Someone called me a geek the other day. Kind of, but kind of not. I’m moving into a more creative phase in my life, but my background and formative years were quite geeky. Why Seagate ? I’ve been using hard … Continue reading Why I Only Buy Seagate (Not Just For Geeks)
I’ve had some discussions recently over authenticity in photographs. What I mean by this is true-to-life representations in photos. It’s a common misconception is that “straight-off-the-camera” equals an exact representation of what the eye would have seen. Not so for … Continue reading Photographic Authenticity – Photoshop – Alchemy Or Evil ?
iPhoneography is fun. My iPhone 4s has 8 megapixel camera built in that produces great photos. Here’s a condensed version of what I’ve learned editing a few thousand iPhone 4s photos in Photoshop CS6. Aim – being concise and quick … Continue reading Quickly Edit A Photo In Photoshop
I have no idea what this says, I’ve tried looking at it upside down, but no I give up, can someone tell me please what it … Continue reading Graffiti Wall Walkorama – Two and Three
My blog has been very busy past few days. So thank you to all those who’ve visited, followed, commented and liked. Together you broke my previous record with a total of 734 likes in one day according to WordPress (12-Dec). … Continue reading Busy Days on Don Charisma, Thank YOU
High achievements and awards don’t really do that much for me. Don’t get me wrong they are nice to receive, but once you have a degree, and achieved “stuff” in your life what’s really left to motivate and inspire. People. … Continue reading Who Inspires Me ? Angels
Only kidding I don’t quit that easily, but the thought did cross my mind. I am however more than a bit cheezed off with having had my blog suspended for 24 hours. Also apologies to anyone who has tried to … Continue reading Don Charisma leaving WordPress.com
I walked past this Graffiti and it’s one of the best I’ve seen locally. Glad I photographed it, because I went back a few days later … Continue reading “ART VENTURE” Graffiti Wall Walkorama
I have iPhone 4S and iPad 3, and they keep pestering me to “upgrade” to iOS 7, version 7.0.4. I’ve read that some users have experienced problems with iOS 7. I am not desperate to upgrade, everything works OK on … Continue reading iOS 7 – “Upgrade” or Not Upgrade ?
It’s been a bit quiet on Don Charisma blog this weekend. Reason being, Opinionated Man of Harsh Reality blog asked me late on Friday to be a guest blogger for him and his followers. I said yes, it seemed to … Continue reading A Weekend of HarsH ReaLiTY
Look what someone did for me in Brooklyn, New York … When I saw it I couldn’t believe my eyes, my jaw just dropped, nearly feel … Continue reading Don Charisma Graffiti/Bling Wall, Brooklyn NYC
I recently discovered a set of Toshiba Service Manuals for around 200+ laptop models (and download links thereof). I was going to post the links on my blog to share with you. But I thought I’d investigate first, as recent … Continue reading Toshiba Censorship, they don’t want me to repair my own laptop(s)
Angie of Angie’s Place asked me to do an “angel” for her. I had a look on all-free-downloads, and liked the one with the little boy kissing the little girl – here How-to do it 1. Extract the .EPS from the … Continue reading Angie’s Place “Logo” – Quick Adobe Illustrator Fun
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)
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?
I’ve just received an email from Buffer app, their website has been hacked and the hackers have been posting Spam messages on Twitter and Facebook from Buffer app. I thought my readers might want to know. For more information visit … Continue reading Breaking news – “Buffer” app hacked, passwords and credit cards safe
“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
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
The result of spending copious hours and days, knee deep in Linux IS – a working and stable 2TB NAS with Debian Linux based on Seagate GoFlex NET. Persistence and Charisma eventually paid off, ended up being a labour of … Continue reading Build your own Pro NAS – Seagate Goflex Net with Debian Linux, RAID1 and OpenMediaVault
Don Charisma’s new .COM – http://DonCharisma.com Dear Don Charisma readers, The last few days have been about getting DonCharisma.com up and running. I’m keeping DonCharisma.org on WordPress.com as my personal/professional blog. I like the community spirit of WordPress.com and would like to … Continue reading Don Charisma’s new DOT COM Website
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
So you’ve started your new blog on “Jimothy’s witty little witticisms” or “Mary’s cake bakery” or “Annie’s Arts and Farts”. You’ve crafted the pages, blood sweat and tears to get it up and running. Toiled for hours, days, weeks, over … Continue reading Virgin’s guide to promoting a blog or website on Google
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 !
It’s only taken them 5 days to tell me, you’d have thought it would be a priority to let their customers know that their personal information had been stolen, Apple are so arrogant and patronising … Anyway, just as a … Continue reading Apple Website Hacked – Customers’ Personal Information Stolen
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
Interestingly, I posted about downgrading my laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 7 because that’s what I wanted and didn’t particularly like Windows 8, and I’ve had a mini-debate going on with my blog readers. It all started because I … Continue reading Windows 8 is … Crap, Rubbish, Awful, Terrible, Horrible, Slow, A Disaster, A Flop?
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
Just a snippet, but I’ve tried multiple times to download Adobe CS6 Master Collection (6.2GB) (see link below) and also the Adobe CS6 Design & Web Prem (4.5GB). It’s not very often I need to download files this size direct from the … Continue reading Google Chrome Download File Size Limit
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
Who wouldn’t want to make money sitting at home on their computer, almost passive income ? This I don’t believe is greed, just folks wanting to make a living for themselves and their loved ones, nothing out of the ordinary … Continue reading I Make Money Online, The Anatomy of a Scam
Getting a reliable wifi connection can be a paid in the backside. A solution is a Ubiquiti Nanostation M2, for the unenlightened that’s one of these – http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#nanostationm Ubiquiti make stuff that works for outdoor wifi, expect to pay around 70-100£ … Continue reading How to get @TRUEWIFI working with a Ubiquiti Nanostation M2
