Ikram Kurdi's Blog

How to sum up the contents of a column in Excel or Google Docs

2009-10-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

If you want to make a sum of Column C, write =sum(c:c)

That looks pretty basic but I only learned it a few days ago. Sad.

Ryan's Hollywood Workout Scam (mensdiet.org)

2009-10-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

This scam is probably by the same people behind the Google Biz Kit scam and the Google Links Programs scam.

Speak truly, you may say, why, Mr. Kurdi, is this a scam?

My dear boy, the website is quite similar to the mentioned scam websites, here are a few things that caught my attention:

1. Generic, ugly design.
2. Step-by-step guide on the right. The two scams I mentioned above had this.

3. Dummy comment form. It doesn't work. It is scripted to say "comment saved" without actually sending what you wrote to a server. Here is a screenshot of the form's Javascript code:

In the previous scams they used to write "Comments disabled due to spam." They probably realized this makes people suspicious. Now they give you the illusion that they accept comments.

What about the comments already on the page?

The scammers have prepared it themselves.

What will happen if I buy their stuff?

They may not send you anything. Or they may send you a book filled with nothing special, just text ripped from websites.

Google has learned Arabic

2009-10-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

I wanted to search for "Twitter logo" and I typed it in the address bar to search for it. I had forgotten to switch my computer's keyboard language to English from Arabic. But still Google understood the Arabic gibberish I wrote!

The trick they use is simple. If the Arabic term doesn't make sense, they translate the Arabic keystrokes into English ones.

I have seen this before on the baheth.info search engine.

Amazing insect robot

2009-10-15T17:42:00.001-07:00

About

2009-09-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

This is my personal blog. I read hundreds of Muslim blogs everyday and I've decided to dedicate some of my time to finding new blogs and adding them to my index.

Difference between str and repr in Python

2009-05-18T20:05:00.001-07:00

Both of them convert values to strings, str changes the look of the value, while repr keeps its looks. str converts the data to a reasonable looking format, in other words it translates the data. While repr just takes a picture of the data and draws it again in string format, thus not changing its look.

Solution for Active Desktop Recovery popping up after every restart [Windows XP]

2009-04-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

Go to this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components

Change the value of DeskHtmlVersion to zero.

Solution for blogger template's "undefined" date

2009-03-31T11:20:00.000-07:00

Some templates, especially those imported from wordpress, show the dates in new cool ways which don't always work for blogger.

To solve this, change the Timestamp format in the Settings-->Formatting tab. Changing it to the 4th one solved my problem.

Thinking about IBM's Roadrunner, comparing it to mine

2009-03-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

How much time would it take for a supercomputer to break one of your passwords if you used AES-256? Encrypted RAR files and a lot of secure internet websites use it.

My computer which is an intel Core2 Duo E8400 can try 240 passwords per second.

I used Sandra to see how many flops my computer did, it ranged at above 25-30 GFlops. IBM's Roadrunner does 1,105,000 GFLOPs.

Which means it is equal to around 40,000 units of my pc.

Using this neat online tool I found that a 7 character password (upper and lowercase and digits) would stand a 5 day brute force attack by Roadrunner maximum.

8 characters would stand 9 months.

9 characters 44 years.

10 chars 2.6 thousand years.

15 chars 2.4 trillion years. So if you use a 15 character password (uppercase, lowercase and digits) you are pretty safe until they invent functional quantum computers.

The danger is here: If you use a normal 7 character password made of lowercase letters, the Roadrunner will crack it in less than 14 minutes.

The numbers are not accurate at all. They change with the size of the file, and different types of bandwidths inside the computer(s) (and between the processors in the supercomputer) come into play.

=============

Update:

I found out that the size of the file is extremely important in cracking it. My computer was able to run 16 thousand passwords per second with a sub kilobyte file.

Cure for self image issues, the piggy way

2009-03-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

A pig contemplated his image in the
water of a pond. He found he looked so
ugly that he started to cry, and his
tears soon obscured his image. Then he
heard a voice from above:

"No creature is more beautiful than
you are, pig," it said.

"That's not true!" cried the pig. "I
am even uglier than a toad!"

"But there's nothing more beautiful
than a toad," the voice replied.

"You see! You're contradicting
yourself! A toad and I can't both be
the most beautiful of creatures at the
same time."

"All my creatures are most beautiful
to my eyes, and all at the same time,"
the voice said.

It was then that the pig understood
he was talking to God. He looked again
at his reflection in the water, and
this time his heart felt light and
there was a smile on his face.

Download The Little Prince by Saint Exupery for free

2009-03-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

Here you go:
http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Little_Prince

Good eye exercises for computer users

2009-03-05T22:04:00.000-08:00

I am usually on the computer for many hours (8+) every day, and sometimes I can feel bad effects of this, such as seeing drop shadows on faraway signs (some Photoshop features are addictive), blurry vision and even difficulty at recognizing faces 20 feet away. A good exercise routine would help greatly.

After a little search I found the following, which are easy and make a lot of sense to me.

Googletalk Chatback, the most useless thing that ever was

2009-03-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

So I added Chatback to my blog and tried to test it. If a guest clicks on my name to chat with me, the first thing they see is "You are chatting with an unidentified user, be careful what you discuss."

I am the one who is supposed to see that, because I am talking with a guest. But they too see that and it outright scares them away.

I saw this discussed on some google forums, and each time Google's answer is: "You are talking with a guest, so they are unidentified". They need some time to catch up.

How to solve noreply@blogger.com feed problem

2009-03-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

I subscribed to one of my own feeds and when in Google Reader I looked at the feed, I saw that my name had a silly noreply@blogger.com beside it.

If you are using feedburner, remove the "?default=rss" from the end of your feed url. This solved my problem.

The reason is that rss needs an email address for the post author and google just fills it up with a useless email address. When you remove default=rss, your feed will use atom instead which doesn't have this problem.

Sohrab Sepehri - The Footsteps of Water - Complete Translation

2008-11-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

The Footsteps of Water is a long poem by Sohrab Sepehri, a modern poet who had a leading role in introducing the practice of free verse with other poets such as Forough Farrokhzad. I took up reading The Footsteps in high school as a way of refreshing my mind and avoiding getting bored with life.
After looking for English translations of it online and not finding any good ones, I decided to write my own. I have reviewed it a few times since I finished it in January 2008. I have tried to stay true to the Persian version's usage of words and punctuation in special places, to communicate the true feel of the poem; even if it seems like a comma is needed somewhere but there isn't one, it is because dear Sohrab didn't put one.

The Footsteps of Water - Complete Translation by Ikram Kurdi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The Footsteps of Water

I am a native of Kashan
My days are not so bad.
I own a loaf of bread, a bit of intelligence, a tiny bit of taste.
I possess a mother better than the leaves of trees.
Friends, better than the water of a running brook.

And a God who is this near:
Within these gillyflowers, beneath that tall pine tree,
Hovering above the awareness of water, above the Law of Foliage.

I am Muslim.
My Qiblah is a red rose.
My praying spot is a spring, my prayer stone is light.
Plains are my praying mat.
I make ablution with the heartbeat of windows.
In my prayer flows the Moon, flow the colors of the spectrum.
Stones are visible from behind my prayer:
Crystallized are all the particles of my prayer.
I do my prayer when,
Its Athan wind, from a cypress tree’s minaret, has sung.
I do my prayer to grass's saying "God is the Greatest"
To the "Iqama" of waves.

My Kabaa is by the lip of the brook,
My Kabaa is under the acacias.
My Kabaa like the breeze, blows from garden to garden, from town to town.

My Black Stone is the brilliance of the garden.

I’m a native of Kashan.
My craft is painting:
Now and then I build a cage with paint, sell it to you
So that with the song of poppies that is imprisoned in it
The heart of your loneliness may cheer up.
What a dream, what a dream...I know
My canvas is lifeless.
I know well, my painting basin contains no fishes.

I’m a native of Kashan.
My descent perhaps goes back
To a plant in India, to an earthen vase from the soil of 'Sialk'.
My descent perhaps goes back to a prostitute in the city of Bukhara.

My father behind two migrations of swallows, behind two snowfalls,
My father behind twice sleeping in the veranda,
My father behind eras has died.
My father died when, the sky was blue,
My mother jumped from sleep unaware, my sister became beautiful.
My father died when, the policemen were all poets.
The grocer man asked me: How many melons do you want?
I asked him :How much is the price of a happy heart?

My father used to paint.
He used to make tars, played the tar too.
He also had a nice handwriting.

Our garden stood on the side of the shadow of wisdom.
Our garden was the interweaving place of feeling and plants,
Our garden was the meeting point of a glance, a cage and a mirror .
Our garden was perhaps, an arc of the green circle of happiness.
The unripe fruit of God on that day, I used to chew in sleep.
Water I used to drink without philosophy
Berries, I used to pick without knowledge.
As soon as a pomegranate used to crack, hands turned to fountains of desire.
As soon as a cello used to sing, the chest burnt from a longing to hear.
Sometimes loneliness used to stick its face to the windowpane.
Passion used to come, and put its arms around the neck of sense.
The mind, used to play.
Life was something, like a rainfall during Eid, like a plane tree full of starlings.
Life at that time, was a line up of light and dolls,
It was an armful of liberty.
Life at that time, was a music basin.

The child, slowly, walked away along the alley of dragonflies.
I packed my things, went out of the city of carefree fancies
With my heart filled with homesickness for dragonflies.

I went to the party thrown by the world:
I, to the field of grief,
I, to the garden of mysticism,
I, to the illuminated veranda of knowledge went.
I climbed up the stairs of religion.
To the end of the alleyway of doubt,
To the cool air of self-sufficiency,
To the wet night of love and affection.
I went to see someone who was at the other side of love.
I went, I went until women,
Until the lantern of pleasure,
Until the silence of desire,
Until the flapping sound of the wings of loneliness

I saw things on the face of Earth:
I saw a child, who was smelling the Moon.
I saw a door-less cage in which, brilliance was flapping its wings.
I saw a ladder on which, love ascended to the roof of heaven.
I saw a woman, who was pounding light in a mortar.
Lunch on their table was bread, was vegetables, was the distance of dew, was the hot bowl of affection.

I saw a beggar, who was walking door to door begging for the song of a lark
And a sweeper who was praying to the rind of a melon.

I saw a lamb, that was eating a kite.
I saw a donkey, which understood hay.
In the meadow of 'advice' I saw a cow, satiated.

I saw a poet who during talking, addressed a lily as "Your Highness."

I saw a book, its words all of the make of crystal.
I saw a sheet of paper, of the make of spring,
I saw a museum faraway from grass,
A mosque faraway from water.
Above the bed of a hopeless scholar, I saw a vase, overflowing with questions

I saw a mule whose load was 'essays'
I saw a camel whose load was the empty basket of 'proverbs'.
I saw a mystic whose load was 'tanana ha ya hoo'.

I saw a train, that was carrying brilliance.
I saw a train, that was carrying knowledge and so torrential it went.
I saw a train, that was carrying politics (and so empty it went.)
I saw a train, that was carrying seeds of lotus and the song of canaries.
And an air plane, which on that height of thousands of feet,
the soil through its windows was visible:
the topknot of hoopoes,
The spots of a butterfly's wings,
The reflection of a frog in a pond
And the passage of a fly from the alleyway of loneliness.
The clear desire of a sparrow, when from a plane tree it comes toward the ground.
And the maturation of the Sun.
And the beautiful love making of a doll with the morning.

Stairs that ascended to the greenhouse of lust.
Stairs that descended to the cellar of alcohol.
Stairs that ran to the Law of Corruption of Red Roses
And toward the understanding of Mathematics of Life,
Stairs that ran to the roof of enlightenment,
stairs that ran to the platform of manifestation.

My mother down there
was washing the cups in the stream's memory.

The city was visible:
The geometrical growth of cement, steel, stones.
The pigeon-less roofs of hundreds of buses.
A florist was putting up his flowers for sale.
Between two jasmine trees, a poet was hanging a swing.
A boy was throwing stones at the wall of a school.
A child was spitting plum stones upon dad's faded praying mat.
And a goat was drinking water from the Caspian Sea of a geographical map.

A laundry-line was visible, a restless brassiere.

The wheel of a cart longing for the horse to become weary,
The horse longing for the carter to sleep,
The carter longing for death.

Love was visible, waves were visible,
snow was visible, friendship was visible.
Words were visible.
Water was visible, and the reflection of things in the water.
The cool shade of cells in the heat of blood.
The moist side of life,
The east of sorrow in the human heart.
The season of drifting in the alley of women.
The scent of solitude in the alley of seasons.

A fan was visible in the hand of summer.

The seed’s journey to flowering.
The ivy’s journey from this house to that house.
The moon’s journey into the pond.
The eruption of flowers of regret from the soil.
The falling of young vine from the wall.
The raining of dewdrops on the bridge of sleep.
The leaping of joy from the ditch of death.
The passing of events behind words.

The battle of a hole with the light's desire.
The battle of a stair with the long leg of the Sun.
The battle of solitude with a melody.
The beautiful battle of pears with the emptiness of a basket.
The bloody battle of pomegranates with jaws.
The battle of 'Nazi'’s with branches of delicacy.
The battle of a parrot and eloquence.
The battle of the forehead with the coldness of prayer-stones.

The attack of the mosque tiles on prostration.
The attack of wind on the ascension of soap bubbles.
The attack of the army of butterflies on the program of 'Pest Control'.
The attack of dragonflies on the row of plumbers.
The attack of reed pens on leaden letters.
The attack of a word on a poet’s jaw.

The opening of a century by a poem.
The opening of a garden by a starling.
The opening of an alley by an exchange of greetings.
The opening of a town on the hands of three or four wooden horsemen.
The opening of a New Year by two dolls, one ball.

The murder of a ratchet on the mattress in the afternoon.
The murder of a story at the entrance of the alley of sleep.
The murder of a worry by the instruction of songs.
The murder of moonlight by the command of neon lights.
The murder of an oak tree by the hands of "government".
The murder of a depressed poet by a chimonanthus.

All was visible on the surface of the earth:
Order was walking in the alley of Greece.
An owl was howling in the 'Hanging Gardens'.
The wind was blowing a sheaf of history’s straws on Khaybar Pass towards the east
On the serene lake of Neghin, a boat was carrying flowers.
In Banares, at the entrance of each alley an eternal lamp was burning.

Peoples I saw.
Towns I saw.
Plains, mountains I saw.
Water I saw, soil I saw.
Light and darkness I saw.
And plants in light and plants in darkness I saw.
Creatures in light, creatures in darkness I saw.
And humans in light, and humans in darkness I saw.

I’m a native of Kashan, but
My city is not Kashan.
My city is lost.
I, with endurance, I, with fever
Have built a house on the other side of nighttime.
In this home I am close to the humid anonymity of grass.
I hear the sound of breathing of the garden.
And the sound of darkness, when it drops from a leaf.
And the sound of, the coughing of brightness from behind a tree,
The sneezing of water from every crack of rock,
The dripping of swallows from the ceiling of spring.
And the clear sound of opening and closing of the window of loneliness
And the pure sound of the mysterious casting off of the skin of love,
The concentration of the passion for soaring in wings
And the cracking of soul's self-restraint.
I hear the footsteps of longing
And the lawful footsteps of blood in veins,
The pulsing of the dawn of the pigeons' well,
The beating of the heart of the Friday night,

The flowing of clove pink in thoughts,
The pure neigh of truth from afar.
I can hear the sound of the blowing of matter
And the sound of the shoe of faith in the alley of excitement.
And the sound of rainfall on the wet eyelids of love,
on the sad music of adolescence,
on the song of pomegranate orchards.
And the sound of the shattering of the bottle of joy at night,
the tearing of the paper of beauty,
And the filling and emptying of the cup of nostalgia, of wind.

I am close to the beginning of the earth.
I take the pulse of flowers.
I am familiar with, the wet fate of water, the green habit of trees.

My soul is flowing towards the new direction of objects.
My soul is young.
My soul sometimes from excitement, gets a cough.
My soul is jobless:
Raindrops, the cracks in bricks, it counts.
My soul sometimes, is as real as a stone on the road.

I didn't see two poplars to be foes.
I didn't see a willow selling its shade to the ground.
For free it offers, willow its branch to the crow.
Wherever there is a leaf, my passion blossoms.
A poppy bush, has bathed me in the flowing of being.

Like the wings of insects I know the weight of dawn.
Like a vase, I listen to the music of growth.
Like a basketful of fruit, I have strong fever for ripening.
Like a tavern, I stand on the border of languor.
Like a building at the lip of the sea I am anxious about the high eternal waves

Sunshine as much as you want, union as much as you want, reproduction as much as you want.

I am content with an apple
And with smelling a chamomile bush.
I with a mirror -a pure connection- am content.
I don't laugh if a balloon bursts.
I won't laugh if a philosophy halves the Moon.
I know the sound of flapping of a quail’s wings,
the colors of a bustard’s belly, the footprints of a mountain goat.
I know well where rhubarbs grow,
When starlings come, when partridges sing, when falcons die,
What the Moon in the dream of a desert is,
Death in the stem of desire
And the raspberries of pleasure, in the jaws of love-making.

Life is a lovely ritual.
Life has wings as vast as death,
It has a leap the size of love.
Life is not something that, on the windowsill of habit to be left forgotten by you and me.
Life is the rapture of a hand that reaps.
Life is the first black fig, which is in the acrid mouth of summer.
Life is the dimensions of a tree from the eyes of an insect.
Life is the experience that a bat has in the dark.
Life is the homesickness that a migrating bird feels.
Life is the whistle of a train that turns through the dream of a bridge.
Life is observing a garden from the obstructed windows of an airplane.
It is the news of the launch of a rocket to space,
touching the loneliness of the Moon,
the notion of smelling a flower on another planet

Life is the washing of a plate

Life is finding a penny in the brook of the street.
Life is the 'square root' of a mirror.
Life is a flower 'to the power' of eternity,
Life is the Earth multiplied by our heartbeats,
Life is the simple and monotonous 'geometry' of breaths

Wherever I am, so let me be,
The sky is mine.
The window, thinking, air, love, the Earth is mine
What importance does it have then
Sometimes if they grow,
mushrooms of nostalgia?

I, don’t know
That why some say: horses are noble animals, pigeons are beautiful.
And why there is no vulture in any person's birdcage.
What do clovers lack have that red tulips have.
Eyes should be washed, in another way we should see.
Words should be washed.
A word in itself should be the wind, a word in itself should be the rain.

Umbrellas we should shut.
In the rain we should walk.
Thoughts, and recollections, should be carried in the rain.
With all the people of the town, in the rain we should walk.
A friend, in the rain we should call on.
Love, we should seek in the rain.
In the rain we should sleep with women.
In the rain we should play.
In the rain we should write things, speak, plant lotuses
Getting drenched from time to time,
swimming in the pond of 'right now', is what life is.

Let us undress:
Water is one foot away.

Let us taste brilliance.
Weigh the night of a village, the sleep of a deer.
Let us feel the warmth of a stork's nest,
tread not on the Law of Lawn,
loosen the knot of tasting in the vineyard.
And open our mouthes if the Moon emerges.
And not say that night is a bad thing.
And not say that the glowworm is unaware of a garden's perspicacity.

And Let us bring baskets.
Take all this red, all this green.

Let us have bread and cheese in the mornings.
And plant a sapling at every turn of a sentence.
And pour between two syllables the seed of silence.
Let us not read a book in which the wind doesn’t blow
And a book in which the surface of dew is not wet
and a book in which cells don't have dimensions.
Let us not wish the mosquito would fly off the fingertip of nature.
And not wish that the leopard would go out of the door of creation.
And let us understand that if worms didn't exist, life would have lacked something.
And if caterpillars didn't exist, the Law of Trees would have suffered a blow.
And if death didn't exist, our hands would have sought something.
And let us know if light didn't exist, the living logic of flying would have gone astray.
And let us know that before corals, there was a void in the thoughts of seas.

And let us not ask where we are,
Let us smell the fresh petunias of the hospital.

And let us not ask where the fountain of luck is.
And let us not ask why the heart of truth is blue.
And let us not ask what breezes, what nights the fathers of our fathers enjoyed.

Behind our backs there isn't a thriving space.
Behind our backs no bird sings.
Behind our backs no wind blows.
Behind our backs the green window of poplar is closed.
Behind our backs dust has settled over the whirligigs.
Behind our backs what there is is the weariness of history.
Behind our backs the memory of waves throw cold shells of silence on the coast.

let us go to the lip of the sea,
cast nets in the water
and catch freshness from the water.

Let’s pick up a pebble from the ground
and feel the weight of existence.

let us curse not the Moonlight if we have fever
(Sometimes I have seen in fever, the moon descends,
and hands reach the ceiling of heaven.
I have noticed, the goldfinch sings better.
Sometimes a wound that I have had under my feet
have taught me the ups and downs of the ground.
Sometimes in my sickbed the size of a flower has multiplied,
and increased it has, the diameter of an orange, the radius of a lantern.)
And let us not fear death
(Death is not the end of the pigeon.
Death is not a cricket’s inversion.
Death flows in the soul of acacias.
Death has a seat in the pleasant climate of thinking.
Death in the spirit of the village's night speaks of morning.
Death with a bunch of grapes comes into the mouth.
Death sings in the red larynx of the throat.
Death is responsible for the beauty of a butterfly’s wings.
Death sometimes picks basil.
Death sometimes drinks vodka.
Sometimes it is in the shade watching us.
and we all know
The lungs of pleasure, are full of the oxygen of death.)

Let us not shut the door on the alive speech of appreciation which we hear from behind the wattled twigs of sound.

Let us remove the curtain:
Let us allow 'feeling' to get some fresh air.
Let us allow adolescence to dwell under any bush it wishes.
Let us allow instinct to play.
To take off its shoes and following the seasons, leap on the flowers.
Let us allow solitude to sing.
To write things.
To go to the street.

Let us be simple.
Let us be simple whether at a teller's window or under a tree.

It is not our job, discovering the 'secret' of the red rose,
Our job maybe is
to, in the charm of the red rose, become swimmers.
To camp behind wisdom.
To wash hands in the rapture of a tree leaf before sitting at the dining table.
In the mornings when the sun, rises let us get born again.
Let us let our excitements fly.
Let us upon the perception of space, color, sound and the window sprinkle water .
Let the sky settle between two syllables of existence.
Let us fill and empty our lungs with eternity.
Take the load of knowledge off the shoulders of the swallow.
Let us reclaim the name from clouds,
from plane trees, from mosquitos, from summer.
On the wet feet of rain let us climb to the heights of compassion.
Let us open the door on mankind, light, plants and insects.

Our job maybe is
between the lotus flower and the century
to run after the song of the truth.

Kashan, village of Chenar (plane tree), summer of 1343 (1964)
Translated by Ikram Kurdi, Slêmanî, Iraq, 2008.

-Last Updated: Monday, November 10, 2008.