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Accessory Review Vinyl Care

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Cleaner From Kirmuss Pt.1

Positioning itself as a midrange product, Paul Rigby exhaustively reviews the Kirmuss KA-RC-1 ultrasonic vinyl record cleaner. This is Part One of a two part review.

Growing in popularity, the ultrasonic record cleaner is becoming an essential part of many vinyl fan’s armoury. I have used every variant of vinyl cleaning known to man (manual and machine-based) and have found ultrasonic technology to be the most effective and efficient out there. I use this type of Record Cleaning Machine (RCM) on a day to day basis.

So what is ultrasonic cleaning, exactly?

The general idea is to dip your vinyl into a bath of distilled water (not low enough to wet the label, of course). That disc is slowly, mechanically rotated.

Built-in, bath-fixed transducers increase pressure and vibration in the water producing millions of rising bubbles that stretch and compress. The frequency of the transducers determine how large the bubbles become. Their structural integrity fails and they collapse…violently. If this happens near vinyl grooves, they will agitate and remove surrounding particles. This is known as cavitation. Any surfactant (a substance to lower water’s surface tension) added to the area attracts further bubbles.

Kirmuss has taken three years to develop the KA-RC-1, focusing on a particular ultrasonic frequency for vinyl cleaning, the correct height to hold the record in the bath, developing an effective surfactant and more.

The first time I saw the KA-RC-1, it was at the North West Audio Show at the Devere Cranage Estate in Cheshire, last Summer. I want to dwell on this occasion a little because it has a bearing on the product, the company itself and this review.

My first view of Kirmuss as a company was its staffer bedecked in a white coat. I had to smile at this. I thought, “Hello, what do we have here, then?” The coat may have been worn to instil confidence but that sort of adornment triggers the opposite from myself. Then I saw the machine, it looked bulky and gawky yet the feature-rich chassis was intriguing, as was the long and involved cleaning process. So I interviewed the company there and then.

During the interview, Kirmuss talked a lot of sense and it was generally informative. And yet, there were also issues that got in the way. Apart from the pantomime white coat there was also the self-aggrandising, self-mythologising and self-promotion. I was constantly dragging the interviewee back to the point. I’m sure Kirmuss only wanted to be informative but it also sounded like Kirmuss was revealing big Dan Brown-type secrets previously hidden, warning of terrible dangers and pointing a trembling, damning finger at my record collection while stating that the only chance I ever have of reaching analogue nirvana and quite possibly also surviving to my next birthday was via the use of a KA-RC-1. Basically, the spiel was just too much.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

I wasn’t the only person there who felt like he had just faced a guy who was selling a potion off the back of a wagon that was guaranteed to give long life, enhance my attractiveness to the opposite sex and cure my dodgy knee…and all I had to do is pay him some money for the privilege. This market stall-approach to promotion was and is not the norm in the hi-fi industry. And not in a good way. And so my hackles were up and alarm bells rang.

More than that, I felt that the company desperately needed (and still needs) a professional PR and marketing team to act as a conduit and buffer between it and the public/press. Sometimes companies need help when trying to convey a message to the press and public. Kirmuss needs such help.

That thought would continue and intensify, as you will see below. Nevertheless, I continued to show interest.

Later, because I also write for the UK news-stand, national magazine HiFi World, I was given the opportunity to review the thing. I liked it too (and Kirmuss has wasted no time in plastering my comments on its website). The problem with print magazine reviews is the limited deadline time you have to fully investigate the product. Which is why, even if you’ve read that print magazine review, you should really ignore it and press the reset button in your memories. Since then, I’ve given this machine many weeks of further research and discovered many new areas that you should be aware of, as well as undertaking additional independent research and interviews, all of which are listed below and need digesting.

This is a big review but I don’t apologise for that. This product is important because it’s the first ultrasonic RCM to seriously look to bridge the gap between the DIY cheapo machines and the high end, super expensive models. It also has a host of options and potential that needs investigation with many additional, potentially contentious features that require careful thought.

The options I mentioned are all described in the accompanying 8-sided, A5 manual, replete with illustrations.

The problem with this? The manual is a mess. It’s poorly planned and laid out, it’s confusing, grammar is a secondary concern and there is no sense of guiding the user through a graduated process of education.

Yes, the early parts of the manual have a semblance of order but that quickly degenerates into a confusing mixture of vinyl and record format history plus How To… instructions spread over the manual and various paper supplements.

Clicking the link (below) you flow downwards from this busy part of the screen…

The website ( retains this haphazard style with a lack of design thought, spelling mistakes and grammatical issues plus the insertion of massive blocks of confusing white space positioned in the centre of each page.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

…the featureless desert that is is part of the page and then again down to…

Hence, the overall impression from the public demo routine, the manual and the website is not a good one. They give the impression that you’ve just walked into amateur night. Again, there’s a need for professional PR and marketing help here.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

…some semblance of civilisation

And the reason I’m telling you all of this? Because, faced with the above (and you might have been at some point), it’s easy to be discouraged. Stick with this product, though. It’s worth investing time and effort into the KA-RC-1. It might not be the magical force that Kirmuss infers but there is a solid product on offer here.

As you can see from the accompanying images, the chassis is a low-and-long design that, unfortunately, demands a fair amount of footprint. Many other ultrasonic cleaners user a vertical design that minimises the amount of space.

Another downside? The KA-RC-1 chassis also looks like a toy. There’s even an ill-advised cartoon graphic stuck on the side to emphasise the Toys R Us feel. One that I would remove 30 seconds after removing the chassis from the box, to be frank. When I first unpacked the KA-RC-1, I actually looked for the Nintendo logo. The KA-RC-1 chassis is even bedecked in that classic Nintendo gray shade.

Kirmuss won’t volunteer the information but this chassis is not their own, it’s bought in. Other, non-hi-fi, third party companies also use the same chassis as a basic ultrasonic cleaner. When I asked about the bath, Kirmuss revealed that it had approached the manufacturer and modified the original design to suit its own purposes. Hence, Kirmuss has invested in its own bespoke, vinyl-centric top plate section and has removed the temperature/heating options. The chassis normally arrives with its own internal basket to hold items for cleaning. That has been removed but can be bought back from Kirmuss if you want the KA-RC-1 to clean other, non-vinyl items in its chassis.

Of course, not developing its own chassis is how Kirmuss has been able to maintain a relatively low price for its RCM.

I do like the built-in handles on the chassis of the KA-RC-1. Other ultrasonic cleaners forget that you need to move cleaners around on a semi-regular basis during cleaning and refilling. I always feel that I’m about to drop my Audio Desk RCM, for example. Without built-in handles, accidents threaten. Kirmuss has the right idea here.

The bath system uses six litres of distilled water as the basis of its cleaning process, which is a lot. Competing systems (like the Audio Desk) often use a lot less – four litres is common – so you’re going to be spending a little more money on distilled water with the Kirmuss. This is not such a big deal, though because distilled water is not, in the grand scheme of things, that expensive.

The rear of the KA-RC-1 chassis features a power cable and rocker power switch. The right side is where the outlet pipe is situated, allowing the exit of bath water during cleaning, with the help of a supplied add-on flexi-tube. The front sees a sturdy valve switch to open/close that pipe. I tested both and they work with no issues.

The top-right features the cleaning controls and readout. The latter keeps a track of the countdown during a selected process, underneath the clock is a set of lights indicating the process underway as well as a colour-coded temperature gauge. Under that are buttons to change the cleaning time (78s, for example, only need two minutes of ultrasonic cleaning whereas vinyl requires the default five minutes).

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

Beneath those are two further buttons. The first is to set the ultrasonic cleaning in motion. The second is a degass (aka Pulse) button to remove latent bubbles within the distilled water. Reportedly, de-gassing makes the water bath a more unified body of water, enhancing cleaning efficiency. Without it, says Kirmuss, the cavitation process spends half its time removing the bubbles in the water, instead of concentrating on cleaning your vinyl.

After filling the KA-RC-1 bath with distilled water, I was asked to degass the water twice, a process that took just over 90 seconds each. Kirmuss recommends that you do this when you first fill the RCM but that you should also repeat after several disc cleans. The feeling being that the water will have been agitated enough to produce extraneous bubbles within the body of the bath liquid content.

I loved the whole KA-RC-1 Record Assembly Unit concept. The modular nature of this area is quite brilliant and this one area justifies the larger chassis footprint. For a number of reasons. Firstly, it provides a range of record format options from the off, as a default. No costly extra adaptors are required for 7” or 10”/78 records. Both of these formats are included as part of the package, as are two 12” size discs: four in all. This is a welcome decision by Kirmuss to give the user this quality of choice from the basic package.

More than that, this Assembly is operated using an almost clockwork array of belts and cogs. It looks fixable by replaceable parts. It appears to be something that, if it broke down, you could actually repair. A concept that is rare nowadays.

More than that, the Assembly is a drop in solution. That is, the top assembly loosely fits onto the top of the bath. A short electrical lead connects to the side of the chassis to provide power to the gearing.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

Two 12″ discs can be inserted for cleaning at the top, third slot down is for a 10″ with a 7″ disc slot at the bottom

What I want Kirmuss to do now is work on a range of Assembly choices, to provide various format options. Hence I’d like to see Assemblies that you can buy as additional accessories. In my own mind’s eye, they could cater for: four 12” discs, four 7” discs, four 10” discs and an Assembly with half and half (two 12” discs and two 7” discs). And then I want Kirmuss to produce a rack for them all, holding a maximum of four Assemblies so that I can then pull the Assembly I need for that day from my rack, drop it into the KA-RC-1 and off I go.

Apparently Kirmuss is working on a new drop-in unit with an alternative slot arrangement but whether Kirmuss will actually have the cash and wherewithal to fulfil all of these record cleaning fantasies of mine is another question. It also depends on user demand.

That sense of potential flexibility is very exciting for someone who not only has thousands of vinyl discs in his collection but has a range of formats sizes to address.

There are effectively two KA-RC-1 stages to cleaning a record. Firstly, there’s the active ultrasonic cavitation process. Then the record is removed and a sort of After Care process is begun. I’ll describe the cleaning process first. After Care – which is more significant to this review than you might think – will be dealt in Part Two.

The standard KA-RC-1 cleaning process, according to the manual, goes something like this.

You insert your record into one of the KA-RC-1 size-compatible slots. You can either change the cleaning time or run with the five minute default. The process begins after the top mounted On/Off switch is pressed twice.

After a single clean, for new records, Kirmuss wants you to remove it and play the thing there and then.

For used records, Kirmuss advises that you place the record on a 7” felt mat (supplied, I talk more about this mat in the After Care section in Part Two) and pump three sprays of Kirmuss’ ‘surfactant’ (also supplied) around the record. This stuff apparently helps to soften the muck and grime but its principle job is to remove surface tension from the distilled water and cavitation bubbles, allowing the bubbles to get closer to the grooves to remove groove muck. In effect, it makes the water wetter.

I want to emphasise the importance of a surfactant to this review. This is a first. It is the first time that any commercial company  has promoted such a step in vinyl record cleaning. General cleaning liquids are applied to the record surface, yes, but don’t count because they are in effect all-in-one cleaning solutions and home-made recipes are excluded here too. I’m talking about a commercial, officially promoted system. This is a first. Other ultrasonic cleaners talk about surfactant use but they often include it as part of the bath liquid. Not as a separate application applied directly to the vinyl surface itself to then be washed off during the secondary cleaning process.

The surfactant is sprayed around each side of the record which is then worked into the grooves by a densely bristled brush (again, more in Part Two). Back into the bath the record goes for a further five minutes of ultrasonics to remove more gunk and wash off that surfactant. Then out comes the record for the After Care section.

Let’s pause right here and backtrack.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

The Record Assembly is connected to the bath with this cable. Not exactly elegant but it works.

Firstly, if Kirmuss is recommending a surfactant at all, why shouldn’t you be using it with a new record as well as old, used records? After all, the surfactant is supposed to enhance cleaning efficiency, isn’t it? Hence, I recommend the use of surfactant on new records too.

As for that surfactant, what actually is it? Kirmuss, in its manual, describes the liquid as 1% propane-½-diol or Propylene Glycol, as it’s more commonly known. It’s used in the eco-variant of anti-freeze. Don’t panic, though, it’s the stuff which stops anti-freeze actually freezing and is non-aggressive. Propylene Glycol is even used in skin care products, in vaping, foods such as ice cream and it’s also in fake fog you might see in the theatre. Glycol isn’t a surfactant, though. It’s there to, in effect, keep the surfactant in place and stop the actual surfactant pooling on the vinyl surface. When Kirmuss mention the surfactant in the manual and suggest that it is merely distilled water and Glycol, that is a half truth. The actual surfactant ingredient is hidden from view. Kirmuss won’t talk about it. You can tell it’s there because this stuff has a perfume and it bubbles up in use. Glycol is greasy and has no smell. I asked Kirmuss on three occasions to reveal the full contents of the supplied surfactant liquid but it was reluctant to do so. Even when I promised to keep my mouth shut about their surfactant secrets. When pushed, it did reveal a rather confusing and murky chemical/brand name but refused to supply further information or links. I wanted to know more because of this…

The Propylene Glycol is rated as safe in any documents you might read on the Internet. Potential hazards are few and far between and there’s no long lasting issues that I could find within the documents I found. That said, I had a reaction because of that unknown part of the liquid, the perfumed surfactant I mentioned above.

What happened was this. In use, when sprayed at the vinyl surface, a small amount of the spray kicked back and flew upwards from the vinyl surface. Looking closely, you could actually see this happening. I then unintentionally breathed the stuff in, it irritated my throat and I flew into a coughing fit. I had to reach for water to stop coughing. This occurred on four or five occasions, immediately after spraying. I did this to make absolutely sure that there was no other possible reason for the reaction (the things I do for you, eh?) The surfactant was used on older and, I hasten to add, brand new records.

I reported this to Kirmuss and owner Charles Kirmuss replied, “The splash back could have been…something coming off of the record as fungus.” Then he hurriedly quoted information relating to how safe his surfactant liquid was – even though I have no idea where the information came from, had no opportunity to double check it and didn’t know what liquid it referred to. Kirmuss’ assumptions may have had grounds if my treated records were all old and had been badly stored but mine were not. As I say, some were even brand new, so fungus infection was doubtful in the extreme. Kirmuss’ scientifically enquiring mind also didn’t think to ask any questions of myself. To save him the trouble, I can tell you that I can react badly to strong perfumes and I guess that was the cause of my reaction. Nothing more. I hope.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

The surfactant is supplied in the tall bottle. More about the other tools in Part Two

Again, I know that a PR and marketing team would have handled this situation better, would have been more thorough, less dismissive and more supportive.

I trust that this is the only issue in terms of health and I assume that, even then, only some people with sensitive throats will be affected in this way. That said, I’d rather not be breathing this stuff in at all and I was. As I say, I could see it lifting off the vinyl surface. It might not do me any bad but it certainly won’t do me any good, either. The day after my coughing fit, I had a slightly sore throat. Nothing worse than that, though.

So, what to do? Forget the KA-RC-1? No, there’s no need to take such drastic steps. As I say, any spray hitting vinyl will rebound upwards towards your face. If you want to continue with the Kirmuss-supplied liquid (or if you spray any surfactant of any type onto any vinyl surface), I’d recommend buying a pipette, eye dropper-type bottle from Amazon with a relatively high capacity bottle (click HERE to see more). This will stop the issue of spray entering the air, retains my good health (and yours too) and, an additional benefit, will be more precise in terms of application so it won’t accidentally spray all over your precious record label.

Then we get to the bath of distilled water. There’s something else included within the water itself. Kirmuss recommends the use of Isopropyl alcohol. This is not sprayed onto the vinyl, as I say, but added to the actual bath of distilled water. Hence, your vinyl is cleaned with distilled water, cavitation and alcohol. You need to buy the alcohol yourself. It’s not supplied. Kirmuss recommend a bottle of 70% alcohol. This liquid is sometimes labelled as Rubbing Alcohol and arrives in two flavours: pure and ‘tainted’. The latter includes impurities for safety reasons, added to make it taste pretty bad. Some Rubbing Alcohol products are pure, though and that’s what I used in the review. Others are literally labelled as 70% alcohol. The other 30% volume is distilled water. You could, of course, use less of the 100% Isopropyl alcohol variant too.

When preparing the bath of liquid for the KA-RC-1, you add 40ml of the 70% solution to the bath of distilled water which amounts to 0.43% total volume. A very low figure indeed.

The addition of alcohol and its recommendation by Kirmuss will be of major concern to some. It was to me, I have to admit, even if only 0.43% was being added. To this point, I have had a zero tolerance of the stuff. In the past, I’ve found it to be nasty and aggressive. It can ruin a vinyl disc.

I have tested an LP to destruction with 100% proof Isopropyl alcohol. In those tests, the first couple of cleans produced a brilliantly clear and open suite of sonics but subsequent cleans produced an increasingly edgy and harsh sound, brittle and bright in tone. After a while, the LP became unplayable, such were the sonic extremes that the alcohol took the sound. The reason? Melting vinyl and groove damage. I’ll address that subject in more detail below.

Suffice to say, I avoided Isopropyl alcohol from that point. I know plenty of people who use it now and swear by it and use various liquid recipes containing it. Often 25% or 20% volume is a common figure in many user’s recipes. I was nervous, though, because I had no facts or figures as to exactly when alcohol caused damage. What was the boundary, over which damage to vinyl occurred? When did alcohol change, transferring from a friendly groove-cleaning product to a damaging, ruinous acidic destructor? Where was the line to be crossed? Was it more than 25%, How about 40%? Maybe it was 15%? Who knows? No-one I ever talked to could tell me for sure. Everyone had an opinion. But no-one actually knew.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

Bottom right is the power connector. To its left is the toggle power switch

Because alcohol is so contentious as a cleaning ingredient and because the liquid is so much at the core of the KA-RC-1, I felt that I had to learn more about it. How could I truly recommend the KA-RC-1 if I could not trust a key part of its cleaning process?

So I undertook lengthy independent research to find out which was spread over a period of months. I reached out to the vinyl industry because, if anyone would know the answers then they would, right?

I approached five separate sectors of the vinyl industry. I first talked to a UK company, Transcom, that supplies acetate discs to Abbey Road. These discs are made from a soft acetate to test a master before committing to a full pressing. I talked to a Canadian-based chemist, a lady whose name I’ll keep to myself to retain her personal privacy, who also works on a regular basis with Abbey Road and knows vinyl. Next, I talked to Vinyl Factory, a UK vinyl pressing plant and the guy who runs the place. Based in the UK, this is a factory that actually makes vinyl records. Finally, I talked to the two largest producers of vinyl pellets in the UK, one was Dugdales the other wished to remain anonymous (it’s a nervous and competitive world, the vinyl pellet business). I’m talking about the raw vinyl. The core material that is supplied to the record pressing plant. Bags of these pellets are supplied to the vinyl pressing plant for processing.

Now, surely, if these guys didn’t know the answer, then no-one would.

I initially asked these experts about alcohol but learned a lot more than I bargained for – all of it valuable and fascinating and of use to audiophiles. I’ll share some of this information with you now (Not all, I’m wary at the final size of this increasingly large review!) and hope to share more, for those who might be interested, later in a separate feature.

The most important conclusion from talking to all of these industry experts is that no-one, I repeat not one person I talked to, knew how alcohol affected vinyl. Not in all encompassing and definitive terms, at any rate. Yes, they told me that Isopropyl alcohol was an issue when used neat. I knew that already but no-one knew when Isopropyl alcohol actually became a danger to vinyl. No-one could tell me at what stage or at what point or at what strength Isopropyl alcohol actually attacked vinyl or if repeated use of safe levels was a problem over time. There are, I was told, no figures. None at all. Yes, everyone had a personal opinion and the conversation quickly degraded into conjecture but nothing official was offered.

To say that I was surprised at this was an understatement. Then I found out why. The reason is down to the vinyl itself. You may think that vinyl is vinyl is vinyl. PVC, eh? No. In fact, far from it. Vinyl records are not made from a single substance. The vinyl in your collection is created from a recipe of chemicals. Only one of those is PVC. There’s between four and 10 elements to any one vinyl recipe.

One contact I talked to had many recipes, ready to go at any one time, “We have around six difference black record formulations we make depending on the state of the [pressing] machines but that can increase if the presser wants something ‘a little softer’, for example.” The “state of the machines” refers to age and wear and tear and if the pressing machines vary in pressure and the like. So that’s at least six (maybe more) different types of vinyl recipe from this one company here and today. But there’s more, my contact’s company has changed the recipe of its vinyl pellets over time.

One of the supposed devastating effects that Isopropyl alcohol has on a vinyl record is to distort the plasticiser with it. The bit the helps the grooves retain their form. Everyone I’ve ever talked to in the hi-fi industry believes that plasticiser is and always has been part of a vinyl record. Now I find that it’s just not so, at least not exclusively, “There is no plasticiser added in our formulations,” said my contact, “other companies might add them but we stay away from them as they distort the record if the balance isn’t right and depending on what it is, the surface finish would be hazy and not crisp and glossy.”

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

Typical vinyl pellets used in the production of vinyl records

Other chemicals have come and gone too. This adds to the variations in the vinyl recipe. If one company requires six vinyl recipes at any one time then, as above, replaces the plasticiser to create another new recipe (so, that’s six new recipes available on a daily basis), then changes more chemicals (another six variants multiplied by the changes) and keeps doing that over the decades, imagine how many different types of vinyl there are on the market from that one supplier alone? And if you have a different combinations of chemicals making up vinyl disc, it makes sense that alcohol will react differently to each, yes?

There’s more than one company out there making vinyl pellets to create vinyl discs, though. And it’s a highly competitive business. Each company lives and dies by its own bespoke recipe, “…every compounding company will have their own formulations and ingredients, there is no set formulation,” said my contact.

If every company has its own secret formula, how many companies are there in the world creating raw vinyl? My contact said, “I would say, including us, there is around 40 to 50. Could be wrong but Asia have a load and the US have loads as well.” And then going back into history? What about those companies who don’t even exist any more?

Just how many variations are there exactly? No-one knows. It’s an impossible figure to consider. What is entirely possible is that there are hundreds, more like thousands of different types of vinyl out there. You might play 20 vinyl records from your collection and it’s possible that every single one is constructed from completely different vinyl recipes. Or not. Who knows? Because of that, each vinyl disc, theoretically, will react differently to cleaning with alcohol.

So what to do? I decided to put my fear of alcohol to one side and complete a sound test with and without alcohol.

Before I get to that, a word about alcohol and 78s. Kirmuss recommend that you clean 78s in its bath containing 0.43% alcohol. Most 78 users are told that alcohol should never touch a 78 disc. Kirmuss says that the 78 discs will not be damaged because the cleaning cycle is ‘only’ two minutes long and the discs are not exposed for long in the tiny amount of alcohol contained in the water bath. I didn’t have a chance to test this because of limited time, I’m afraid but you have been warned.

I began the first KA-RC-1 sound test tests with a Richie Havens original release. The LP, Something Else Again and a track called From The Prison. The track possessed a continual stream of noise that sat underneath the vocals.

I undertook the sound tests, initially, by the Kirmuss book but included no alcohol as part of the bath of distilled water. So I firstly inserted the vinyl into the KA-RC-1 to soften up the muck and dirt in the grooves, ran through a single, five minute, ultrasonic cavitation cleaning process, took out the LP, applied the spray-on surfactant to the LP (to soften up the muck some more) and cleaned it off with another cavitation clean.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

Havens – working for the audiophile cause

Sonically, I noticed a dramatic reduction in noise. Some noise could still be heard but the overall effect was much improved with sonics also benefitting from being smoother, less edgy and with an informative midrange.

I decided to give the same record an additional surfactant spray and another ultrasonic/cavitation application, again without alcohol as part of the bath contents.  The noise reduced still further while sound quality improved again. Clarity improved while extra air and space was heard across the soundstage.

I did notice a mucky build up on my stylus tip. So I tried a third time. I sprayed more surfactant, cleaned that off with another cavitation cycle and played the record. It was this third application that I realised that I’d hit a bit of a wall and no further sonic improvements were occurring.

At this point I added the alcohol to the water, degassed the KA-RC-1 liquid bath again and repeated the cleaning process. More reduction in noise occurred. What remained was very low level, mostly heard between tracks and at the very beginning of the LP. This could easily have been age and vinyl wear.

What really hit me, though, was the sonics. The effect was, how can I put it, less, “Oh that was nice.” And rather more, “Wow!” The minor levels of alcohol are supposed to act as a “grease remover” and that sense of a veil being lifted from right across the frequency range was certainly heard here. Focus, precision and clarity were all enhanced as was a slight increase in gain. Haven’s voice was enhanced in terms of the texture and gravel-like nature of his crescendos while his acoustic guitar was powerful and expressive during his powerful strumming routines.

I did notice a tiny deposit on the stylus tip so maybe the record could have done with one last clean (see the After Care section in Part Two for more on this). I decided to leave that, having satisfied myself of the enhanced sonic qualities.

Instead, at this point, I took the record out of the KA-RC-1 and ‘cleaned’ the same record in my Audio Desk ultrasonic cleaner. The latter featured bespoke Audio Desk liquid within. No alcohol was present in the Audio Desk RCM.

I then played that same Havens’ cleaned record on my reference system and I have to say that, compared to the KA-RC-1, a thin veil had now newly appeared over the music once more. The sound quality was still excellent, lots of detail and so on – this wasn’t a disaster I was hearing by any means. So, let’s not get carried away. That said, there was a dulling, a muting of the top end and a lack of excitement around the vocal delivery. String plucks lacked that organic tonality that I was hearing before. The KA-RC-1  naturalism had largely gone or, at least, had been softened and restrained. Almost as if a thin layer of something had covered the grooves.

KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Cleaner From Kirmuss

Drain pipe on the Kirmuss’ RCM, to remove old bath liquid. A pipe is also suppled to attach to this nozzle

I then took the record out of the Audio Desk and cleaned that same record once more with the KA-RC-1 RCM and the passion come back, so did the dynamic reach, the mids opened up allowing space and air within the soundstage once more, tonality was enhanced, the reverb ‘ring’ off the back of the strummed guitar strings was more evident now and the vocal was far more expressive…even the gain increased.

The revelation was absolute. The shock or rather aftershocks of this test were unquestionable.

Yet there was a single variable that was proven to be responsible for this sonic change. Alcohol. At least alcohol enhanced by the ultrasonic action – and I think the latter is very important here. Remember, only a tiny portion of alcohol was used but this one factor (in conjunction with the ultrasonic action) was key to the change in sonics. Up to the addition of the alcohol, I felt that the performance of the KA-RC-1 and the Audiodesk were roughly on par in terms of sound. That is, sound quality was very good indeed in terms of sonics and the removal of noise, pops and clicks. These physical obstructions had been reduced by both machines to a similar level.

That, in itself, was an intriguing find because the Kirmuss was achieving roughly the same anti-noise performance for around half the price.

Nevertheless, it was the the addition of the alcohol (plus ultrasonics) that was giving me the addition of the sonic lift, removing that dulling veil across the entire soundstage. The alcohol was the important part of the recipe that increased sound quality.

At this point, I’ll end Part One of this test of the KA-RC-1 RCM. Please don’t draw too many conclusions from this one Sound Test – there’s more to come and the story changes. I hope to see you for PART TWO which includes the After Care section, more direct tests with the Audio Desk RCM plus a few suggested tweaks to hone the performance of the Kirmuss (and the Audio Desk) and that final rating.

[Don’t forget to check out my Facebook Group, The Audiophile Man: Hi-Fi & Music here: for exclusive postings, exclusive editorial and more!]

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  • Reply
    15th January 2019 at 8:50 pm

    Fantastic article, thank you for your research. When can we expect part 2? I’d like to read it before continuing to use my KA-RC-1.

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      16th January 2019 at 11:47 am

      Very kind of you to say so, Shawn. Working on Pt.2 right now 🙂

  • Reply
    17th January 2019 at 10:56 am

    That was a lot of work. Thank you.

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      17th January 2019 at 11:56 am

      True! And no problem 🙂

  • Reply
    18th January 2019 at 7:20 pm

    Thank you very much enjoyed immensely and lots of hard work looking forward to,part 2

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      19th January 2019 at 1:57 pm

      And thank you for your kind words Neale – Part Two is now up and ready to read 🙂

  • Reply
    Bernard Ginsberg
    27th January 2019 at 2:38 pm

    I would think, also comparing Clearaudio’s Double Matrix Sonic Cleaning Maching, as being part of this series of cleaning machines will give the ‘buyer’ a better understanding of all three machines. In addition, will you be comparing the ‘newset’ 2019 Audio Desk model? Thx. Bg. 1/27/19

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      28th January 2019 at 9:58 am

      Hi Bernard – thanks for the suggestions. I hope to be reviewing more ultrasonics in the future.

  • Reply
    Jagdeep Singh
    25th March 2020 at 7:15 am

    An absolutely brilliant article that was thorough. It was very helpful.
    Jag – Singapore

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      25th March 2020 at 11:57 am

      Thanks for your kind comments 🙂

  • Reply
    Joe Parknavy
    27th March 2020 at 5:00 pm

    Cant that you enough for the article. I almost bought a KA-RC-1 and not sure what to do at this point. I may just stick with this spin clean unit even if I am killing brushes almost monthly for the amount of records that I clean.

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      27th March 2020 at 5:08 pm

      No problem, Joe – if you thought about the Kirmuss, like the idea of ultrasonic technology and the Kirmuss is where your budget is at then by all means grab one. It’s a decent cleaner. The core tech is ok. It’s just that I have issues with the company selling it and their advice. So, if you’re still up for it, buy it and then by all means come back and talk to me, ask any questions you may have and I’ll offer any help and guidance you need.

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text:
What is Bravery?

What is courage?
When you do the right thing, no matter the risks

No, but hear me out
Going on in spite of fear?
Doing things other people want to but wouldn’t dream of?
Slaying monsters?
Well, duh

But what is bravery?
Is it a feeling?
Can you measure it, make a list of ingredients?
Can you tell someone to julienne something and boil something else
Soft peaks
Soft peaks
Until the butter’s folded with the sugar
And, voila, courage?

The bravest things I ever did didn’t feel brave
They didn’t feel scary, either
(I mean, there was some of the “what if” going on
But I wasn’t terrified
More like mildly curious about potential negative outcomes
Something like that)
They didn’t feel much like anything
I just did them
Didn’t even think of them as brave until someone congratulated me
That was weird
All I did was what I thought was right
Is that bravery?

But then I think “well, this is something I’d never have done a year ago
No matter how much I wanted to
So I suppose that’s brave”

Except it’s so anticlimactic
There’s supposed to be a swelling soundtrack
Probably some trumpets
(Definitely some trumpets – what kind of movie do you take my life for?)
A French horn for a few noble notes
I’d probably strike a pose for an invisible camera
But no, all I did was send an email
And then make lunch
Or decide again that “yeah, this writing thing is that important to me”
Four years of making that decision
Is bravery?
I guess maybe that
And the email
The sandwich definitely wasn’t
That was just a sandwich
(It tasted nice, though)

“Just” a sandwich, though
I “just” did them

I broke up with very last week
Maybe it’s time to break up with just?
“Just does not imbue your words with confidence”
“Just says you don’t really believe what you say”
Fine. It was a sandwich
I did the things
(Now I’m hungry)

But is it allowed to be bravery if it feels so ordinary?
Is it allowed to be love if there aren’t flower petals?
Is it allowed to be inspiring if I said it without really thinking?
Or after it always being part of my thoughts?

I get this uncomfortable feeling when people congratulate me
Say the nicest things about me
All I want is to get off the thing they’ve put me on
“Please, look at someone else. I didn’t do anything special, promise
I didn’t do anything anyone else here couldn’t have also done
I sent an email
I set a priority
Please, you do this all the time
It’s really not that amazing, I promise”
And then they try to explain it
But I’m like
“No, really
I don’t have any qualifications or skills you don’t
It’s not that special
It’s really not.”

Part of me says “Thea
You need to learn to take a compliment”
Another part of me says
“But I don’t want to be arrogant”

Which means I need a new definition of bravery
Because I need one that can be me
I don’t know
I’m five feet tall
When people start looking up at me it’s because they’ve fallen
Or physics broke
And all I want to do is bring them back to their feet
Because this is so weird
I mean
If bravery is my new normal, I’ll take it
But can we not talk about it?
I feel like Leonardo Da Vinci in Ever After
“Yes, I shall go down in history
as the man who opened a door!”
(Life is so much easier when people write all the witty one-liners for you, I imagine)
Like, if I were brave
Why would I be this uncomfortable right now?

Maybe the compliments we have the hardest time taking
Are the ones we have the hardest time believing
There are so many times I gave up
So many things I wanted to say, but was too scared or hurt to
So much I wanted to do
Only to turn around and walk away at the first sign of rejection
And I wonder “what if?”
What would my life look like if I’d insisted on being in drama class in grade ten?
If I’d insisted on trying out for Helen Keller and didn’t take no for an answer?
That role that I’d secretly wanted to play for years?
But the teacher expressed doubt at the timing of it (the semester was already underway)
And I walked away sadly instead
What would my life look like if I’d insisted on speaking in chapel?
Saying to the pastor who told me he didn’t think I could hold people’s attention for more than ten minutes
“I know I can – watch me”
I’ve done hour long presentations since that were a blast for everyone involved
But I let his doubt become my own that day
Because I was unproven
And I knew it
And I hated that I wouldn’t give myself the chance to prove it to myself
That I could do the things I knew knew knew that I could do
So sending an email is brave?
I wish I’d had that bravery when I was younger
I wish I’d believed in myself enough to show people what I already knew was true
I wish I’d said things
Instead of walked away
I wish it could be better now
I wish I could have known what I do now
And just believed in myself
It could have been so simple.

I’ve done stupid stubborn things since
Two prerequisite waivers
Made a class happen for me after it got cancelled
Published four books even though I still can’t pay rent with any of them
Told myself “you can” even when I was sure I couldn’t
And applied for jobs
Got booths at conventions
Gave workshops and presentations
Edited that darn book after three years of being terrified of it
Graduated without debt
Made a webcomic
Wrote this poem
But every time someone tells me “you’re brave”
I see fifteen-year-old me walk away from the drama teacher
With a broken dream in my heart
And all I want to do
Is cry

Maybe being brave
Is finally letting her go
And being who I am now

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Erica's Story (WIP title) | The Books of Bílo (WIP title) #1
First draft 29%
Hunter and Prey | White Changeling #3
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Grow Your Library

The Tree Remembers
Dreaming of Her and Other Stories
The Illuminated Heart
Hidden in Sealskin
The Kitten Psychologist Tries to Be Patient Through Email
Like Mist Over the Eyes
The Kitten Psychologist Broaches the Topic of Economics
The Kitten Psychologist

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text:
My Indiana Home as a B&B

From “Ask Kit!”:

Q: I am a Brit living in rural Indiana in a beautiful log home in a fantastic location with fabulous views and an appealing little tourist attraction town/area all around + wonderful forests with trails etc etc. I am going thro a divorce and want/need to start my home as a B&B- I already have my Planning and Zoning permit and have looked into quite a lot already – there seems so much to learn!

My greatest fear is that I don’t have any business experience and would be going into this alone apart from a p/t cleaner and possibly a friend to do my books. The house is @ 6,000+ sq ft with 4 bedrooms and independent living quarters- all set up to open really except for more furniture ,equipment, a spruce up and a few more permits.

My main question, apart from any moral support any of your readers can give me is-

* How do I find a sympathetic (to the B&B industry) attorney ? (to advise me re what type of business entity I should set up?- no courses seem to even MENTION this vital 1st step!!)

* and also a similarly experienced accountant ?

* Any help, advice or sympathy or even a temp “partner” in the biz to get me off on the right foot would be most welcome.

I realise I probably should try to go on a seminar for Aspiring Innkeepers or get an apprenticeship somewhere but my (soon to be ex) husband is pushing me hard to start up as we are running out of funds and the season is going over and my permit will expire soon. Help and advice please!!

A: You are right about starting with a seminar as your first step. I can’t speak to other seminars, but mine sure talks about business entities (my ebooks would be another alternative to a seminar).

I don’t know of any professionals in Indiana, but I have a great tax man in California who does taxes across the country. Doug Thorburn, 818-360-0985, is an Enrolled Agent and a Certified Financial Planner; he knows taxes and tax planning extremely well. He’s also familiar with B&Bs.

To help you get beyond your lack business experience, take classes, read books, and plan to attend B&B conferences.

There are many regions and states that hold conferences, and PAII has a biannual meeting (the next to be held in Arizona in April). It may seem that you can’t afford to attend these conferences and classes, but you can’t afford not to because of the wealth of information and the camaraderie (valuable for support) you get when attending.

The things you learn will help you run your business smarter so you can make money. I understand your husband’s fear of running out of money, but if you are going to make a go of this, you have to hang on a bit longer. Go ahead and open the B&B and start taking guests, but don’t overlook your education — an investment in your success and future.


text:
NOBUNNY at Bottom of the Hill 2/25, Noise Pop Festival 2011

Blame the weatherman. Even though people kept going to Bottom of the Hill’s rear courtyard and disappointingly peering up into the cloudless, snow-free sky hoping for a once-in-a-lifetime show, the real show was going on inside.

The Downer Party at Bottom of the Hill 2/25, Noise Pop Festival 2011

After The Downer Party‘s poppy, riot girl-inspired punk rock opened the night, San Francisco’s own Exray’s took the stage. Nominally a duo but performing as a three piece, Exray’s have a unique live setup. Instead of a drummer, their percussion is handled entirely by someone playing an electronic drum machine. Interestingly, for the majority of the set, the “drummer” used naturalistic drum sounds and was playing them almost exactly as a real drummer would. If you were just listening to a recording of these songs, you’d have no idea the drums were canned. The effect live, once the novelty wore off, was similar that that of a band playing with a minimalist drummer but without the added electric crispness that comes from live drums.

Exray's at Bottom of the Hill 2/25, Noise Pop Festival 2011

The songs themselves were uniformly mellow garage pop. The guitars were jagged but unaggressive. The band’s sparse arrangements highlighted singer Jon Bernson’s uninflected vocal lines and engagingly off-kilter melodic sense. At times the band sounded like a less aggressively amateurish version of Beat Happening fronted by one of the Johns from They Might Be Giants.

Exray's at Bottom of the Hill 2/25, Noise Pop Festival 2011

Midway though the set, things started getting more interesting when the melodies got more sing-song and drumming started using more synthetic sounding timbres. As this happened, the band sunk deeper into the pocket and finally got the audience moving around.

The thing that’s amazing about NOBUNNY is the extra bit of artistry that goes into the music itself. For example, it would have been enough to see a band fronted by a guy wearing a ragged rabbit mask, a cutoff leather jacket, black underpants, a pair of handcuffs dangling from said underpants and that’s it, dance around like Iggy Pop and close their set with a cover of “Eat It” by Weird Al. But the thing that’s amazing about NOBUNNY, is that the cover emphasized the sharp edges of the song’s riff and transformed into something almost frighteningly savage. This is a band that could easily coast on singer Justin Champlin’s charismatically raucous whirlwind of a stage persona and be successful, yet they go out of their way to infuse each of their nuggets of pop gold with catchy hook after effortlessly catchy hook. The band performs with so much vinegar and bravado that there’s no reason a song like “Do the Fuck Yourself” needed to be certifiable pop gem to get everyone in the strikingly young crowd bounce off the walls.

NOBUNNY at Bottom of the Hill 2/25, Noise Pop Festival 2011

And bounce they did. As soon as Champlin stumbled onstage from the middle of the crowd, a mosh pit spontaneously broke out and didn’t stop for the entire brief set. People were crowd surfing and stage diving like it was 1994.

NOBUNNY at Bottom of the Hill 2/25, Noise Pop Festival 2011

The songs themselves are essentially little punk tunes in the style of the Ramones but filtered though 30 years of garage rock. These guys are clearly students of the garage sceneâ€”inserting bits of songs foundational to the garage rock cannon like The Regents’ “Barbara Ann” and The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” into their own original compositions. Their songs all have an undeniable rhythmic pulse, you can’t not dance to them if you tried.

Finally, closing out the night, was Battlehooch. Allow me to tell a story about Battlehooch. I discovered this band a few years ago when they were busking in Golden Gate Park as I was leaving the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. They were dancing around like madmen with tiny portable amps and absolutely nailing a cover of “Super Bad”. It was, as they say, rad. I was in a band at the time and we had a show at a dive bar so far out in The Mission it felt like it was halfway to Santa Cruz and we asked Battlehooch to play with us. Now, we thought ourselves as hot shit musicians. We’d do things like have different band members play parts in different time signatures, throw in perplexing, maddeningly complicated left-field turns – the type of things that bands do to show off the thick meatiness of their chops. Then Battlehooch played. A couple months later the band dissolved and I place the blame directly on the insane amount of ass Battlehooch kicks. In light of Battlehooch’s whip-tight orchestral prog, our musical ego just melted. The band sounds like a cross between The Unicorns and Parliment/Funkadelic. I’ve seen them turn Faust’s avant-garde jazz pastiche “Picnic on a Frozen River” into a stadium-rock anthem and I’ve seem turn Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights” into drunken pub rock sing-a-long.

For my money, they’re the best local band in the Bay Area.

The band ambled onstage with their faces covered in little kid face paint that made them look like nothing so much as overgrown tribe of feral kindergardeners. With a smile and a crack of, “let’s make it snow” the band launched into an especially proggy set. One of the band’s core strengths is making music that simultaneously maddeningly complicated and broadly accessible. You could spend an equally enjoyable time at one of their shows playing “find the one” as you could shaking your ass.

Just as their set was closing, everyone’s phones stared buzzing that somewhere in San Francisco Battlehooch’s threat of making it snow had come true. It wasn’t happening anywhere near Bottom of the Hill, but if there’s any band that could make that happen by sheer force of will, it’s these guys.


text:
Alert! Important online Public Safety Committee meeting tonight, 6PM — must register for best results

logoLatest in a series of posts on City Government logo

The Bethlehem City Council Public Safety Committee will hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday, August 11, 2020, at 6:00 PM, to discuss City of Bethlehem police use of force polices and statistics as well as the proposed Community Engagement Initiative.

Find agenda, documents, public comment instructions, and registration information

Leave a Reply


WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: application/xhtml+xml

text:
Full activation of estrogen receptor alpha activation function-1 induces proliferation of breast cancer cells.

The effects of estrogen and anti-estrogen are mediated through the estrogen receptors (ER) alpha and beta, which function as ligand-induced transcriptional factors. Recently, one of the phthalate esters, n-butylbenzyl phthalate (BBP), has been shown to induce estrogen receptor-mediated responses. By using the truncated types of ER mutants, we revealed that ...
activation function-1 (AF-1) activity was necessary for the BBP-dependent transactivation function of ERalpha. AF-1 is also known to be responsible for the partial agonistic activity of tamoxifen. Whereas tamoxifen exhibits an anti-estrogenic effect on proliferation of the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line, BBP showed an estrogenic effect on MCF-7 to stimulate proliferation. In vivo and in vitro binding assays revealed that whereas 4-hydroxytamoxifen (OHT) induced binding of ERalpha to both an AF-1 coactivator complex (p68/p72 and p300) and corepressor complexes (N-CoR/SMRT), BBP selectively enhanced the binding to the AF-1 coactivators. We also showed that the transcriptional activity of OHT-bound ERalpha was modulated by the ratio between the AF-1 coactivator and corepressor complexes. Expression of a dominant-negative type of N-CoR inhibited the interaction between OHT-bound ERalpha and N-CoR/SMRT and enhanced the transcriptional activity of OHT-bound ERalpha. Furthermore, the cell growth of MCF-7 stably expressing the dominant-negative type of N-CoR was enhanced by the addition of OHT. These results indicated that fully activated AF-1 induces the stimulation of breast cancer growth and that the ratio between AF-1 coactivators and corepressors plays a key role to prevent proliferation of tumor by tamoxifen.
Mesh Terms:
3T3 Cells, Animals, Binding, Competitive, Breast Neoplasms, Cell Division, Estrogen Receptor alpha, Female, Humans, Mice, Neoplasms, Hormone-Dependent, Phthalic Acids, Protein Binding, Protein Structure, Tertiary, Receptors, Estrogen, Receptors, Interferon, Repressor Proteins, Tamoxifen, Transcriptional Activation, Transfection, Tumor Cells, Cultured, Two-Hybrid System Techniques
J. Biol. Chem.
Date: Jul. 18, 2003
Download Curated Data For This Publication
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text:
Saturday, October 20, 2007

There is no place for me in the cavern.

My dreams tell me otherwise. This is why I continue to find a niche. I don't understand it; the things I used to enjoy are of no interest to me. Being with my friends, playing in Jalak, taking the true beauty of D'ni, I just don't want to do it anymore.

But, something is holding me here. I don't know what or who or if I can even escape. I honestly hope someday soon someone will at least give me a clue if not the answer.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Pleasant Dreams?

I slept in Relto for the first time in a long time. I had a dream.

Everything was quiet in D'ni, but not eerily so. Everything looked different, new. Then I realized that D'ni had been restored; physically. It was so beautiful. I went looking for other people, but I found no one. I thought maybe I was in my own instance of Ae'gura. So, I linked to Relto and went through the Nexus to the Ferry Terminal and I was right.

The city instance was in ruins with bahro everywhere. People were running, climbing and screaming. I turned to my left towards the docks and I saw Yeesha. She said "You can help
them my child." I had no idea what she meant by that.

Not knowing what to do, I linked out and went to my neighborhood. Things looked normal for
now. So, I went to Eder Delin to think. The destruction had come, but, how could I help?

I sat alone for a few minutes until Yeesha came. She was angry this time.
"Why aren't you helping?" she yelled. "I don't know what to do,"I replied. She shook her head and left. I went over to the linking book and saw a bahro sitting
quietly by itself. I got close enough for it to hear me. I started talking to it. Just about everyday ordinary things; and it looked as if it understood what I was saying.

I'm not sure how long I was talking. I didn't even notice it stand up.  I stood face to face with the bahro; not scared, not flinching. There seemed to be something so human about its manner, I couldn't put my finger on it. Then all of a sudden, it hugged me and we linked out. I felt so warm and loved.

When I opened my eyes I found myself in the restored city. Not like my instance. It was alive and warm and felt like home. There were people; explorers and others. I turned to my bahro friend, but he was gone. Yeesha came up to me, and all she said was "Thank you."

That's when I woke up. Curiouser and curiouser.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

That's how I feel right now. Lost. With so much going on in the cavern, why do I feel so detached? I just wander around listening to bits of conversations, not really paying attention to what's being said. That's part of the reason why I've been on the surface for so long. It's not that the cavern is boring now; I think it's just that I might have a fear of commitment. I'm speaking in terms of the war of course.

Watson and Engberg have returned. So has Phil. So the DRC is back - plus Cate. But, it doesn't mean that things are back to normal.

I don't know. It may just be fear mixed with the feeling that I don't belong. I have friends and such. It's just a personal feeling that I'm an outsider. HA! Wouldn't it be funny if I turned out to be D'ni?

I think I need more rest.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Getting Caught Up

I will have to continue the begining of my tale some other time. There has been so much going on in the cavern, I can hardly keep up. It's been almost a month since the loss of 'Wheely' and the near loss of Douglas Sharper. The incidents have made me very aware of the Bahro. Before they were just off in the distance screeching every now and then. Now they can be seen, the scream louder, they attack.

Sharper said himself they were at war. The Bahro Civil War. Who knows what affect this will have on explorers in terms of cavern accessibility. Cate says things will go forward as planned, but I have my doubts. No one knows what happened to Engberg or Watson and with the number of original DRC members dwindling who knows what will happen next.

I'll have to finish my thoughts later.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Bactrack to the Beginning Part 2: The Cleft

It's been several months since I began to recount my journey so, I have decided, while I'm on the surface, to continue my account of my journey so far...

I awoke some time later; I didn't have a watch so, I had no idea how much time had actually passed. I rolled over onto my right side and was startled when I felt something bump my hip. Standing up I could now see that the little green book was hooked on to my pants. I had almost forgotten about it.

I went back outside to further examine the totem. I noticed a hand symbol carved into the front. Reaching out my right hand, I touched it. The hand glowed briefly and the totem opened to reveal another book.

Well, I thought, maybe this can lead me home. I placed my hand on the page, just like before, and everything went black.

I found myself in a fenced in area in the desert. It seemed completely deserted. Wandering around, I found that , once again, I was wrong. An airstream trailer and a person. Civilization! A feeling of relief and joy came over me thinking I would soon be on my way home.

I should have known better than to be so optimistic. This guy left me more confused than when I started. Of course I don't know why I'm here; I'm trying to leave! And who is "she"? All I understood was that his name was Zandi. At this point I knew I wasn't going home anytime soon. Well, at least he offered some help if I needed it.

So, off I went wandering around the fenced in desert. I didn't really know where to start. I decided to go back to see Zandi (he did offer to help). I came around to the back of the trailer and saw something familiar. The hand symbol on a piece of cloth. I went up to it and touched it. It glowed a little and then faded. hmmm....Maybe there are more around here.

I was right, there were more symbol cloths. And after some more wandering around and navigating the cleft, I found six cloths. But, it didn't seem to finish the hand symbol.

Well, by now I had turned the power on so I figured I  should try the mechanism in the cleft. I entered the four symbols from the wall and pressed the button.

WOW! I wasn't expecting that! So this must be Yeesha. Some will seek the destination, but you should seek the journey... What does that mean? Wait, another cloth!!

I touched it after the transmission ended. The hand symbol was complete. What now? Maybe the tree will open now. I was right; the tree opened.

I climbed down inside and found a piece of paper with the picture of the totem on it. Then I used my book to return to the island called Relto.

I'll continue my adventures in further posts, but I'll have to go for now.

Friday, January 26, 2007

What I am going to post is a work of fiction (of sorts) based on the MMO (not RPG) Myst Online: Uru Live. I should warn you that it contains a lot of spoilers to the game. All ages, Yeesha, Zandi, and the DRC are sole property and copyright of Cyan Worlds. Liandra is my own creation. All other characters belong to their repspective players. Enjoy.

Backtrack to the Beginning Part 1: Relto

I've been an explorer for roughly a month now. So many adventures in such a short period of time. I've almost forgotten what my old life was like. That's a dangerous thing because I know, one day, I will have to go back. Well, let me try to remember....

I lived in a small town in the Mojave desert, working a dead end job, and college wasn't working out. I grew up shy and somewhat anti-social; it wasn't my fault though.

Anyway, I felt like going to library one day just because I hadn't been in quite a while. It was a small branch (they had quite a number of special requests and frequent shipments from other branches). I browsed my favorite section, fantasy and science fiction, and didn't find anything of interest. But a small green book at the end of one of the shelves caught my eye. There was no Dewey Decimal label on it, no title, no author, nothing. I opened the cover and was surprised to find a small picture of an island. I tried turning the page, but it seemed like they were stuck together. Curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to take it home. I slipped it in my purse (hey, it's not like it was a regular library book!) and returned home.

I continued examining the book pondering over why I couldn't turn any of the pages. I gave up about an hour later, my brain was burnt out. I couldn't figure it out. I sat there lazily staring at the picture and as my hand touched it I started to tingle all over. Then the room went black. I could have sworn my eyes were still open....

I regained my vision after what seemed to be an eternity. I was shocked to find that I was no longer in my house. I was, instead, standing on a mountain top in the clouds with trees, bushes and a small hut with a single, small, totem type thing (sorry, that's the best way I can describe it) in front.
I approached with caution thinking there might be someone inside. Wrong... the place was empty; just two windows, and two bookcases on either side of a large bureau. Investigating the bookcases I found three books. Two of them were similar to the green book that brought me here. I didn't touch them because, well, I hadn't even gotten my bearings in this place yet. The third book, on the bookcase to the right, was interesting and confusing. It contained names of places and cryptic passages describing them.

I finished reading and realized how tired I was. All I could do at that point was make myself as comfortable as possible on the floor and try to rest.


text:
Sixty percent of Durham adults have received COVID-19 vaccine

Sixty percent of adults in Durham Region have received the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the update Monday (May 24), 60.1 percent of all Durham residents aged 18 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Only 4.3 percent of residents have been fully vaccinated.

While Scugog leads municipalities in terms of vaccination rate – at slightly more than 80 percent – that total may be skewed by acknowledged reporting inaccuracies.

A disclaimer on the Durham Region Health Department’s data tracker notes that some residents from Brock and Uxbridge may have been assigned to Scugog due to inaccuracies in assigning rural postal codes.

Brock currently has the lowest vaccination rate in the region at 39.4 percent.

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Warm Topic Archives: satam to become cnn’s new gadget specialist

Satan to become CNN’s New Gadget Specialist

By Daemon Mailer, KEY WEST – In a classic double-cross, Satan will succeed former Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins as CNN’s go-to gadget guy. After selling his soul to get the plush CNN jobbie, former Rollins fans Twittered Satan “so many times it really ruffled my feathers,” according to the Big Red One himself.

Posted in Ask Daemon Mailer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment


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Reported sexual assaults by cyclist in Swanley

Police officers in Kent have issued an appeal following three reported sexual assaults on women in Swanley.

The incidents have involved a suspect on a dark bicycle who is alleged to have indecently touched the victims as he has ridden past them.

The first incident reported was on New Barn Road at 5:30pm on Saturday 18 April.

A second incident took place between 11:40 and 12:40pm the following day in Leydenhatch Lane.

The third incident was reported at around 1pm on Monday 20 April in Swanley Park.

The suspect is described as white, in his teens or early 20s and of a slim build. He is also reported to have brown or ginger wavy or curly hair.

If you have any information you should call Kent Police on 01622 604100 and use the crime reference number 46/67975/20.


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This self-erecting tent is very easy to set up and very portable as it folds into a circular 22″ diameter bag. Perfect for outdoor meditation. Features outer mesh walls with zip up cover for more privacy or slightly breezy conditions. Tent also comes with a water proof cover. Weight: 9 lbs Peak Height: 4′ Floor area: 6.5′ x 5′

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Where Was 1BR Filmed?

1BR’ is a horror film that tells the story of a woman, Sarah, after she shifts to a new city to get a fresh start. She finds an apartment complex that she thinks is quite suited for her, even though they have strict rules. Initially, it seems as though she has made the right decision, especially when she sees how warm and welcoming the people in the area are. However, Sarah soon faces horrible consequences for breaking some rules, and it turns out that her neighbors aren’t necessarily who they appear to be.

1BR Filming Locations

The protagonist moves away from her overbearing father to the City of Angels, and consequently, the movie was also shot in Los Angeles, California.

Los Angeles, California

The film had its fair share of challenges even before the shoot commenced. Alok Mishra, the producer, said that their office was affected by the Skirball Fire. That office, situated in the Valley, was then off-limits and the production team moved over to his house intermittently. In a tweet, he said that he lived 2 miles away from the complex that was used in the movie.

The apartment complex used in filming (named Aliso Del Mar in the movie) is also located in the Valley. In an interview, Alok Mishra also said that although shooting in an apartment complex was quite tough, they achieved the desired result. He explained further, “The trials and tribulations of working in an apartment complex are obviously tough, but we were able to get what we needed. The one problem, I would say, was that the complex was very big; there were like two courtyards, so if we wanted to go to one side to shoot something, it was like, 15 minutes and 40 people having to move everything over to this corner.” He also said that the apartment complex was as much a character in the film as any of the scripted ones. Its precise location, however, is not verifiable.

While the apartment complex was used for its exterior, the rooms were built on just one set. It was the production team that went in and redressed that same set every time a new outlay was needed. David Mormor, the film’s writer and director, also said, “Our production designer, Ricardo Jattan, designed this ingenious apartment set we were able to re-dress to transform it into all four apartments we see in the movie. He and his team were amazing, often working overnight to change the set over so we could keep shooting every morning.”

Read More: 1BR Ending, Explained


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A Guide to the Best Museums in Kobe, Japan

Kobe may be a smaller city, but it’s a cultural hub brimming with museums
Kobe may be a smaller city, but it’s a cultural hub brimming with museums | © Ian Trower / Alamy Stock Photo
Photo of Tanja Warwick
23 April 2020

For a relatively small city, Kobe is a cultural hub with a surprisingly high number of museums to discover, covering subjects from art and fashion to traditional crafts such as glassmaking and carpentry.

One of Japan’s most sophisticated cities and once home to wealthy European merchants, Kobe has developed into a cultural centre, boasting a thriving jazz scene, art galleries, fine-dining restaurants and fashion boutiques.

To get a better understanding of Kobe’s history and culture, there are a wealth of museums to explore that cover the history of the city, from the ancient artefacts on display at Kobe City Museum to the story of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake at the Earthquake Memorial Museum.

Art lovers will not be disappointed by the vast collection of contemporary works at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, while fashion addicts can leaf through vintage copies of Vogue magazine from the early-20th century at the Kobe Fashion Museum. Check out Culture Trip’s recommendations for the best museums in Kobe.

Earthquake Memorial Museum

Map View
Kobe Earthquake museum, Japan, Asia.
© agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo

Kobe’s Earthquake Memorial Museum details one of the most significant events in local history, the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that killed more than 6,000 citizens and destroyed much of the city. Kobe’s location at the epicentre of this tragic event saw the worst of the damage, and the museum’s goal is to educate visitors about it through its immersive re-creation of the earthquake conveyed through projections screens, special effects and soundscapes. Volunteers are on hand to guide non-Japanese speakers around the exhibits, and many of the staff include survivors of the earthquake.

Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum

Map View
Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum in Kobe.
© Newscom / Alamy Stock Photo

Traditional Japanese carpentry is known for its unique joinery that fits together like a complex puzzle to form elaborate temples and houses without the use of any nails, screws or power tools. At the Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum near Shin-Kōbe Station, you can learn more about the history of this fascinating craft and see large-scale models of carpentry examples and the tools used to create them. On the weekends, the museum also holds open workshops where you can try your hand at making small wooden items such as chopsticks and pencil holders.

Kobe Fashion Museum

Map View
Kobe Fashion Museum, Kobe, Japan
© David Cherepuschak / Alamy Stock Photo

The Kobe Fashion Museum is Japan’s first public museum dedicated to fashion and is located in the Rokkō Island area in southeast Kobe, a short walk from Island Center Station. The first floor of the museum houses an extensive collection of costumes, including 18th-century ballgowns, folk costumes, shoes, jewellery and accessories. On the third floor, a vast library holds 40,000 fashion books and magazine archives whose volumes date back to the beginning of the 20th century and include early editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Admission costs ¥500 (£3.76) per adult, with additional charges for special exhibitions.

Kobe City Museum

Map View
Kobe City Museum in Kobe Japan.
© Takatoshi Kurikawa / Alamy Stock Photo

Housed in a former 1930s bank and located around 15 minutes on foot from Sannomiya Station, Kobe City Museum opened in 1982 and is home to 70,000 cultural artefacts of importance to the local area, such as antique maps and bronze bells used in ancient agricultural rituals. Art on display includes a large collection of Namban works; these are 16th- and 17th-century paintings heavily influenced by the arrival of European merchants to Japan for the first time. The museum is also home to a 1930s Art Deco-themed café and small souvenir shop.

Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art

Art Gallery, Museum
Map View
Street view of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe Japan
© David Cherepuschak / Alamy Stock Photo

Situated on Kobe’s waterfront overlooking the ocean, the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art was designed by renowned architect Tadao Ando, and it features more than 8,000 artworks, mostly by artists associated with the local Hyogo region. One of the museum’s main focal points includes its collection of sculptures, with featured pieces by Rodin and local artists. You can also expect to see exhibitions on modern print art by Picasso and Warhol, Japanese prints, paintings of local landscapes and artworks by contemporary Japanese painters. The museum also houses a restaurant and gift shop and can be easily paired with a visit to the nearby Earthquake Memorial Museum. Entry costs ¥500 (£3.76) per adult.

UCC Coffee Museum

Map View

Coffee lovers should pay a visit to Japan’s only coffee museum, operated by the Japanese company UCC, which invented the world’s first canned coffee – a staple item found in vending machines throughout Japan. The museum provides a wealth of informative exhibits regarding the history and culture of coffee, along with a popular tasting room where you can sample different kinds of coffee for free. It also has free Wi-Fi and an audio tour that you can download onto your phone, so pack some headphones. Other events include the regular coffee-roasting workshops (reservations required) where you can hand-roast your own beans to your desired taste before taking them home; the class costs about ¥1,200 (£9) per person.

Kobe Lampwork Glass Museum

Map View

Dedicated to the art of glass craftsmanship, the Kobe Lampwork Glass Museum is a small interactive museum a short walk from Kobe’s Sannomiya Station. Inside, you can observe live demonstrations of staff producing glass beads by melting glass rods, and for an additional charge of ¥1,250 (£9.40), you can take part in a hands-on workshop to make your own. While waiting for the beads to cool, you can peruse the collection of 2,000 glassworks from around the world, including intricately carved beads, sculptures and paperweights.

Kosetsu Museum of Art

Museum, Art Gallery
Map View

The Kosetsu Museum of Art was founded in 1973 to house the private collection of the founder of The Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s most popular national newspapers. The museum’s collection includes traditional cultural items such as tea ceremony utensils, weapons, armour, calligraphy and Buddhist art. Located a five-minute walk from Mikage Station in Kobe’s Nada ward, the small museum lends a good insight into traditional Japanese culture via the items on display. Entry to the museum costs ¥700 (£5.27) per person, and since exhibition themes change regularly, it’s advisable to check the website before visiting.

Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum

Brewery, Museum
Map View
Tourists tasting Japanese sake at the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum
© Newscom / Alamy Stock Photo

Housed in an old sake brewhouse close to Kobe’s Rokkō Island, the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum is one of the few sake breweries in Japan to provide exhibits with English-language explanations. The brewery was founded in 1743 and is a good starting point for some brewery-hopping in Kobe’s Nada district, one of Japan’s top-producing sake regions. There is no admission charge to enter, and you can also experience complimentary tastings on your tour while learning about the sake production process via informative videos.

These recommendations were updated on April 23, 2020 to keep your travel plans fresh.

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Les Dentelles, Avignon and Maya

We haven’t posted for a while because we have been so busy with mummy’s birthday.

At the end of our stay in Provence, we visited Gigondas and hiked up to the Dentelles, which look like teeth.  We got lost on the way up – everyone had a walking stick and they kept dropping them.  Margot got hurt by a prickly bush.  Afterwards we tried to have lunch in a restaurant at Gigondas, but we made so much noise that mum and dad were embarrassed to take us in and people at the restaurant were looking at us.  We had to go home and have lunch instead.  Lucky it was so close.

We also visited Avignon which was fantastic!  We had lunch in a courtyard and afterwards we walked past the shops and saw a lolly shop that looked really good.   Mum bought a dress for her birthday party, but she couldn’t find any shoes. We then visited the Palais de Papes where the popes lived for about 100 years in the 1300s.  The rooms were amazing – one of them was where the pope’s bedroom was and it had amazing frescoes all over it.  It

was beautiful.  We then went to visit the bridge at Avignon which was the same bridge from the nursery rhyme and we all sang “Sur le Pont, D’Avignon, On y danse, On y danse”!

Afterwards, we went back to the lolly shop and bought some delicious lollypops and caramels.

On the way home from Avignon, we went to McDonalds.  We had a happy meal and got toys – a puppy and two turtles that were like Lego.  Maeve and Jasper played with a lot of French girls in the playground who were very nice – we played “Le Louvre”, or “the wolf”, which is exactly like tip in Australia.  We got a balloon each at the end and we were really happy.  The next day, Margot kept saying “Happy meal, happy meal!”  We thought McDonalds was the best bit about Avignon.  Mum said she never wanted to hear that sentence again.

At the end of our stay in Vaucluse, Maya, Josh and Shanti came to stay for the night!  It was really fun to see them.  They came for mummy’s birthday.  We will write more about that later.

On the way to Quissac for mummy’s birthday we visited the Haribo factory at Uzes – we saw gummy bears and how they made all the lollies.  It was so amazing because we got 5 packets of lollies there.  We thought it was the best day of our lives.

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Did your ancestors come from Finland?

Do you want to know who your first Finnish ancestor was and when he or she left Finland and arrived in Canada? Are you curious about your Finnish origins?

If so, our website is a great place to begin your research. Here you will find a page dedicated to genealogical research on the Finns. This page provides you with historical information, archival documents and published material from the Library and Archives Canada collection, as well as links to other websites and institutions.

If your ancestor came to Canada between 1865 and 1935, you might find his or her name on the passenger lists.

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Hi I’m Rich. I am an Industrial Designer, Design Engineer, Project Manager, Practical Thinker, Life Hacker, and constant DIY’er

I have created and managed hundreds if not thousands of projects, working on small-scale products to multi-million dollar industrial systems. Solving problems daily.

Plane and chisel

When I left school I was unsure of what I wanted to do, like a lot of people I didn’t really know where to start, but being very practical and logical I followed in my father’s footsteps and join an aerospace company as an apprentice mechanical Engineer.

Since then, I have worked in the Aerospace, Pharmaceutical, and Food Industries.

Using the skills I have learned designing, building, and problem-solving, I set up my own business, I have owned, renovated (well . . . more like completely gutted them and started from scratch), and made a living renting properties.

Making mistakes

When I first started trying to fix things, I made mistakes and got things wrong, it was frustrating and cost both time and money, but I learned from my mistakes, building my knowledge and experience to do better.

Creating The DIY Help Desk

I set up The DIY Help Desk as a place to help others and share the knowledge that I learned to make things easier and quicker and help you avoid the same mistakes I made.

So where ever you are in your journey, let’s get together and help solve problems, let me know what you are having issues with. Let’s get started

Learn More


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Category: Blog, News and Events Post Date: September 25, 2020

Feast of Trumpets – Return of The King – River Shabbat

We await the return of our blessed hope. How are we to understand His great plan of redemption from His perspective and not our religious dogma? What really is the meaning and fulfillment of His Fall Appointed Times / Moedim. We start by taking a look at the Feast of Trumpets / Yom Teruah and what this really means for The Body of Messiah.

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Bitcoin Vs Usd 2017 Graph

main Comments Off on Bitcoin Vs Usd 2017 Graph

When Transition launched the original Sentinel back in 2017 its geometry numbers turned heads. After all, at the time there.

Sparkswap adds USD support to its Bitcoin Lightning Network exchange. When The Block last covered Sparkswap, the bitcoin startup had just raised a $3.5 million seed round to build a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange on the Bitcoin Lightning Network using Atomic Swaps.

All the data and statistics provided in this Water Treatment Chemicals Market report are backed up by latest and proven tools.

If You Want To Buy Bitcoin Gold (bgold) The Ticker Symbol Is Btg And This Could the dollar be replaced by a single new dominant currency like China’s DCEP, or is a
Rose Gold Iphone X Case Free next day delivery on eligible orders for Amazon prime members | Buy iphone x rose gold

Year 2017 Bitcoin/Indian rupee (BTC/INR) rates history, splited by months, charts for the whole year and every month, exchange rates for any day of the year. Source: Bitcoin charts (Bitcoin charts)

Bitcoin has dipped back below the psychological area of support near the $10,000 level amid a 20-minute sell-off. OpenNode Finds Way for Retailers to Turn Fiat Payments Into Bitcoin.

Why Is Bitcoin Dropping No cryptocurrency has ever had to face life amidst an economic recession. Bitcoin's price has completely collapsed,

What's the Best Bitcoin Chart?  And what it can tell us.Bitcoin – US Dollar Chart (BTC/USD) Conversion rate for Bitcoin to USD for today is $8,883.43. It has a current circulating supply of 18.4 Million coins and a total volume exchanged of $44,384,949,711

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The Fappening: Back At It Again!

New Leaks Released Daily!

Most Popular This Week:

Rita Ora Erin Heatherton

Contact and Inquiries

Sara Tommasi is an Italian actress and television personality. She made her film debut in the 2008 comedy Ultimi della classe playing a teacher who had appeared in a "sexy" calendar shoot.

Disclaimer: This website is a news source and the images shown are not owned by the site's operator(s).
All celebrity images are owned by the respective celebrity and were obtained from Reddit and 4chan.


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Priyanka lambasts PM Modi for holding rallies, ‘laughing on stage’ as people cry for oxygen

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi attacked the Yogi government for not ramping up COVID-19 testing in UP, and PM Modi as well for staging public meets during a raging pandemic

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra
Priyanka Gandhi also attacked the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan for not taking the dignified Manmohan Singh's suggestions to combat the pandemic in the right spirit

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attacked the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday (April 20) for not doing enough COVID-19 testing nor improving the inadequate medical infrastructure, after the state recorded more than 20,000 cases over the past few days.

Uttar Pradesh, which is one of the worst-affected states in this virulent second wave of the pandemic, clocked in 29,754 new cases on Tuesday, while its death toll has breached the 10,000 mark after the state reported 162 deaths. According to a BBC report, though the government claims the situation is under control, there are “disturbing images of overcrowded testing centres, hospitals turning away patients and funeral pyres burning round the clock at cremation grounds in the state capital, Lucknow, and other major cities such as Varanasi, Kanpur and Allahabad have made national headlines.”

Also read: India’s daily COVID count nearly 3 lakh, deaths at 2,023; Maha mulls more curbs

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In the backdrop to this situation, Priyanka Gandhi highlighted the need for the UP to ramp up testing, which had been recommended to the state after their own sero-survey showed that “five crore people had come into contact with COVID-19”, reported Hindustan Times. However, the government started 70 per cent antigen testing, which meant that only 30 per cent of those tests were RT-PCR, she said.

“What is more important? People’s lives or your numbers or the image of your government? Were the antigen tests done to lower the numbers?” Priyanka Gandhi asked, adding that private labs had been directed to stop the testing.

The Congress leader in-charge of UP went on to lambast Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well for continuing to hold public rallies in poll-bound states. According to her, “they” are busy campaigning even today. “At rallies they are seen laughing from stages while people are reduced to tears seeking oxygen, beds, medicines and you are holding huge rallies and laughing,” said the Congress general secretary.

Also read: Enough rallies, says Calcutta HC, asks EC to enforce COVID protocols

Prime Minister Modi will hold rallies in Murshidabad, South Kolkata, Siuri and Malda on April 23.

Priyanka Gandhi next targeted the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan for his negative response to former Prime Minister Manmohan’s letter to PM Modi offering suggestions and strategies to combat the coronavirus crisis in the country. Singh, who tested positive for COVID, advised the PM to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 and not to consider absolute numbers as a standard to evaluate the vaccination programme.

But Harsh Vardhan had hit back at Singh mocking his advice and instead turned on Congress leaders for creating doubts about the vaccines in people’s minds.

Criticising Vardhan, Priyanka Gandhi said that when a dignified person like Manmohan Singh was suggesting measures when our nation is facing pandemic, “then suggestions should be taken up with the same dignity with which they were offered”.

Get breaking news and latest updates from India
and around the world on


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Should I Get A Credit Card? Before You Do, Watch This First!

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Having a credit card is seen as a bit of a “rite of passage” isn’t it? When I turned 18, I was offered a credit card as part of my student account package with my bank. I thought it was the most amazing thing ever!

The problem was, I wasn’t taught about how it worked. And would I have even listened? I don’t know, but I didn’t bother to find out, and so began my slippery slope into debt.

I don’t want you to make the same mistake – and if you have kids, make sure they don’t either.

What To Consider BEFORE Using A Card

There are several things you should consider before taking out a credit card. Like why do you want one? Is it because you are planning a big purchase and looking to do it on a 0% card so you can pay it off interest-free, or is it because you are looking to improve your credit score?

Did you know that you don’t actually need to take out a credit card? You could try a savings plan like LOQBOX and build your credit score up that way instead. I’ve tried it out myself and its easy to set up – just make sure you follow the process at the end when you are wanting to take your money out so you don’t incur any fees.

Also think about the debt load you might already be in. Are you getting another card to transfer a balance over? Did you know that this soon adds up in fees? Why not try consolidation instead? It might be better over the long-run for you, and at least you’ll have a fixed amount to pay back every month.

Watch the video below for more tips on what to consider. I would love to know what you think in the comments below.

Other Resources You Can Try:

9 Reasons Not To Get A Credit Card This Year

Going To University? Don’t Forget To Add These Things To Your Budget

These 8 Symptoms Suggest You Have A Debt Problem (And What To Do About It)

Until next time!

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, ,

As previously mentioned, my sister and her boyfriend just moved to Austin, Texas and by all accounts it is an awesome place. Here’s something that makes it a little more awesome. I’ll let my sister tell the story.

I wrote this in a bathroom at a cafe a week ago on a chalkboard (meant for customer use).

blackboard reads: My sister is bisexual. I come from a tiny town that hates homosexuality. THANK YOU, Austin for accepting all people [heart] MRC.

Today, I went back. Under is someone wrote, “well, we don’t really support homophobes, so you’re welcome.”

I thought that was a grand response.

Happy Friday everyone. Spread the love :).


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(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)

Here we are, four days post-Easter weekend, and I am once again just absolutely in awe of my Savior’s perfect love and the ultimate sacrifice He made for my sin. I am so refreshed in my relationship with Jesus when I am reminded of all that He has done for me, and I pray the same for you.

You know, I was so encouraged this weekend when I saw people sharing their testimonies and posting Scripture that was impacting them, as well as how they were celebrating Jesus. It was simply incredible! Christians were actually publicly professing to be followers of Jesus. However, when Monday came, all of those things ceased. It was as if Easter was just a slight “interruption” in their lives and nothing more than that.

What happened?

I can’t tell you how many individuals I heard say that they just felt different. Many expressed that they felt content with where God had them. Others explained that were falling in love with God’s Word again, and that they knew God was trying to speak to them in powerful ways.

Then, most of them went back to their worldly “normal”.

You probably already have an idea of where I am going with this, but allow me to ask you a question…

If we feel so free when we are actually doing what God commands of His followers, why wouldn’t we want to be a part of that every day?

It pains me to see how quickly our love and devotion for Jesus fades, and how fast we run back to materialistic things and glorifying ourselves.

We so desperately want to be God!

Somehow, we have tricked ourselves into thinking that three days is really enough because we want to get back to our “normal”. Are you content with spending three days to mourn your sin, celebrate the cross, and post lifechanging Scripture?

I’m not.

A.W. Tozer once prayed, “O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me the grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wondered so long.”

I want to want Thee. That is my prayer. I want Jesus more than anything else. Church, are we ashamed of our lack of desire for Him?

The good news is this… If you’re not content with only feeling free for three days, you don’t have to be. Jesus can help you change; you just have to choose Him above all else.

If you want to want Him, make different choices. It all starts with your choices.

= Do people know you are a follower of Jesus?

= What keeps you from living for Him?

= What are you going to do differently?

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Best forex brokers in Israel

BrokerCountryRatingMin. DepositWebsite
USA5/5$250Click for a special offerWebsite
US4.99/5$50Click for a special offerWebsite
UK, Cyprus, Belize4.94/5$5Click for a special offerWebsite
Australia, Cyprus4.93/5$100Click for a special offerWebsite
UK, Australia4.85/5$50Click for a special offerWebsite
Cyprus, SVG4.8/5$100Click for a special offerWebsite

The retail forex and the CFD market, as well as the financial markets as a whole, in Israel are regulated by the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), which was created in 1968 with a mandate to ensure an efficient capital market, based on transparency and fairness.

Several years ago ISA tightened its regulatory requirements for forex and CFD brokers, raising the minimum capital requirements to 200 000 USD and limiting the maximum leverage allowed with “low risk” assets like currencies and gold to 1:100, to 1:40 for several indices, and to 1:20 for all other CFDs.

ISA is structured and functions, like the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK and recently, following a similar step by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), banned all binary options bets on the Israeli market.

Actually back in 2016 ISA prohibited Israeli licensed brokers to offer binary options bets only Israel – thus brokers were still able to offer binary options bets to traders outside of the country.

However, after Canada and Australia warned of 11 Israeli based brokers, offering binary trading schemes, ISA took additional measures and banned binary options trade altogether. That decision was confirmed by the Israeli Supreme Court in January 2018 after a series of appeals.

ISA supports a regularly updated register of licensed entities.

Israeli forex brokers news

Israeli binary options agent jailed in the US

Former Israeli TV star Lissa Mel, who pleaded guilty to her role in a 145 million USD fraud, run through the binary

Posted in Binary options, News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 💬Leave a comment

Israeli prosecutors charge iTrader’s owners with fraud

Israel’s state prosecutor moved against Gal Media Trade Ltd., which ran a binary options broker under the brand name iTrader between 2013

Posted in Binary options, News | Tagged , , , , , , | 💬Leave a comment

AvaTrade fined 153 000 USD by the Israeli Securities Authority

The Israeli Branch of AvaTrade was fined with 576 000 Israeli Shekels or just about 153 000 USD for failing to comply

Posted in Forex, News | Tagged , , , , , | 💬Leave a comment