Thermodynamic potential Updated 2025-07-16
chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/7696/how-do-i-distinguish-between-internal-energy-and-enthalpy/7700#7700 has a good insight:
To summarize, internal energy and enthalpy are used to estimate the thermodynamic potential of the system. There are other such estimates, like the Gibbs free energy G. Which one you choose is determined by the conditions and how easy it is to determine pressure and volume changes.
Entropy Updated 2025-07-16
OK, can someone please just stop the philosophy and give numerical predictions of how entropy helps you predict the future?
The original notion of entropy, and the first one you should study, is the Clausius entropy.
Video 1.
The Unexpected Side of Entropy by Daan Frenkel
. Source. 2021.
Video 2.
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 20. Entropy and Information by Sean Carroll (2020)
Source. In usual Sean Carroll fashion, it glosses over the subject. This one might be worth watching. It mentions 4 possible definitions of entropy: Boltzmann, Gibbs, Shannon (information theory) and John von Neumann (quantum mechanics).
Refrigerator Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Refrigerator - How Does It Work? by Curiosity Show
. Source.
Temperature Updated 2025-07-16
For scales from absolute 0 like Kelvin, is proportional to the total kinetic energy of the material.
The Boltzmann constant tells us how much energy that is, i.e. gives the slope.
Vacuum Updated 2025-07-16
Life difficulty level meme Updated 2025-07-16
TODO there was one which was relly good, can't find it anymore. One day.
Figure 1.
Life difficulty level meme with West Europe, East Europe, Turkey and Middle east
. Source.
The Final Encyclopedia (Paul Allen) Updated 2025-07-16
The Google Story Chapter 21. A Virtual Library mentions that Paul Allen was interested in trying to create something like the "Final Encyclopedia" from this book. This is somewhat the same motivation for Google Books and Google's activities more broadly, as shown in their organise the world's information mission statement.
Csound Updated 2025-07-16
XML file format (but with 99% of the action of interest in a domain-specific language on the CsInstruments and CsScore elements) that can be played and the reference implementation. Offers complex effects out-of-box apparently.
Allows you to easily define instruments with seemingly arbitrary mathematical functions, and then use them to play notes at given time intervals.
The instrument functions can be parametrized, and each note played can have different parameters.
The instrument definition actually defines a block diagram graph, much like a hardware synthesizer would.
Csound is so not-bloated that it contains an UI system. And it includes an interactive virtual MIDI keyboard that interacts with parameter knobs: www.csounds.com/manual/html/MidiTop.html
But hey, it's fun. And like any other good domain-specific language, debugging it is barbaric of course.
If only it had been written in Python... the array manipulation boilerplate would be likely perfect for NumPy, and this would have been exactly what Ciro Santilli wanted!
CSound states that one of its design goals is backward compatibility, and it shows. Some of the stuff is utterly arcane, e.g. you have to remember what GEN10, GEN11, etc. mean instead of having named enums.
It just worked on Ubuntu 20.04 no questions asked:
sudo apt install csound
git clone https://github.com/csound/csound
cd csound
git checkout 92409ecce053d707360a5794f5f4f6bf5ebf5d24
csound examples/xanadu.csd
which runs this file: github.com/csound/csound/blob/92409ecce053d707360a5794f5f4f6bf5ebf5d24/examples/xanadu.csd and this plays a relly cool sound demo:
Video 1.
Xanadu Csound demo
. Source.
Save to file instead of playing:
csound -o xanadu.wav xanadu.csd
or direct ogg output:
csound --ogg -o xanadu.ogg xanadu.csd
or pipe to stdout to FFmpeg TODO: stackoverflow.com/questions/64970503/how-to-pipe-csound-output-to-ffmpeg-for-conversion-without-an-intermediate-file
TODO find the most amazing set of songs made with it on GitHub? Some examples:
Documentation-wise, it's a bit lacking. The only dude who can explain it really well, Dr Richard Boulanger, made the "The Csound Book" closed source, so, congrats, this will forever hurt the popularity of Csound.
SuperCollider 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.

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