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Monday, 17 June 2024

SWINGING BOTH WAYS

 We have both sorts of weather in Wellington NZ - Before and After!


Saturday, 15 June 2024

31 MILLION FREE EBOOKS

Anne's Archive is an amazing resource with over 31 million free ebooks online. It is described as the largest truly open library in human history. All their code and data are completely open source, and the way the site is set up pretty much side steps all issues of copyright (they are only sharing download links rather than the books themselves).

It has 31,603,758 books, and 99,900,496 papers in the database, all available to download. These include a lot of conspiracy books, some of which are heavily censored and hard to find.

I have been asked how it all works so here are some basic instructions showing how to download eBooks:

First go to the Anna's Archive website and enter the author or title you are looking for in the search box - https://annas-archive.org/


The results of your search will rapidly appear - now if you want to filter by format tick PDF & EPUB in the file types on the left


After you select the book you want, click on one of the two "slow download" options - If you are new to the site you won't be a paid subscriber but these will still both work fine. Don't get carried away, you can only do about two downloads at a time from each one of the options.
 
There are daily limits on how many books you can download, I'm not sure what they are, (maybe 10?) because I'm not the only one downloading books on one internet connection. But when you do too many  downloads the site stops working. Leave it a a day and try again. Anne's Archive is certainly not the only site to find eBooks, just the easiest on to use. This website describes a bunch of other ebook download alternative sites


Next, remember to hit the "Download now" link to start the book downloading


Save your eBooks in a folder (don't change or rename this folder once you start using them on your eBook reader or your books will disappear from the reader & you will have to add them again) - I edit the names of the new books before adding them to my eBook reader because the file names of eBooks downloaded through Anne's Archive tend to be very long.

On my Windows PC I use Calibre eBook reader which can be downloaded here

I was trying to keep things simple for people new to eBooks and tested some other more basic eBook readers such as Ice Cream reader, but I prefer having all the features of Calibre (which is free anyway) - it's slightly more complex at first but it does everything I want.

For reading books on an Android tablet or phone I use the Read Era app which is really good. It's not set up for all the more complex text editing stuff that Calibre can do, but is great for displaying and reading your eBook collections. Although its not designed for PC use, it apparently can be installed on a windows PC - I'm about to try doing that and instructions for installing it on a Widows PC are here

Having access to 31 million eBooks is pretty amazing, and before you know it, you can have your own vast library.



 

HOW TO GET A BETTER FACEBOOK FEED

It wasn't until I tried looking at my Facebook feed on my tablet that I realised just what a bunch of crap most people see when they look at Facebook. And that wasn't even using the mobile version! I never look at the internet using a phone but apparently 98% of Facebook users are doing just that.

STEP 1 - Use a computer or laptop, not a mobile phone or tablet.

Usually I look at Facebook on my PC or laptop, either using Windows 7 (Yes I still use Windows 7, but this will work on Win 10 as well) or Linux (I use Linux Zorin or Mint but this would be the same on any distro). It won't work on Android, and I don't know about Apple or Windows 11 because I've never used them.

STEP 2 - Add the Facebook Purity app (aka Fluff Busting Purity or FBP) to your browser - (this doesn't override Facebook's default settings as fully as it used to, and won't lock FB into a chronological feed anymore, but never mind, see step 3). This can get rid of a lot of crap. I go into settings and hide all the right and left sidebar links as well as turning off pretty much everything.

 https://www.fbpurity.com/


https://www.frot.co.nz/design/computing/use-f-b-purity-app-to-make-fb-usable/

STEP 3 - Get a chronological feed - This is the most essential thing to do with Facebook really, otherwise it is unusable. It's pretty easy to do, but you sometimes have to reset it because FB keeps trying to force your feed back to their controlled algorithm. 

Click on the nine little dots icon in the top right to open the Menu, then select "Feeds"


 STEP 4 - Use a good browser. It's all quite beyond me how this stuff works, but oddly I find Firefox is hopeless for viewing Facebook, while the Firefox fork Waterfox works best. Vivaldi or Brave both work OK as well. (I never use Chrome because I think it sucks, so I'm not sure how well that runs with FB)

For use on Windows or Linux I highly recommend the Waterfox browser. It's not widely used, but it's really good browser - like a faster version of Firefox with better privacy.


STEP 5 - Ad Blockers. I always use five ad blockers which is probably complete overkill, but they all seem to get along happily together so why not? I'm not really using them for Facebook in particular, they are there to block all advertising. It's probably not really possible to block all the advertising on FB, but I certainly see a lot less "sponsored posts" on my computer than on my tablet. Sometimes I go to the trouble of blocking particular advertisers, but mostly I just ignore them.

The five free ad blockers I use are Adblock Plus, Adblocker for YouTube, Adblocker Ultimate, AdGuard Adblocker, and uBlock Origin


I don't know which of these ad blockers is best so I just install all five of them - when it comes to ads I figure more blocking is better! This review on Techradar ranks uBlock Origin as #1 so I gave it a picture.

THE FINAL SOLUTION - Delete all the numpties. Find like minded friends, and bin any woketards. The days of signing up for Facebook using your real name and linking up with all your relatives and old friends is really over in this day and age in my opinion. I know a lot of people are still into that, but if you have been trying expose the globalist narratives, you probably have learned the shortcomings of that approach over the past five years in particular.

If you exclusively stick to being friends with people who can tell the difference between shit and chewed dates, a FB feed can be surprisingly good. Personally, I have given up arguing with anyone online, and just let any remaining tards of any kind block or unfriend me.


Friday, 14 June 2024

THE STEEPEST STREET IN NEW ZEALAND

 Baldwin Street, Dunedin is said to be the steepest street in the world - it probably isn't, but it is the steepest street in NZ and nearly 20 years ago I walked up it and took some photos. It's pretty cool, with stairs for footpaths!



 

PS. It turns out Baldwin St really is he steepest street in the world - some cheeky punks in Wales tried to steal our record but they got slammed!
 

In the historic town of Harlech, Wales, a steep road briefly held a Guinness World Record. Ffordd Pen Llech held the title of World's Steepest Street in 2019 before being stripped of this claim, the title returning to Baldwin Street in New Zealand after only a year.

In the Guinness World Record survey committee's first analysis, this street was said to have a gradient of 37.45%.3 However, upon review a year later at the request of Baldwin Street representatives, the guidelines of this world record were rewritten to require measurement to be taken from the middle of the road rather than the outside, and Ffordd Pen Llech was given a new official gradient of 28.6%