Fresh Coffee Beans make a difference!

I've never really been a 'Coffee Drinker'.  Not really.  But that was because instant coffee tastes so insipid to me.  I cannot think of a single time that I actually enjoyed a cup of instant coffee.

Percolated, drip filtered and pot boiled coffee on the other hand I have enjoyed, along with the usual espresso flavoured milk drinks like cappuccino, flat white and latte.  But it took regular visits to a friend who actually enjoyed not only drinking coffee, but making it, for me to develop a taste for the stuff.  I'm still not a coffee expert and hope never to be, but I now know what I personally enjoy in a coffee.

Free Software for Drawing and Art

Following from yesterday's post, I decided to look a little deeper into what can be done using an ordinary 'Office Suite' for graphics.  So this morning I decided to have another look at LibreOffice 'Draw'.  This is the program I used to create the text that is filled in so it looks as if the letters are cut out of a photo.

This morning I read a post where someone was wanting to buy a graphic design program that would let him make a mockup of a mobile phone case that he could put various images on to show customers what the case would look like.

Linux Image to TEXT - use an image instead of colour

I'm writing this so I remember it can be done easily.

One of the neat things about Xara ExtremeLX for Linux was that it was fast, it worked with SVG files and it was easy to use.  For the last couple of releases of Linux Mint KDE, Xara has been able to be installed, but has failed to load.  A quick search on google show I am not the only one with this problem.

Now one of the simple things I used Xara for was to make things like logo graphics, maybe just something with a message, and instead of changing the font colour, I would put the text over the image, then use Xara to remove the image from everywhere except the actual text.

Linux MINT 17 KDE

I noticed that the KDE version of Linux Mint 17 was available, so I downloaded it and yesterday I got it up and running.

I noticed a few annoying things while I was doing this.  I run two versions of Mint on my computer at any given time.  I have a partition for the version I am currently using, and a partition for the old version.  If anything goes wrong or I don;t like the old version, or if I tweak something in the new version as I am doing now, and screw stuff up, i can choose the old version from GRUB boot menu and reinstall the new one.

Simple Accounting softare for Aussies using Linux!!

One of the annoying things about Australia is our tax system.  One of the annoying things about Linux is that almost everything is available for Linux except a simple small business accounting system that is designed for Australian and designed for Linux.
There is a partial solution however...

Quick aNd Easy Web Builder Update!!

QNEWB2 is being constantly improved.  What is already the best Drag And Drop and WYSIWYG web editor I have tried during many years of searching is even better. What is more exciting is that it works perfectly in Linux!

On June 2, 2014 Pablo added a number of new things to the program.  Some are for advanced users, but for beginners and those trying the program for the first time a couple are very important.

A Drag n Drop Web Editor that Actually Works!

I have always preferred hand coding, or cutting and pasting bits of old pages to make web sites.  After all, if something works once, sometimes a small change can make it seem exciting to someone else.

So I spent a lot of time in HTML editors and also writing HTML in POTEs (Plain Old Text Editors)

The Magic Bullet Solution

There is a popular small kitchen appliance called The Magic Bullet.  It is supposed to be a compact and powerful food processor, able to do wonderful things.

Krups 871 Espresso Bravo

I can't believe that people are actually reading this stuff.  Sure, a few friends get curious, but there are people actually finding my email because they have found my posts about these two types of coffee machines.  I find it strange that people go to the trouble of digging out my email address from my other web sites rather than leaving a message or comment here? 

Ok, the Krups Espresso Bravo 871 is my favourite coffee maker.  They have not been produced in a long time now, but I am sure some of the other cheap 'steam pressure' coffee makers like Breville, Sunbeam and others can make as nice a coffee too.  I believe Krups still make this type of coffee machine too.

Brekky Time Musings

Away from the subject of computers for a moment and back to day to day life.  I've written before about coffee and how I prefer my cheap boiler coffee machines to the expensive ones.  The little Krups 871 Espresso Bravo, even though it is old, makes espresso that tastes thick and sweet, even before milk is added and the espresso from that boiler type machine can always be drunk black with no sugar.

Left monitor shows Firefox almost transparent after scrolling mousewheel on title bar.

7 May 2014

KDE Ghost Windows and Dialogs - Faster YouTube - Mint and Ubuntu

I had an annoying problem with Mint 16 KDE where using
Right click > Send to > Desktop # was leaving a ghost
of the window on my desktop, and the ghost window does not go away until I
change desktops. I also had a problem with some dialog boxes remaining after their program exited.