Sponsor updates Updated 2025-07-16
Previously, updates were being done with more focus to sponsors in the format of the child sections to this section. That format is now retired in favor of the more direct Section "Updates" format.
Ciro's Edict #4 Not work Updated 2025-07-16
Some further comments at: Section "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead".
Ciro's Edict #4 ourbigbook.com Updated 2025-07-16
I had meant to make an update earlier, but I wanted to try and add some more "visible end-user changes" to OurBigBook.com.
Just noticed BTW that signup on the website is broken. Facepalm. Not that it matters much since it is not very useful in the current state, but still. Going to fix that soon. EDIT: nevermind, it wasn't broken, I just had JavaScript disabled on that website with an extension to test if pages are visible without JavaScript, and yes, they are perfectly visible, you can't tell the difference! But you can't login without JavaScript either!
I still haven't the user visible ones I wanted, but I've hit major milestones, and it feels like time for an update.
I have now finished all the OurBigBook CLI features that I wanted for 1.0, all of which will be automatically reused in ourbigbook.com.
The two big things since last email were the following:
A secondary but also important advance was: further improvements to the website's base technology.
Ripples by ripples Updated 2025-07-16
A Baidu Baike page: baike.baidu.hk/item/層層水瀾/12386243 mentions that the score was published in 1970 by Tao Yimo (陶一陌) in a eponymous score book.
Ciro's Edict #5 Completely rebrand Cirodown to OurBigBook Updated 2025-07-16
The name cirodown should not appear anywhere now, except with very few exceptions, e.g.:
- github.com/cirosantilli/cirodown to github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
- file extension from
.ciroto.bigb - the Node.js NPM package was renamed from
cirodowntoourbibook. - all in-code instances
I have also squatted
OurBigBook on all major social media handles for near future usage, e.g.: twitter.com/ourbigbook and so on.I was going to do this sooner or later, it was inevitable, but the timing was partly triggered due to noticing that English speakers (and likely many other nationalities) are not able to easily read/hear/pronounce "Ciro".
Ciro's Edict #5 Link to an image or video in another file that has an
\x on title from another file Updated 2025-07-16Issue report at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook/issues/198 Suppose you had:
programming-language.ciro
= Programming language
\Image[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/python-logo.jpg]
{title=The \x[python-programming-language] logo}
== Python
{c}
{disambiguate=programming-language}= Logos I like
\x[image-the-python-logo]Now, when rendering
\x[image-the-python-logo], we would need to fetch two IDs:image-the-python-logofor theTheandlogopartpython-programming-languageitself, to know that\x[python-programming-language]should render asPython
But after group all SQL queries together was done, there was no way to know that rendering
image-the-python-logo would imply also fetching python-programming-language.This was solved by adding a new database entry type,
REFS_TABLE_X_TITLE_TITLE to the existing References table, which tracks dependencies between IDs. Computer data storage hardware Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro's Edict #5 Make
\Include headers show on table of contents work for cirosantilli.com Updated 2025-07-16One of the key advances of the previous update was to show include headers on the table of contents.
This was to allow splitting source files freely.
While that goal was in principle achieved in that commit, when I went ahead to split the huge index of cirosantilli.com into multiple files, I notice several bugs that took a week to fix.
After all of these were solved, I finally managed to split the README at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/commit/84c8a6e7fdbe252041accfb7a06d9b7462287131 and keep the previous desired output. You can now see that the README contains just:
\Include[ciro-santilli]
\Include[science]
\Include[mathematics]
\Include[technology]
\Include[art]This split led to a small positive modification of the output as follows. Previously, a section such as "Quantum Electrodynamics" would have been present in the monolithic README.ciro as:If you visited cirosantilli.com/quantum-electrodynamics, you would see see a link to the "nosplit" version, which would link you back to cirosantilli.com#quantum-electrodynamics, but that is not great, since this is was a humongous page with all of the README.ciro, and took long to display.
= Quantum electrodynamicsAfter the split,
= Quantum electrodynamics is present under science.ciro, and the nosplit version is the more manageable cirosantilli.com/science#quantum-electrodynamics.The key changes that were missing for that to happen were:
Ciro's Edict #5 Misc OurBigBook.com Updated 2025-07-16
Some smart people just brought up to my attention that OurBigBook.com is a bit like: roamresearch.com/ and other graph knowledges. I feel ashemed for not having seen this software and its alternatives before. I was so focused on the "book aspect" of it that I didn't search much in there. I couldn't find an immediate project killer superset from the options in that area, but maybe one exists. We'll see.
Ciro's Edict #5 Next steps Updated 2025-07-16
- upload all of cirosantilli.com to ourbigbook.com. I will do this by implementing an import from filesystem functionality based on the OurBigBook CLI. This will also require implementing slit headeres on the server to work well, I'll need to create one
Articlefor every header on render. - get
\xand\Includeworking on the live web preview editor. This will require creating a new simple API, currently the editor jus shows broken references, but final render works because it goes through the database backend - implement email verification signup. Finally! Maybe add some notifications too, e.g. on new comments or likes.
Ciro's Edict #6 Updated 2025-07-16
Computer science and philosophy masters course of the University of Oxford Updated 2025-07-16
Public landing page: www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/computer-science-and-philosophy
Corresponding undergrad: Computer Science and Philosophy course of the University of Oxford.
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain China Updated 2025-07-16
China stuff is mentioned at: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/bitcoin-blockchain.
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain IRC log dumps Updated 2025-07-16
tx 210000d1392bec2505d1289e5c39c2039204ff1ecf7eef55f973ccd3111003e1, block 360235 (2015-06-10) and the following transactions have transcripts of a very long developer chat starting with:
TODO purpose? The transcripts are interspersed with developers likely voting for project leadership, and commenting on Gavin.
TODO find original discussion location, these are almost certainly from one of the Bitcoin IRC channels.
Part of the goal of this dump is that the Bitcoin developers have a policy of not allowing logging on their talk channel, and this released it all to the blockchain forever where it cannot be deleted. These might just be more of protests against larger block sizes.
Miner message Updated 2025-07-16
This is opposed to messages that may be left by non miners during transactions.
Miner messages are therefore of course much harder to control on established blockchains, as they basically require consensus in a mining pool to set. Most of them are just ads for the mining pool itself.
Ciro's Edict #6 China front Updated 2025-07-16
I've started rewatching The Water Margin, it is just so good. I'm taking some reasonable notes this time however, because due to Ciro Santilli's bad old event memory I'll forget the details again otherwise.
That type of rebellion symbology could also be useful against the Chinese government. It is interesting that Mao Zedong loved the novel.
Water Margin tribute to Chinese dissidents
. Source. Ciro's Edict #7 Email verification and reCAPTCHA signup protection Updated 2025-07-16
Added this basic but fundamental protection layer to the website.
The email setup will of course be reused when notifications are eventually implemented.
Ciro's Edict #7
--format-source Updated 2025-07-16Added
ourbigbook --format-source automatic code formatting. I implemented it for the following reasons:- I want to do certain automatic modifications to source code on web, e.g.:
- later on, much later, this will allow WYSIWYG export to plaintext
This also ended up having one unexpected benefit: whenever a new feature is added that deprecates an old feature, by converting the large corpus from github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io to the new feature I can test the new preferred feature very well.
For example, converting
\x[blue cat] en masse to the new insane syntax <blue cat> found several bugs with the new insane syntax.This seemed somewhat easy at first, so I started it as a way of procrastinating more urgent Web features (web scares me, you know), but it ended being insanely hard to implement, because there are many edge cases. Also, most bugs are not acceptable, as they would corrupt your precious source code and potentially output.
But well, it is done!
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain Trump Updated 2025-07-16
There's a bit of both sides in the 2016 race:
- tx 3aaae4adc68b3768e1a6029987f2aca2479818495c9aee6a86067710806e9c4f: "bEW Trump 2016! Stop the TPP!"
- tx 202ceac7b3e7b990d1961fd2eab18ba5c80c99f10eacc783f14c53ebfdcaee00 "oEW Fuck Obama&Clinton Go Trump!!!!"
- tx 53fcddaa69e79c0fdc4e2cd139bffef341a38d46bb653721d9adf42460b1afae "EW Trump will fail America, like all his businesses"
- data/out/0433.txt:1752:EW FUCK Trump and his supporters. You ppl are the dumbest scum ever.
- data/out/0435.txt:1904:EW TRUMP 2016 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- data/out/0437.txt:1150:bjEW FuCk OfF TrUmP!
- data/out/0439.txt:1017:EW trump will trample regulations justly
- data/out/0443.txt:1281:L9,GOD EMPEROR TRUMP WINS THIRD TERM`7
- data/out/0444.txt:2102:L99,TRUMPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
- data/out/0445.txt:311:L127,TRUMP WILL SAVE THE WORLD.
- data/out/0445.txt:1257:EW Howard not Trump is the actual 45th president.
- tx 2fb07a8f358d690d8717734a48e5daf0ef70ea2d0e3b7c88dace8a5818fcb168 "L299,Trump touched my no-no"
- data/out/0457.txt:8677:EW All of the sheep think Donald Trump is literally Hitler.
- data/out/0481.txt:11481:I kill donald trump!!!!!!
- data/out/0545.txt:1239:}fEW fuck donald trump
- tx 05fce37228c732f4635f79e6f36d028be677404beab497ddace9024fe8e4b517 "EW Heil Trump!He's the true white leader our race need so much since Adolf"
- data/out/0552.txt:14:Trump needs to get impeached and locked up!
- data/out/0666.txt:56:(Trump was impeached for the second time in office.
Create gradient image with ImageMagick Updated 2025-07-16
convert -size 256x256 gradient: out.png
convert -size 256x256 gradient:white-black out.png
convert -size 256x256 gradient:red-blue out.png
convert -size 256x256 radial-gradient: out.png
convert -size 256x256 radial-gradient:white-black out.png There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.