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hookah — Comments Off
26
Mar 07

10 Hookah Golden Tips

Here is a quick reference to what was learned during years of practicing hookah/ shisha/ sheesha/ water pipe/ nargeela/ nargile/ narghile/ nargileh/ argeela/ arghileh/ okka/ kalyan/ ghelyoon/ ghalyan/ goza…

Here are the “golden tips” :) that were collected, followed, tested and confirmed from different places (hookah bars, web sites, people) including personal experience.

The strategy was split into three sub-goals:

Get as much taste/flavor as possible
Get as much smoke as possible
Get one session to last as long as possible

The taste is a very unique creature – several different things need to be setup right and work smoothly with each other to produce a rich and strong taste.

A lot of smoke can be reached easily (just make a fire in a room :) ) but a quality of smoke and a session itself may suffer.

The longer session, the more relaxing the experience is, but it needs to be done the right way, so that this experience is truly relaxing.

Here they come – no assumptions, no stories, just “golden tips” ;) …

1. A coal should NOT touch tobacco while smoking. This is a very important thing to notice, since the “peak of the taste” comes about 5-10 minutes after the beginning of the session, and if a coal touches tobacco, the taste will no longer be pure tobacco taste, but will also have a burn flavor, since the top of the tobacco will be burning.

2. The deeper the bowl – the better. This just supports the point above, since if a bowl is deep, enough tobacco can be packed into it allowing an air buffer between a coal and tobacco.

3. Have tobacco sit for about 20-30 minutes before packing into a bowl. This is sometimes called acclimatization, where tobacco is unpacked, sprinkled on a piece of paper/foil, and let to be sit there (opened to the environment’s air) for some time before packing it into the bowl. This gives tobacco a stronger flavor, since its substance balances out with a room/outside temperature.

4. Sprinkle tobacco into a bowl instead of put it in as one piece. When tobacco is sprinkled into the bowl, it has a better chance to get a hit from a coal, as well as it lets hot air to pass better, which makes the smoke richer and the taste/flavor stronger.

5. Go with a lot of small holes instead of a few big ones. Instead of making several big wholes in the foil, take a needle or a simple staple and make a lot of small holes in the whole foil’s surface. These will allow more air to pass (if the whole surface is covered), as well as an even distribution of the hit.

6. Move that coal around. By moving a coal around a foil/bowl’s surface every so often (5-10 min) more tobacco will be engaged in a session, making the session longer and the taste/flavor stronger. When the coal is there on the same place for the duration of the whole session, tobacco, right under the coal “goes” pretty fast, and other tobacco is “not utilized”, which makes it fast and tasteless.

7. Clean the hookah periodically – all the parts. Cleaning is not always pleasant and the best time spent, but it pays off really well, especially if strong flavors (like mint or any citrus, etc.) were used, or the burn effect occurred. Make sure to clean not only the bowl and the glass part, but get a special long and narrow brush to clean the pipe itself. The hose(s) needs to be washed as well. Things to note: if a “filter ball” is made out of metal, make sure the water does not get into it.

8. Different hose for different effect. Get a “heavy” leather hose for a huge amount of smoke, and get a “light” hose winded up with metal stripe (to cool off the smoke) for the richer taste/flavor.

9. “The more coal the more smoke” – the more chance of burning and shortening the session. A lot of places advise more coal for more smoke – this is true, but there are “consequences”.. More coal is more hit – higher chance to burn the tobacco. More coal is shorter session, since tobacco is “gone” faster.
Alternative solution for more smoke is to use different hoses, as described in the point above, as well as to make sure the hookah is well sealed.

10. Green tea is the way to go! Green tea along with the hookah makes flavor/taste richer, and the overall experience healthier and simply magnificent!

More tips to come..

Leave you comments – to create a discussion ;)

P.S. Here is a very good place with a lot of useful information: hookah forum

money — Comments Off
23
Mar 07

Checking account that pays money

How many times did you get charged for nothing? Specifically, how many times did you have to pay those annoying overlimit/overdraft fees to the bank like Wachovia/PNC/Your bank?

You went $5 over the limit, and instead of blocking the transaction they (bank) process it and than charge you

$31 general overdraft charge +
$31 overdraft charge for one transaction +
$31 overdraft charge for the each transaction after that +
$6 each day while your balance is negative

RIDICULOUS? – Yes, it is indeed. Banks are there to SERVE us! Not even to be upset with us, and definitely NOT to PUNISH us!

However, they do – that is the way they operate, that is the way they always did, and since these are usually huge corporations with a “long way back” history – they are very inflexible and unable to efficiently apply “change management” strategies…

Here is a very efficient and great solution that I found – switch to young, innovative and full of energy company – ING ;)

ING offers a free checking that actually PAYs you interest (4.0% to 5.0%) from your existing balance.

They also have 32000 free ATMs word wide – using ATM locator I just found 55 right next to my house. In some places like Rite Aid, CVS, Wallgreens, and even one Chinese Buffet :) )

And, of course to feed the “pet peeve” :) – Automatic protection with your Overdraft Line of Credit.

There is many more, like Fraud Protection and Security (how many old and boring banks offer that?) and many more – you can check it out here

So fight those monolithic and often unfair corporation with something that we all have – the CHOICE – choose what’s GOOD for you! ;)

I am not working for ING, don’t even know anybody there – I just like “true and cool” young companies and dislike “big and grey” old ones. If Google would open a bank, I’d definitely consider ;)

linux — Comments Off
22
Mar 07

Installing Sun’s Looking Glass on Ubuntu

From Ubutu’s wiki:

Looking Glass – If you wanna dazzle Vista wannabees, there’s the package you’d want to consider. A 3D Desktop with much less requirements than Vista

Here is a demo:

Below are the instructions on how to install Looking Glass on Ubuntu:

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Add one of these two-liners, whichever is more applicable (most likely stable will be the one to go with):

For stable
# LG3D repsoitories
deb http://javadesktop.org/lg3d/debian stable contrib

For testing
# LG3D repsoitories
# deb http://javadesktop.org/lg3d/debian testing contrib

For unstable
# LG3D repsoitories
# deb http://javadesktop.org/lg3d/debian unstable contrib

(Since a stable version is suggested, it is the one uncommented)

3. Save the file and close it

4. Update the repositories using the following command
sudo apt-get update

5. Install looking glass using the following command
sudo apt-get install lg3d-core

Stop here. Smile broadly.

Although there are less requirements for Looking glass, the video card requirements still apply ;)

linux — Comments Off
22
Mar 07

Convert TABs to spaces using shell scripting

The purpose is simple and clear – to archive a “indentational independence“, when indentation is the same across all platforms, editors and systems.

Here is the simple shell script that takes the file as the command line argument and substitute all TABs with spaces:

#!/bin/sh

#
#   Script converts TABs to spaces in a given file
#

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
     echo 1>&2 "This script converts TABs to spaces in a given file
                \\n\\n\\tUsage: $0 "
     exit 127
fi

expand $1 > temp && mv temp $1

The above script shows how that it is all done by virtue of the “expand” command that does just that ;)

And no need to worry about sed‘s s/tab/space/g pattern, because “expand” does exactly what we need ;)

howto / linux / tutorials — Comments Off
22
Mar 07

Golden AWK tips to analyze a server log

Here are several of 100% working, simple, and yet very powerful TIPs on how AWK can be used to parse/process the server log (apache’s “access.log”) to return the data about website visitors and other useful statistics:

1. Find the number of total unique visitors:

cat access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | wc -l

2. Find the number of unique visitors today:

cat access.log | grep `date '+%e/%b/%G'` | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | wc -l

3. Find the number of unique visitors this month:

cat access.log | grep `date '+%b/%G'` | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | wc -l

4. Find the number of unique visitors on arbitrary date – for example March 22nd of 2007:

cat access.log | grep 22/Mar/2007 | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | wc -l

5. (based on #3) Find the number of unique visitors for the month of March:

cat access.log | grep Mar/2007 | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | wc -l

6. Show the sorted statistics of “number of visits/requests” “visitor’s IP address”:

cat access.log | awk '{print "requests from " $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort

for better understanding here is a snapshot/part of the result:

7. Similarly by adding “grep date”, as in above tips, the same statistics will be produces for “that” date:

cat access.log | grep 26/Mar/2007 | awk '{print "requests from " $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort

Below is the “very general” about the above: :)
There is a certain point in the life of any website owner when he/she stops in the middle of the street/hall/train/plane puzzled with a question: “hm… how many creatures did actually see my work?”, or even “how many creatures did see my work today?” The answer lies in front of the eyes, we just often do not see it – due to the simple fact that

we are sure we see everything ;)

but it is there… there, in a server log.

There are tons of log analyzer software out there, just go to sourceforge.net and look for one – you’ll see plenty (good example is awstats), but what if something very simple needed, and what if installing all other software is overhead, and most of the cases, another security risk? Then we go to Google, find this blog and keep reading :)

There is a very powerful, yet not well used (known?) language/tool as AWK which is there on almost any Linux/Unix. The purpose is simple:

“AWK is a general purpose programming language that is designed for processing text-based data, either in files or data streams.”

kam
one of those blogs

10 Hookah Golden Tips

Checking account that pays money

Installing Sun’s Looking Glass on Ubuntu

Convert TABs to spaces using shell scripting

Golden AWK tips to analyze a server log

here is more about

kamone of those blogs

10 Hookah Golden Tips

Checking account that pays money

Installing Sun’s Looking Glass on Ubuntu

Convert TABs to spaces using shell scripting

Golden AWK tips to analyze a server log

here is more about

kam
one of those blogs