It’s tragic that sometimes, it takes a tragedy for people to come to the realization that “Hey, we’re all human beings, we share the same hardships, why not help each other out?”. I want to make it clear that by “help”, I mean helping others unconditionally.

Over time I’ve learned to be wary of actions with a condition/conditions. It’s just like my experience with most salespeople: they accentuate the good but skim the bad, if at all (personal experience: “Very good watch! Will last long! Half price for you!” (Beijing shop owner) => stops working when you get back home). We learn through our mistakes, which can be heartbreaking, painful, casual (“oh the watch stopped working… okay”), but the main thing is that a mistake is a mistake only if the lesson isn’t taken to heart. A mistake that is learned from isn’t a mistake; it’s a teaching.

In other words, to be able to move forward as a human, we need our legs (physical) and we also need the capacity for self-growth (mental). It’s very easy for many of us to literally move forward with our feet; it’s hard (very hard) sometimes to move forward in our minds, but it’s something that we have to do otherwise the mind will just be a body of still water dwelling on the same set of ideas instead of being a vessel with a constant flow of ideas, thoughts, and motivation.

“Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee

The world is full of horrible people. It’s a truth that I sometimes like to ignorantly deny (which I subsequently pay for), but it’s true. People do things with the intention/motive of some sort of reward, be it recognition, praise, money, affection, a gift, revenge, spite; a whole mix of benign and malignant outcomes. For this reason, I really respect people who volunteer in charities and for different causes (people who do things without the intention of getting much/anything back). What they’re ultimately giving is their time, which is the most precious commodity anyone can give as you can never get it back and it’s priceless.

There’s dark because there’s light, there’s good because there’s evil, there’s warmth because there’s coldness. Without one of the ends, we wouldn’t have anything to compare the other end to. In life, you sometimes have to be a salesperson to yourself: accentuate the good and de-emphasize on the bad, don’t amplify and dwell on your flaws/mistakes. Try to see the good in yourself and in others. If all you have is a grim outlook on life and in others, then there isn’t much anyone else can do to help you except yourself. “Don’t get set into one form”.

Maturity is purely how you respond to positive or negative events. If you throw a sissy fit when something doesn’t go your way, that’s being immature. Being mature means being able to try to understand the motives behind actions, being proactive and knowing what the most correct/suitable/reasonable (not right; there is no perfect response in real life) response is. You have to know you can’t “win” at everything, but you can at least instill respect in yourself being making yourself to be perceived by others as being “mature”, “understanding”, “courteous”, “patient”, or “down-to-earth”.

But you have to also have integrity and merit when you say things. One of my pet peeves is people who start off sentences with “you have to understand…” when I know that they don’t know much about what they’re trying to educate me on, especially when I know that I know more about the topic they’re trying to “help me understand” than them.

If something bad/unfair happens in life, I tell myself: “Everything happens for a reason, so forgive and move on, since bearing any ill thoughts will only weigh you down. Continue moving forward.” This reminds me of a quote from Buddha: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” If someone does something to upset me, I often comfort myself by thinking that karma will eventually catch up to them. Depending on the severity, I might even give karma a little nudge forward.

On the flipside, if something good happens, question it for a split second: “Is this too good to be true? Are there any catches?” as my trip to Asia has taught me that there is very little that is free in this world that has no catch. Don’t let emotions drown out reason. After all the smoke and mirrors, if there is a catch, the end-result would still be the same: you giving a possession to another person that is valued to be more than what they are giving you. Keep in mind that time is the greatest gift you can give anyone.

Everything in life has to be done in moderation: eating, sleeping, studying, partying, you name it. If you’re the leader of a team, you can’t be a micro-manager, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, you can’t be detached from everything to the point where you’re just a literal position. Power and reputation can get to a person very easily and inflate their ego to the point where all they see is themselves. Stay humble, stay classy. Think about how others may perceive what you say before you say things. Teach others on how to get to where you are. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” – Plato

It’s also important not to do irrational things based only on emotion without trying to talk things out and reaching an understanding, such as being aggressive towards others or lying. “A lie is like a snowball; the longer it is rolled, the larger it is“ - Martin Luther. A lie has the potential to blow a “small” thing way out of proportion since it then becomes an issue of trust when the lie is exposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnO-hpds7As

1. “It works on my machine” always holds true for Chuck Norris.
2. All arrays Chuck Norris declares are of infinite size, because Chuck Norris knows no bounds.
3. All browsers support the hex definitions #chuck and #norris for the colors black and blue.
4. All projects become Agile when Chuck Norris is looking.
5. All Starbucks baristas know Java in fear that one day Chuck Norris will walk in and demand it.
6. All statements in a Chuck Norris script evaluate to true.
7. Chuck’s PC doesn’t need an anti-virus program. His PC is always virus free because viruses would be afraid to enter his PC.
8. Chuck Norris’ Internet connection is faster upstream than downstream because even data has more incentive to run from him than to him.
9. Chuck Norris’ keyboard has 2 keys: 0 and 1.
10. Chuck Norris’ keyboard has the Any key.
11. Chuck Norris’ keyboard is missing the F1 key; he never needs help.
12. Chuck Norris’ beard can type 140 WPM.
13. Chuck Norris’ first program was kill -9.
14. Chuck Norris’ keyboard doesn’t have a Ctrl key because nothing controls Chuck Norris.
15. Chuck Norris’ OSI network model has only one layer: Physical.
16. Chuck Norris burst the dot com bubble.
17. Chuck Norris can’t test for equality because he has no equal.
18. Chuck Norris can access private methods.
19. Chuck Norris can delete the Recycle Bin.
20. Chuck Norris can divide by 0.
21. Chuck Norris can escape infinite loops.
22. Chuck Norris can install 64-bit OS on 32-bit machines.
23. Chuck Norris can install iTunes without installing Quicktime.
24. Chuck Norris can instantiate an abstract class.
25. Chuck Norris can overflow your stack just by looking at it.
26. Chuck Norris can perform a DoS attack by looking at a system.
27. Chuck Norris can post working URLs when commenting on a Youtube video.
28. Chuck Norris can read all encrypted data, because nothing can hide from Chuck Norris.
29. Chuck Norris can retrieve anything from /dev/null.
30. Chuck Norris can solve the Towers of Hanoi in one move.
31. Chuck Norris can spawn threads that complete before they are started.
32. Chuck Norris can tag himself in Youtube.
33. Chuck Norris can unit test entire applications with a single assert.
34. Chuck Norris can write infinite recursion functions…and have them return.
35. Chuck Norris can write multi-threaded applications with a single thread.
36. Chuck Norris compresses his files by doing a flying round-house kick to the hard drive.
37. Chuck Norris computed all primes in his sleep.
38. Chuck Norris considers Sprints futile. He’ll catch you anyway!
39. Chuck Norris created the “hard disk”.
40. Chuck Norris does not declare variables; he owns them.
41. Chuck Norris doesn’t believe in floating point numbers because they can’t be typed on his binary keyboard.
42. Chuck Norris doesn’t bug hunt as that signifies a probability of failure, he goes bug killing.
43. Chuck Norris doesn’t do Burn Down charts; he does Smack Down charts.
44. Chuck Norris doesn’t get compiler errors, the language corrects itself.
45. Chuck Norris doesn’t have disk latency because the hard drive knows to hurry the hell up.
46. Chuck Norris doesn’t need a debugger, he just stares down the bug until the code confesses.
47. Chuck Norris doesn’t need a Sprint to hit his targets.
48. Chuck Norris doesn’t need garbage collection because he doesn’t call .Dispose(), he calls .DropKick().
49. Chuck Norris doesn’t need Google. Google needs Chuck Norris.
50. Chuck Norris doesn’t need sudo, he just types “Chuck Norris” before his commands.
51. Chuck Norris doesn’t need to use AJAX because pages are too afraid to postback anyways.
52. Chuck Norris doesn’t need version controlling because all his source files are prohibited to have revision number greater than 1.
53. Chuck Norris doesn’t practice agile programming because his programs won’t ever need to be changed. They are perfect.
54. Chuck Norris doesn’t program with a keyboard, he stares the computer down until it does what he wants.
55. Chuck Norris doesn’t use a computer because a computer does everything slower than Chuck Norris.
56. Chuck Norris doesn’t use GUI, he prefers COMMAND line.
57. Chuck Norris doesn’t use Oracle, he is the Oracle.
58. Chuck Norris doesn’t use web standards as the web will conform to him.
59. Chuck Norris don’t need passwords to access your system; he simply types * and the system gives him access.
60. Chuck Norris finished World of Warcraft.
61. Chuck Norris has the shortest scrum meetings in the world.
62. Chuck Norris knows the last digit of PI.
63. Chuck Norris knows the value of NULL.
64. Chuck Norris never has a Backlog. It flees in terror when he starts telling Stories.
65. Chuck Norris’ decision trees consist of only one decision.
66. Chuck Norris programs do not accept input.
67. Chuck Norris programs occupy 150% of CPU, even when they are not executing.
68. Chuck Norris protocol design method has no status, requests or responses, only commands.
69. Chuck Norris runs Windows 7 on his etch-a-sketch.
70. Chuck Norris types with one finger: he points at the keyboard and the keyboard does the rest.
71. Chuck Norris writes code that optimizes itself.
72. Chuck Norris’ hosting is 101% uptime guaranteed.
73. Instead of writing the assigned “Hello World” program in CSC 110, Chuck Norris rewrote the Google search engine algorithm from scratch.
74. It is not necessary to isolate Chuck Norris during a Sprint. No-one can keep up with him anyway.
75. MySpace actually isn’t your space, it’s Chuck’s (he just lets you use it).
76. Product Owners never ask Chuck Norris for more features. They ask for mercy.
77. Project managers never ask Chuck Norris for estimations…ever.
78. Stand-up meetings never work for Chuck Norris. Would you like to stand up to him?
79. The class object inherits from Chuck Norris.
80. The only pattern Chuck Norris knows is God Object.
81. The programs that Chuck Norris writes don’t have version numbers because he only needs to write them once.
82. There are no user interfaces that are not user friendly to chuck norris. He just stares at them till he gets what he wants.
83. There is no Esc key on Chuck Norris’ keyboard, because no one escapes Chuck Norris.
84. There is only one person standing in a Chuck Norris scrum meeting.
85. To Chuck Norris, everything contains a vulnerability.
86. When Chuck Norris is web surfing websites get the message “Warning: Internet Explorer has deemed this user to be malicious or dangerous. Proceed?”.
87. Whiteboards are white because Chuck Norris scared them that way.

This article will serve as a guide to get you quickly running ScriptNo, and configure it to your browsing needs!

ScriptNo? Is that a Pokemon? What is it?

ScriptNo essentially gives you more control over what is loaded by pages you browse. This means less ads, less tracking, less annoyances, more security, more privacy, and more comfort. ScriptNo can block webbugs, block pages from detecting where you came from, as well as content that you don’t want. You are given granular control in the form of a whitelist and blacklist.

ScriptNo gives you detailed information on exactly what a page attempted to load (that was blocked before it was loaded) and what a page was allowed to load. This information includes what type the resource was (e.g. SCRIPT, IFRAME), and what the path was (e.g. http://ads.doubleclick.net/script.js).

If more privacy, security, and control over your browsing experience sounds good to you, you can install ScriptNo!

Installing ScriptNo

Pretty straightforward, head over to the ScriptNo page on the Chrome Extension Gallery  and click on the “Install” button.

Note about the “This extension can access: Your data on all websites + Your tabs and browsing activity” warning: rest assured, I am not a crook or criminal who created ScriptNo to steal data.

For ScriptNo to work (sorry, I have to go into some technical detail here), it injects Javascript functions into every page you load in order for it to work (hence the “Your data on all websites” warning). ScriptNo does not log or transmit any private data anywhere (to check for yourself, search for the oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf folder on your computer and go through the files).

ScriptNo requires access to the tabs in Chrome in order to detect when a page is loading and when it has completed loading (hence the “Your tabs and browsing activity” warning).

Configuring ScriptNo

Here comes the fun part. You can either left-click on the ScriptNo icon that’s added to your Chrome toolbar (or right-click on it), and click on “Options“. You’ll be brought to a single page that has all of the settings of ScriptNo clearly laid out.

For detailed information on each and every option, check out my other post on ScriptNo.

Tips:

• If you use bookmarklets OR set Default Mode to “Allow” OR experience problems with other Chrome extensions on a page, it is recommended you tick “Respect Same-Domain” AND tick “Block Unwanted Content“
• If you want to whitelist/blacklist an entire domain (e.g. a.domain.com, zzz.domain.com), enter *.domain.com in the URL box
• Personally, I’d always have “Block Unwanted Content” and “Antisocial Mode” ticked

ScriptNo in Action

After installing ScriptNo, an icon will be added to your Chrome toolbar which will provide you with a real-time counter of things that are blocked on a page. These things can be scripts, iframes, frames, objects, embeds, video, audio, images, Java applets and noscript elements. This section will be quite detailed as it describes the way you’ll be interacting with ScriptNo the most.

Click here to see a screenshot of the different icon variations.

The icon itself will tell you lots of things:

• red “not available” icon = content on page blocked
• blue exclamation mark = some content in the page bypassed for the duration of your browser session
• green checkmark = parent page itself is whitelisted, but third-party content most likely also blocked.
• grey icon = ScriptNo disabled on the page (only if it is a non-HTTP/HTTPS site (e.g. chrome:// URL)

Clicking on the icon will provide you with even more information. It will show you a list of blocked and/or allowed resources. If you hover over each domain, you will see a detailed list of the elements that have been blocked/allowed and the paths of the files.

If the “Show Rating Button” in the Options page is ticked, a “Rating” button will be added under each domain which goes to the Web of Trust page for that domain which shows you the reputation level of the domain.

By the nature of ScriptNo, you will have to teach it to allow content from specific domains in order for pages to work IF “Default Mode” is set to “Block“.

The trick is knowing which domains are needed in order for the page to work, and not to allow advertising/third-party/tracking servers in the process. So allow a domain one-by-one, reload the page, and see if it works. If it doesn’t, allow another one. It helps to hover over each item and see exactly what they’re trying to load.

You have the ability to Whitelist, Trust, Blacklist, or Bypass the domains:

• Whitelist: adds the specific domain to the whitelist (e.g. js.abc.com). This means that video.abc.com won’t be whitelisted since you’ve only whitelisted js.abc.com
• Trust: adds the entire domain to the whitelist (*.abc.com). Content on video.abc.com and js.abc.com will be allowed to load.
• Blacklist: similar to whitelisting a domain, this will only add a specific domain to the blacklist.
• Bypass / Temp. Block:
• Bypass: if your Default Mode is “Block” this will temporarily allow specific domains for the entire duration of your browsing session. After you close Chrome, this setting will be cleared.
• Temp. Block: if your Default Mode is “Allow” you will see this instead of “Bypass” (above); temporarily blocks specific domains for the entire duration of your browsing session. After you close Chrome, this setting will be cleared.

Upgrading ScriptNo

You can either wait for Chrome to automatically update your ScriptNo (which will preserve your settings), or if you’re impatient you can uninstall ScriptNo and install the new version.

If you decide to do the second method, before uninstalling ScriptNo, it is recommended that you:

1. Go to the ScriptNo Options page
2. Copy the “Export” content under “Import / Export Settings + Lists” to Notepad
3. Uninstall ScriptNo
4. Install the new version
5. Import the saved settings back into ScriptNo

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why can’t I see the “Allow/Trust/Deny” options for some domains in the tab options popup?
• If you’ve ticked “Block Unwanted Content” and set “Unwanted Content Mode” to “Strict” in the options page, any blocked resources/elements will not have the usual “Allow/Deny/Bypass” options. If you do want to see them, you can set ”Unwanted Content Mode” to “Relaxed“.
• The “Ratings” button that’s under each domain in the tab options popup is UGLY! How do I get rid of it?
• If you don’t want to see the “Rating” button for each domain, in the Options page untick “Show Rating Button“
• I use other Chrome extensions and they don’t work properly with ScriptNo enabled. What should I do?
• I personally use a couple of Chrome extensions (e.g. Adblock Plus, LastPass) and have come up with a few workarounds of my own:
• If you trust the domain and the issue occurs only on the domain, you can choose to either Whitelist or Trust it.
• If it happens on almost every page, tick “Respect Same-Domain” AND tick “Block Unwanted Content” (second tick is optional, but HIGHLY recommended)
• You can also choose to set “Default Mode” to “Allow“, but this is not recommended as it will let content load by default (taking a blacklist approach)
• I love this extension! How do I convey this love to you?
• Thank you! I’ve put many hours into this extension to get it to this level (of course, user feedback has been helpful and important in the progress of ScriptNo). Some ways you can help ScriptNo and I out are:
• Translation help: one of my long-term goals is to have every ScriptNo user comfortable using it, and this means being able to use it in their own language. If you are bilingual (English + another language) and are willing to help translate the sentences in ScriptNo, contact me! (go to the top of this page to contact me)
• Donations: donations are definitely welcome, but I’m personally against me aggressively soliciting them as I firmly believe it is your choice to donate or not. Whether you do is up to you, you’ll never see any nag messages in ScriptNo about doing so. You’ll just see the clickable heart icons in the ScriptNo Options page
• Writing: you can email me, post on the Chrome extension wall and rate it, and/or tweet/share/post about ScriptNo to your friends!
• You’re so mysterious. Who are you?
• I’m a recent honors graduate from a business technology program from a university in Toronto, Canada, graduating with over 20 months of full-time work experience due to my co-op terms with world-class organizations such as CIBC and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
• You can follow me on Google+ / Twitter. If you can’t tell already, I like my privacy on the Internet (which is the main reason why I created ScriptNo).
• I love Google’s products (a given seeing how this is a Chrome extension), and actually applied for a position at Google Canada (Toronto) (on May 12, 2011), but I’ve had no response since (was temporarily heart-broken).
• I’ve created other Chrome extensions as well (all quite popular and highly-rated); you can check them out under the “More from andryou” box on the ScriptNo page on the Chrome Extension Gallery