Category: Technology

  • Create a text only animated GIF using Canva and Gimp

    This post describes how to use Canva and GIMP to create an animated GIF file containing text only that can be attached to a tweet or uploaded into a Blog post. It’s only one of many ways to create an animated GIF. To walk through the process I’ve chosen to create an animated GIF composed…

  • Four ways to convert a Word document for reading on an e-reader

    Reading a document on an e-reader is an invaluable step in the review and editing process. Problems with the flow and structure of text are so much easier to detect on an e-ink screen, because you can approach the document with the objective eye of a reader rather than its author. So, what are the…

  • Why I’ve accidentally migrated from Ubuntu back to Windows

    After four months with a new laptop, I realise that I’ve accidentally migrated from Ubuntu Linux back to Windows. This wasn’t my intention when my new Dell Vostro arrived in September. I started using Ubuntu back in 2006 and was, until September, predominantly a Linux user. My ratio of Ubuntu to Windows use was about…

  • Is a smartphone running Ubuntu the only device you’ll ever need?

    Canonical’s founder, Mark Shuttleworth, announced on Tuesday that its Ubuntu operating system has been modified to run on smartphones, opening up the possibility of using the same operating system on phones and PCs. A key selling point of Ubuntu for phones is the ability to dock an Ubuntu smartphone with a monitor and keyboard. It…

  • Netbooks were a flawed concept but so are tablets

    The announcement that Asus and Acer have stopped manufacture of netbooks (Sayonara Netbooks, Guardian 31 December 2012) brings to an end a promising but flawed experiment in low cost, high portability computing. They were an interesting, but insufficiently flexible tool, that has been overtaken by tablet computers in the consumer’s quest for highly portable computing.