engineer will be:
  • OMG, this is so labour intensive, why haven't they automated this
  • OMG, this is frightening, all the 8 hours of work I've just done are present in that tiny plastic tube
  • Amazing! Look at that apparatus! And the bio people are like: I've used this a million times, it's cheap and every lab has one, just work faster and don't break you piece of junk!

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