If you’re a non technical person and just want to use free VPN, you are in the right place. There is a website called OutlineKeys.com where you can get the free VPN with various country of origin with free of charges. Please keep in mind that those are free VPN service which run Outline VPN and it doesn’t guarantee safety or security, so please use it at your own risk.

Taken with Nikon D850 and Nikon 105mm f2.8 ED G VR Nano

Within a few days, I went from taking few minutes to solve it to cracking it in under a minute. I leveled up by grabbing a bunch of different cubes, from a 2×2 to a 5×5. I even got a Pyraminx cube, which surprisingly turned out to be easier than the 3×3. I even created a YouTube tutorial on how to solve Rubik’s cube as beginner level with step by step walkthrough.

Here what I learned after playing with both Rubik’s cube and teaching myself how to play piano for for several months,

1. Learning new things is easier than you think even at my age. I was worried I’d mess up the algorithm to solve the cube or get scared by the Pyraminx, but practice really does make perfect. No matter what you’re trying to learn, you’ll eventually get the hang of it if you just keep at it.
2. Muscle memory is real. Those sequences of moves for the 4×4 Rubik’s cube (like, 18 steps) seemed impossible at first, but my fingers just sort of… learned them on their own. Same thing with piano – your left and right hand learn to work together at different paces without you even thinking about it.
3. The feeling of accomplishment is the best kind of dopamine. When you finally achieved something that seemed tough, it gives you a happy boost and makes you want to keep learning and pushing yourself. That’s why I keep tackling harder piano pieces and collecting more complex Rubik’s cubes.

These are the biggest takeaways from my learning adventure last year. So, have you been learning anything new lately? Ever messed around with a Rubik’s cube or play the wrong keys? Let me know what you’ve been up to and what you think.

I just installed ActivityPub WordPress Plugin along with Hum, WebFinger, NodeInfo WordPress plugins in order for this to become part of the fediverse.

LetsEnhance.io is a AI powered web based tool allows you to upload low quality images and turned them into higher image quality like 2x 3x or even 5x so that you can use your images for web, social media, or even printing.

First, you have to sign up with your email account. LetsEnhance.io allows 5 credits / images in their free plan so that you can test their tool. The dashboard looks simple and pretty straigh forward. Upload your photo and you can select photo, digital art and select tone and color enhance if it is required. You can also use their existing presents like printing or e-commerce. After you have selected you can click “Start Processing”. It will take only few seconds to process and you can download the photos you’ve just uploaded.

I’ve been using their free plan and I only have 1 credit left as you can see in the screenshot. Overall, I’m really impressed with the results from LetsEnhance.io and I suggest you should try it out.

TL;DR: Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows you to connect to the network which residing in different part of where you’re currently living. For example: if you’re living in Singapore and the VPN server that you’re connected to is in United States, the website or the app you’re accessing only to understand that you’re United States like you can browse some movies in Netflix which are only available in United States. VPN is not just about the location but it is also securing your data between your browser/app and the server you’re communicating. If you’re living in the country where some sites are blocked, you can use VPN to access those sites without being blocked.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Outline VPN

Outline VPN is an open-source project created by Jigsaw that provides a safer way for individuals and organizations to access the open internet. What makes Outline VPN standout is that it lets you create, run, and share the access keys to your own VPN server with you don’t have to have much technical knowledge or going through all the complicated scripts to setup.

How to setup Outline VPN

This guide will walk you through how to setup your own Outline VPN server and create access keys to your devices such as computer, desktop, laptops , and mobile devices.

Sign up required at VPS providers

Outline VPN requires you to have your own virtual private server (VPS) which you can easily create an account at Digital Ocean, Amazon, Google Cloud Service, or Linode. I suggest you to use Digital Ocean which they offers $5 / month to run your own VPS server. Once you’ve finished setting up and provided necessary information like credit cards there, then you can follow the following steps.

Download Outline VPN Manager

Now, just head over to Outline website and download the Outline VPN manager for your operating system. If you’re using windows or mac, select the appropriate one.

Install and run Outline Manager

After downloading the outline manager file for your operating system, please install and run Outline manager. Outline manager will probably look like this at the time of I am writing.

As you can see the screenshot above, I’ve already setup two outline servers from different cloud providers.

Select VPS Provider

Now click “ADD SERVER” from the left menu and Outline will show you which provider you would like to setup. You can select Digital Ocean if you’ve created the account there. Press “CREATE SERVER”.

Select Location

It is important to know that you should decide which location you want to create your own VPS server to run outline VPN. For example: if you want to watch Netflix videos content available in U.S, you can select the New York or San Francisco. Once Outline has created the server, you can’t change it back. What you can also do is either you create a new VPS server in another region to install Outline VPS or destroy the existing one and create the new one again. It’s all up to your decision.

Give authorization access at Digital Ocean

Next step, Outline Manager will open the browser and you have to give authorization access at Digital Ocean in order for Outline Manager to create the VPS server and install Outline VPN server on behalf of you. It may take about two minutes depending on the connection.

Create Key Access for your Outline VPN clients

You’ll see something similar like the screen below after the setup has been completed. All you have to do is to create the keys for your devices. “Acess keys” allow you to connect with your device and your Outline VPN. Click “Add new key” and it will automatically create the key for you. You can click on the name to provide the meaningful name so that you can easily remember.

Copy the Access Key

You can click Share Icon to copy the access key. The access invitation is something like below.

You’re invited to connect to my Outline server. Use it to access the open internet, no matter where you are. Follow the instructions on your invitation link below to download the Outline App and get connected.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/outline-vpn/invite.html#ss%3A%2F%2FY2hhY2hhMjAtaWV0Zi1wb2x5MTMwNTplVHFoVk5qbW5JdWo%40100.200.186.211%3A9875%2F%3Foutline%3D1

Having trouble accessing the invitation link?

Copy your access key: ss://Y2hhY2hhMjAtaWV0Zi1wb2x5MTMwNTplVHFoVk5qbW5JdWo@100.200.186.211:9875/?outline=1
Follow our invitation instructions on GitHub: https://github.com/Jigsaw-Code/outline-client/blob/master/docs/invitation-instructions.md

Download Outline VPN Client App

Look for “Outline VPN” in Google Play Store for Android or Apps Store in iOS devices. Outline has clients for other platforms such as Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Installing Key for your Outline VPN client

After you have installed Outline VPN client in your phone or OS, all you have to do is to copy the access key from the previous step starting with ss:// protocol string ending with ?outline=1, Outline VPN client automatically detected and show you to add server. Tap “ADD SERVER”, Tap on “CONNECT” and you’re basically done.

Testing if you’re connected to VPN server

You can try searching “What’s my IP” in Google or What is my IP website and see if you’re connected to another location. You can disconnect from Outline VPN client and try to see the IP address you see with or without VPN are different.

Other Outline Manager VPN features

• You can change port in outline VPN
• Set the data limitation for each access keys to control the VPN usage

Benefits of using your own Outline VPN server

• You only have to spend just about $5 / month for using virtual private server
• You can create acess keys for your devices as much as you want without having to pay for additional fee
• You can destroy your own VPN server or create a new one with different location

Conclusion

Overall, Outline VPN is quite easy to setup for most of the normal users without having to know so much about technical scripts and server configurations. What impressed me the most about Outline is that the team behind the project has done a great job at doing everything simple for the user with step by step easy to follow guidelines. The speed and the performance is quite fast in my experience with Outline VPN for over three months. I suggest you to try it out if you want to use your own VPN server.

Let me know if you’ve any questions about Outline VPN or any other problems while installing it. And don’t forget to share this article with your friends. Thank you!

The above photos were shot with Nikon D90 using Godox flash with softbox, and 35mm SIGMA F1.4 ART for Nikon EXIF: F/7.1, ISO-100, 1/200 sec