Don's House of Fine Patisseries

January 6, 2025January 6, 2025

Podcasts, Google NotebookLM, and my Making Coffee post

As indicated at the beginning of the previous post about making coffee, the post was mounted, definitely tongue-in-cheek, as a result of a podcast created by Google NotebookLM about a previous blog post I’d mounted about making yoghurt muffins.

As part of the initial vision I had when I started to mount the post about making coffee, it was a foregone conclusion that a new podcast be generated as a result. As such, my brother and I tried to make podcasts about the post using Google’s NotebookLM Podcast Generator.

I had a few objectives about how the podcast should be structured:

There should be a bent that both the post as well as the podcast were inspired by the previous podcast on yoghurt muffins;
There was a hope that the new podcast would be somewhat (read I had an expectation of it being “sufficiently”) self-aware, including that the previous podcast was created “by the same hosts”, and therefore, that “the hosts” would at an obvious juncture make a comment to the effect of “In a previous podcast, we jovially suggested that the blog post author create another blog post about making morning coffee, and whaddya know, they did!”;
When supplying Google NotebookLM with source material, I entered an expressed expectation that there be a certain incredulity on the parts of the “hosts” that, albeit tongue-in-cheek, that I followed up on the jovial suggestion that I make such a blog post in the original podcast (at about 3:49), as well as the previous two points.

Unfortunately, the results were less than satisfactory.

The first podcast that was created, using the original yoghurt muffins post as one of several pieces of source material, seemed to focus more on the post on the yoghurt muffins than the post on making coffee;
Said first podcast generally seemed to rehash the podcast on the yoghurt muffins, often word for word or at least re-phrasings;
Throughout several of the podcasts that were created, there seemed to be lot more of what I will call psychobabble that came through multiple times, analyzing myself, and went on tangents on how to look at things differently in life — comments which, in general terms, were not fully inaccurate, but which were general human nature and not really what we were looking for. Ultimately there were increasing departures from the content, even ignoring the meta and self-referential parts.
The podcasts became increasingly long, one being at least 15 minutes long.

Ultimately, NotebookLM seemed unable — perhaps by design or a known lack thereof, and certainly at what would constitute a cursory glance — to handle levity, self-awareness, and meta conversations / commentary.

Anyway, here is the podcast I settled on after a few tries and was frustrated with the general results; it at least does discuss somewhat the meta nature of the post, as well as just barely enough of the coffee part when taken at face value.

Sigh. (Meaning, I guess that if I want a podcast creator that does what I want, I should find out if such exists. Or, I dunno, make a real life podcast myself.)

January 5, 2025January 6, 2025

Making Coffee — Photos

In October, 2024, I published a post on making yoghurt muffins, and on a whim, my brother fed the post into the Google NotebookLM Podcast Generator, creating a podcast (in fact, two) in the process.

In the first podcast, one of the “hosts” remarks, starting at 3:49, “Like, imagine making a super detailed blog post, like, making your morning coffee.”

Well, here is the post that the “hosts” jokingly “suggested” that I create.

Note that I don’t actually drink coffee because I don’t care for it; I like iced tea (this web page was written somewhere between 1995 and 1997; while the page’s premise still stands some 28 to 30 years later, some of the specific information is rather out of date, principally the beer section: Nowadays, I adore Belgian dubbels, quadruppels, and German bocks — but I digress.) However, I regularly prepare coffee for my mom.

Note that there are a small number of photos which were either taken in a slightly different order, or which were recreated during the session, and one which was taken during a different session, but presented as follows for the sake of the narrative.

Update 20250106: I wrote a post about the trials and tribulations of attempting to make a podcast using Google NotebookLM about this post and its tongue-in-cheek premise.

Making the coffee:

I normally set up a coffee machine for my mom every day, usually the evening before.

Firstly, the coffee machine was taken out:

Paper coffee filters were taken out:

A single paper coffee filter was taken from the grouping of paper coffee filters:

Paper coffee filter separated from group

The coffee machine’s lid was opened:

The paper coffee filter was placed in the plastic basket in the coffee machine:

Paper coffee filter placed in coffee machine basket

Note that my mom finds “medium roast”, fine grind drip coffee machine coffee grounds meets her liking:

… which of course has suggested preparation instructions:

Manufacturer’s suggested preparation instructions

We keep coffee in a resealable plastic container in the fridge:

Coffee kept in sealable container in fridge

The coffee container was taken out:

The coffee container was opened:

Three heaping tablespoons of the coffee grounds were measured out:

The coffee grounds were transferred to the paper coffee filter in the basket in the coffee machine:

Coffee transferred to paper coffee filter in basket

Just for fun, a paper coffee filter was placed on a kitchen scale, and the kitchen scale was set to zero:

… then the paper coffee filter was switched out, and the paper coffee filter with the measured out coffee grounds were placed on the kitchen scale, revealing that I’d measured out about 24 grams of coffee grounds:

The paper coffee filter and coffee grounds were returned to the coffee machine (photo from a subsequent setup):

Paper coffee filter and coffee grounds returned to coffee machine

The coffee carafe was taken out of the machine, and brought to the sink:

A bit of water was drawn into the carafe, and swirled around to rinse out the inside of the carafe:

The rinse water was poured out:

Two cups of water — about up to one of the marks on the side of the carafe — were drawn into the carafe:

Back to the coffee machine …

The water in the carafe was poured into the water reservoir at the back on the coffee machine:

Water poured into coffee machine reservoir

The coffee machine’s lid was closed:

The empty coffee carafe was placed into the machine on the hotplate under the basket:

Since I normally prepare the coffee machine for my mom, I normally place a handwritten sign on top of the coffee machine indicating that all she has to do is turn on the machine:

Sign for my mom placed on top of the coffee machine

I also normally place a coffee mug beside the coffee machine for her …

… and I normally also place a spoon in the coffee mug for her:

The following morning, a weekend day for me, I prepared the coffee for Mom, and served it to her.

I went up to the coffee machine, which of course was off (and, I noticed in the better morning light, that the machine itself could use a wipe down!) …

… and I turned it on:

The machine started operating, and liquid started flowing through the machine, and into the carafe, fogging up the inside of the carafe in the process:

Coffee starting to drip through the coffee grounds into the carafe

Coffee dripping through the coffee grounds into the carafe

After a few minutes, the machine finished, and the coffee was made:

I reached over to the compost bucket across the counter …

… to remove its lid:

The coffee machine’s lid was opened:

… and the paper coffee filter and wet coffee grounds were removed from the basket:

Paper coffee filter and wet grounds lifted out of coffee machine basket

The paper coffee filter and wet coffee grounds were transferred to the compost bucket:

Paper coffee filter and wet grounds placed in compost bucket

… and the compost bucket’s lid was placed back onto the compost bucket:

The coffee maker’s lid was also closed:

Mom likes to keep milk for her coffee and tea in a plastic container in the fridge:

Milk for coffee and tea in container in fridge

The milk container was taken out:

Milk was poured into the coffee mug:

For fun, I decided to measure out how much milk I’d poured out, which was a roughly typical amount:

… leading to it being roughly two liquid ounces:

The milk was returned to the coffee cup:

The coffee cup with just the milk was placed in the microwave oven:

Coffee cup with milk placed in microwave oven

… and the milk was warmed for 20 seconds (1100 watts):

The warmed milk was brought back to the coffee maker:

Coffee cup brought back to coffee machine

Mom likes sugar in her coffee, so a sugar bowl was taken out:

The sugar bowl was opened:

For fun, I thought I’d find out how much sugar I put in Mom’s coffee, so I took out a kitchen scale, placed the spoon on the scale, and set the scale to zero:

Kitchen scale set to zero with spoon on it

The spoon was placed in the sugar bowl …

Sugar was measured out:

… and the sugar was weighed, proving to be about 4 grams:

The sugar was transferred to the coffee machine with the warmed milk:

Sugar transferred to coffee cup with warmed milk

Coffee was poured into the coffee cup with the warmed milk and sugar:

Coffee poured into coffee cup with warmed milk

… until the coffee cup had been filled:

The spoon was picked up …

… and the coffee was thoroughly stirred:

Coffee, milk, and sugar thoroughly mixed

The now-filled coffee cup was again placed in the microwave oven, because mom likes her coffee really hot:

Coffee cup with coffee, milk, and sugar placed in microwave oven

The coffee was warmed for 25 seconds (1100 watts):

… and I served Mom her hot, fresh coffee:

And of course, Mom received a refill!

December 21, 2024December 22, 2024

Making Strawberry Jam Muffins — Photos

As an effort to diversify my offerings of muffins for my mom, I learned how to make these delicious muffins containing strawberry jam, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mom likes them so much that she declared that she likes them a lot better than both the bran muffins and the yoghurt muffins I make for her!

Note that while this recipe can be easily multiplied several times to make more muffins at once, this recipe is intentionally tailored to a half dozen muffins instead of the usual custom of a dozen muffins, since the original recipe on which it was based allows it to be halved and therefore be baked in a countertop convection oven.

In addition to this recipe, the following recipes can (usually, depending on oven size and specific dimensions) be made directly without adjustment in a countertop convection oven:

As well, here are a number of my other recipes which allow for adjusting by half to be made, or can otherwise easily be made (sometimes in shifts), in a countertop convection oven:

Making the muffins:

First, my countertop convection oven was turned on and set to 350F (yes, the photo says 86F, it’s preheating!):

Countertop convection oven turned on to be preheated

A muffin baking tin and some paper muffin liners were taken out:

Muffin baking tin and paper muffin liners taken out

Paper muffin liners were placed in each of the wells of the muffin baking tin:

Paper muffin liners placed in muffin baking tin wells

A mixing bowl, a fork, and a spoon were taken out:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out, and some flour was measured out:

The flour was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Sugar and a measuring cup were taken out, and some sugar was measured out:

The sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour:

Baking soda and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some baking soda was measured out:

The baking soda was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour and the sugar:

Cinnamon and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some cinnamon was measured out:

The cinnamon was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, and baking soda:

Nutmeg and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some nutmeg was measured out:

The nutmeg was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour, sugar, baking soda, and cinnamon:

Salt and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some salt was measured out:

The salt was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg:

A fork was taken out and used to mix the dry ingredients:

A box of eggs was taken out:

An egg was taken out of the box of eggs:

The egg was cracked on the edge of the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients:

Milk and a measuring cup were taken out, and some milk was measured out, but the milk was not yet transferred to the mixing bowl:

Milk taken out and measured out but not yet transferred to mixing bowl

Vegetable oil was taken out, and some oil was measured out in the measuring cup while the milk was still in it, but the milk and oil were not yet transferred to the mixing bowl:

Oil taken out and measured out but not yet transferred to mixing bowl

Strawberry jam was taken out, and some strawberry jam was measured out into the measuring cup with the milk and vegetable oil:

Strawberry jam taken out and measured out

The milk, vegetable oil, and the strawberry jam were transferred to the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients and the egg:

Milk, oil, and strawberry jam transferred to mixing bowl

The ingredients were mixed together with the fork:

The batter was transferred to the paper liners in the muffin baking tin, using a spoon:

Batter transferred to paper liners in muffin baking tin

The filled muffin baking tin was transferred to the pre-heated countertop convection oven:

Muffin baking tin with batter placed in countertop convection oven

A timer was set to 23 minutes:

While the muffins were baking, a cooling rack was taken out:

Here’s a picture of the muffins rising while baking:

At the end of the 23 minutes when the muffins were baked, the muffin baking tin with the muffins were taken out of the countertop convection oven:

Muffins taken out of countertop convection oven

The muffins were taken out of the muffin baking tin and placed on the cooling rack:

A muffin (in the case of this photo, from a subsequent batch) was taken out to serve to mom:

Mom loves these delicious muffins a lot these days!

… and I froze the rest of muffins in a freezer bag, as I did with muffins from a subsequent batch:

Extra muffins placed in freezer bag for freezing

Mom now says that these are her favourites!

December 16, 2024December 23, 2024

Making Bierocks (Stuffed Bread Rolls) — Photos

I came to enjoy a type of convenience frozen pizza in the early 1990’s while in residence at university; of course I enjoyed them then, and continue to occasionally enjoy them to this day. However, what really fascinated me was how the manufacturer managed to produce what amounted to a bun stuffed with a filling, in this case pizza toppings, without an apparent seam or other apparent entry point for the contents (such as the small hole one would see on the size of a jelly doughnut). While said fascination remained, it was not strong enough for me to actually try to figure it out.

Fast forward to late 2023, and a snacks table offered bierocks (here’s my archive), which immediately caught my attention. Before I even picked one up and looked at it, including inspecting its bottom, I immediately realized how they had been made. I definitely ate some, and asked the person who had made them for the recipe. Due to delays in setting up a cooking lesson with said person, I eventually just followed the recipe instead of waiting to be shown how to make them.

(And, I am assuming, the manufacturer of the commercial pizza treats uses some kind of mechanical method analogous to the relevant section(s) below, or, a precisely timed continuous dual extrusion system that minimizes seams, and in either case a dough recipe tuned to be susceptible to the process; ultimately, whichever process is used appears to assure that the edges stay sealed, and the filled units are moved along an Archemides’ screw or the like to the next step, in such a way that smooths out any seams.)

Note that in the following narrative, while the photos are principally from a single session, a few are from two other sessions in order to complete the narrative.

Making the bierocks:

One of the common ingredients in bierocks is chopped cabbage; so cabbage was taken out:

A piece of cabbage was cut off to make chopping easier:

Piece of cabbage placed on a cutting board

The cabbage was chopped up somewhere between coarsely to finely:

As the cabbage was chopped, it was placed in a bowl:

I continued to chop cabbage, and froze the excess for future use, since a typical cabbage is far larger than the roughly half pound needed for this recipe.

In the case of this session, frozen cabbage from a previous chopping session was used; as such, a plate was placed on a kitchen scale, and the latter set to zero, so as to only be measuring the cabbage:

Bowl placed on kitchen scale, which was set to zero

About half a pound (about 227g) of frozen chopped cabbage was placed in the bowl:

The cabbage was put aside in order to allow it to defrost.

Frozen ground beef was taken out, and weighed to make sure that the appropriate amount of two pounds (911g) would be used:

The ground beef was put aside to allow it to defrost.

The basket from my bread machine was taken out and cleaned:

Six ounces of water were measured out:

The water was placed in the microwave oven (1100 watts) …

… and heated for 45 seconds.

The warmed water was poured into the bread machine basket:

Warmed water poured into bread machine basket

Eggs were taken out:

The eggs were cracked into the bread machine basket with the warmed water:

Egg cracked on edge of bread machine basket

Eggs cracked on edge of bread machine basket

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The measured out flour was transferred to the bread machine with the warmed water and the eggs:

Flour transferred to bread machine basket

Sugar and measuring spoons were taken out:

Six tablespoons of sugar were measured out …

… and transferred to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, and flour:

Sugar transferred to bread machine basket

Salt and measuring spoons were taken out:

The salt was measured out and transferred to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, flour, and sugar:

Salt transferred to bread machine basket

Oil and a measuring cup were taken out:

The oil was measured out (oops twice as much as I should have used):

The oil was transferred to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, flour, sugar, and salt:

A little note at this point: Since this recipe calls for using a bread machine, I strongly recommend using bread machine yeast; standard bread yeast behaves differently — although not necessarily badly — and in a bread machine, will produce a strong yeasty odour and taste, no doubt due to different timing required for it to act properly. Should you be making bread dough another way, including using standard bread yeast, of course I do not have any advice on that front. 🙂

Bread machine yeast and measuring spoons were taken out:

Bread machine yeast and measuring spoons taken out

Two teaspoons of bread machine yeast were measured out:

The bread machine yeast was added to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, and oil:

Bread machine yeast transferred to bread machine basket

The bread machine basket with all the ingredients was placed in the bread machine, and the unit was set to the dough only cycle, which in the case of my bread machine is setting #8, with a cycle time of 1h30:

The bread machine was turned on:

While the bread machine was preparing the dough, baking trays were taken out:

Parchment paper was taken out:

Sheets of parchment paper were cut off the roll and placed on the baking sheets:

Parchment paper placed on the baking sheets

The baking sheets were put aside for later.

An electric frypan was taken out:

The electric frypan was plugged in, and the ground beef was placed in the electric frypan:

Ground beef placed in electric frypan, and electric frypan plugged in

The chopped cabbage was placed in the electric frypan:

Chopped cabbage placed in electric frypan

Salt was added to the electric frypan:

An onion was taken out and weighed to be sure it was enough (“about” a quarter pound of chopped onion in the end):

The onion was placed on the cutting board:

The onion was trimmed:

The onion was cut in half:

The onion half was sliced into half coins:

The onion slices were chopped:

The rest of the onion was chopped, and the chopped onion was transferred to the electric frypan, and the ground beef was cut up with an egg flipper:

The ground beef was broken up further, and the ground beef, cabbage, and onions were mixed together:

Ingredients broken up and mixed together

Cheese was weighed out:

The cheese was grated:

The grated cheese was transferred to a bowl, and put aside for later:

Once the meat mix was cooked, the electric frypan was unplugged:

At this point, I took out a large serving plate and a kitchen knife in anticipation of the bread machine dough cycle completing:

The bread machine finished its dough cycle:

At this point, I started to preheat the oven, set to 350F, and one of the racks was placed in the top position (photo taken after preheating):

The dough was taken out of the bread machine basket:

At this point, to get 24 roughly similarly sized balls of dough, I am using what I call the “Jamie Oliver Method” because I saw Jamie Oliver use this method on one of his shows with bread dough:

Cut the dough in half (2 pieces);
Cut each half into three pieces (2 x 3 = 6 pieces);
Cut each “third of a half” into four pieces (6 x 4 = 24).

I concede that Jamie Oliver would have you roll the dough into a long log first to further help with estimating making the sizes relatively even.

The dough was cut in half:

One of the dough halves was cut in three:

One of the pieces was cut in four:

The rest of the bread dough pieces were cut up, resulting in 25 pieces, which eventually were reduced to 24 pieces:

25 bread dough pieces (which will be integrated into 24)

A bread dough pieces was placed on the cutting board, and flattened and stretched out:

Bread dough piece flattened on cutting board

Some shredded cheese was placed in the centre of the piece of flattened bread dough:

Shredded cheese placed on flattened bread dough

Some cooked meat mix was placed on top of the shredded cheese on the piece of flattened bread dough:

Cooked meat mix placed on flattened bread dough

I began to stretch the edges of the flattened bread dough, pulling them together and covering the filling:

Bread dough edges stretched and brought together

All of the edges were brought together and the edges were pinched together:

Stretched bread dough edges brought together

The resulting ball of stuffed bread dough was placed on the parchment paper on one of the trays, pinched edges face down:

Stuffed bread dough ball placed edges down on baking tray

The process was repeated with more pieces of bread dough and more cooked meat mix and shredded cheese:

Stuffed bread dough balls placed edges down on baking tray

The process was continued until there were 24 units:

Margarine, a bowl, and a spoon were taken out:

The empty bowl was placed on the kitchen scale, which was set to zero:

Kitchen scale set to zero with bowl on it

Margarine was weighed out, about five tablespoons’ worth, in the area of about 70g to 73g:

The bowl of margarine was placed in the microwave oven (1100 watts):

The microwave oven was set to 15 seconds:

The margarine was partly melted:

The microwave oven was set again for 15 seconds, and the margarine was mostly melted:

A food brush was used to brush the melted margarine on to the bierocks …

… until all units had been basted and all the melted margarine had been used:

The trays of bierocks were placed in the oven:

Baking trays with bierocks placed in oven

The stove timer was set to 22 minutes:

Cooling racks were taken out while the bierocks were baking:

Pot holders were taken out:

At about halfway through the baking, the trays with the bierocks were rotated back to front within the oven:

Baking trays rotated back to front part way through baking

At the end of the baking period, I turned on the broiler to brown the tops of the bierocks:

… and the oven timer was set to two minutes:

Here’s a photo of the bierocks as they were browning under the broiler:

After the two minutes under the broiler, the bierocks were taken out of the oven:

Baking trays with bierocks taken out of oven

The bierocks were transferred to the cooling racks:

A bierock was picked up to check the bottom where the pinched edges of the dough had been brought together to show how it baked (but … not seamlessly! 🙂 )

I bit into the fresh bierock … yummy!

A bierock was placed on a cutting board with a kitchen knife:

Bierock and knife placed on cutting board

The bierock was cut into four pieces:

Bierock sliced into four pieces for freezing

Several bierocks were cut up into quarters, because bierock pieces have become part of my usual breakfasts:

Bierocks sliced into four pieces for freezing

… and the cut up bierocks were placed in a freezer bag for freezing:

The bag of bierock pieces was placed in a freezer for future eating as part of my daily breakfasts.

I find these bierocks to be yummy!

December 1, 2024December 1, 2024

Desktop Linux: Unveiled Chapter 7: Desktop applications

Previous chapter: Desktop Linux: Unveiled Chapter 6: Upgrading the Operating System

Using your computer of course requires some software beyond the base operating system; fortunately, most desktop linux distributions not only have repositories of freely installable software, often more common software as decided by the distro’s maintainers are pre-installed on the system at the same time as system installation.

This post is concentrating on the popular office suite LibreOffice which includes a drawing program, a word processor, a spreadsheet application, and a database application. While this post will show a few functions of each part, it is in no way intended to be a tutorial, but rather a cursory demonstration of each, leaving the exploration of each to you, the reader.

In this post I occasionally refer to operating systems beyond Linux. Also, contrary to my usual habit of not editorializing in this series, I offer the following: Many Linux software suites are largely, although importantly, not completely compatible with other known equivalents on other systems. They will often be able to open and edit files created by them; however, the compatibility and drop-in replacement value of each piece of software for the other (regardless of in which order) is often variable, sometimes quite substantially.

Note that occasionally, some screenshots were taken at different times for the sake of completeness, but presented in the order seen here, for the sake of the narrative.

Pinning Apps to the Dock:

Start from the Activities (hot corner in the upper left hand corner (the horizontal bar; either just quickly move the mouse there, or if necessary, click on the the horizontal bar):

I searched for “Lib” which brought up three of LibreOffice’s apps: Writer, Calc, and Impress, and I right clicked each one …

Searching for installed LibreOffice components

… each of which I pinned to the dock at the bottom, one at a time:

Templates:

Note: In this post, the use of existing document templates found on the internet will be generously relied upon in order to demonstrate in a cursory fashion some of the resources available to desktop users — both of free software packages and other systems as well — as well as to simplify the mounting and development of the narrative using said existing documents. The site www.freedesktop.org, by happenstance, is frequently used, as is the templates section of www.libreoffice.org. Of note, especially on the former site, there are a number of templates which are in languages other than English, and some which have been on the site for several years, using older formats. Hopefully, the language barriers as the cases may be will not be too difficult to surmount given online translation services, while the older file formats are normally seamlessly supported by current software suites, with the ability to save in modern formats.

Users are of course free to create documents from scratch as they would on any system.

Going back to the activities screen, choose the Firefox icon (orange and blue, on the left at the bottom):

In the address bar, enter the address of a search engine, such as www.duckduckgo.com:

Search for templates. In this case, I specifically asked for templates appropriate for LibreOffice, which brought me to www.opendesktop.org:

In the search bar, I searched for LibreOffice, which gave me the following options:

… and chose for ODF Text Templates (for word processessing):

Browsing through the templates, I chose a CV template, for “Tux the Penguin — Brand Ambassador and Mascot”:

… which I downloaded:

On the activities screen, I opened up the Files application:

Drawing:

… and this is where I learned that the downloaded CV template was not what it seemed. 🙂

Much like other popular desktops, Fedora Linux has several fully functional and fully featured drawing software. One such piece is LibreOffice Draw, which functions similarly to Microsoft Visio, allowing for some basic-to-not-so basic graphical manipulations, editing, basic draughting, and inserting texts.

From the Files program just opened, I navigated to the Downloads directory, where the CV was located after downloading, and despite having believed that the CV I had downloaded was a text document, the file format in fact proved to be a drawing format:

I double-clicked on the CV file, which, since LibreOffice Draw isn’t always a part of a Fedora base installation, launched the software store, and having found LibreOffice Draw in the Fedora repositories, offered to install it, which I accepted:

CV file double-clicked, launching the software store in order to install required software

Once LibreOffice Draw had been installed, I asked that it be launched:

After closing the offer to see the “What’s New” notes, I went to the File dropdown menu to open the file:

… and navigated over to the Downloads directory, where the CV was located.

I clicked on the CV file to open it:

In Draw — depending on the nature of the input file — various existing texts can be modified, as well as many basic-to-not-so-basic graphical manipulations. In the case of this file, the file was designed such that the text could be modified:

To manipulate images, the picture of Tux (the penguin) was double-clicked to select it, the right mouse button was clicked, and the “Rotate or Flip” option was selected:

… and I chose to flip the picture of Tux upside-down:

Some modestly — or more complex — drawings, including multimedia documents such as the CV shown above, can be created and / or modified, which I leave to the reader to explore.

Word Processor:

Much like other popular desktops, Fedora Linux has several fully functional and fully featured word processing software suites. One of the more popular such pieces is LibreOffice Writer.

I returned to the opendesktop.org website, and chose a business card template to open in a word processor — LibreOffice Writer.

I navigated to find a business card template:

opendesktop.org template for business cards

… and downloaded the file:

Similar to how the CV above was opened, the business card template was opened, without having to go through the installation of LibreOffice Writer:

Business card template opened in LibreOffice Writer

The text of the first card was changed to a “Desktop Linux: Revealed” theme:

Name and contact details on first card changed

The modifications were also saved:

Returning to the opendesktop.org templates, I chose the “Organica Business Forms” to download:

The page for the Organica Business Forms was opened:

… and the file downloaded:

Template downloaded and directory opened

The business forms were compressed in the .tar format, analogous to .zip files:

Directory with downloaded file, which was double clicked

The archive was double-clicked, revealing a directory contained within:

.tar file double clicked, opening up the archive

The directory was double-clicked, revealing several templates: Business cards (different from above), a fax cover sheet, four different kinds and sizes of labels, an invoice, and a letter:

Going back to Writer, the letter file was double-clicked, which again opened the file in LibreOffice Writer:

A space was added between two paragraphs:

The “Table” drop down menu was opened:

… and the “Insert Table” option was chosen:

… which opened up a window to determine some settings for the table to be inserted:

Window opened to set table characteristics

A table with five columns and five rows was selected:

The table was selected, and the right mouse button was clicked, revealing a contextual menu:

The option “Table Properties” was selected, bringing up a window:

The button for all lines under “Line Arrangement” was chosen in the Borders tab, in order to insert borders around all the cells of the table:

The “Ok” button was pressed, returning me to the document, showing now all the cells of the table with borders:

Text was added to a cell in the upper left hand corner (“Linux Desktop”):

A number of other cells were filled in:

The “File” drop down menu was opened:

… and the file was saved:

As with the previous section, I leave it to the reader to further explore LibreOffice Writer to see the various options in the various menus, and the various kinds of text documents that can be created.

Spreadsheets:

Much like other popular desktops, Fedora Linux has several fully functional and fully featured spreadsheet software. One of the most popular such pieces is LibreOffice Calc.

After saving the business cards, I returned to the freedesktop.org website, browsing the spreadsheet templates:

opendesktop.org page sorting for spreadsheets

I chose the Amortization Schedule:

opendesktop.org page with amortization schedule

The amortization Schedule was downloaded:

Similarly to previous files, the Amortization Schedule was opened (file double clicked in the file download directory).

Amortization schedule opened in LibreOffice Calc

Several of the balance figures was selected, revealing how the value us calculated in the formula bar:

Amortization schedule, cell calculation revealed

I chose to modify the table, by adding a value of 1000 in the “Extra Principle Payment”, to change the values of “New Balance” …

… and then I changed the value to 500 to see how it affected the values of “New Balance”.

Again I leave it to the reader to further explore mounting spreadsheets of their own using their own data.

Slide Shows / Presentations

At the opendesktop.org collection of templates, I chose a slide show template to download:

opendesktop.org page sorting for a presentation template

I chose a template to download …

… and downloaded it:

Again through the files directory, I double-clicked on the downloaded file:

File in download directory double clicked

… which opened up the file in LibreOffice Impress:

Presentation opened in LibreOffice Impress

I began editing the title line — in the process, using the wrong branding for this series!

The text colour, white, didn’t have enough contrast for my taste, so I selected the text …

… and went into the options area on the right to by clicking on the letter “A” with a red underline, to change the font colour:

Text colour changed through menu icons on the right

The font colour was changed to a greenish-blue colour:

Other text was changed and added:

I changed to the second page, and similarly started to change the text:

Text can be changed as per your needs, as well as pages added through copy / paste or other wizards available.

The drop-down file menu was chosen, so that I could save the file:

Once the file was saved, I opened up the drop-down file menu again, and chose “Export As” so that I could export the file as a PDF. (Editorial note: As mentioned earlier, while there is a good amount of compatibility between LibreOffice and other office suites, it can be disappointingly incomplete, which I have particularly seen and experienced with — but not only — slide shows. For more of a discussion of such from the perspective of the usefulness of PDFs, please see my post on the subject.)

The file drop-down menu was clicked again, and the option “Export As” was clicked:

File menu opened to export the file as a PDF

Exporting to PDFs can be rather easy and direct, or, as I am going to show a little bit here, allows for a large amount of choices …

… including protecting PDFs with passwords for opening:

Tab with options for password setting for opening PDFs

Passwords were set for both opening as well as for “permission” which means to allow editing of the PDF (see my post on the subject), and the slide show was exported as a PDF:

… and the OK button was clicked:

As usual, I leave to the reader to explore further. Also, within LibreOffice itself it has a wizard to help the user create a number of presentations with various backgrounds and layouts.

Database:

LibreOffice also includes a database module, called “Base”, which is similar to Microsoft Access; it is essentially a front end manager — a gui interface — for the actual database software behind it that it leverages.

Before I show a properly mounted database, I will show some screenshots about how to start.

Starting from the home screen, the activities corner (hot corner) in the upper left was clicked:

On the Activies screen, “libreoffice base” was typed into the search bar, and the option to install LibreOffice Base, which is not always installed in a base install, was offered:

Activities screen accessed, and “libreoffice base” searched for; the option to install Base was offered

The option was double-clicked, which brought up the “software store” with the choice of LibreOffice Base …

Software store opened to allow for installation of Base

I double-clicked on the option, bringing up the information page on the package and the offer to install it:

I clicked the “Install” button:

Once LibreOffice Base was installed, an “Open” button presented itself:

The “Open” button was clicked, lauching LibreOffice:

A wizard came up to select a database:

Wizard opened to allow choice to launch Base

The presented option was accepted, and the “Next>” button was clicked, bringing up a “Save and proceed” window:

The “Finish” button was clicked, opening a Save window:

Finish button clicked, allowing for the creation of a database

Once that was done, the following screen came up, in order to start creating a database:

Note that from this point on, I am showing some very basic things, and I will soon recommend a tutorial, which will better show how to use the software than I could ever present.

I clicked on the “Table” icon, which brought up a Table Wizard:

I chose the “Personal” category, on the premise — in the context of this post, anyway which presumes that many readers may be seeking to use linux at home and not just at the office, and that a database might not as easily appear to be a personal piece of software.

I pulled down the suggested list of topics:

… and chose “Recipes” for what I presume are obvious reasons — we all eat, and presumably many people have a personal collection of varying sizes (here’s my collection of recipes, incidentally NOT in a database format, at https://www.malak.ca/food).

Some field names were suggested:

I clicked on “Name”:

… which moved it over to the column on the right:

I also chose other sample tables:

… at which point, I clicked on the “Finish” button, leading to the following screen:

Finish button clicked, leading to a data entry page

I started entering data:

I chose to save my changes:

At this point, I am going to direct you to a far better tutorial than I could ever present, even in the most cursory of fashions:

As of the writing of this post, a rather complete tutorial on using Base can be found at thefrugalcomputerguy.com/seriespg.php?ser=15/ (no doubt amongst countless other similarly excellent resources):

TheFrugalComputerGuy.com LibreOffice Base tutorial page

Although I think it best to leave the tutorial to TheFrugalComputerGuy, I will show a small database in action:

Starting again at the desktop screen:

The activities screen was accessed through the upper left hand hot corner with the mouse:

The Firefox icon (orange, on the left on the dock at the bottom) was clicked:

I went to my favourite search engine, duckduckgo.com:

Search engine opened (in this case www.duckduckgo.com)

… and I searched for “libreoffice base templates”:

I chose the “Templates & Extensions” link, the second link above, at the LibreOffice.org site itself:

I clicked on the green “plus” sign to the right of “Boost your creativity with templates”:

… which led to the following page:

On the left, there are a number of filters under “Add tag filters:”, and clicked on “Base”, bringing up the following page:

I chose the “MyRecipes” template for LibreOffice Base:

I scrolled down to quickly assess the files, finding them eminently interesting for the task at hand:

The download button was clicked, and the file downloaded:

The files program was opened, and the newly downloaded file was highlighted:

The .zip file was double-clicked, creating a directory of the files (ok I accidentally created the directory three times!)

One of the directories was double-clicked and opened:

The “ReadMe.txt” file was double-clicked and opened:

The .odt file was opened as well:

Instructions and general description file checked

The “MyRecipes1.jpg” file was double-clicked, opening a screenshot:

Screenshot of database operating consulted

The FoodPix directory was opened, showing pictures of the recipes in the database:

From the database’s main directory, the database was opened:

After looking about, the “UpdateRecipes” option was selected:

Which opened up one of the recipes:

The database author chose to have an active Pantry list with checkable items, no doubt based at least partly on their recipes; by having it dynamic, when asked to create purchasing lists, the database can exclude pantry items already on hand:

Said shopping lists can be generated from the “1MainMenuSwitchboard” option:

Main menu switchboard created by the author to navigate through their recipes and other functions they programmed

Given that the “switchboard” is based on macros, the Tools pull down menu was opened::

… and the “Options” option was clicked:

“Options” option clicked, opening an options window

The Security option was chosen:

… and the “Macro Security” button was clicked. The security level was set to low, as per the author’s suggestion:

Back to the Switchboard:

The “Mark Recipe List” button was clicked, and I decided to mark three of the recipes:

In trying to close the window, a window asked if I wanted to save my changes, to which I clicked “yes”.

The “Grocery List for Marked Recipes” button was clicked:

Grocery list option chosen from main menu

… producing a grocery list based on the recipes, which was automatically opened in LibreOffice Writer:

Grocery list created for the selected recipes

The next chapter will look at graphics.

October 18, 2024October 18, 2024

Desktop Linux: Unveiled Chapter 6: Upgrading the Operating System

Previous Chapter: Desktop Linux: Unveiled Chapter 5: Gnome Extensions, and Basic File Management

Note: Although it has been a while between posts and I had planned on another subject for what would have been this post, given the time lapse I decided to take advantage of a new version of Fedora that had been released to show how to easily upgrade the OS version, in this case, from version 39 to version 40. Note that many different versions of linux (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc.) have similar functions and upgrade paths; since I began using the automatic upgrade tool in Fedora in about 2018, I have had good experiences.

Firstly, the “Activities” screen happened to open when I logged into the system, and I chose the software icon in the dock on the bottom (the white “shopping bag” with the red, black, and blue symbols):

Which brought up the following screen, telling me that there were general updates, and that a new version of Fedora was available:

The system updates were first chosen and downloaded:

Once the updates were downloaded, the system was ready to be rebooted for installation:

The “Restart & Install” button was chosen to confirm the reboot:

Restart and install updates dialog box opened

The system rebooted:

… and updates were installed:

Once the updates were installed, the system rebooted:

System rebooted after installation of updates

… leading to the login screen:

… where I entered my password:

Once logged in, I clicked on the software icon again in the dock, and chose to download the upgrades for Fedora 40:

Software store opened again, and upgrade packages downloaded (2%)

Once the upgrade packages were downloaded, the “Restart & Upgrade” button was pressed:

All packages downloaded, and Restart and Upgrade button pressed

… which required authentication, so my password was entered:

Authentication required for the major changes

The system asked again if I wanted to restart and Install the upgrade:

Confirmation requested to restart and upgrade the system

The “Restart & Install Upgrade” button was pressed:

Once the upgrade was complete, the computer rebooted:

The login screen came up again:

And again I provided my password:

Once logged in, new artwork for the new version came up, as well as a notification that the system had been upgraded to the new version (in this case, Fedora v.40):

Just to finish off some checks, the menu at the power button was opened, in order to open the settings screen, accessible from the little gear second from the left on top:

The settings were opened:

I noticed that the name of my computer was curiously changed back to “Fedora” in the upgrade:

System renamed after curious change by upgrade

Then I chose the “System Details”, showing that the system had indeed been updated to version 40:

Confirmation that the system had been upgraded to Fedora 40

Next chapter: Using common pieces of desktop software

October 8, 2024January 5, 2025

AI Generated Podcast About my Yoghurt Muffins Post

Note: I suggest that you read my recent post about making yoghurt muffins first for context before reading this post.

This past weekend, my brother decided to play around with the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, using my recent post about making yoghurt muffins as the podcast topic source material.

Here are the results: “Podcast 1“, the first one I listened to and chuckled at throughout (see below), and “Podcast 2“, which is longer than the first, and a slightly different approach (again, see below).

As a reference, according to Wikipedia (here’s my archive), NotebookLM is a tool by Google that has an “audio summary” feature has the “ability to condense complex documents into engaging podcasts”. As referenced in the article, some of the generated podcasts have indeed been making the rounds on at least the media local to me; the samples played on the radio had the “voices” of two artificial “hosts”, one male and one female, and appeared to greatly impress the real radio host. The real human host on the radio then proceeded to create their own samples with the tool using local news items as source material, resulting in stunningly … seemingly accurate (or at least faithful to the source material) content and banter between the two artificial “hosts”. The voices — and banter — of the artificial “hosts” that were created sounded so real that the “hosts” did not sound obviously artificial in almost any, let alone many, of the usual ways that usually betray the artificiality or synthetic nature of the voices. “They” seemed to bypass the Uncanny Valley (here’s my archive) as well, if only because they weren’t associated with artificially-created “speaking” faces or other cues that might suggest that “they” were artificial.

To wit: My brother came up with two podcasts: Podcast1, and Podcast2, based on the blog page about the yoghurt muffins: The first podcast was roughly what I would have expected, based on the samples I’d heard on the radio, in the form of “entertaining” banter from the artificial “hosts” about the overall post and subject, while the second podcast followed a play-by-play style review of the post and its pictures.

Especially while listening to the first, I was often incredulously guffawing at how “seriously” they seemed to be taking the subject, to the point of “their” calling me a perfectionist; despite, uhm, seriously having approached mounting the post with its pictures and processing the photos for presentation, as well as of course maintaining my recipe archive, and again of course being fairly serious on a hobby level about my cooking, for the overall cooking project I have always had a certain laid back, “enjoying the fun” pleasure to mounting the posts. Which, I must admit, intentionally include a lot of photos detailing usually every last step and even micro-step. I would estimate that the “hosts” got it better in the second podcast by calling me meticulous.

The end result of the two podcasts is so good that except for the knowledge that it’s totally AI generated, I would actually believe that the podcast was hosted by real people and put together by real people providing real feedback. As such, I have a few responses to some of the “comments” that the “hosts” made:

Shorter Podcast: (audio here)

I am flattered in a giggly kind of way that the “hosts” underlined the dirty oven window, which I myself had somewhat sheepishly admitted was the case in the original post;
The “hosts” seem to enthusiastically say it’s like a scientific document with no room for error; I would challenge anyone to compare the blog post against the recipe and say that the two are identical. 🙂
For the record: I did not lick the spoon. 🙂
The “hosts” spoke of how much care I took by freezing them … well, I will go into the “easy” column and say both that baking a half batch or a double batch is roughly as easy as a standard batch, and, that I often try to make recipes that are good for the freezer!
And finally … the “hosts”, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, pretty much suggested that I make a blog post on making the morning coffee, ~~which I may just do sometimes in the future~~ which I actually have done. 🙂

Longer Podcast: (audio here)

The “hosts” asked what does “easy” mean in my claim that the muffins are easy to make, such as is it the number of ingredients, the technique, or the cleanup? “They” initially conclude “Let’s find out!” “They” then go on to point out the use of the paper liners, and the reuse of the measuring cup used to measure out the yoghurt to then measure out the oil without cleaning it in between, as examples of the “easy” part.
The “hosts” seem to insinuate at a couple of points that the amounts of sugar and oil used are “generous”, while of course continuing to state that the muffins’ crumb would no doubt be rather moist as a result; yet, when discussing the presence of the yoghurt, the “hosts” wondered whether the yoghurt muffins were just an alternative to the bran muffins I make for my mom, but ultimately seemed to decide that it was obviously a “health angle”. I perceived this as a lack of continuity in the “creation” of the podcast. And to be clear, having adopted this recipe was simply meant to be an alternative to the bran muffins I give to my mom, which is clearly stated at the beginning of the post; further, I am not trying to “match” the sweetness of bran muffins.
The “hosts” say that the kind of yoghurt I use is not identified, ie. firm yoghurt, stirred yoghurt, or greek yoghurt, etc.; “they” are correct that the tub does not say so, at least in the view in the picture. However, “they” do read into it by saying that this lack of information is part of the “easy” claim by letting people trying the recipe to use what they have on hand. Also, “they” did not pick up on the strawberry on the tub as an example of how the “relatively plain” was intentionally a loose interpretation.
The “hosts” say that the kind of oil I used was not identified; again, the photo of the jug plainly says “vegetable oil”, which should tell all bakers that it’s generic vegetable-based cooking oil.

Is this a fun tool? Sure. My brother and I have bandied about ideas — purely in the hypothetical — about using the tool to create large numbers of podcasts that could then be syndicated to AM radio stations for the overnight slot during which a lot of content is often recycled or of what we consider to be of dubious interest.

October 3, 2024December 21, 2024

Making (Simple) (and Relatively) Plain Yoghurt Muffins — Photos

These easy to make muffins are fairly straightforward, tasty, and, despite being labeled as “plain”, the term is used somewhat loosely since the yoghurt used may be any kind of flavoured yoghurt, which will come across lightly but distinctly in the final product. As well, small amounts of fruits or other flavouring agents could be added without substantial changes.

I had originally researched the recipe to allow me to serve a different kind of muffin to my mom, in order to contrast the bran muffins she likes as well; as noted elsewhere, she enjoys the bran muffin recipe I found on the internet more than her own bran muffin recipe.

Note that this yoghurt muffin recipe lends itself well to half batches (one egg only), as well as easy and quick baking in countertop toaster-ovens.

Update 20241008: Using the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, two podcasts were produced about this post, and, I made a blog entry about the podcasts. Podcast1 Podcast2

Making the muffins:

First, the oven was pre-heated to 350F:

A tray of muffin moulds, and correspondingly sized paper liners, were taken out:

Muffin moulds and paper liners taken out

The moulds were each lined with paper muffin liners:

The lined baking tray was put aside, and a mixing bowl, a spoon, and a fork were taken out:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The measuring cup was filled with flour:

The flour was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Sugar was taken out, and the measuring cup was taken out again:

Sugar was measured out:

The sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour:

Sugar transferred to mixing bowl with flour

Baking powder and measuring spoons were taken out:

Baking powder and measuring spoons taken out

Baking powder was measured out:

The baking powder was added to the flour and sugar in the mixing bowl:

Salt and measuring spoons were taken out:

Salt was measured out:

The salt added to the flour, sugar, and baking powder:

Using the fork, the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt were thoroughly mixed:

Flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt thoroughly mixed with fork

A tub of yoghurt and a measuring cup were taken out:

Yoghurt was measured out:

The yoghurt was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt:

Yoghurt transferred to bowl of flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt

Yoghurt transferred to bowl of flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, with spoon added

Vegetable oil was taken out, and the measuring cup used for the yoghurt was reused, without needing to clean it since I’d only just used it moments before for the yoghurt :

Vegetable oil and measuring cup taken out

The vegetable oil was measured out:

The vegetable oil was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and yoghurt:

Eggs were taken out:

The eggs were cracked into the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, yoghurt, and vegetable oil:

All the ingredients were mixed together with a spoon:

… creating a thick paste dough:

The muffin mould tray prepared earlier was taken out:

The dough was spooned into the paper muffin moulds:

The filled muffin tray was placed in the preheated oven:

A timer was set to 21 minutes:

Looking through the oven window (which admittedly could use a cleaning!), the muffins began to rise:

Muffins baking and tops beginning to brown

While the muffins were baking, cooling racks were taken out:

After the timer ran out and the muffins had baked, the muffins were taken out of the oven, and the tray placed on a cutting board:

The muffins were transferred from the muffin tray moulds to the cooling racks to cool down:

Freshly baked muffins transferred to the cooling racks

A yummy fresh muffin was served to my mom with another mini-muffin, with the paper linings removed:

… and the rest of the cooled muffins were placed in a sealable freezer bag, to be placed in the freezer:

Cooled muffins placed in a sealable freezer bag

Yummy!

August 20, 2024October 18, 2024

Desktop Linux: Unveiled Chapter 5: Gnome Extensions, and Basic File Management

Previous Chapter: Desktop Linux Unveiled : Chapter 4: Installing Linux

In this chapter, Gnome Extensions will be briefly discussed, and basic file transfers and manipulation will be highlighted.

Gnome Extensions

Gnome was designed to be extensible, or have its behaviour be changed with extensions. There are hundreds of extensions, most produced by volunteer programmers.

Launch Firefox from the dock at the bottom of the screen (the icon at the left). Firefox will launch, leading to the Fedora Project main page (a setting you may wish to keep, or change at a later time.)

In the navigation bar, enter the site https://extensions.gnome.org. (Some distributions may manage extensions locally; Fedora has opted to only do so partially.)

Click on the link “Click here to install browser extensions”, which will eventually allow for the installation of the Gnome Shell integration tool.

Click on “Add”:

I recommend that you click on “Allow this extension to run in Private Windows” and press “okay”.

As of when the following screenshot was taken, here is page one of the available extensions, along with a brief description:

To install an extension that interests you, click on the black switch that will be set to “Off”.

Click on “Install”:

Sometimes, an extension will be incompatible with the current version of Gnome, and the page will say as much:

When you have selected all the extensions which interest you, close Firefox:

Basic file manipulation:

Starting from the main screen, click on the activities bar in the upper left hand corner:

… leading to the activities screen, with the dock:

Click on the blue rectangle meant to resemble a filing cabinet, in the centre.

For convenience, I moved the window to the left, and it “snapped” to take up half the screen:

The activities screen was accessed again, to access the dock, and right-clicking on the file manager icon:

Choose “New Window”, in order to launch a second file manager window:

The size and location of the second window were adjusted in order to have a second window on the right:

Before moving on, I am going to point out that I personally like file listings with full information; however, files can be displayed with previews (the following shots were taken after the following operations were completed):

By hovering the pointer over a button with four blocks in it, you can toggle between lists and icons:

Clicking on the icon will change the filenames to icon size:

Hovering over the same square icon can revert to a list view.

At this point, you can insert a USB key with some files or a backup, or a CD/DVD drive, or a portable USB hard drive.

In this case, I decided to copy some files from the computer hosting my website, and some file backups. Clicking on “+ Other Locations” reveals, as per the window on the right, access to other computers accessible to your computer:

I entered into the address bar at the bottom of the window the address of my website, and telling the file manager to use the ssh protocol to securely access the location:

As part of the initial connection, my computer asked me to confirm if I wanted the connection, since it was the first time this instance was connecting to my website. Should you get such a challenge, click on “Log In Anyway”:

My website server presented an authentication challenge:

I entered my username and password, chose “Remember password until you logout”, and clicked on “Connect” (you may choose either of the two other options, at your discretion):

Once there, I navigated to a directory with some photos from a past birthday celebration for my grandmother:

Wishing to copy all the files on my server (on the right) over to the computer (on the left), the first file was selected by clicking on it …

… and then scrolling down to the bottom of the file list, and while pressing on the CTRL key, clicking on the last:

Instead of drag and drop, I right clicked my mouse over the right …

… which opened a contextual menu, in which I chose to create a folder, leading to the opening of a dialog:

A name for a new directory, in this case reflecting that it was from my grandmother’s birthday one year, was entered into the dialogue, and the directory was created:

The previously selected files on my server were transferred via “drag and drop” to the newly created directory:

A photo was selected, and a right click opened a contextual menu, offering a number of options. The first, “Open With Image Viewer”, was selected …

… opening the selected photo.

On the local machine, I clicked on “Home” …

… then on “Documents”, while on my server, I navigated to another directory where I chose a PDF document:

This time, I used a right-clicked contextual menu on my server side to chose “Copy To” to copy the document over to my local machine.

The file was then selected, and a contextual menu (right click) was opened, which offered “Open with Document Viewer”:

… opening up the document, in this case about how to make a backwoods washing machine:

Again on my server, I navigated to another directory, this time in my backups:

… and selected another file to transfer, in this case, a spreadsheet:

The spreadsheet was dragged and dropped onto the local machine:

Recognizing the file extension as that of an OpenDocument spreadsheet file, LibreOffice was launched:

… and the file was opened, in this case, for a table of prices for a number of items I sell at a flea market near my cottage:

Back to the file transfers, a video file in a directory with pictures and videos of my cat was selected …

… and dragged and dropped over to the local machine, and the file selected and right clicked, revealing a contextual menu, allowing for the opening of the video file:

The Gnome Videos player was opened; since the relevant codec had not been installed in the base install, Videos asked if it should attempt to install the codec, which it proposed might be available in the software repositories:

The “Find in Software” button was clicked, leading to the following window:

The required codec (“GStreamer Multimedia Codecs – H.264”) was chosen for installation; once installed, a video of my cat, playing with a feather toy, was shown:

Another file, another spreadsheet, was selected on my server …

… and dragged over to the new setup:

Using a right click contextual menu, the new selected file was opened:

… revealing my shopping plans for a large amount of soup I was going to cook for a community meal:

Another file, a text file, was selected on my server …

… and dragged over to the new setup:

Using a right click contextual menu, the new selected file was opened:

… and a text editor window opened up with the text file:

Many other things can be done with the file manager, including launching template documents in a click if templates have been placed in a templates directory.

Next Chapter:

Chapter 6: Upgrading the Operating System

March 27, 2024December 22, 2024

Making Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Squares — Photos

This decadently rich and scrumptious dessert is another relatively new addition to my collection of recipes. Mom loves it!

Making the squares:

Before beginning, some cream cheese was taken out of the fridge and put on the counter to warm up to room temperature:

Cream cheese taken out before beginning in order to soften it

Parchment paper and an 8″ baking pan were taken out:

Parchment paper and baking pan taken out

A parchment paper larger than the baking pan was torn off the roll …

… and the baking pan was lined with the parchment paper, with a little bit left over the edges of the pan:

The pan was put aside for a few moments, and a countertop convection oven was set to 325F and turned on:

Graham cracker crumbs were taken out:

A cup and a half of graham cracker crumbs were measured out:

The graham cracker crumbs were transferred to a mixing bowl:

Graham cracker crumbs transferred to mixing bowl

Margarine was taken out:

Margarine was scooped out of the tub:

The margarine was placed in a bowl, previously placed on the scale and the tare set to zero:

The margarine was melted in the microwave oven, 15 seconds at a time:

Margarine being melted 15 seconds at a time in microwave oven

Once fully melted, the margarine was taken out of the microwave oven:

Melted margarine taken out of the microwave oven

The melted margarine was poured over the graham cracker crumbs in the mixing bowl:

Melted margarine poured over graham cracker crumbs

An electric blender was taken out and used to fully mix the graham cracker crumbs and the melted margarine:

Graham cracker crumbs and melted margarine mixed with electric blender

The baking pan with the parchment paper lining was brought back and the fully blended graham cracker crumbs and melted margarine were transferred to the baking pan.

Graham cracker mix transferred to baking pan

The graham cracker mix was flattened with an egg flipper:

Graham cracker mix flattened with an egg flipper

The baking pan with the graham cracker crust was placed in the pre-heated countertop oven:

A timer was set for six minutes:

While the graham cracker crust was baking, a cooling rack was taken out (and placed on my stove):

After baking for six minutes, the graham cracker crust was taken out of the oven and placed on the cooling rack:

Graham cracker crust placed on cooling rack

Another bowl was placed in the scale and the tare set to zero:

Small bowl placed on scale and scale set to zero

More margarine was taken out and measured out:

The mixing bowl had been washed while the graham cracker base was baking, and the margarine was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Margarine transferred to clean mixing bowl

Brown sugar and a measuring cup were taken out:

The brown sugar was measured out:

The brown sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the margarine:

Table sugar and a measuring spoon were taken out:

Table sugar was measured out and poured into the mixing bowl with the brown sugar and margarine:

Salt was taken out and measured out:

The salt was added to the mixing bowl with the two kinds of sugar and margarine:

Vanilla extract and a measuring spoon were taken out:

The vanilla extract was measured out and added to the mixing bowl with the two kinds of sugar, margarine, and salt:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The flour was measured out:

The flour was transferred to the bowl with the two kinds of sugar, margarine, salt, and vanilla extract:

Two kinds of chocolate chips were taken out:

Half a cup of milk chocolate chips were measured out:

Half a cup of milk chocolate chips measured out

… and half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips were measured out:

Half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips measured out

The chocolate chips were added to the mixing bowl with the other ingredients:

A hand held electric mixer was taken out and the ingredients mixed to make a powdery dough:

The cookie dough was transferred to another bowl and put aside:

Cookie dough transferred to another bowl

Cookie dough transferred to another bowl and put aside

The package of cream cheese placed on the counter earlier to warm up to room temperature was taken out and opened with a pair of scissors:

The cream cheese was transferred to the mixing bowl, the latter of which again was washed in between mixing jobs.

The table sugar was taken out again and measured out:

The table sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the cream cheese:

The electric mixer was taken out again to cream the cream cheese and table sugar together:

Eggs were taken out:

The egg was cracked into the bowl with the cream cheese and sugar:

Egg cracked in bowl with cream cheese and sugar

Vanilla extract was taken out again:

The vanilla extract was measured out and was added to the bowl with the cream cheese, sugar, and egg:

The egg and vanilla extract were mixed into the cream cheese and sugar:

Egg and vanilla extract mixed into cream cheese and sugar

The now-cooled graham cracker crumb base was taken out:

Cooled graham cracker crumb base taken out

The cream cheese mix was transferred on top of the graham cracker crumb crust:

The cream cheese mix was spread evenly over the graham cracker crumb crust:

Cream cheese mix spread evenly over base

The chocolate chip cookie dough was taken out:

A bit of the cookie dough was picked up in my hand …

… and the ball of dough was flattened between my two hands:

The flattened cookie dough was placed on top of the cream cheese mix:

Flattened cookie dough placed on top of cream cheese mix

… and repeated with more cookie dough:

Flattened cookie dough pieces placed on top of cream cheese mix

… until all the cookie dough was used and the whole surface of the cream cheese mix was covered:

Flattened cookie dough pieces fully covering cream cheese mix

The baking pan was placed in the still-hot countertop convection oven:

A timer was set for 30 minutes:

After the 30-minute baking period, the baking pan was taken out of the oven and placed on a cooling rack:

Once the dessert had cooled enough, it was removed from the baking pan using the edges of the parchment paper:

The dessert was first cut in half:

The dessert was cut into quarters:

The dessert was rotated 90 degrees, and sliced just left of centre (so that it can be cut five ways):

Dessert rotated and sliced left of centre

The slicing of dessert was completed (five slices along this axis), making twenty (20) pieces:

And a yummy piece of dessert was served!