All my adult life I have been listening to audio books. And I am not even blind! Let me tell you how come, and why I love this form of reading.

To pass my exams in high school I had to learn pretty heavy chunks of information more or less by hearth. To excel in subjects like geography and history almost entirely depended on a capacity to parrot a long string of prefab information. Creativity was neither required nor recommended.

Now I happen to have an excellent short-term memory. So it was only natural for me to read aloud the stuff in the books and record it on my beloved tape recorder, and a few days before my exam I sprang into action. Comfortably lying on my bed, refreshments and cigarettes within reach, I listened with an alert, blank and open mind to the words, allowing themselves to imprint them on my memory.

I soon found out that simply by hearing these ‘audio books’, not even trying to remember, was the best way to remember them! Very Yin indeed! Repeating this process about five or six times as closely to the day of the exam brought me extraordinary ratings for extraordinary little effort. So this was a bit my magic trick!

Later I my life came a few years that I had to write a great amount of poetry. Regardless of the quality, which was very uneven, at least the sheer bulk of it was quite impressive. Recording the stuff and listening it back made it a lot easier to find out which ones were merely word salad, and which ones made sense, or better still, made lucidly nonsense, or transcended the sense/nonsense dichotomy altogether (The best!). I also recorded poems of good poets to appreciate their work and to be subliminally influenced by them.

Then came the years that I fell in love with Indian philosophy, and once again my tape recorder functioned as an adequate extension of my memory. How often did I play the audio book ‘I am that’ by the great Indian sage Nisargadatta, in a Dutch translation? Of course I do not know, but I reckon it to be a few hundred times! Shorter and more poetic pieces like The Book of Ecclesiastics (it’s even in the bible!), accompanied by my own piano playing also proved quite palatable and interesting.

Now, do not let me misunderstood! I like books, and it is a great thing to sit in an easy chair underneath a cosy lamp, being absorbed in anyone’s flights of fancy or lightning bolts of insight! But if I really value a book, I get it as an audio book, or I record it myself. A great advantage is that it allows the body to take any position; lying down (my personal all time favorite!), standing, walking down the street with a walk-or disc man, etc. A few times one could see me reading a book while walking down the street, but this is at the same time a bit hazardous as well as a bit eccentric looking, which is ok, but maybe one should care not to look too eccentric too often in the eyes of too many people.

Audio books are safer and less odd. In one’s home it enables one to continue reading while cooking, ironing, going to the bathroom, etc. Long live continuity!

Another great advantage is that one can listen to it without concentrating on it, which, I strongly believe, allows the words to percolate in quit interesting and penetrating ways. One studies without studying, so to say. It is a bit like the way a child learns to speak. With or without specific concentration the young child hears all those grown-ups make those mysterious noises, accompanied by their no less mysterious behavior. Somehow there is felt to be a correspondence between the two; something within the child resonates, making it to imitate the grown-ups, who have the standing of gods for the child; it starts recognizing its own name, as well as the fathomless meaning of the word ‘I’ and there you are: welcome to the Culture Club!

My guess is that this oral transmission is very powerful in allowing sub-and supra conscious energies to join the game. In this sense Audio Books are truly post-modern: the oral tradition is the archaic one, the literal tradition the modern one, and the new born audio book tradition a revival of archaic power on a higher wind of the spiral.

Self made Audio Books make nice presents too. I can say that some of my friends say they really enjoy the recordings I gave them. Well, maybe they are just polite…

Anyway, enjoyed actively, passively, or both, Audio Books are here to stay. In my opinion, one has not even to be a great fan of many aspects of modern digital technology to be fairly enthusiastic about Audio Books. I work with them most of my life, and found little or no reason to suspect them. Come on; let me hear you read this article aloud.

Here you can find a lot more  Audio Books

H. Rackers is W.M of  Download Movies

The Internet is used by a lot of people to download movies and various other soft wares for free. The legality of this practice is, and will be for a long time, a hot issue. Some countries want to totally stop the downloading of copyright protected materials, like the U.S.A. Other countries, like France, want to allow this type of downloading, but only for personal use. And there are quiet a few countries that do not care at al. The Internet has no borders, and it will be a very long time before all the counties of the world have agreed on how to legislate this music, movies and games downloading.

Of course there is an ethical issue. A lot of people consider the downloading, for free, of copy right protected material as theft. I have heard all the arguments by now. I did hear them in the 70’s when cassette recorders became available and very popular. I heard them when CD writers became available and I hear them now when downloading over the Internet is becoming more and more popular.

In my opinion it is theft if you copy anything and sell it. If you copy something for your own use that is o.k. with me. I have noticed that I, and a lot of people I know as well, still buy the “real thing” if we like it, and I also have noticed that I am getting selective.

I hardly buy anything anymore from the real top performers. I think they simply earn enough as it is. If I come along a new group I like I usually copy a few songs, and I might go out and score their CD if I really like them. I noticed that I must have been doing this for a long time.

I had a look at my CD’s and saw that most of the originals were indeed the earlier work of a certain group. If I had more of them, it were usually copies I had downloaded some how from the Internet.

I know there are quit a few people who use this “selective downloading”. A friend of mine loves the music of a certain performer, but, as he told me, he refuses to pay for his records. He refuses to contribute a single penny towards the legal team that is defending this guy in a child molest case. He has downloaded the music of this performer, for free, from the Internet.

But all this free downloading has a downside. A lot of people are having computer problems because they downloaded something from the Internet. The Internet is a jungle and there are a lot of predators around that are searching for their prey. Predators like spy ware and ad ware. Little programs that you sometimes download as well and that hide on your computer without you knowing it. Some can be very harmful indeed, like the so called key loggers. These programs “remember” every keystroke you make, and send this info to their “owners”. This way sensitive info, like passwords or credit card numbers, can get in the hands of the wrong people.

I advice every one who wants to download music, movies, games or any other program for free from the Internet to be very careful. Make sure your computer has very good spy-and ad ware protection, and when in doubt, do not download. If you are not a very experienced Internet user than the best way to download music, full length movies, games and various soft wares for free is to get a download site membership. These download sites will provide you with the right soft ware to search for, and download, all sorts of files from the Internet. They also provide a helpdesk in case you run into difficulties and need some assistance.

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After 70 years audio books are still going strong. Nowadays it is very easy to download audio books from the Internet, which makes them more popular then ever before.

A short history of the audio book

In 1920 the Royal National Institute for the Blind in England was already doing research on how to create audio books for the blind. At that time there were a lot of ex World War 1 soldiers who had gone blind as a result of the fighting. In 1926 the RNIB started to use LP’s to record audio books which could be played on record players (the kind with the big horn, you had to swing a handle a couple of times before it would play).

In 1936 the “Talking Book Service” was launched. The first two books were:’ The murder of Roger Ackroyd’ by Agatha Christie and Joseph Conrad’s ‘Thyphoon’. The records used at the time could hold 25 minutes of spoken text, so they needed about 10 records for an average audio book.

In 1940 the studio used by the RNIB was bombed, and one month later a replacement studio was bombed as well. The RNIB wanted to start publishing audio books again, but they needed certain materials which had been destroyed.

In America, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), had started producing audio books as well, and they did send the much needed parts to help their English counterparts. Unfortunately the shipment got lost during a bombing raid of the London harbor! A second shipment however did make it, and the RNIB was able to start again with the production of audio books.

In the sixties the audio books started to appear on cassettes, and later, after the invention of the compact disk player, on CD’s.

Nowadays the audio books have become more and more popular then ever before, in spite of their age. One of the main reasons for their ever growing popularity is the fact that audio books can be downloaded straight from the Internet. There are a good few audio book publishers who provide this service, and it looks like their on to a winner.

Audio books, more then 70 year’s old and still going strong.

Here you can find more info on  Audio books

H. Rackers is W.M of  Download Movies

In August 2006 a sixty year old, bald, stocky bachelor with a face at once stern and sensitive died of diabetes. He was living on his own in his home-town: the genteel city of Cambridge, England, world widely known for its university, which, in the UK, is rivaled only by the equally venerable one in Oxford.

His name was Syd Barret. Or was it? No. His name was Roger Keith Barret, known as Rog to the few people he bothered to see, mostly his family. Syd Barrett is the name the world will remember him by.

He was a living legend. Now he is a dead legend.

Let me outline the birth of this legend in a few words.

Do you know the magnolia?

What makes its beauty so special is not only its features, but also that it blooms very early, and very short. In those seminal years of pop/rock music, the mid sixties, Barrett’s songs and music shared the same properties. As founding father and undisputed leader of a band called Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett was a pivotal figure in the emerging psychedelic scene in London, and, via his records, the rest of the world.

It was a time when the world, in the words of Keith Richards, suddenly turned from black and white into Technicolor. And Syd Barrett was a most colourful being indeed, to the ear, to the eye and to the mind in equal measures. Brought up quite liberally, with well to do parents, and a particularly doting mother, young Syd was as gifted as he was attractive, and a humorous, impish fellow at that. Experimenting with a few things almost no one had heard of in these days, like LSD –until the sixties mainly used by the CIA as sort of a truth serum drug- and the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching, his main occupations were painting and music. Painting came first, the music and songs that would make him famous came second in those early days.

In the music industry many things had changed in the slipstream of the Beatles fame. Musicians were no longer puppets on a string of shady, cynically-minded Tin Pan Alley-types, churning out product for whoever laid the money down. There was a new playfulness and originality in the music of the Beatles and also a completely un-self-conscious integrity, mainly brought about by the fact that the Beatles wrote their own songs, and became a role model for that. It was the Kennedy era. People were in some ways starting to be encouraged by the authorities to think for themselves and not to do simply what the same authorities expected them to do, which, of course, implies a paradox with a vengeance, but, lucky for those times, it took a while for us all to realize.

Back to our story. So the Beatle phenomenon became a trailblazer for a whole gamut of gifted young bands, all into writing their own material: The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who, who does not know their names.

Barrett’s Pink Floyd rose to fame a few years after the first batch of post Beatles bands. And in those heady days a few years made an enormous difference. Swinging London was already turning psychedelic and of that era Barrett was, is, and always will be one of the finest relics. It all went by so fast…

Syd Barrett was an almost devout non-believer in discipline, and had a frame of mind and body not heavy duty enough for the rough life of a rock star. Within two blasting years his behaviour had become so erratic that he could not rationally function anymore in the band that was his brainchild. Forgetting guitars everywhere, sometimes refusing to speak to anyone, standing on stage like a statue, playing just one chord. Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason had to incorporate guitarist David Gilmour, a good friend of the whole band, and already a highly rated session player.

A short while the band was a five some, David Gilmour delivering the sonic good, and Syd Barrett as a sort of far-out ornament. Then the idea was that he would be the home staying genius, with the other boys on the road a la Brian Wilson, but it al expired, Syd being so deranged that he temporarily became an inmate of the Terrapin Asylum, after which followed a few years in London, living in various trippy bohemian settings. During that time he did manage to create two albums that are still enjoyed by quite a few good ears: “The Madcap Laughs” and “Barrett’s” quirky, very asymmetrical songs with strangely evocative lyrics about almost nothing/everything, after which he stopped making music altogether. He ended up where he started, in Cambridge, living with his mother, and after her death on his own, picking up painting again and writing a history of art for his own enjoyment, without the slightest idea to let others read it, let alone publicize it.

All his life he had the status of a cult hero, also because his old band, Pink Floyd, became hugely successful in the line-up with David Gilmour, and the standard bearers of, let’s say, adult rock: always competent, creative, even poetic, skilfully performed on state of the art hardware, but with the elusive x-factor, which makes things creep under your skin, considerably reduced.

A short career and a long retirement.

He regained his inner balance sufficiently to live as a quiet, withdrawn, strange but not crazy citizen, sustained by the royalties of his compositions on Pink Floyd’s and his own records. According to his family he could even be said to live with his very own brand of satisfaction. Syd Barrett will always be remembered as one of the most enigmatic characters in the pantheon of modern Western popular music.

Harry Rackers writes for  File Sharing the site to visit if you want to download music, movies and/or games from the Internet.

You could find more info on pop stars at Music Movies Download where you will find lots of entertainment articles, and a directory of entertainment sites.

As a kid I did a lot of boat building, mainly scale models that were not able to sail, although I did actual build a few boats that were, more or less, capable of sailing. I even once build a 10 feet boat, or shall I say raft. I accomplished this with a few friends and we had great fun sailing it on the local river. It was not really water proof and while one person was rowing, the others had to make sure that they removed the water quicker then it was entering our boat.

Then sadly one day we failed. I was rowing at the time, and we were in the middle of the river when it was clear we were sinking. I stopped rowing to assist with the hosing, but this only slowed down the process of sinking, it did not stop it. So I started to row again in on effort to reach dry land before we sank, thus avoiding having to swim to safety.

And guess what: We made it! Just before the boat really started to sink we managed to jump ashore. Here we watched as our pride and joy slowly sank to the bottom of the river. It was then that we realized we were at the wrong side of the river and this left us with a problem. We either had to walk to the nearest bridge, 10 kilometers upriver, so that would have been a 20 kilometer walk, or swim to the other side.

We decided on swimming. We did not see anyone around, so we quickly undressed, and with one hand holding our clothes above the water, we managed to get back to our own side of the river. Just as we were struggling to get out of the water a group of girls from our own school were passing by, and I can tell you we were not happy!

This all happened a long time ago and a few times in my live I have had plans of building a boat again. I have spent a good amount of time looking at boat building plans, but with boats size does matter.

I usually looked at boats between 30 and 40 feet, but the sheer volume of work involved has always stopped me from going ahead with my boat building plans.

Now I have decided to start small. I am going to build a 16 feet Grand Banks dory, which I want to fit with a small outboard engine. I bought the boat building plans, I got the working space, and by the time you read this article I might be finished already.

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The so called music and movie download sites are under attack. In America the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Hollywood’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) are trying to shut them down, and seasoned Internet users are calling them a scam. Do they deserve this?

Surfing the Internet, looking for music and movies to download, you will find a lot of so called music and movie download sites. These sites do not provide you with music, or movies to download, no, they provide you with file sharing soft ware you can use to search for, and download music, movies and games. Most of them also provide you with cd burning soft ware and they have a helpdesk for those members who run in to problems with their downloading.

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Web banner ads are seen on many websites as they still are proving to be very effective in converting graphical ad units visitors and viewers to real websites traffic main streams which will in turn lead to sign ups, orderings and online purchases.

You know, there is a secret feeling that makes people click on animated web banners on the web, if the banner ads be designed in a way to professionally reflect the web business image on the web then people will feel that clicking on the ads will take them to a website offering something or the information that they like to view.

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Here’s a tip that I learned from my Grandma that works extremely well in the classroom. Growing up, when my grandmother would talk to my brother and I, she would finish sentences with the phase “Do you know what I mean?” or “Do you know what that is?” Constantly, confirming that my brother and I understood what she was saying.In truth, my brother and I, who were teenagers, found these verbal confirmations almost silly at time. I remember one time when she told us about her trip to New York. I clearly remember her saying “We visited the Statue of Liberty” then added “Do you know what that is?” Of course, my brother and I were teenagers and rolled our eyes as we said “Yes, Grandma, I know what the Statue of Liberty is.”

Years later, I realized that my grandmother was a genius in communicating to us teenagers. The main reason for her making that statement was to draw our attention back to the conversation.

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Whichever way you hand them out or deliver them to your target readers, your flyer printing project is definitely the most worked out marketing tool in your bevy of promotional materials. Not to mention that your flyer printing project is probably the most cost effective to produce, too.

It is even the easiest to produce because your flyer printing piece is a one page sheet of paper that you can print on your marketing campaign for your products and services. No need to cut to a certain paper size, or even shape out to a certain figure. And even if you decide to do it yourself, you’ll be able to create a good flyer printing project if you just put your mind (and your imagination) to it.

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Impotence or erectile dysfunction (ED) is a sexual health problem that is now rising among men. This condition is characterized by a man’s failure to perform an erection, keep an erection long enough to finish the sexual intercourse, or fail to have an ejaculation. This is the reason why men fail to perform well in bed. This ailment is not just a condition caused by old age or disease. Unhealthy lifestyles which includes excessive drinking, smoking, and unhealthy diets may contribute to the development of ED.         In addition to these factors, ED can also be caused by physical abnormalities or it could be a product of mental disturbance. Understanding these factors can help people suffering from ED improve sexual performance and overall well-being.

Diabetes has also been known to cause ED because it affects some, if not all the bodily systems such as the circulatory, nervous, and the endocrine systems. The organs in these systems all work in harmony to let blood flow into the penis so that erection can take place. In addition, a number of medical studies show that diabetic persons are more likely to have low testosterone levels. Testosterone is a hormone that is responsible for the enhancement of libido or sexual energy. Men with type 1 diabetes are more likely to become impotent once they reach 40 years of age.

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