knowledge work

The first of a short series by Welch Labs on building a complete neural network in Python. It introduces the data and the architecture of a simple network before later parts cover forward propagation, gradient descent, and backpropagation.

A two-hour NANOG tutorial by Richard Steenbergen aimed at network engineers, covering optical networking technologies. This is the updated 2017 edition of a recurring talk.

Andreas Spiess explains the basic principles of LoRa and LoRaWAN, their pros and cons, link budget and bandwidth. He shows his own gateway and client sending a message to The Things Network.

The 8-Bit Guy explains how character LCD screens work and how to control them directly, first part of a series.

Ben Eater explains how VGA signals work and builds a breadboard circuit that produces correct sync timing so a monitor recognizes the signal. He then builds toward displaying an image from simple logic chips.

Martin Gorner's Devoxx talk introduces deep learning with TensorFlow, walking through neural networks for MNIST, how to choose an architecture and how to diagnose networks that fail to train.

A woodworker shows how his table saw accident happened, why it happened and how to avoid a similar one. He describes severe hand lacerations from a blade contact.

Dan Wahlin's hour-long beginner course on AngularJS builds a small single-page app while covering SPAs, directives, filters and data binding. It gives an initial grounding in Angular 1.

Ben Eater starts a series building a working computer on breadboards around the 6502 microprocessor. In this first part he gets a 'hello world' running from scratch.

An 11-minute guided Wim Hof breathing session built around an expanding and contracting bubble to pace the breath. Wim breathes along with the viewer over ambient sound.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science explains how electrophoretic e-paper displays work and how he modified the driver firmware and waveform lookup tables of a 4.2-inch panel to reach roughly 3Hz partial refresh. It covers the tweakable constants in the refresh process and touches on colored e-ink microcapsules.

Dave Jones of EEVblog and Richard Stephenson tour the 70m DSS43 dish at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex and explain how NASA talks to Voyager 2. It covers the transmitters, receivers and tracking involved.

Marco Baringer's tutorial video on SLIME, the Emacs mode for developing Common Lisp. It demonstrates the interactive workflow of working against a live Lisp image.

Dodoid gives an in-depth look at an SGI Onyx RealityEngine2, a $250,000 graphics supercomputer from 1993, covering its history, a physical overview, a teardown and some demos and games.

Wim Hof guides viewers step by step through his breathing method, with some explanation of the science he cites behind it. It stresses learning from the source and avoiding unsafe settings.

Tech Ingredients builds a pair of large Voigt speakers and explains ported, transmission line and horn designs. It tests them in an anechoic chamber and uses constrained layer damping for the enclosure.

A 1953 US Navy training film on the basic mechanisms in fire control computers: shafts, gears, cams and differentials. It shows how these mechanical parts compute ship and target firing solutions.

A short screencast tour of JSPM, SystemJS and ES6 features, building a small app with the then-new JavaScript module and package tooling. It shows how JSPM works as a package manager, bundler and loader.

Andrew Huang teaches the basics of music theory in about half an hour, covering intervals, chords and patterns. He stresses understanding how music works over memorizing terminology.

An episode of FunFunFunction explaining monads in JavaScript as functors that also implement flatMap. It builds on the preceding functor episode and works through code examples.

Jon Gjengset's long live-coding stream explains Rust's Pin and Unpin types: why they exist, how they work, and how they connect to futures and async/await. It also covers moving from pre-pinning code to the new model.

Day 1 of Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero, a live-coded game built from scratch in C on Windows. It reviews C on Windows, sets up a minimal build system and WinMain entry point, and shows a first MessageBox.

A roughly 45-minute vintage US military instructional film that gives a comprehensive overview of celestial navigation, covering sextant use and the theory behind lines of position.

David Beazley's workshop screencast builds asynchronous programming in Python from scratch, starting from callbacks and continuations and replacing threads to show how concurrency works underneath.

ElectroBOOM's Mehdi Sadaghdar explains how a full bridge rectifier works, the building block of AC to DC converters, with his usual humor and a demonstration of the circuit.

Dave Jones builds the Evil Mad Scientist discrete-component 555 timer kit, then tests it and explains the internal circuitry of the 555 at transistor level. He finishes with scope waveforms.

CuriousMarc inspects a newly arrived Teletype Model 19, an early military unit built around a Model 15 keyboard and printer, after an initial rough cleaning. It is the first part of a restoration series and touches on 5-bit Baudot code.

Inigo Quilez shows step by step how to build a simple heart shape from mathematics and shaders, with code on Shadertoy. It is an introduction to procedural graphics and signed distance functions.

The first part of a ShaderToy live-coding series that lays the groundwork for The Drive Home, a rainy night-traffic shader. It covers basic setup and builds toward rain and bokeh effects.

Ben Eater finishes building a minimal VGA video card from logic circuits. He explains analog RGB signals, stores an image in an EEPROM and builds a simple digital-to-analog converter to display it.

Tech Ingredients shows how to build cheap, high-performance flat-panel speakers using audio exciters on sheet materials such as foam-core board. It explains how distributed-mode speakers work and walks through experiments to find good designs.

A 1993 Yoga Works video of the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series led by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, with senior students demonstrating. The class is filmed in classic style from the back of the room.

A step-by-step guide to building a lifter, a small triangular ionocraft made from balsa wood, aluminum foil and thin wire, powered by a high-voltage supply. It also shows high-voltage safety practices.

The Original Ace shows how creators can use a third-party music distributor to file Content ID claims on their own videos, turning false-claim abuse into a share of ad revenue. It also names distribution companies and their revenue splits.