Category: Themes

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A visit to the Saint Charbel Monastery in Annaya, Lebanon

Charbel Makhlouf, also known as Saint Charbel in Annaya Lebanon is very famous amongst Maronite and Catholic Christians. Charbel is famous for his numerous miracles such as healing partial paralysis or eradicating cancer from patients.
It is customary for me and my family to visit Saint Charbel’s monastery once a year at least. In this blog post, I share with you some of the photos I took.


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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:

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”

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The difference between hell and heaven is a mindset

the sacrifice of one An old teaching tale goes like this: A young man wanted to know the difference between Heaven and Hell.

The sage led him to two rooms with observation portals, one labeled Heaven and one Hell.

Looking in at Hell he saw a banquet table filled with luscious food but the people at the table were emaciated and distressed. Their spoons had long handles to reach the food, but the handles were too long to bring the food to their mouths.

Then he looked in on Heaven. Same table full of luscious food. Same long spoons. But the people were healthy and happy and using their long-handled spoons to feed one another.

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Funny male sexuality quotes from a shirt I found

  • God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.
  • Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won’t either.
  • What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
  • A verbal outburst during the male orgasm is called “sperm wail”
  • It’s not how deep you fish, it’s how you wiggle your worm.
  • Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. “Yes” is the answer.
  • Wanna hear a joke about my penis? Never mind, it’s too long.

 


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The 2017 World Predictions – Between reality and illusion, between today and tomorrow

Last year, out of curiosity, I decided to translate the predictions of Michel Hayek for the year of 2016. The article proved to be popular so I decided to do a preliminary translation of the 2017 predictions.

Disclaimer:

  1. I am not a professional translator and I do this as a hobby.
  2. I do not claim the accuracy of the translation below.
  3. I did not translate everything. I skipped many things including predictions of events that are very local to the Arab region and Lebanon.
  4. Please watch the original video with the help of an interpreter if you want to know about all of his predictions.

As Michel Hayek said in his interview, the title of his predictions for the year of 2017 is:

Between reality and illusion, between today and tomorrow

Let’s get started!

More predictions:

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Batchography: Converting numbers to characters (or the CHR() function)

In various programming languages, you might sometimes need to convert numbers to characters. In simple terms, each character you see has a numerical representation. The ASCII table  shows the numbers of each character and its corresponding glyph.

Converting numbers to their corresponding characters would be useful to generate a random string for instance. The first step to generating a random string is to generate random numbers between 65 and 90 (upper case ‘A’ to upper case ‘Z’) or between 97 and 122 (lower case ‘a’ to lower case ‘z’).

While the Batch language is pretty primitive, you would be surprised how many things you can do with it. In the Batchography book, I cover various topics that would bring your Batch programming skills to the next level.
batchography-good-res

Get the book from Amazon:

  • Paperback editionbtn-buy-on-amazon
  • E-book editionbtn-buy-on-amazon

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Batchography: How to do a “switch/case” in Batch files

You have found this blog post because you are wondering if there is a way to express a “switch/case” logic in Batch files.

The short answer is: “no, not exactly”. However, there are ways to achieve the same in Batch files.

In the Batchography book, I explain in details the “switch/case” construct, but in this blog post I will illustrate this mechanism briefly. For more advanced Batch scripting topics, please grab a copy of the Batchography book.

batchography-good-res

Get the book from Amazon:

  • Paperback editionbtn-buy-on-amazon
  • E-book editionbtn-buy-on-amazon

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Are you Christian? Are you Muslim? What’s your religion? Tell me, I want to feel better

I am writing this blog post just to rant and vent off and share with you one incident that happened with me.

 

The other day, while visiting Vancouver, BC, I was stopped by a family to take a photo. They observed my accent and they asked me where I am from. When I mentioned Lebanon, they wanted to know if I am a Christian or a Muslim. When I said Christian, they felt really happier and more friendly!

If you live in the West, some (if not many) people are Islamophobe. They ask you if you are a Christian or a Muslim so they feel a bit of relief if you have a more “positive” and “peaceful” religion.

I just hate the fact that I have to declare my religion so that others around me feel better. Even if they don’t ask directly, I feel this covert need to disclose my religion. Too bad, what a state of affairs. Having said that, I was born to a Christian family.

Today, based on the current world events, more and more people are brainwashed by the mainstream media to hate the religion of Islam. Where is the real freedom of expression?

When it comes to me, I treat others not based on their religion, but on how they act towards others. I try not to generalize because each person is different.: there are bad Christians as there are good Muslims and vice versa.

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The Zen master Shichiri Kojun and the thief

One evening, Zen master Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras when a thief entered his house with a sharp sword, demanding “money or life”.
Without any fear, Shichiri said: “Don’t disturb me! Help yourself with the money, it’s in that drawer” and he resumed his recitation.

The thief was startled by this unexpected reaction, but he proceeded with his business anyway.
While he was helping himself with the money, the master stopped and called, “Don’t take all of it. Leave some for me to pay my taxes tomorrow”.
The thief left some money behind and prepared to leave. Just before he left, the master suddenly shouted at him, “You took my money and you didn’t even thank me?! That’s not polite!”. Continue reading “The Zen master Shichiri Kojun and the thief”

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No Wifi – Talk to each other! Pretend it’s 1993!

no wifi, talk to each otherDo you remember the days when you used to go to a coffee shop to meet and talk with new people?

Well, it is no longer the case. You go to a coffee shop and you see people with headphones absorbed in their own bubbles or just glued to their smartphone screens!

It takes more efforts these days to strike a conversation with strangers because you have to find the right way not to interrupt or annoy people as you start a conversation.

Often times, I also go to a coffee shop to work and focus and thus I don’t want to talk to new people. But even still, often times I want to take a break and meet/talk to strangers. Continue reading “No Wifi – Talk to each other! Pretend it’s 1993!”

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7 simple methods to achieve success in life

Source: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/03/started-bottom-now-im/
Tips for success
  1. Study hard when you’re young
  2. Work hard when you’re older
  3. Never shy away from making connections
  4. Leverage your network for opportunities
  5. Life 10% below your means -> save 10% of your income
  6. Don’t foster any addictions (alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling)
  7. Don’t fall for scams

Those really are “proven steps”!

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Batchography: How to do string substitution in the Batch scripting language?

There are so many undocumented or obscure features in the Batch scripting language and in this article I am going to illustrate how to do string substitution.

For more advanced Batch scripting topics, please grab a copy of the Batchography book.

batchography-good-res

Let’s get started! Continue reading “Batchography: How to do string substitution in the Batch scripting language?”

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The stereogram experience

I first learned about stereograms in 2001. Back then, the term was new to me and I had no idea that it was possible to see 3D shapes on a 2D screen with the naked eyes.

What are stereograms you ask?

A diagram or computer-generated image giving a three-dimensional representation of a solid object or surface

Wikipedia, as usual, has a nice article explaining stereograms.

After a long week of trying hard, researching and learning various techniques, I managed to see my first stereogram:

snowman-softsource
3D snowman

Continue reading “The stereogram experience”

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I found a “Million Dollar Bill” in a park in Manhattan, NY

The other day, while walking around and exploring Manhattan, NY, I decided to stop and rest in the nearest park. On the bench where I sat, there was this $1,000,000 dollar bill next to me:

million-dollar-face

On the back of the bill, the following text is found:

million-dollar-quote

As it turns out, LivingWaters.com think it is a nice way to use a fake bill to draw the attention of the people to the bible.

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