Friday 11 October 2013

Into the Jelly Bean Jar again

Android Honeycomb was good. The upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich impressed me, but on both the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 started coming up with errors.  I got used to seeing reference to Android processes having stopped unexpectedly on a regular basis on both devices.

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Libre Office and Graphics

It's easy to tell when I am in a lot of pain, or suffering badly with fatigue and bored senseless.  I write in this place again.  Being house bound is forcing me to mess around with programming and graphics again within the limits of endurance.  I can only sit upright for short periods, which makes productivity a bit hit and miss.

Ok, Recently I wrote a script to automate preparation print images and text to go on ceramic mugs.  The script program can be used to make output for printing then pressing to iphone cases and mousepads, coolers, in fact just about anything.  It started as an exercise to make a simple preview program that would project the output of a mug design onto a cylinder.  From there I just made it print to a blank picture of an actual mug, then took it to its logical conclusion and made it spit out a layout page ready to print.

Monday 7 October 2013

GIMP Tricks #13272

Another quickie for working with GIMP image editor.
I often want to make an image fuzzy around the edges, but have the fuzzy part transparend rather then the default white..  GIMP has an option for fuzzy borders in the menu under:
Filters > Decor > Fuzzy border... 
To achieve the desired transparent edge result there are only a few simple steps, BUT !!  The first step is very important.

Friday 4 October 2013

Android Browsers

There is an amazing array of Web browsers available for Android and while the big three are excellent and familiar,  some of the new ones are even better.  I have tried out a lot of them,  looking for a combination of speed,  versatility,  ease of use and general usefulness.  As I did with office programs,  I put them through some rigorous tests. Recently I found one that works well and even lets me post to blogger,  a big stumbling block with most.

Thursday 3 October 2013

Jelly Beans and Minties

Android has a few thing I don't like,  but a lot of the experience depends on the support from your devices.  My first Android device was a Motorola Xoom tablet,  followed by various phones.  Then I got a Samsung Galaxy tab 2 10.1 tablet,  and later a Samsung Galaxy W phone.  The Samsung devices really showed me the differences in Android.
My Motorola is still running an early version of Android honeycomb.  Since I've had the Samsung tablet it has had Android updates. Most recently it was updated to jelly bean.