QUANTUM TELEPORTATION
What is it: A method that transfers the states of a qubit between two separate locations, without transfering any information about the qubit. We transfer classical (non-quantum) information
only to do this.
Usefulness: This is good for secure communication of information! It has its applications in cryptography and other fields that involve information transfer.
Basics you need to know to understand QT:
- Qubit: A regular bit stores the value 0 or 1 only. A qubit, or quantum-bit, stores 0, 1, or some superposition of 0 and 1. Superposition means that the qubit isn't in state 0 or 1, but has some probability of collapsing to 0 and 1 when it's measured. A qubit is always described as its probability to collapse to 0 or 1, even if that probability is 100% or 0%.
- Gates: A gate performs some sort of operation on a bit or a qubit. Think of it as a function, i.e. f(x) where f(x) = x + 3. This function adds 3 to its input number. Similarly, a gate does something to its input bit/qubit.
- X-gate: An X-gate, also called a "not" gate, flips the value of its input. So, if a 0 is input, it becomes a 1, and if a 1 is input, it becomes a 0. This gets a little more complicated when you have a qubit in superposition, but all you need to know is that whenever you see a 0, it becomes a 1, and a 1 becomes a 0. For example, if a qubit is in state 0.8|0〉+ 0.2|1〉, it would become 0.8|1〉 + 0.2|0〉.
- CX-gate: A CX-gate, also called a "controlled not-gate", is a not-gate that isn't always activated. It takes in two inputs, the input that may or may not be flipped, and the input that tells the not-gate whether it should operate or not.
- Z-gate: A Z-gate does what we call a phase-flip. This means that the term that describes the possibility of collapsing to state 1 has its sign flipped. For example, if a qubit is in state 0.8|0〉+ 0.2|1〉, it would become 0.8|0〉- 0.2|1〉.
- Hadamard Gate: A Hadamard gate is like a X-gate in a different dimension. It flips |0〉to (|0⟩ + |1⟩) / √2 and |1〉to (|0⟩ - |1⟩) / √2 .
Okayyy time for quantum teleportation :3
This is the quantum circuit for quantum teleportation. User 1 has qubits S and A, while user 2 has qubit B. User 1 wants to tell User 2 what the state of qubit S, |Ψ〉, is.
Before User 1 and User 2 separated, they entangled qubits A and B together. This is represented in the highlighted part of the diagram below.
What does this mean? First, let's talk about what quantum entaglement even is.
Then, let's make sure we all know what Bell States are. If you're curious, the
Wikipedia page has more detail.
Now that we know what entangled qubits are, and what they look like mathematically, and we know what Bell States are and what they look like too, let's discuss why Bell States represent entangled qubits. There are multiple ways to think of this, but the matrix representation is the easiest. I've shown the Bell State matrix below, where each column of the matrix corresponds to one possible output of the gate that converts to Bell States.
Okay. Conceptually now we know that Bell States represent different combinations of entangled qubits. How does this part of the circuit specifically put qubits into Bell States?
Awesome! Now we understand what entangled qubits are and how we can entangle two qubits. Let's move on to the next part of the circuit!
Unfortunately I don't totally have a grasp on why this is done conceptually. The best intuition I can give you is this: Now qubits A and B are related. In order to tell User 2 what the state of qubit S is, we want to determine the relationship between all
three qubits, not just the two. If we know that, then we can tell User 2 what to do to qubit B based on the values of qubit S and A, to obtain the state of qubit S, |Ψ〉. You may notice that this part of the circuit looks like the reverse of the section of the circuit we were just looking at. Think of it as transforming qubits from the Bell State
basis to the computational basis, whereas the previous part of the circuit did the reverse.
Here's how the math of this part of the circuit works:
Now, we measure qubits S and A. As you know, measuring a quantum bit will cause it to lose its current state and collapse to either |0〉 or |1〉. This is okay! We now have our relationship between all three qubits, where the classical values of S and A (so the values after measurement) are related to the quantum state of qubit B, and these states of qubit B are in terms of |Ψ〉.
According to the values we get from measuring S and A, we now operate on qubit B. This operation will put qubit B into state |Ψ〉, which was our end goal!
Yayyy!! now you understand what quantum teleportation is and how it works! I hope you had fun! Thanks for reading!
DEAD CELLS
A roguelike noob plays Dead Cells: Tips and tricks
Dead Cells is described as a roguelike-Metroidvania. This means two things: 1) When you die, you die, and 2) progression is nonlinear. It also means it's platformer-like in some way.
If you die and lose all your progress, how do you complete the game? You don't lose
all your progress. You do, however lose the weapons you had at the time, you start from the very beginning of the dungeon, and there's no sort of XP system that lets you build up strength over time. You only start saving things between deaths when you complete the first dungeon,
The Prisoner's Cells. Upon completion, you reach a point of no return where you can invest the currency you gained along the way into upgrades
you keep between runs. This includes:
- Health potions (before unlocking this, you cannot really heal unless RNG gives you a healing item for killing an enemy)
- Gold (used to buy items-- that you don't keep between runs-- while traversing the dungeon)
- Non-basic starter weapons
and some other things. Gameplay before you start building up these upgrades will just rely on you not dying and making it to the other side of the first level. As you progress you also pick up 4 permanent runes, which help you unlock new parts of the map. Oh, also the map changes randomly every time you die...
What tips would make me better at not dying? Unfortunately for someone who isn't super good at video games (me), timing is basically everything. Luckily, the game is pretty forgiving about giving timing cues. To avoid damage you can either choose to use a shield or to dodge. As most enemy attacks are directional, dodging past an enemy after it has decided to attack is all you need-- they will then attack in the wrong direction and you'll be no worse for wear. With a shield, you can just hold it up forever and only
lessen the amount of damage you take, or you can
parry. I am not good at parrying. Basically, at least for short range attacks, parry when you see the enemy's (!) icon appear above its head (as levels progress, the window of time to parry gets smaller, so be quick). For long range, obviously try your best to parry when the projectile reaches you, which is a little after the (!) appears, if you're far away.
What are Mutations? Mutations are special skills! Read their descriptions to learn more about a specific skill. You may notice that everything you can pick up in a dungeon is color-coded red, green, or purple. The mutations are too. These colors signify that these items/skills can be boosted by
Scrolls of Power, where you can invest one point into either
Brutality (red, involves dealing damage),
Tactics (purple, involves dealing damage from a distance or via bombs/turrets/etc.), or
Survival (green, involves maintaining health, i.e. through parrying) categories. Try your best to align your weapons, skills, and point-investments for maximum effect! I'd recommend taking the time to devote a couple play-throughs to exploring each category, as they're all fun in their own ways.
Okay!! That's all I know about the game. Because I haven't progressed any further than the first mini-boss T^T
Dead Cells is a game with a lot of charm, excellent pixel art and animation, and satisfying gameplay mechanics. It has a ton of replayability, and is clearly a game made with a lot of love. I'd recommend checking it out if you can!
TERMINAL CUSTOMIZATION
Basic ways to customize your command line terminal experience...
I use Linux machines at work remotely using the terminal, so I use the command line and Vim a lot. There are ways to use text editors like VS Code for remote development, but I haven't really tried them out yet, and for writing code locally, I just use VS Code (or the Neocities editor)
That makes it seem like I'm a little reluctant when it comes to changing work environments. Maybe I am... Or maybe I just think using Vim makes me cool (not true).
Anyway! While looking at a dark screen with colored text on it can be easier on the eyes in the long term, it's hard to pick out important information from a sea of white text! Here's how I change the color of my terminal text:
- Locate the .bashrc or the .bash_profile file for your machine. And if you want to customize it, your .vimrc file. Most likely, these are in the root directory, and listed with the command ls -a. Open them up in your preferred text editor.
- Decide what you want your command line and Vim experience to be like. I personally end up working really late at night when my eyes are tired, so I made my command line prompts bold and used colors that are easier on my eyes than pure white. My local (Mac) and work (Linux) terminals look like this:
Since I use Vim, I also wanted features like cursor line, line number, syntax coloring, one tab = four spaces, indenting, and a slightly different background color to show that I'm in Vim. There are many other features for Vim, some of which you can find here, with a bunch of color schemes, vertical cursor lines, keyboard shortcuts (if you don't like the defaults), etc. You can also download custom plug-ins and themes, like I ended up doing, to get this:
Do note that some settings, i.e. font size, are better set in your terminal emulator! If you don't know what that is, the terminal itself is just an interface that we can interact with our machines with. A terminal emulator is the thing that lets you interact with the terminal/shows you the terminal, in a sense. Sort of like how a Nintendo DS emulator can shows us games, but the emulator isn't the game itself. For a Mac, it's just called "Terminal", but some people prefer XTerm, Yakuake, Kitty, ST, etc.
- Customize your terminal text: People do all sorts of things, like customizing the terminal tab names, using an image for the background of their window, making the window transparent, etc. There's decent guides online, but they're all specific to your terminal emulator. If you want to do those, there's definitely guides online for you. I'll show you how to edit the text, which can be done on anything.
Your .bashrc/.bash_profile files are run at startup. A bash script is basically a list of terminal commands. This means that commands you put into them are run right as you open up the terminal. This is commonly used to edit the $PATH variable to tell your machine where to search for executable commands, and other initialization. If you don't have either of these files, you can make one with the command touch .bashrc or similar, in the root directory.
The PS1 variable controls the formatting of terminal prompts. I have no idea what PS1 means, but it's definitely not PlayStation One lol. Setting this variable controls the text that is printed. To set it, do something like this: export PS1='\[\e[1;31m\][\u@\h \W]\$ \[\e[1;33m\]'. Broken down, here's what that command means:
- export PS1 = '....' Sets the value of the variable PS1. All bash variables are strings, hence why its value is enclosed in ' '.
- \[\e[1;31m\] You may be wondering why the square brackets don't close. That's because \e[1;31m is an expression on its own, and is surrounded by \[ and \], which indicates that it's a special string, not to be printed in the terminal.
This part formats text to be bold and red. Specifically: 1 indicates that the font should have the bold effect and 31 indicates that it's for text and should be red.
Color codes basically follow ANSI escape codes. There are also ways to include custom codes, look up CLICOLOR and LS_COLOR. I often use this site as reference, specifically the Colours, Effects, and Backgrounds tables, which I'll put for you here:
| Color |
|
Effects |
|
Backgrounds |
| 30 |
Black |
| 31 |
Red |
| 32 |
Green |
| 33 |
Yellow |
| 34 |
Blue |
| 35 |
Purple |
| 36 |
Cyan |
| 37 |
Grey |
|
|
| 00 |
Default Color |
| 01 |
Bold |
| 04 |
Underline |
| 05 |
Blinking text |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
| 40 |
Black |
| 41 |
Red |
| 42 |
Green |
| 43 |
Yellow |
| 44 |
Blue |
| 45 |
Purple |
| 46 |
Cyan |
| 47 |
Grey |
|
- [\u@\h \W]\$ Since they aren't escaped by \s, these square brackets are printed. This prints [user@host current directory]$. Note that the $ has to be escaped like \$, since $ is a special character. \u, \h, and \W are special strings that tell the terminal to prin tthe user, hose, and working directory respectively.
- \[\e[1;33m\]' This string has a space in front of it! This makes sure that there's a space between [user@host current directory]$ and the input text you type. Using our code table, we can tell that this sets the text to bold and yellow.
HOWEVER! This makes all the following text yellow, not just your input text. We need to clear the text formatting after the input text is entered! You can do it like this, in a single line: trap 'echo -ne "\e[0m"' DEBUG or in a couple lines like this:
debug()
{
echo -n $'\e[0;32m'; <- set to whatever formatting you want the terminal output to be
}
trap debug DEBUG
These two do essentially the same thing. Calling the debug trap executes at each command, and resets the following text with the echo -n command.
- To get my Vim theme: I use the Gruvbox theme, and installed it with pathogen! You can see the lines involved in the screenshot, at the very bottom. You need to install Pathogen and the theme to begin with. The instructions are in the link, but I'll show you how I did it:
Install Pathogen by running the command mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \, then the command curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim.
Install Gruvbox theme by running the command git clone https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox.git ~/.vim/bundle/gruvbox.
Coupled with the last two lines of my .vimrc file, you should have the theme appear whenever you open Vim!
I hope this helped!! Thought it seems easy to figure out now, I remember the first time I tried to customize my stuff and I was confused the whole time... hopefully this gives you a starting point for terminal customization!
NOSTALGIC SONGS (to me)
Here are a list of songs that I find incredibly nostalgic and love listening to. I felt like compiling this list because I was talking to someone about the similarities and differences in what songs people find notalgic thru generations. To be clear, these aren't my favorite songs of all time (though I enjoy them a lot), they're the ones I find the most nostalgic... In no particular order:
Triple Baka by Lamaze-P ft. Hatsune Miku and Teto Kasane
I encountered this song wayyyy back when I was in elementary or middle school. I vividly remember watching the music video on a friend's iPod Touch sitting at the front of a school bus. Its lyrics are very reminiscent of how I used to feel as a kid, and the animation is super typical of the time... but also I think the composition of the song itself is also nostalgic (not just because it has the Nokia phone beeps in it).
It has two vocal lines (Hatsune Miku and Teto Kasane)-- Miku plays the main melody, while Teto is used for simple harmony and also used in the instrumental. It has a flourishing, synthetic instrumental and a racing drum line, and Lamaze-P is relaly good at making Teto and Miku sound realistic. It has that chord progession and electric guitar you heard all the time in 2008. Coupled with some of the animation and the lyrics, it gives the sense of a world bigger than you can handle, that you willingly pretend is simple. You ignore it for now even though it'll come back to fuck you over later, even though you get scolded for it. It's like someone is going FUCKKK WHY DO I HAVE TO PERFORM THE WAY EVERYONE ELSE TELLS ME TO but in a toned down way because that's what Asian culture is like. And then you just bottle it up and ignore it because that's what Asian culture is like. And then you beat yourself up over it silently because that's what Asian culture is like lol. I think Lamaze-P ended up being an artist/Vocaloid producer tho so I'm glad it went well for him. I personally became a software engineer so...
I also think the gags in the music and in the animation make me miss what the Internet was like when I was a kid
Pay No Mind by Madeon ft. Peach Pit
I used this song as my morning alarm ringtone in high school so that could be why I find this so nostalgic lol. Nothing like being forced to wake up at 7am when sleep is the most important to your growth and development as a human being. Also I loved this album in high school. Its instrumental is spacy at times, dry and sharp at other times, and the vocalist's voice goes really well with the track. I think somehow the lyrics of this song also ended up being a response to the lyrics of Triple Baka?? I didn't plan that. Some of the lyrics, at least. some of them are nonsense. I think in high school I took the lyrics to mean Just hang on a little longer! Just keep going! And I did. And I made it out of high school, thank god lol. Listening to it as an adult is pretty nostalgic for that reason, I think. I don't think this will be a song that other people my age would find nostalgic. Though I do find its tone to be very warm, somehow... maybe because of the mixing or the chord progression or something, I'm not sure. It doesn't have as harsh of a synth track as a lot of other songs from that genre at the time, either, and I think I enjoy Dance/Electronic music more when it has melodic vocals.
Kira Kira no Hai by Regal Lily
This song is definitely nostalgic because of the chord progression and how it sounds like a song from an indies 90s British band without a shitty male singer ruining it lol. that was a joke I love edgy white boys from the 90s. My husband said they sound like Smashing Pumpkins and he's totally right; a lot of punk rock was written to sound nostalgic.
I really love Dungeon Meshi and this was the second outro song from Season 1. The lyrics match the show, talking about chasing things that we love, no matter how exhausted we are. Though more than the lyrics, just the production and composition of the song are done really well. It has a super warm tone while still having the Japanese rock-esque crunch to it... Like how people oversaturate photos and put extra crunch/sharpness in it to make it seem old school, but in music form. Anyway this song is awesome and you should listen to it.
Rewrite by Asian Kung-fu Generation
Honestly this song was pretty closely tied with *Asterisk~ by ORANGE RANGE. It's the 4th opening to Fullmetal Alchemist (not Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood), and *Asterisk~ is the very first opening to Bleach. The Bleach opening gives me the immediate pang of nostalgia as soon as it comes on, but overall I'd say that Rewrite is the better one overall. I actually haven't gotten to that part of FMA yet, so I haven't heard it in the anime... In terms of why it's nostalgic... it's Asian Kung-fu Generation. It's like asking me why The Pillows are nostalgic. It's like if Oasis was better just kidding Oasis is great
Dark Side of Your Room by All Time Low
I know this entire album inside and out :) I listened to it all the time in high school! My favorite track is probably Chemistry? but this is probably the most nostalgic song for me. I started listening to All Time Low in middle school as one does, but I think after Dirty Work in 2011 they didn't release an album until Future Hearts in 2015, which is when I was in high school. I feel like All Time Low hasn't changed at all since Dear Maria Count Me In, but I think what actually happened is that they managed to keep their sound the same while adapting to different generations... That could be why it's so nostalgic. Other big contenders from All Time Low are Somewhere in Neverland, Weightless, and Backseat Serenade lol
Nattoppet by Detektivbyrån
I heard this song in a Homestuck animation T0T by the same guy who did Homestuck's very final animation. It's called Homestuck Animation - A Lullaby for Gods, and is linked above. I've listened to other songs on this album, but I don't know much about the artist or anything. This song itself is music-box delicate, and I probably find it nostalgic because I associate it with something I liked a lot in middle school lol. Homestuck is literally "the friends we made along the way", but also about being forced to become something you thought you'd never be able to be, fragmenting yourself, finding yourself, learning about what you are, etc.
Polonaise de Concert in D Major by Henryk Wieniawski
I listen to a lot of classical pieces and there are many that i like more than this one, but this particular piece is very familiar to me, for various reasons. I was debating between this piece and Rondo Alla Turca.... I find that songs that are considered nostalgic are usually songs that we connect to specific times in our lives, whether because we listened to them during that time, the lyrics remind us about that time, or the style reminds us about that time. To me, Polonaise Brilliante has a bright, light, joyful tone, and reminds me of when I started playing the violin, when I like to make music just because I enjoyed the act of it.
Big Black Car by Gregory Alan Isakov
My friend Asher showed me this song first! I started listening to the album version first, but I like the version I linked a lot, too. I think this, and when i found the Oh Hellos, was the first time I started to get into folk music. Isakov is an excellent songwriter and lyricist, and this particular song reminds me of summers wishing i was someone else.
Summer Time Record by Jin
I'm a big Jin fan, (but I hate the Mekakucity Actors anime, so don't talk to me about it lol) and Summertime Records is probably one of my favorite songs from him. In many ways, Vocaloid works end up being an avenue of expression of people who struggle to communicate things they can't say out loud, so that's probably why there are so many Vocaloid songs in this list... After a long run of producing music for this series, interacting with other artists and fans, and creating a world that he held dear to him, Summertime Record really feels like a hearfelt goodbye and thank you to everyone who supported his work along the way. I recently watched this August 15, 2024 stream on YouTube where he covered some songs live and you can really tell that it was work he really cared about. The conversation at the end sums it up the best: "I guess this must be goodbye, now./You won't forget again, will you?/Don't worry; I wouldn't forget a tale like this./I wonder about that./I bet you'll have completely forgotten by tomorrow./And is that so bad? I mean, if there are better days to come.../But we'll meet again somewhere, won't we?/Of course we will./Well, I'd better be going now./Right. I'll see you later."
Exeunt by The Oh Hellos
This song is gorgeous, and the live rendition (first half of the linked video) is really nice. Like Summertime Record, Exeunt talks about coming to terms with leaving something you loved behind.
Winter Cleaning by Deco*27 ft. Hatsune Miku
Winter cleaning, or Oosouji, is kind of like spring cleaning, in English terms... The song talks about wanting to clean and start fresh, but struggling to do so, as in trying to change yourself and forget the past, all you seem to be able to do is remember how you were and what happened, like kicking up dust while cleaning. The last line says, "When I’ve cleaned everything up, then as for me, will someone…?"
My husband would like to also add many songs by Counting Crows. They didn't really feel nostalgic to me (kinda just sad) but now they will be because he sang me their songs in our kitchen while holding my hands and kissing the top of my head so I like them 10x more than I did before.
