Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love, time is eternity.
— Henry Van Dyke
Time quotes – Henry Van Dyke
Auroville – The universal town in Tamil Nadu, India
Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.
Today Auroville is recognised as the first and only internationally endorsed ongoing experiment in human unity and transformation of consciousness, also concerned with – and practically researching into – sustainable living and the future cultural, environmental, social and spiritual needs of mankind.
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Take aways from the Defensive Driving Course
Recently, I took the 6 session defensive driving course. The following are some of the notes I extracted from the course that I would like to share with my you:
- The defensive driving formula
- The Ten Habits of Defensive Driving
- The “What If?” Strategy
- The Three Second Rule and stopping distance facts
- Safe and unsafe passing
- Road Sign colors and shapes
There were lots of information in the course, I highly recommend taking it! You can download the notes as a single PDF file from here:
(The PDF was created using the free Pic2Pdf tool)
The defensive driving formula
Continue reading “Take aways from the Defensive Driving Course”
How many slaves work for you?
When researching minimalism and reading the Affluenza book, I came across the “Slavery Footprint” website (http://slaveryfootprint.org)
On this website, you take a survey:
…and then at the end you get the result:
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Batchography – Programming the “Hangman game” using the Batch scripting language!
In this blog post, I am going to share with you the high level steps needed to build the Hangman game using the Batch scripting language.
To learn more about how the Hangman is programmed using the Batch scripting language, please refer to Chapter 5 in the Batchography book.
Get the book from Amazon:
- the print edition
- or the e-book edition
Continue reading “Batchography – Programming the “Hangman game” using the Batch scripting language!”
How to turn your bookshelf into an e-book library: Digitizing all of your books
Since I moved to the US, I collected around 350 books. I love books and the thought of giving them up is not a pleasant thought.
Each time I used to move from an apartment to another, the majority of boxes would be packed with books. Each time I travel somewhere for a long period, I miss being able to grab a book from my bookshelf and start reading (most of my books are old and they do no exist in digital format anyway). It is clear that I have attachment to those books.
To break this attachment, I had to make a couple of decisions. The first was whether to just forget about the books, leave them on the shelves and get myself busy with another chore. The other decision was whether to scan and /or give away the books. With that came other questions like how to scan books and convert them to eBooks, what methods to use, how much efforts would it take to convert the books, etc.
I decided to get rid of the books and the trim down on the space they occupy. For the reasons outlined later in this blog post, I chose to destructively scan my books. By scanning the books, I get a digital and searchable copy of my books (in PDF format).
In this blog post, I will share with you different ways you can use to digitize books and then the remainder of this blog post will illustrate how I destructively digitized all of my books and what tools I used. Continue reading “How to turn your bookshelf into an e-book library: Digitizing all of your books”
The 8 methods of teaching – By Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King’s College, Cambridge, England. After returning to India he took up various civil service works under the maharaja of the princely state of Baroda and began to involve himself in politics. He was imprisoned by the British for writing articles against British rule in India. He was released when no evidence was provided. During his stay in the jail he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work. — Wikipedia
In this article, I am going to discuss my thoughts about his teaching methods and how much they resonate with my own teaching methods. Continue reading “The 8 methods of teaching – By Sri Aurobindo”
PHILOSOPHY – Rational Choice Theory: The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Batchography: How to check if your Batch file script is running as an Administrator
In chapter 4 of the Batchography book, I illustrate 3 methods that you can use to check if your Batch file script is running as an Administrator.
In this blog post, I will share with you the method entitled “Using known commands that fail to run without elevated privileges” from the book.
The idea behind this method is to run commands that are known to fail and return a non-zero error code if they are not executed with administrative privilege.
The Batch script would then check the return code and act accordingly:
@echo off :: :: The Batchography book by Elias Bachaalany :: net session >nul 2>&1 if %errorlevel% neq 0 ( echo Requires administrative privilege. goto :eof ) echo Script starts here...
Do 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.com!
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Seven Golden Keys for Good Health – an advice from Dr. Shinya
I ran into the following article when researching the topic of Kangen Water.
The contents of this blog post has been compiled from excerpts from the “The Enzyme Factor Paperback – April 1, 2010 by Hiromi Shinya MD” book.
I find this article very useful, therefore I am sharing with you slightly modified version of it. It will contain 7 important diet and mental attitude tips to inspire you to have good health and longer life.
Make sure you check the other recommended articles.
1. GOOD DIET
You should be consuming 85-90% plant based foods and 10-15% animal based food and proteins.
Plant-based foods
Eat a 85-90% plant-based foods:
- Eat 50% whole grains, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, barley, cereals, whole grain bread & beans including soybeans, kidney beans, garbanzo beans, lentils, pinto beans, pigeon peas, black, white & pink beans.
- Eat 30% green and yellow vegetables and root vegetables, including potatoes, carrots, yams and beets and sea vegetables.
- With the remaining 5-10%, eat fruits, seeds & nuts.
Continue reading “Seven Golden Keys for Good Health – an advice from Dr. Shinya”
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
The All-Consuming Epidemic
The following documentary is based on the “Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic” book. I read the book and it changed my life. I highly recommend it if you are looking to start implementing a sane and minimalistic way of life. Continue reading “Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic”
Batchography: Building a dynamic menu in Batch files – Part 1
In this blog post, I am going to share with you a recipe from the Batchography book that illustrates and explains how to build a dynamic menu using the CHOICE command with Batch files. In this article, we will dynamically build a menu around the COLOR command so that the user can change the colors of the console interactively.
To learn more about this technique and the Batch scripting language, please refer to Chapters 3 and 4 in the Batchography book.
Get the book from Amazon: the print editionor the e-book edition
Continue reading “Batchography: Building a dynamic menu in Batch files – Part 1”
Batchography: Embedding an executable file in a Batch script
In this blog post, I am going to share with you a recipe from the Batchography book that illustrates and explains in details how to embed executable files in the Batch file script and execute them after they are dropped.
This technique does not rely on using a polyglot Batch file where its first part is actually a Batch script and the other part is a VBS or JScript script. If you want to learn more about how to write polyglot Batch scripts, please refer to Chapter 4 in the Batchography book.
Get the book from Amazon: the print editionor the e-book edition
Continue reading “Batchography: Embedding an executable file in a Batch script”
Kindle edition – Batchography: The Art of Batch Files Programming
After one month of releasing the Batchography book, this month I released the e-book Kindle edition.
The benefits of the e-book Kindle edition is that you can buy the book from many countries in just a few clicks: USA, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India.
In the Batchography book, you will learn about:
- The Basic concepts of Batch file scripting
- Data structures: Arrays, Stacks, Sets, Maps
- Multiline, compound and conditional statements
- Function calls and repetition control structures
- Files and strings manipulation techniques
- Debugging and troubleshooting tips
- Coding conventions and testing methodologies
Click here to see full details about the book.
Buy from Amazon: the print bookor the e-book
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- More books by the author
- WifiPasswordReveal: A script to reveal all the saved WiFi passwords in Windows 7 and above
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Introducing the “Batchography: The Art of Batch Files Programming” book
Long gone are the days when you had to use search engines to jump from one website to another in order to figure out the syntax or how to solve a problem using a Batch file script. The Batchography book is a boon for system administrators, build engineers, programmers and home users alike. It takes you on a journey of re-discovery of the lost art of Batch files programming. Whether you are an experienced user or new to the language, you will be surprised by the clarity and the abundance of the material presented in this book. With more than 140 scripting recipes, you will learn about things that you never thought were possible to achieve using the Batch files scripting language.
In the Batchography book, you will learn about:
- The Basic concepts of Batch file scripting
- Data structures: Arrays, Stacks, Sets, Maps
- Multiline, compound and conditional statements
- Function calls and repetition control structures
- Files and strings manipulation techniques
- Debugging and troubleshooting tips
- Coding conventions and testing methodologies
Buy from Amazon:
- Printed book:
- Kindle edition: Continue reading “Introducing the “Batchography: The Art of Batch Files Programming” book”
Video: Tummy Tuck Surgery
Out of curiosity, I wanted to learn about plastic surgery and I ran into this video.
I am appalled at how the doctor takes her belly skin apart, removes some fat, tighten the muscles and then stiches everything back together!
Very intrusive surgery! I can only imagine how much trauma the body takes during/after this surgery.
The following video is very graphic, so if you cannot handle seeing blood then click here for something more fun. Continue reading “Video: Tummy Tuck Surgery”
Sleeping tips – Basic Sleep Hygiene
This is a multi-part short article about sleeping tips to help you improve your sleep.
Basic sleep hygiene
Like you have food hygiene principles, there are also a set of sleep hygiene principles that can help you get a good night’s sleep:
- Slow down your mind: do relaxing activities before going to bed, do not keep on working and then abruptly try to go to sleep. Your mind will keep on “rolling” and will take the problems with it. Slow your mind down before going to sleep.
- Don’t feast at night: Unless you want to watch lots of action dreams or nightmares, do not eat heavy meals before going to sleep! You don’t want to make your body busy digesting. You want to have your body rejuvenate itself.
- Avoid bright lights: Don’t stare at bright screens too long before going to sleep (like your phone or tablet). Instead, read a physical book or if you have to, use a dimly lit e-ink based reader like Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite.
- Avoid caffeine at least a couple of hours before going to sleep: to some, drinking caffeine will not help them fall asleep fast or soundly at night.
- Your bedroom is for sleeping only: while you can do other “stuff” in your bedroom, keep unpleasant and distracting activities outside the bedroom essentially. No computers, eating, playing with your electronic devices all night long, etc…
- Organized sleeping time: your body loves order and routine (same like your mind loves patterns). Make a habit to sleep no longer than 10PM each night and learn how to wake up naturally without an alarm.
…and the list goes on, but you get the idea.
Now you may ask “What if I still cannot fall asleep?”
The answer to this is a topic for another blog post in this series. However, if there is something I learned during my quest for better sleep is the fact that if you are in bed, tossing around and around not able to sleep then don’t stress about it! Accept that fact and relax until you eventually lose consciousness and drift into sleep.
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- Dreams
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- In My Darkest Hours – A music album review
- Roy Orbison – In Dreams