Like most games in Facebook, Cafe World is very easy to understand. The game starts with you being given a cafe to manage. You start out with a stove, a counter, a few tables, and an employee. When you click the stove, a cookbook will open indicating the dishes that you can cook at the level you are in. Once you decide on a dish, you continue to click the stove until the image indicates the amount of time it will take until the dish is cooked. Afterwards, you will be asked to click on the stove to serve the food. This will trigger your character, the cook, to bring it to the counter so that your waiter can start serving the dish. To be able to find out how many servings you have left, you place the mouse pointer on the counter. Those are the basic things you need to know to be able to serve a dish.

I like this game because you can design the cafe any way you want. You can go crazy with the decoration you can use. A friend of mine designed his cafe with a Moroccan theme. Let your creativity flow. The only thing that will limit you is the cash you have which you also use for buying a dish before you can cook it. It is fairly easy to earn money in Cafe World so this should not be a problem.

Another thing why I like Cafe World is because I imagine cooking, and eating, some of these dishes that sound so appetizing. Just thinking of dishes like Lemon Butter Lobster, Atomic Buffalo Wings, and Triple Berry Cheesecake makes my mouth water.

So if you haven’t yet, try out Cafe World and start cooking.

Cheers!

One of the problems I have with this borrowed camera is that when it is too bright, tiny dots appear on the lens which also appear on the pictures.  The reason for this has actually been explained to me but right now I can’t remember what it was.  Anyway, my problem was how to fix the pictures.

I just started using GIMP, so don’t laugh when I tell you that the image editor I used before was Paint.  I don’t really know what terms like saturate, color balance and layers mean.  For me Paint is enough to modify the image attributes like when I need to resize a photo.

After asking an expert, I learned that it’s actually very easy “fix” photos in GIMP.  All I needed to use is the Heal Tool (Tools > Paint Tools > Heal).

In this example, I was working on a photo in Grayscale mode.

Notice the encircled black dot? There are also several noticeable dots on the picture. So what I need to do is to look for a part of the photo that I can use to overlap those dots. I pressed the CTRL key while clicking on that part that I want to use to cover the dot with. Then, I clicked on the dot, this time without pressing the CTRL key to erase the dot. It is simple, just like Copy – Paste, right?!

So there you go. Here’s the finished product.

P.S.
I also learned how to create a custom brush. Check out my signature on that finished photo. I’ll provide the tutorial link later.

Here are other photos that I enjoyed editing.

I know, I know… The photos need a lot of improvement but that initial attempt might have opened up the field of graphic design for me. I just took one quick peek. Perhaps there’s something for me there.

I was initially excited when I changed themes, from Coffeecup to Arthemia. When I saw this theme last year on a client’s website, I started picturing my own blog and how it will look once I use this theme. I finally decided to change my theme on June, unfortunately I was hired for a 30-hour-a-week project that I simply had no time to fill this up with content. I left the blog on maintenance mode since then.

Fast-forward to three months later, I remembered that I still need to update my blog. I changed my blog title to Whiteboard, and promised myself that I will finally organize my posts. That’s why I like how the categories on this theme works. I’m not the most organized writer, in fact my blogs are all over the web, my posts are usually uncategorized so Arthemia will force me to organize my articles. After all, I can always use this as part of my portfolio when I apply for projects in Odesk.

I also realized that I need to practice writing once more. I am currently writing a screenplay for another project and my hiatus on blog-writing has slightly affected my productivity. I still have a lot of content to post and perhaps some retouches must be done which means brushing up on HTML and studying CSS. All of a sudden my To-Do-list is full! Learning something new is always exciting, don’t you think?

I have a mean streak. For more than 10 years, I have been providing customer service, that I know how service should be delivered. As a customer, I make sure that I get the service that I am paying for. It’s not that I’m intentionally being mean, but don’t you just hate it when you get stupid answers?

I can’t deliver a joke. A LOL-worthy joke is wasted on me. Apparently I don’t know how to build up a joke all the way to its punch line. That’s why I have this wry (read: sarcastic) sense of humor.

The caffeine is starting to lose its effect, yet I’m still knee-deep in work. This is what happens when you procrastinate.

I’m trying to remember the html programming I’ve studied years back and trying my hand at php programming which is a lot similar or completely the same with html, I’m not sure yet.

The domain dotbiz (.biz) actually stands for business. So I will try my best to steer clear of topics on love and relationships, which I think I’m actually good at, and will be posting about the latest in technology, gadgets, travel, food, etc.. and that is definitely a challenge. Another challenge is updating this site often, otherwise Mr. Administrator might kick me out.

Hmm… maybe you can give me ideas for my posts. Email me: chini@paglalakbay.biz.