Useful Vipassana Meditation Resources

The following are some useful free audio files and tools for meditators:

• Download or stream all 11 of Goenka's official 10-day dhamma discourses (Available in more than 40 languages).  Additional audio files, including discourses from the 3-day and Sattipatthana courses, are available at http://www.pariyatti.org.  Harder to find recordings can be purchased from http://www.sourcevipassana.ca/sngaudio as well. (Note: In order to listen to these files you may have to login using the old student username and password.)

• Time and log each of your hourly sittings using your iPhone with Sati:

• Calculate how many calories you burn while meditating:
  

• Document your food intake, biomarkers, and exercise with CRON-o-Meter (Linux, Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android):

More to come after I sort through my bookmarks!

Repairing a Windows 7 installation that won't boot:

1. Insert Windows 7 installation disk, boot from the disk, and choose "Repair Windows" at the bottom left of the second screen

2. Try to run the following command:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=[DRIVELETTER]:\ /offwindir=[DRIVELETTER]:\windows

(Image credit: http://www.maximumpc.com/how-to-repair-a-faulty-windows-installation-without-reformatting/)

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If you get a message saying "There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete", try this command:

cd c:\windows\winsxs

find "pending" /i 

Then:

rename [FILENAME].xml [FILENAME].xml.bak

If you get an error message at any point, run this command (while still in the winsxs folder) and then retry the above rename operation:

icacls * /T /Q /C /RESET

Now repeat step 2 to check for errors.

Harden Security and Misc. Tasks for Ubuntu 15+

Remove Misc. Lenses from the Unity Dash:
Note: You may not want to do this if you're new to Ubuntu 14+
sudo apt-get autoremove unity-lens-music unity-lens-photos unity-lens-video

Install Unity Tweak Tools: sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

Install Ubuntu Tweak: http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

Install Preload:
Predicts applications and loads them into memory based on the ones you run the most.
sudo apt-get install preload

Enable the firewall: sudo ufw enable

Secure shared memory space:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add the following line:
none /run/shm tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0

Deny "su" to everyone except administrators:
sudo dpkg-statoverride --update --add root sudo 4750 /bin/su

Secure your Home directory:
chmod 0700 /home/username

Disable guest account access:
echo allow-guest=false | sudo tee -a /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf

Misc. other security tools

• Facebook security checkup tool (more info available at https://threatpost.com/facebook-security-checkup-tool-keeps-tabs-on-security-settings/114039)

17 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.04

1) Always show menus:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity always-show-menus true

2) Install Privacy Indicator:
"The goal of Privacy Indicator is to make it easy it change settings that influence the user’s privacy or the automatic collection of data and to delete automatically collected data."
http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/indicator-privacy/
or
http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/indicator-privacy/dist/indicator-privacy_0.05_all.deb

3) Install Unity Folders:
"Easy way to organize your apps, files, folders, chrome web apps, links and shell scripts. Tested on Ubuntu 14.04"
http://unity-folders.exceptionfound.com/
or
http://unity-folders.exceptionfound.com/unity-launcher-folders_1.0.3_all.deb

4) Install System Load Indicator:
"A system load monitor capable of displaying graphs for CPU, ram, and swap space use, plus network traffic."
https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/precise/indicator-multiload/

5) Install Laptop Mode Tools (if applicable):
"Laptop mode is a Linux kernel feature that allows your laptop to save considerable power, by allowing the hard drive to spin down for longer periods of time."
sudo apt-get install laptop-mode-tools

6) Install Bleachbit:
"Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk."
sudo apt-get install bleachbit

7) Install codecs and enable DVD playback:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gxine libdvdread4 icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame nautilus-script-audio-convert libmad0 mpg321 gstreamer1.0-libav

8) Enable playing encrypted DVDs:
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/./install-css.sh

9) Install Flash plugin on browser:
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

10) Install Preload:
"Speeds up application load time by monitoring the software that is loaded and used day to day, the software used most often, and cache them in memory."
sudo apt-get install preload

11) Swappiness:
"Swappiness is a Linux kernel parameter that controls the relative weight given to swapping out runtime memory."
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Add the following lines:
#Use workable swap level
vm.swappiness=10

#Improve cache management
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

12) Re-enable Ctl-Alt-Backspace:
sudo gedit /etc/default/keyboard

Replace XKBOPTIONS="" with this line:
XKBOPTIONS="terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"

13) Block connections to Ubuntu's Ad server
sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -d 91.189.92.11 -j DROP

14) Install extra archive utilities:
sudo apt-get install p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller

15) Install GNOME Music player:
sudo apt-get install gnome-music

16) Install rkhunter and chkrootkit:
sudo apt-get install rkhunter chkrootkit

Run and update rkhunter using the following commands:
sudo rkhunter --update
sudo rkhunter -c -l Desktop/rkhunterlog.txt

Run chkrootkit by simply running:
sudo chkrootkit

17) Install Aptik:
"Aptik is an open source package that simplify backup and restore of PPAs, Applications and Packages after a fresh installation or upgradation of Debian based Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu derivatives."
http://www.teejeetech.in/
or
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67740416/linux/aptik-latest-i386.deb?dl=1