I wish you all to have a nice summer time and don't forget that I'm waiting your comments or news... Till the next time we meet; just have fun :-)

«Να γίνουν εξαίρεση οι αλμπάνηδες ρε παιδιά, όχι ο κανόνας...»
"Quacks should be the exception, you guys, not the norm…"

(Αμαλία Καλυβίνου - Amalia Kalyvinou , 1977-2007)

    Amalia passed away on Friday, May the 25th, 2007. She was just 30 years old. Before dying, she managed to document her experience and share it with us in her blog http://fakellaki.blogspot.com/. The promising literature graduate named in there each and every one of the doctors she had to bribe, praising at the same time the ones that honoured the Hippocratic Oath. Her testimony moved thousands of people that stood by her side all the way to the end.
    Have a nice trip Amalia and maybe some day we all be together… Watch the YouTube Video and help “Spread The Truth” by adding it to your Favourites and a link to your homepage or blog. More info you can find here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIg0q9H5auc

    Η Αμαλία άφησε την τελευταία της πνοή την Παρασκευή 25 Μαϊου 2007. Ήταν μόλις 30 ετών. Πριν φύγει, πρόλαβε να καταγράψει την εμπειρία της και να τη μοιραστεί μαζί μας μέσα από το διαδικτυακό της ημερολόγιο (blog). Στην ηλεκτρονική διεύθυνση http://fakellaki.blogspot.com, η νεαρή φιλόλογος κατήγγειλε επώνυμα τους γιατρούς που αναγκάστηκε να δωροδοκήσει, επαινώντας παράλληλα εκείνους που επέλεξαν να τιμήσουν τον Όρκο του Ιπποκράτη. Η μαρτυρία της συγκίνησε χιλιάδες ανθρώπους, που της στάθηκαν συμπαραστάτες στον άνισο αγώνα της μέχρι το τέλος.
   Καλό ταξίδι Αμαλία και ποιος ξέρει ίσως κάποια μέρα να συναντηθούμε… Δες το βίντεο στο YouTube και βοήθησε κ εσύ με τον τρόπο σου ώστε να γίνει γνωστή η ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ αυτή. Μπορείς να το βάλεις στα αγαπημένα βίντεο σου αλλά και ένα link στην ιστοσελίδα ή ιστολόγιο σου θα βοηθήσει αρκετά ώστε να ενημερωθούν όλοι. Περισσότερες πληροφορίες εδώ... και εδώ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aYu0YapSm0

“I have stopped nicotine for 2 months, I've not smoked 1078 death sticks, and saved 92.67€. I've saved 3 days, 17 hours and 52 minutes of my life”

Oh yep... and I feel sooo nice... with one word much HEALTHIER. Believe me its worth to stop smoking! Don’t wait for tomorrow... the day after... etc... a big list of reasons and excuses to postpone it again and again. The awful truth is that you know that you have to quit it but you’ve never truly done something about it. I know this by life... Don’t poison yourself anymore! Now is the time... now you can!

I know... I know... it's really difficult especially at first weeks but I survived from this edict, so you can. Here I’ll try to give you some tips that really helped me at first days. Did you know that your body/brain needs only 3-4 days abstinence from nicotine before it stops to require it?

But, before I continue I should first recommend you to visit this memorial site of Noni Glykos. This site actually made me think a lot of stuff and remind me that I love myself and my family.

Links:
You should download this nice e-book (pdf) with many articles and tips. To learn and read more tips and tricks you could visit whyquit.com and read on the helpful articles as well as at help-eu.com. Bookmark or print/save some pages that might be useful to you. You can also download and install this great tool that actually helped me a lot at first hours and also you have some stats and msg greeting!

But the most important of all is: to admit that you are addicted and that you need help. Admit it first to yourself and then to the others. Say “No More!” and became a person that makes true the things that she/he says. Do you remember how it feels like when you hit a target? So, make up your mind and find your target!

Few tips that work: 
  -  Every time you want a smoke, you should write down a personal benefit or two of worth quitting it. Soon you will fill in a top10+ reasons why quit, read them a lot and have this list always with you.
  -  Another useful idea is to write down a simple phrase as many times you want at anytime you want! The “I DON’T SMOKE” line... I don’t remember how many times I actually wrote it down... but I think the best thing that helped me is that I wrote it in my left hand. Yep… that’s right with a pen I wrote it on my left palm and every time it went blank I wrote it over and over again. When I went out with smokers and the temptations where high, I just read on and on and told to myself the simple line “I DON’T SMOKE” and I don’t know how or why, everytime I got really calm down! Believe me this simple line saved me :) You should try it!
  -  Exercise is your best allay! You can try to run a certain distance every day or for certain minutes. Jogging and other straight exercises will help you to regain your health stamina quickly. If you spent too much time in front of your pc, I'll recommend you to download and install one of these Anti-RSI tools: Gym-O-Fizz or WorkRave. Try them and then choose the one that works best for you (then uninstall the other).
  -  Another think that comes to my mind is that after a meal I wanted badly to smoke... I tried to fight it by replacing this bad habit with a good one. So after a meal I just brush my teeth and chew a gum!!!
  -  I guess now you are wondering if I took some weight… Yep, I did. In 20 days I got +5kg!!! But in one week I lost it again -5kg by doing some extra exercise and diet (stop eating junk foot and sweets). Here I should suggest you to try not to eat much chocolate or sweet dessert, especially at nights. You can replace your brain hungriness by eating some fruits and drinking water or chewing sugar free gums. I think you can find more tips at the articles above… but the truth is that now I am at the same weight state as I was before quitting it and I try to be careful with the sweet temptations at nights!

I think now I should close this feed; hoping I gave you some good energy and info. Don’t forget I’m waiting your news with good ideas, succeeded stories or even bad ones; but you should always remember that if you truly want something then it will happen to you.

Take care and be healthier,
/Chris.

1st Battle  --  My Guestbook vs Spam Bots
After my guestbook went alive I started to receive too many signs with ads or links. I was very disappointed and angry about it. I was thinking “This is only a personal website, who will care about it?”; but among of people, spammers really care...

“Why?”
Because a spammer usually spreads a bot engine crawler (alike a bot of a search engine - google/yahoo) that finds and crawls your pages looking for emails to add in spammers' database, so he-she-it could use those active addresses to send their spam emails. Moreover bots can add links to guestbook/comment pages to support a spam/advertisement site or even a phishing one. With these ways they gain... what else? MONEY!

“How to separate a human from a bot?”
An authentication is needed that could say if someone is human or not. This could be done by a CAPTCHA system. A human should easily solve and input the right answer but a bot could not bypass that test!

So… I've updated the way that someone could sign my guestbook:
Now I use the captcha image authentication system. If someone wants to sign and enter a comment she/he should enter the code from a displayed image. Hopefully this test could stop those stupid bots and actually really did. Unfortunately not all that bots are so “stupid”… New techniques (ocr etc.) and more sophisticated bots are already in the wild web but what can you do? Here I should thanks the nickg78 for his php code tip :)

The fight is continued...

• Summer Time
  On this collection you can view some pics from a summer trip in Volo - Greece. We had a very good time under the Greek sun and sea...
• Carnival Time
  Here you can see our Carnival Party Time we had in a trip to Kozani - Greece. A very funny and blast weekend with good friends and nice costums :)

Find out right now if you're in... or not!

Q: “You're from Greece, why use only English?”
A:   I know, I know... soon my site will speak and Greek so keep an eye :p

More questions? You can contact me or just keep reading this feed...
Chris Stefanidis.