Today I decided to experiment with a “portrait” panorama/”tower panorama. I wanted to try and capture that feeling of awe of standing at the foot of … Continue reading My First Tower Panorama, Thailand Nov-2013
I finally got round to cooking my own tomato pasta that I wrote about back in October. You can read about it here: https://doncharisma.org/2013/10/23/tomato-pasta-the-right-way/ Well not … Continue reading Tomato Pasta Cooked to PERFECTION!
I often walk past this little derelict house, from the sign/plaque I think it belongs to the Thai King, or at least the Royal Family (I … Continue reading Thailand Hidden House Panorama, Nov-2013
I’ve been posting some photos from Australia (and other places) as and when my friend Chris Herron sends them over. I had been adding my own logo, and decided that it would warrant doing a logo for him also. Chris … Continue reading Creating a Heron Logo (in Photoshop)
Out for my early evening constitutional walk, I decided to try my hand at a panorama. These shots were taken with my iPhone 4s and stitched … Continue reading Thailand Beach Panorama, Early Evening, Aug-2013
To Award, or not to Award: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles. … Continued Hamlet, Don Charisma style … Continue reading What I Learnt about Blog Awards during my “Awards Day”
It’s been two months since I wrote what’s been lovingly nicknamed “Virgin’s guide to SEO”. It’s probably been the most popular post that I’ve done with more than 250 likes. It’s a really hard act to follow, and I hope … Continue reading Virgin’s Guide to Promoting a Blog or Website (Ethos – Part 2)
I’ve just completed a statistical analysis on when people comment on my blog. To be more exact, what times of day and which days of the week. Obviously there are many factors that can skew these types of studies, so … Continue reading What is the best time of day to post on your blog?
Photo courtesy Chris Herron 2013. Taken with Canon IXUS 125 HS And here’s how sundown become midday using a Photoshop cooling filter on the sky and … Continue reading Bondi Beach Sydney Australia, at Sundown – May 2013
My friend Chris from Australia loves sending me great photos, so I though why not share. Hope you enjoy:) Photo courtesy Chris Herron 2012. Taken with … Continue reading Bowl of Flowers – Sanur Beach – Oct 2012
“A man’s got to know his limitations” Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in Magnum Force 1973 Photoshop- To Overlay text on B&W photo- draw a white … Continue reading “A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations” – Clint Eastwood
Originally posted on Danny Boy:
Following on from my graffiti tutorial, I put together another video to show how easy it is to colorize your photos for free using GIMP rather than Photoshop. This is a really quick effect to… Continue reading How to colorize a photo in 5 minutes
I haven’t shared any of my culinary skills, yet. Angie (AngieG9) inspired me to share what I know about cooking truly awesome Pasta with a Tomato based sauce, with her ketchup recipe. I used to have an Italian girlfriend from … Continue reading Tomato Pasta, The “Right” Way – Give your taste-buds a treat:)
I love to chop things up and then make new things, must be a creative process, I guess. WordPress dot com blogs give us really great tools and widgets already. But I wanted to create a custom Widget to show … Continue reading DIY Widget – Coolest Bloggers – “Fun” with HTML
I bought a generic “Apple AV Component Cable” to connect my Apple iPad and iPhone to my ancient TV, because genuine Apple product isn’t available any more. The TV in my apartment is a Philips 32″ and belongs to my landlord, … Continue reading AV Component Cable Scrambled Picture (Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod)
I don’t know why but whenever (“whenevr” ?) I see these ads I just think “Whatever”. Don Charisma, the critic – Great, so the guys at yahoo had a great idea, a photo website, let’s call it “Flicker”. On checking if the domain name was available, oh shit, it’s not, it’s already registered. What shall we do. And some bright spark comes up with the an idea, we can misspell it “flickr” rather than buying it fair and square from the legal owner, plus it will sound “cool”. Hmmm, no one visiting or using our site. What shall we do, how … Continue reading flickr – biggr – WHATEVR
I really like this quote by Henry Ford, the founder of Ford, a well known brand. It’s simple and straightforward. Whether, you believe you CAN or you believe you CAN’T YOU ARE RIGHT Henry Ford Confidence and self-belief are a … Continue reading “Driven by you” – Confidence by Henry Ford
I’ve been blogging now just over 4 months. I came here originally because I’m rubbish at writing CVs, bored of rat-race brown-nosing and wanted to get starting doing something on-line. Oh and the financial markets had swallowed up a big … Continue reading What is Charisma? by Don Charisma, with a little help from Richard Branson
Personally, I don’t follow the news too much, I started my information diet some years ago, and I’m emotionally much fitter as a consequence. I catch the occasional story when I check my email on Yahoo, and keep abreast of … Continue reading Trolls-R-Us, a guide to blog Trolls – Moose, Mr Whisk and The Axe Murderer
A friend of mine sent me these photos from the Canberra Floriade 2013. Enjoy:) These pictures were taken at the Annual Floriade held in Commonwealth park, Canberra, Australia. The Floriade is held 14-Sep-2013 to 13-Oct-2013. Presumably Australian equivalent of the … Continue reading Canberra’s Floriade 2013 – Gallery (Including Big Duck!)
A friend sent me this photo of the ducks (well probably actually more like moor-hens), on the duck pond. His favourite of the set, I’ll post … Continue reading Canberra’s Floriade 2013 – Duck Pond
Link DannyBoyBroderick – How to Create a Graffiti Logo. Link YouTube Video – Thanks Danny, great first video. I have to confess I used the monkey-with-typewriter method at first and when I started to see something I liked, then spent a bit more time and care refining it. Photoshop can do some AMAZING things with text using these effect so well worth having a play with. Cheers Don Charisma Continue reading How to Create a Graffiti Logo
What’s wrong with this picture ? As I’m not a photographer, it’s taken me an age to get to the bottom of how to fix this. Photoshop has it’s own idea about colours, presumably something to do with the fact … Continue reading How to Get Photoshop JPG colour to match web page colour
let it be… …let it change… …let it go Don Charisma 2013 Resources & Sources I would like to thank: Vitaly S Alexius svitart.com – for the four seasons graphic, just awesome Vitaly. Please do visit his site, there are … Continue reading DonCharisma.org – Charisma, The Easy Way
Looking for a lodger or apartment sharer in the London, UK used to be fairly straightforward process. Gumtree did a fairly good job. But recent times Gumtree just isn’t getting many replies, generally because of increased competition and Gumtree now … Continue reading Review, find a lodger or sharer – easyroommate vs spareroom
For some reason I thought this would be quite difficult and involve learning video editing with something like Adobe After Effects. No so. I wanted a basic slide show of photographs with captions, maybe a bit of background music. A … Continue reading EASY WAY to Create a YouTube promo video in 30 minutes, with Powerpoint
My first Adobe Illustrator mini project:) Resources Keep Calm and Carry on Font http://www.ianbarnard.co.uk/free-keep-calm-and-carry-on-template-vector-eps/ Continue reading Keep Calm and STOP with These Boring Keep Calm Clichés
I’ve owned several Canon digital cameras over the years, which have all come with a “free” utility called PhotoStitch. PhotoStitch isn’t the most feature packed or the newest software, but it does work well, made by a well respected company. … Continue reading How to get Canon PhotoStitch Panorama and Photo Stitching software for free
Have you ever taken a photo when it’s overcast, and when you got home, looked at it on the computer, and you were thoroughly disappointed ? – this has happened to me many, many times. Until now I didn’t know … Continue reading Grey Skys to Blue, How to Photoshop it – THE EASY WAY
Back in July, I wrote about my experiences Cartooning myself, because I wanted to show myself I could do it and I wanted to share with others my experiences. With a little free time on my hands I decided to … Continue reading Miss Charisma – Cartoonize my girlfriend, another two days of cartoonification !
I’ve flown back and forth from London to Thailand quite a few times now, and I’d like to share some of the things that I’ve learnt in my travels that make things cheaper, more comfortable and more relaxing. I’ve written … Continue reading Flying long haul on a budget in relaxed comfort (well almost!)
The Beginning I have a good old friend of more than 20 years back home in London, England. The UK economy according to the politicians is doing great, but ask most people on the street and you’ll hear a different … Continue reading Getting A Failing Website Back On Top
In my previous blog post I wrote about building a code box like this one : Code: #!/bin/bash # rsync script rsync -avh –exclude=”*.bak” /home/user/Documents/ /media/diskid/user_backup/Documents/ However, kindly another blogger has pointed out that a nicely numbered code box is … Continue reading Revisted – How to add a code box in free WordPress blog
To interupt booting on my Samsung laptop – F2 key for BIOS, F10 key for boot selection Continue reading Quick Tip – Samsung Laptop Boot/Bios Keys
My ageing Core2Duo Toshiba 17″ laptop was OK whilst it lasted but I was starting to find it a bit sluggish even with an SSD and 2GB memory. At the time when I bought it, I thought I’d got a … Continue reading Samsung Laptop Windows 7 Drivers for NP350E7C-S02UK (and Windows XP drivers !)
How I Cartooned myself, by Don Charisma I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, finally managed to find the right time and space to get it done. And this is what I came up with : I … Continue reading How to Cartoon Yourself (or Myself or Whatever) – Two Days of Cartoonification
Attempting to space out neatly text and images in web-pages can be annoying sometimes, trying the patience and wasting one’s time. I had some short paragraphs that I wanted to highlight with images to make them easier to read and … Continue reading Spacing Images and Text in WordPress Free
Frustratingly, WordPress free blog doesn’t have a code box facility, or not one that I could find. Sometimes it’s handy to put a code box for code snippets or commands to be run a command line, like this Code: #!/bin/bash … Continue reading How to add a code box in free WordPress blog
I recently came across this great free cloud accounting for UK users http://www.quickfile.co.uk Accounting for a loan so that Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss are correct was a little confusing so I put this article together. Example £5000 loan … Continue reading Quick File – Accounting for a loan
Don Charisma 