Author: lallouslab

My name is Elias aka lallous and I am a computer scientist and a seeker of ultimate truth and human potential
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Amazon.com – Freelance mode

Amazon.com has always been my favorite online bookstore, nonetheless shipment cost was always a big problem for me since all my orders are delivered by international shipment.

What would be nice to see is a new mode in Amazon.com called “Freelance mode” in that mode you can buy single items or more and ship them almost anywhere in the world **for free**.

By slightly and intelligently increasing the price of each item when in “Freelance mode”, Amazon.com would be able to cover the shipment cost of the items.

Amazon.com can also improve its shopping cart system and lessen pages reloads when one deletes an item or moves an item to the shopping list.

And if “Freelance mode” is ever implemented, a nice feature would be to add an option so that Amazon store, intelligently, sends you the next book (you queued in your shopping list) on time just before you finish reading the current book (it does that by teaching it how fast you read, and how much time the books usually take to arrive to your destination).

Of course, in the advancement of electronic books it is useless to introduce such modes.

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Baoding trackball mouse

I routinely clean my trackball mouse but this time something else came to mind also: Baoding balls.

A small excerpt from Wikipedia about Baoding Balls:

Baoding balls, also called Chinese exercise balls, Chinese meditation balls, and Chinese medicine balls, are thought to have been created in Baoding, China, during the Ming dynasty. Baoding balls are a tool for injury recovery or as an exercise tool to improve manual dexterity and strength. They consist of two or more balls which are rotated to orbit in the hand. The iron-ball system is the greatest of Baoding prefecture’s “three treasures.” Long throughout history, renowned within China and other countries, this is Baoding prefecture’s traditional product. This item of Buddhist martial arts was first produced in the Northern Song Dynasty.

So imagine the mouse initially like this:

How the mouse normally looks

Then ready to be cleaned:

How it looks without its ball

But suddenly, the Baoding Balls sitting on the shelf catch my attention:

The perfect match!

So you can imagine what I did next:

Top view

Spiritual Baoding trackball mouse

Oh btw, Baoding balls produce a nice sound when you juggle them in your hands:

But I doubt you can use this mouse at work since it will produce lots of melody! 😉

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How to be ready for your first 10 days Vipassana Course

meditating-buddhaIf life puts Vipassana in your way and you are considering to take the course, then it is best to read a little about the technique, and how to be prepared mentally and physically so that you can complete the 10-days course.

The purpose of this article is to tell you, from my own experience, what should be known before hand, what mental attitude to adopt, and any other aspects that can help you. It is a bit of a long read, but I think it is worth it especially that you are considering to take this life changing meditation course.

The advises below do not follow any specific order, but all of them are essential points I discovered when I took the course. Continue reading “How to be ready for your first 10 days Vipassana Course”

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The young professor and the old layman

On board of a big ship a simple old man met a young professor and they started to have conversations along the journey. Every night the man came to the professor’s cabin, trying to learn something from the learned man.

On the first night, the professor asked: ‘Old man, do you know what Geology is?’
‘Oh, Professor Sir, I never went to school, I know nothing about Geology. Could you tell me what it is?’ replied the man.
‘Oh, poor old man, you don’t know what geology is. It’s the science of the earth. You’ve wasted a quarter of your life.’ said the professor.
The old man felt so sad, if the professor said that he wasted a quarter of his life than it must be true.

On the second night, the two men met again and the professor asked: ‘Old man, do you know what Oceanology is?’
‘Professor Sir, I am just a simple man, I don’t know that Oceanology is. What is that sir?’ replied the old man.
And the professor said: ‘Oh, poor old man, you don’t know what oceanology is. We are sailing and you don’t know the science of the sea. You’ve wasted half of your life.’ The old man felt so sad, so incredibly sad, he just found out that he wasted half of his life.

On the third night, still eager to learn, the old man came to the professor’s cabin and was asked: ‘Old man, do you know what Meteorology is?’
‘Professor Sir, you know I am just a simple man, I don’t know that Meteorology is.’ reply the old man.
‘Oh, poor old man, you don’t know what geology is; you also don’t know what oceanology is. And now you don’t know what meteorology is. It’s the science of the sky and the weather. You’ve wasted three quarter of your life,’ said the professor.
The old man felt so sad, so incredibly sad, he just found out that he wasted three quarter of his life.

On the fourth night, the old man ran into the professor and start asking: ‘Professor Sir, Professor Sir, do you know swimmology?’
‘Old man, I know a lot of things, but I’ve never heard of swimmology. What is that?’ replied the professor.
‘Do you know how to swim, Sir?’ Asked the old man.
‘To swim? I didn’t have time to learn how to swim; I was busy learning other things. I can’t swim,’ said the professor.
‘Oh poor professor, you’ve wasted all of your life. If you had known swimmology, you could have swim to the shore because the ship is sinking now.’ said the old man.

Origin: Dhamma 10 days discourse by S.N Goenka

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Oh that’s very good! … No! It’s not!

so joe the old farmer, was sitting outside his farm, with a sad look on his face; them sam, his neighbor, comes and asks joe what’s the matter:

sam: joe, you look sad, what’s up?
joe: we had one horse that helped us alot, but now it ran away
sam: oh, that is so so sad, …poor joe
joe: no it isn’t sad!
sam: what? your only horse ran away and it is not sad?
joe: no, it is good! the horse ran away, but returned with 3 other horses!
sam: that is great!!!
joe: no, that is bad!!! ;(
sam: you now have 3 + 1 horses, you can do more work now
joe: true i have 3 horse more, but one day my elder son was mounting one of the horses, and that horse went wild and my son broke his leg!
sam: oh! how sad!
joe: no it isn’t!
sam: what?! your son with a broken leg? and it is not sad?!
joe: no it is not sad! last week, the military was recruiting young boys; when they saw my boy’s broken leg, they did not enlist him!
sam: oh that’s great!!!
joe: no it isn’t!
sam: ……..

and it goes on…..

do you love the story? what do you think happened next? what did they talk about, write me!

origin: Hans DeJong, Silva Method

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Trying to be nice

I found myself saying internally “..but I was trying to be nice…” and that made me wonder: “am I not nice in the first place?” 😉

It turns out there is nothing as “trying to be nice” there is either you’re nice by your nature and how you act, or you’re not nice. Anything in between can be superficial, acting and not natural, and that does not work for whatever purpose you were “trying to be nice” for.

Bottom line: don’t try to be nice, just be as you are.

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The Law of Jante

I was reading Paulo Coelho’s blog and he mentioned “The Law of Jante”

As Google is our first best friend, Wikipedia is our second best friend, so here’s the Law of Jante:

There are ten different rules in the law, but they are all variations on a single theme and are usually referred to as a homogeneous unit: Don’t think you’re anyone special or that you’re better than us.
The ten rules are:

  1. Don’t think that you are special.
  2. Don’t think that you are of the same standing as us.
  3. Don’t think that you are smarter than us.
  4. Don’t fancy yourself as being better than us.
  5. Don’t think that you know more than us.
  6. Don’t think that you are more important than us.
  7. Don’t think that you are good at anything.
  8. Don’t laugh at us.
  9. Don’t think that anyone cares about you.
  10. Don’t think that you can teach us anything.

I love this law, since it puts an end to our ego and selfishness, and tells us that we are not better than anyone else, and we should be humble.

By knowing we are not special, that does not mean we are not really special, it just means that we don’t have to act special and show off in front of others.

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Resetting NTFS files security and permission in Windows

UPDATE:

I have released a new graphical user interface utility to reset the files permissions.

Try it out!

I was running Vista with two NTFS partitions (C: and D:), then formatted C: partition and installed Windows 7. The second partition (D:) had some files security set on files and folders.

After Windows 7 was installed, some files on drive D: were not accessible anymore and I was getting “Access Denied”. I tried to right-click/properties on the folders that were not accessible and changed their owner and changed permissions but still some folders were still inaccessible not matter what I did.

After some research, it turned out the tool “cacls” that allows one to display or change ACLs (access control lists) can help to reset ACLs. In Windows 7 it is called “icalcs”.

To reset files permissions, follow these easy 3 steps:

Step 1: Run “cmd” as Administrator.

Note: In MS Windows 8 and above, press the Win+X keys, then choose “Command Prompt (Admin)”.

Step 2: Go to the drive or folder in question, for example:

CD /D D:

Step 3: To reset all the files permissions, type:

icacls * /T /Q /C /RESET

That’s it! After that, the files permissions were reset and I could access them back again.

Very Important note:

Step 3 is irreversible. Make sure you backup the permissions before you proceed!

It is possible that “icacls” might fail. For that try to take ownership of the files first. Just before Step (3), please type the following command:

takeown /R /F *

flower separator

Download the graphical utility instead!

flower separator
batchography-good-resDo you want to master Batch Files programming? Look no further, the Batchography is the right book for you.

Available in print or e-book editions from Amazon.
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You might also like:

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Some dreams that can become true

Hello Reader,

How does it feel when you wake up in the morning after having a dream showing your best friend dying and you had the chance to sit with him/her and say goodbye before he/she part you the next day?

I know it is a sad feeling, how you cannot afford loosing such dear person to you….you may forcefully wake yourself up from the dream…Alternatively, you may allow your being to express the sad emotions and let tears flow from your eyes and start the process of self healing and release.

But why are we really that sad?

Perhaps because we are loosing something? Continue reading “Some dreams that can become true”

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Peace

Peace, Peace, Peace…everybody talks about peace….This is not yet another thought to talk about “peace” as you’ve read about it in the news, or heard it from an idealist or a politician.
This thought is to share with you a moment of experienced peace, a moment where I got to realize how peace can exist and be found.

Lately, I’ve been greatful and appreciate my meetings with people from all sort of backgrounds. Be that a garbage collector, the concierge, the taxi driver, the small child of your neighbor, or even a person that you’ve known for years but see him/her in a different way.

I came to understand that peace with others can be perceived only when peace with yourself is achieved. The reason I say perceived and not created is simply because peace is already there, but you can’t see it when you are not in peace.

If you are angry, you tend to see people as your enemies. If you are greedy and selfish, you get to see people as those who want to rob you and abuse you. If you are sad, you get to see people as those who want to nag you and bother you. But if you are in peace with yourself, you will get to see everyone peaceful only because you have this perception in your heart.

What has changed? Nothing has changed, the angry person is still angry, the selfish person you meet, is still selfish, what changed is YOU.

A call for peace is something you achieve within, and then the world will change.

You’re not asked to become a saint, to take a slap on both your cheeks, you are simply asked to accept people as they are without any mask of preconception and only then you get to see past the mask that all people are wearing.

Peace upon you dear reader.

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On being oneself

Hi,

Moments of solitude make you reflect, gives you a time, a certain mental pause to look around and see.

I came to realize how hard it is to be oneself, to be your true self.

You may think are your acting on your own, but have you really look inside to see if you are trying to be like someone else, trying to please others, trying to impress someone?

Have you ever evaluated the amount of hidden stress you put inside every time you’re not really being yourself?

I don’t have much to offer now, because I am not myself neither, so much work need to be done to remove all the peels and get to the core of myself.

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Dreams

Hello everybody,
Every now and then, I ask myself to have a dream and most importantly to remember it after I wake up.
It works mostly.However, sometimes I remember dreams and discard them and not give them some attention, and guess what happens?

I start not to recall my dreams and have the impression that I did not dream. It can happen for weeks that no more dreams for me! 🙂

Dreams offer insight into your subconscious mind, help you resolve conscious matters and things that bother you. Dreams also allow to see your loved ones, dead or alive, sometimes dreams can remind you of old friends.

I remember also recurrent dreams that kept on telling me about unresolved issues with friends and these dreams will keep on repeating until I recontact the person and re conciliate him/her.

Also dreams can make your dreams come true in the dream and experience what you don’t have. This have an effect of giving you more hope and patience to actually work harder towards your goal or to ease your waiting time. And paradoxically, dreams can change your mind as well regarding certain things, for the best of course.

And finally dreams can heal you emotionally, especially if you receive or send love in your dream.

Some tips to reengaging/re remembering your dreams:

– Be serious about them: there are no silly or interesting dreams. Remember they are part of you. Try to see what your being is telling you
– Try to record dreams, either a journal next to your bed or a sound recorder. I use the latter, it is more practical
– Before you go to sleep, tell yourself what you want to dream, or if you have nothing specific, just tell yourself that you want an insightful dream and you will be grateful if you just have any dream
– If possible try to act according to your dream: whether it told you to make peace with someone, apologize or contact someone.

And now, what do you think of dreams?

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How to steal facebook accounts?

Catchy title huh?

Well, I am going to tell you how to do that, but first let me explain to you about what we call “phishing” yeah with a”ph” and not an “f” as fishing the fish! 😛

Okay, as Wikipedia puts it:

“Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”

In simple terms, it is to trick user into going to a fake website that looks like a genuine website, and have him/her submit hir* username/password to that fake website.

As a live example, the website: http://www.faceilbook.com is a phishing website where you are tricked to believe that this site is facebook. Now look closely:

1. That website is not facebook, it is f a c e i L b o o k . c o m
Notice the “i” and “L” introduced in the name. These are tricky characters that are not easily seen in the URL.
2. Notice the domain name WHOIS information of this website:

http://whois.domaintools.com/faceilbook.com

It the domain name was registered by a Chinese person.

3. Notice the source code of that fake website, it will redirect you to the profile:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=81014163 after you give away your username/password.

It looks like “Carl Cachia” is somehow involved in this scam.

My advise to you:

1. Never to click any URL or address you are given, even by the trusted ones, without making sure that the website looks okay or not (as I explained above). Your trusted friend might be infected by a virus which sends this fake website automatically.

2. Always doubt when you click on a URL and you suddenly find yourself being asked to enter your username and password

3. In case of doubt, enter a wrong username/password and see if the website reacts normally.

That’s all for now, hope you got informed!

Take care,
Elias

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Movie: Together

I watched today a Chinese drama movie called “Together”. It is the story of a boy who is a talented violinist who’s looking for success with the help of his father. What’s so moving about the story is that the boy’s father is not his real father, instead the boy was picked up by him from a train station along with the violin that was laying next to him.

The story evolves as how the father went to China’s capital to find a good teacher for his son, and how the events lead to unveil to the son the truth about his babyhood.

It is a moving story and movie, hope you enjoy it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Together_(2002_film)

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Who said English was easy?

I got this nice forwarded email, and since I love English language, I thought it is nice to post it here:

You think English is easy???

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce .

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present ..

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither fromGuinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. – Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is ‘UP’

It’s easy to understandUP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We callUP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car . At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And thisUP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixedUP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. I f you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP ..

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP .

When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dryUP .

One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap itUP , for now my time is UP, so……….. it is time to shut UP .!

Oh . . . one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P Oh well, toodle doo.

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Gold Wrapping Paper

Today I received this chain letter, usually I delete chain letters, but this one had a moral.
Oh by the way, I truncated the part where the chain letter usually asks you to forward this to your friends and such. So here we go:

Gold Wrapping Paper

I received this from a friend who had a choice to make. It said that I had a choice to make too.

I’ve chosen. Now it’s your turn to choose.

The story goes that some time ago a mother punished her five year old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and she became even more upset when the child used the gold paper to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her mother the next morning and then said,
“This is for you, Momma.”

The mother was embarrassed by her earlier over reaction, but her anger flared again when she opened
the box and found it was empty. She spoke to her daughter in a harsh manner.

“Don’t you know, young lady, when you give someone a present there’s supposed to be something
inside the package?”

She had tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, Momma, it’s not empty! I blew kisses into it until it was full.”

The mother was crushed. She fell on her knees and put her arms around her little girl, and she begged her forgiveness for her thoughtless anger.

An accident took the life of the child only a short time later, and it is told that the mother kept that gold
box by her bed for all the years of her life.

Whenever she was discouraged or
faced difficult problems she would open the box
and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us, as human beings, have been given a Golden box filled with unconditional love
and kisses from our children, family, friends
and GOD. There is no more precious
possession anyone could hold.