Friday 17 January 2020

Coffee grinder spraying coffee Everywhere?

I've been using a Sunbeam EM0480 Coffee Grinder for many years to grind fresh beans for my various beans.  I also have a hand turned grinder for times when I am away from electricity and want to make an espresso or cappuccino.

The one thing that has annoyed me since the day I got the Sunbeam is how messy it is.  Sure, I could grind into a container rather then directly into the portafilter basket, but I like to measure my dose, and the simplest way to do that is directly.

I have got around the problem sometimes by grinding into a deeper basket, then filling the Breville Duo-Temp Pro basket from that.  I always end up spilling ground coffee.

So I thought abo tit and one business card, a pair of scissors and some electrical insulating tape later, I had a solution.

I cut the business card in half and joined it in a circle the size of the inside of the filter basket using some tape, then covered the card completely with tape.



It fitted snugly into the top of the basket.




I simply slip the guide into the basket before I grind the beans


And after I have weighed my 18 gram dose into it, I bash the crap out of it on the counter to settle the coffee evenly, then when I remove the guide I have a nice flat basket of coffee to tamp.

And much, much less cleaning to do.

I thought I was pretty clever coming up with the idea, but then I saw a picture of someone grinding into a Rancilio Silvia portafilter with a metal one.
A quick look on YouTube shows I could have bought one from China for about $7 including freight

Not a problem.  Mine was about 10 cents and some time.

Mint XFCE 19.3 and Wide Borders - again

Friday 17th January 2020
Another milestone in the transition back from Plasma 5 to something that works much more like a computer Operating System again.

I didn't like the default buttons in the WideBordersBigButtons theme for XFCE.  But there was another theme that was supposed to just add a speecific Tittie Bar and Buttons, that simply would not show as an option in Settings > Window manager.  And even if it had, it would likely have replaced the Wide Borders theme.

So I did some modifications to combine both themes into the 'Clearlooks' theme.  I called the new effort 'Clearlooks-RAD-AR'.

Here is what I ended up with.  The Minimize, Max/Restore and Close buttons glow as the mouse hovers over them.  The Tittle Bar has a nice curved look and is a translucent smoke colour.

I'm fairly happy with it.

First pic shows the nice Wide 'grabable borders for resizing windows..



Pic below shows the Buttons at Right as they usually appear..


And this next pic shows the Max/Restore button when the cursor hovers over it.


The theme modification is not perfect, but for now it serves its porpoise.

My other bit of excitement for the computers is that while the BRIX is still running its 500GB Crucial SSD, I got hold of a brand new Samsung EVO 860 1TB SSD in one of those 'too good to ignore' offers.

It is now installed in the M93p Tiny, and happily chugging along on Linux Mint 19.3 XFCE.

Saturday 11 January 2020

Linux MInt - XFCE - Wide Borders - UPDATE

More about Wide Borders

After discovering the Wide Borders and Big Buttons theme for XFCE, I looked a little further into the whole theme design thing, and discovered that adding a .themes folder in /home/user would let me install a theme without having to mess with root access in /usr/share/themes

I also found that a lot of the standard themes have their borders and buttons defined as .png and .xpm files for each part of the image that makes up a folder.  Sort of like a weird jigsaw puzzle.
So I wondered what would happen if I copied the folders with the png and xpm files into the /xfwm folder of one of the standard themes.
I copied the WideBordersBigButtons theme folder from /usr/share/themes to /home/user/.themes and also copied the Clearlooks theme folder and renamed it to Clearlooks-RAD.  Then I copied the .png and .xpm files into the appropriate places in the /Clearlooks-RAD/xfwm4 folder, opened Settings > Appearance and checked that I had a 'Clearlooks-RAD theme showing.

It worked!  I could swap from the WideBordersBigButtons theme to the Clearlooks-RAD theme, and while it changed the colours etc to those of Clearlooks, it kept the Wide Borders and the Big Buttons in the top right corner.



But there was more.  Out of curiosity I checked some other themes, Like Mint-Y and Mint-Y Dark.  They changed, and for some reason they kept the wide borders and different buttons.
And after several reboots no matter what theme I apply, it has wide borders.
I don;t know how, or why, but the change has persisted even though I only installed one theme (by copying its files to the /usr/share/themes folder) and changed files in one theme in /hom/user/.themes.

OK, I finally worked out why my thick borders became persistent across themes.
Choosing a 'Style' in Settings > Appearance > Style, changes the looks of a particular Window theme.
Choosing a 'Theme' in Settings > Window Manager > Theme  Changes to a particular THEME.

Where I was getting lost is that some Styles or Themes are listed in BOTH Appearance > Style and in Window Manager > Theme.  Which is a little weird.

However choosing WideBordersBigButtons in Settings > Window Manager > Theme  will apply the wide border persistently and let you change 'Styles' in Appearance.


Monday 6 January 2020

Linux Mint - XFCE - Wide Borders - Resizing Windows

Just a quick UpDate on my move back to XFCE.

XFCE Wide Borders Themes for Resizing Windows

One of the small annoyances about not only XFCE, but some other desktops, particularly in Linux Mint (but defintely NOT limited to Mint)  is that for some reason  the writers of 'Themes' have decided that people no longer want to use the Mouse to resize windows on the desktop.
So rather than clicking a button on a corner of a window holding the left button down and dragging to resize, we are forced to use the 'Right Click somewhere within a third of the distance to a corner, Hold the ALT key, then drag, because the default border on most themes seems to be only about 1 pixel wide.

This is ridiculous on modern higher DPI displays where users find themselves spending half an hour or so trying unsuccessfully to grab a side or corner of a window.

Luckily, there are still a few people in the computing world who have a functioning brain.

One of these people is darktrick who added a handy XFCE theme at  pling .com that provides considerably more than the 1px border common on most themes these days.

This is what that theme adds (my mouse cursor is 'Red' and on the bottom corner where two nice, wide, easy to grab borders meet.


Works well and saves so much time and frustration!