Adding money into e-gold.com account

E-gold is one of the oldest internet payment system. The idea behind it is brilliant, nothing comes out, nothing goes in, it's just virtual money covered by real gold. They have an amount of gold( which may change depending on their investitions and strategies) but from the user's point of view you virtually have just some part of that gold and you can send it to other users and get goods or services in exchange. Some users are exchangers and they give you real money for the e-gold.

So, if you need to buy something with e-gold and you signup for e-gold but your account is of course with 0 balance, what you do? Simply you must find an exchanger. You give him money or kind of emoney such as: webmoney, paypal, epassporte, moneybookers, stormpay. The most important thing for you is to research if the exchanger is really trusted and not a scammer. With virtual money and specially with those non-refundable such as e-gold, scamming is not uncommon.

How to get e-gold with a credit card? very easy. Although most exchangers don't accept CC payments due to high fraud rate, if you have a credit card, it means you have a bank account so you can make a bank tranfer. With bank transfer you are much more trusted so you will get your e-gold if the exchanger is also trusted. I recommend one exchanger which I tested and succeeded: klad.ee. There you can do wire <-> egold <-> WMZ <-> etc.

Epassporte good or bad?

At the first sight epassporte is a great service. The ATM card is a good idea, being one of the fastest way to send/get money around the world, specially in the countries where paypal is not accepted.
It seems to be very popular in the webmasters groups, many affiliate programs have epassporte payout options which makes them more atractible.
All is well until you get into troubles. The first and most common, is that your plastic card will arrive with delays or it will eventually get lost. Then you have to contact them and their customer support is not really horrible but is bad, they keep you waiting on the phone, which can be a nightmare for non-US people. Then eventually a new plastic card is mailed, it arrive and you set your PIN and are now able to get money from ATM.

But many users talk about other kind of problems such as fraud. I also had this kind of problem, when a big amount of money was fraudulenty transferred from my account. First when I contacted them, they were acting very lousy saying it's all my fault and that I lost the money. But after 2 weeks, they solved the problem very well.

Then once when retrieving from ATM, I got some error and they said transaction was unable to proceed, however when I got home and logged in into my epasporte account I saw that the requested balance was missing from my account. First I contacted the bank which owns the ATM, they said I have to contact my own bank in order to start the investigation. Epassporte was again very slow in this matter, I had to send several mails and make several phone calls until things started to move and after one or two weeks, my money were back.

Another common problem is when you login your account and find that "Information is required", account access restricted and you cannot make any operation. Unfortunately all this happens without any notification. And usually there is no real problem, just Epassporte needs some documents from you, but instead of telling you first and give you grace period until locking your account, they choose the abusive way and lock your account first. Then you have to go again through all contacting process(phones, emails, etc) and if you send the requested documents after some days your access to epassporte account is restored. Phew.

Overall epassporte handled well my problems but with very many delays. And although I said not just once that I will stop using them for having lousy answering time, I keep using them, maybe because there is no real competition on this area and they are hard to replace, ikobo was an option but not anymore.

Custom Bikes by Goldhammer

This great work of art was given birth by the known Canadian custom enthusiast Roger Goldammer. He said he wanted to harmoniously mix elements from classical as well as modern bikes. The result is “Goldammer Board Tracker” or “BTR-3” a true beauty in the world of motorcycles. This bike incorporates the classic look of a board-track-racer (the kind of bike that was used to race over an oval board track… a very dangerous type of race in case one of the racers crashed because of the boards) and the modern technical characteristics of a V-twin engine. The frame is only apparently rigid, the rear spring is hidden somewhere beneath the seat and one can only be blinded by the beauty of a V-twin Evo of 1640cmc mounted on a 20’s looking bike. This bike won the title of World Champion in 2004.

Motorcycles with ABS: Honda

Honda is one of my favorite brands for both motorcycles and cars. It seems they are the most reliable brand in the world. And now they have decided something that will improve the safety of their bikes: introducing the combined braking system CBS-ABS. Their decision was to upgrade all of their new sport, touring models over 250 cc and scooters by the end of 2007 with this new braking system. I like this decision as I am sure more and more factories will adopt a similar upgrade for their bikes. The Dual-CBS system activates the braking off both wheels but with a different force. The Single-CBS system allows the separate braking of wheels but nonetheless the braking off the front (for example) will automatically trigger the soft braking of the rear wheel as well. This seems to be a very good decision for any motorcycle manufacturer because this will improve the safety of all us riders on the streets. Until now, over 2 millions Honda motorcycles have been equipped with this type of system. Be safe!

The Fastest wheelie

Dave Rogers was one of the lucky ones to try it. He was able to do a wheelie with an average speed of 220,3km/h. The length of the distance he managed to keep his front wheel in the air was about a kilometer. Another crazy person… who holds the world record (Guinness Book Of World Records) is Billy “The Blind” Baxter. This guy managed to do a wheelie on his Kawasaki ZX-12 R at a speed of 265,3km/h but over a shorter distance. They both have my respects. But records aren’t broken only by adrenaline junkies here is a guy that did it out of pure pleasure: Emilio Scotto. This guy was able to ride his bike , a Honda Goldwing over a distance of 735000km in ten years. … I think he only got off his bike when he needed to eat and sleep. Or maybe only to sleep.

Indian Dakota Four or Four In-line Cylinders

Indian the famous American motorcycle brand was re-invented in Edinburgh, England. By Alan Forbes, the builder of the four in-line cylinder motorcycles. These bikes are a new replica of the famous four in-line air cooled engines. The design and the technology used in the process of building these cool bikes has evolved greatly since the unveiling of the first prototypes in 1999. Today the 1845cmc engine has a power of 110 Hp and a torque of nothing less then 201Nm at 3750 rpm and a weight of 350kg. The Dakota Four (one of the bike's name) is, despite the nostalgic classical look, a modern piece of work equipped with an electronic fuel injection kit and braking discs of 320mm in diameter. But all good things come with a price: “The Dakota Four” in its version “Classic Deluxe” costs 27 000 euros. Exclusivity has its price…

A nice game from Google: Image Labeler

Go to http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/ and login if you have a google account to change your nick or you can just start as guest. You will be randomly paired with someone and you will get a timer. You will get random images and you will have to write words to label them. For instance if you see a n elephant you have to write things such as: elephant, animal, africa, etc. Once one of your words matches one of your pair, you get a new image. The more matches, the higher score.

Have fun!

gtk-warning **: cannot open display:

For this error, the most common cause is that you are not running the X server.
So you have to type "startx" first then retry with your application.
It also happened to me when I did a "su - anotheruser" and tried to run from anotheruser without having proper access to my $DISPLAY. I quickly solved this by copying .Xauthority from the user running the X server to the users who su to, then did a export DISPLAY=:0
However I am not sure if this is the most secure and apropriate way to do it, but it worked and no longer gtk-warning **: cannot open display:

Meaning of Names

Ever wondered what is your surname or firstname meaning? Do you the provenience of your names? Do you know that some people, specially in Africa have unique names? Here are some interesting websites where you can find such information:

Behind The Name
Name Meanings
Most Popular Names