End The Fed: Ron Paul's new book released

Congressman Ron Paul has released his new book “End The Fed.” His long struggle to audit The Fed through the bill “The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (H.R. 1207) is still in progress and has 287 cosponsors. Here is the caption from RonPaul.com

Now Shipping: End the Fed – by Ron Paul

In the post-meltdown world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve.

Most people think of the Fed as an indispensable institution without which the country’s economy could not properly function. But in END THE FED, Ron Paul draws on American history, economics, and fascinating stories from his own long political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional. It is inflating currency today at nearly a Weimar or Zimbabwe level, a practice that threatens to put us into an inflationary depression where $100 bills are worthless.

What most people don’t realize is that the Fed — created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia — is actually working against their own personal interests. Congressman Paul’s urgent appeal to all citizens and officials tells us where we went wrong and what we need to do fix America’s economic policy forfuture generations.

Order End The Fed Now!

Bugs in Opera Turbo

Opera Turbo can be a solution in low speed connection, but it has some bugs. In certain condition these bugs are not comfortable for users who decide to use it to improve their speed in surfing.

The first bug is server overload (may be). There are times we can’t use Turbo at all in certain times, usually in several hours. It seems that in these hours many users use Turbo together, resulting in very low speed or even error. Users must wait until it turns to be normal again.

The second bug is cookies. Occasionally, even if browser has activated cookies, cookies don’t work at all when Turbo is active. This becomes a problem when users try to login to certain websites, in which need cookies to be activated in browser. The only solution is close and open Opera window several times until cookies turned active in Opera Turbo.

Opera Turbo still has other problem, especially when ISP is busy. The most notorious ones are broken interface and double interface of the same pages. These problems occur when your connection is in very low speed. In normal low speed, Opera Turbo can works very well, but it has tolerance only to certain range of low speed. So, if speed connection is too low, perhaps Opera Turbo is not a solution

Opera Turbo: A Solution for Low Speed Connection

Perhaps some of us are the ones who don’t lucky enough to have high speed internet connection. Generally, low speed internet is cheap, but we can complain if the speed turns out to be very-very slow or even broken. I currently use low speed too; here I make use of Opera Turbo. It can help to ‘speed’ up a bit our connection.

Users can download Opera Turbo in Opera official site. After installation, make sure that the turbo is turned on by clicking a button in lower left side of Opera Turbo Window. Turbo is on when the button is red (see the image above). The button itself is clock shaped or perhaps speedometer shaped, I am not really sure.

I don’t really understand details how it works. In simple explanation when we are surfing in internet, data are routed through opera server first before reaching our browser, not direct from the source. When we browse a site, data is sent through opera server, compressed, and then compressed data is resent to us. Data is compressed up to 80%, so it is not amusing that we can surf a bit faster. It is not amusing too if images in a site we browse has lower quality, they has been compressed after all.

If you have fast internet connection, don’t bother to use Opera Turbo, it would not give any satisfying result. Fast connection won’t speed up using Turbo, in the contrary good images will be broken; their quality is lowered after passing opera server.

Lombok: Sister island of Bali

Lombok is an island in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia (Nusa Tenggara means south east island in English). The province’s capital, Mataram, is located in this island. Lombok is located on the east of Bali Island and only separated by a strait. Considering its near location to Bali, the main destination of tourists in Indonesia, and Lombok also has many exotic places as Bali, many people consider Lombok as alternative to Bali. Lombok is less westernized and less crowded than Bali too, a good thing for some people to retreat.

Because of growing potential of tourism, Lombok now has Selaparang International Airport near its capital, Mataram. Selaparang International Airport serves domestic and international flight, even if the main flight is dominated by domestic flight, especially to Denpasar, Bali. Most of tourists usually visit Bali first, and later visit Lombok via air from Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar to Selaparang Airport in Mataram. Tourists who have visited many places in Bali can make extended visit to Lombok. But less advertisement makes Lombok has not been as popular as Bali yet; furthermore, many infrastructures in Lombok are still in development. Local government is concerning with this problem, so developments in many potential areas are growing especially after Indonesia recovered from Asian Financial crisis in 1997. Hopefully, recent world economic crisis doesn’t affect badly to those developments even if tourism industry seems to be slowing today due to situation of world economic.

Compared to Bali, main inhabitants of Lombok is Sasak people with majority of them are Muslims. According to Statistic Bureau of Indonesia, 80% of inhabitants are Sasak people with majority of them are Muslims, 15% are Balinese Hindus, and the remaining are Javanese, Chinese, and Arabs. Main language is Sasak language, but Balinese in Lombok use Bali language. Islam as main religion affects many local cultures, compared to Bali whose cultures are affected by Hinduism.

These are many tourist attractions in Lombok such as Senggigi Beach, located in west cost of Lombok. Even if it is smaller, Senggigi is similar to Kuta Beach Bali. Senggigi has natural reef and many tourists go there to do snorkeling activities. Also Gili Meno, one of three Gili islands (the others are Gili Gili Trawangan dan Gili Air). Gili Meno is the place of endangered birds’ sanctuary. There is a unique thing in Gili Meno, i.e. local people intentionally limit motorized vehicle and electricity. In Gili Trawangan, compared to Gili Meno this Gili has more party air. Tourists usually go to Gili Trawangan for scuba diving or snorkeling.

There is one volcano in Lombok, Mt. Rinjani. Mt. Rinjani is a part of Mount Rinjani National Park. It is the second highest active volcano in Indonesia. Nearby, there is Hutan Monyet Pusuk, literally that name means Monkey Forest of Pusuk, located in Rinjani Forest. This forest is the place of Sendanggile Waterfall, a gate to climb Mt. Rinjani.

There are many other tourist attractions other than above. Local guides or travel bureaus in Bali are able to offer information about Lombok. Some people feel that less developed location can bring more enjoyments. Lombok does have places that will satisfy them.

BitTorrent: A Solution for faster download

Comparing to manual download, BitTorrent is incredible in particular things. In manual download, the process is getting slower when there are more users who download particular file together. In the contrary, using BitTorrent is faster when there are active more users downloading same files together.

Getting faster by adding more users is possible using BiTorrent because users don’t depend on single server. Users don’t download file on same source, but they are supporting each other. When a user has downloaded a part of particular file, he then uploads it to another user and next user do the same process in chain. Users are working together, so more users will result in more speeds. So, the term file sharing is more correct than download. See following animated image for more detailed process.

Usually I take BitTorrent files in The Pirate Bay and run them in Bittorrent client. I currently use a BitTorrent client, µtorrent, and it gives incredible speeds. This is a freeware and famous for its small size and stable performance.

Currently, BitTorrent is blamed for copyright infringement and becomes a medium to express anti-copyright movement. The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. was sued, accused facilitating infringement. By the way, I am not a supporter of copyright, so I just enjoy this BitTorrent.

Converting Cassettes to MP3

Do you own any cassette tapes? Do you want to convert cassettes to MP3 or other audio files? Most of the old songs were recorded in cassettes. I still remember that there were stacks of cassettes in my home when I was in primary school. Now, I hardly see it again when digitally recorded songs are distributed using CDs or even copied and pirated. Moreover, it is difficult to find any cassettes player sold in electronic stores today.

Here I presented a few tricks if you want to re-record those songs in cassettes to be MP3 or any other formats. It is such a waste if we dump those cassettes without preserving its contents.

First, prepare those things:

• Cassette player with earphone out.
• Male to male audio cable.
• PCApplication (software) to record audio (You can choose JetAudio, Audacity, or others)

First connect cassettes player to Line-In slot in PC Souncard. Be careful to mild electric shock if that player has metal chasing. When both of them are on and the player is playing a cassette, you should be able to hear the song from speaker connected to PC Souncard. Set to the best sound as certain as possible.

After that, run your recording application and go to recording mode. Play the player to play cassette from the very beginning and press record button in your application simultaneously. It would be better if you record one side of the cassettes continuously and then cut it per song. It takes less work to do those applications I mention above have ability to cut audio files.

These steps are easy, but perhaps you will need some times to get used to them. It is not considered as piracy if you re-record them for your own use, so just enjoy!
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Google Chrome "The Minimalist"

Google entered browsers market by releasing Google Chrome, a free web browser. That decision seemed to challenge Mozilla Firefox, the leading free browser, to prove which one is the best. Today, Internet Explores is dominating browsers world, because it’s packed with Microsoft Windows. Firefox has been challenging position of Internet Explorer, and succeeded to become the second in use after Internet Explorer. It is not certain whether Google Chrome sided with Mozilla Firefox challenging Internet Explorer or even challenging both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

As browsers, Google Chrome has minimal interface and completely different compared to other browsers, but it does not mean that Google Chrome has bad looks. Google Chrome’s interface is very simple, toolbar only consist of navigation tools (back, forward, and reload), address, page control, and Google Chrome control (these last two are equivalent with complex toolbars in other browsers). There is also additional Bookmark Toolbar. Because of this minimal interface, I call Google Chrome as The Minimalist.

Like other browsers, Google Chrome also has ability to open multiple tabs, so users must not open many windows to open many websites. Generally, there are not any problems in performance of Google chrome, but I can recall that it does have less performance in opening multiple tabs. If users want to open multiple tabs simultaneously, especially when users press right click and choose ‘Open link in new tab’, Google Chrome can not response as fast as other browsers. Between opening tabs, users must wait a few second or more before users can open a new tab. So, this delay can become serious problem if users need to open multiple tabs simultaneously. Sometimes, delay also occurs when I want to paste characters I copied in Google chrome window. I can’t conclude whether this problem comes from Google Chrome itself or from PC performance, but I found this problem in many different PCs.

Google Chrome needs online installation, so this is a problem if users have slow internet connection. Installation using slow connection may take place for several hours. This problem is worsening if internet connection downs, installation must be repeated again from the beginning. Other problem I noticed is I haven’t found any features to disable images in Google Chrome. Sometime, to save bandwidth quota, I must disable image appearance in browser. So, I wouldn’t use Google Chrome if I need to disable images.

In my opinion, browsing ability of Google Chrome is good, similar with other browsers. I am just not satisfied with the problems I mentioned above. Generally, interface and browsing ability are good, Google just need to improve its ability in opening tabs. It would be better too if Google adds offline installation option, so users must not go online to install Google Chrome. Online installation of Google Chrome is uncomfortable for users who connect to internet using low bandwidth connection.