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Windows Spotlight/Bing wallpaper info

Windows Spotlight Ever since Windows 10 introduced Spotlight—the backgrounds that you see on the lock screen when you log in to Windows 10 (and above), I've wanted to get the ones I like and put them in my fave wallpapers folder. Thing is, getting these images and their info can be a bit of a challenge. The simplest way is, before logging in, you can try hovering your cursor over the "Like what you see?" text on the upper right of the screen. If you're lucky, you'd be shown a clickable info like this: Click on that link and, once you're logged in, Microsoft Edge browser will take you to a Bing image search results page where the image can be (if you're lucky) and you can download from there. End of story. But this is a hit-or miss thing (in this case, the result wasn't the exact image but it looks better though). Also, depending on your windows set up, you might not see this link. If you don't have this link, don't worry, you can hunt down for ...
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Queen City Cebu logo makeover

Two years ago I came up with a logo for Queen City Cebu , featuring the Magellan's Cross landmark. But it was pretty staid, I should say. Now we have this: Coupled with occasional cosmetic treatments, it's more fun and lively, more appropriate for a fun oriented page. The funny thing is that I originally made this as a placeholder for a photo-post mockup in 2019 (the original brief was for something precolonial but nothing came of it), using the old technique of making shapes from letterforms (in this case, turning 'QCC' into a crown resembling that of the Sto. Niño's (minus the surmounting cross). Now no one remembers the old logo. 😉 I also employed making shapes from letterforms in the " Ayy, Ang Cute! " (another Facebook page) profile pic:

T-shirt mockup template for Inkscape (SVG)

As an avid Inkscape user, I've always wanted SVG t-shirt mockup templates. But, most often, the commonly available ones for download are for Photoshop (PSD) or Illustrator (AI). I currently can't afford an Adobe subscription so I'm sticking with open source apps (Inkscape, Gimp or Krita). So, back in July, I decided to make an SVG t-shirt mockup template, based on a tutorial (for GIMP) by Irfan Prastiyanto . Making one is just getting an image of a white t-shirt (one with slight shadows to show contours is good) and then, through the use of clipping paths, layers, and blending modes, be able to change the color to the one you want. Here's how it looks: To change the t-shirt color, just select the group on the 'color' layer and change its fill. To change the design, just make your own in the 'design' layer or import an SVG, PDF, or a PNG file (with transparent background) into the 'design' layer. There's also a 'heather texture' effec...

Queen City of the South, Cebu logo

Two years ago I was assigned to design the website logo of QueenCityCebu.com , a popular Facebook page on all things fun to do in Cebu. The original Facebook page profile pic is the one below (actual size), and my boss wanted a similar "crowny" feel to the new logo: I'm a sucker for symbols. Aside from the Sto. Niño, the second most obiquitous symbol for Cebu is the Magellan's Cross  shrine/chapel, as can be seen in the Cebu City seal (the pûsô  is probably the third): Since I'm lazy, I decided to go via the Magellan's Cross route. I wanted to combine the Magellan's Cross chapel with a shape that recalls one of those bulbous European crowns, like the Spanish royal crown ( corona tumular )– which is a bit appropriate, Cebu having been the first major area to be under the Spaniards in their conquest of these islands (and the corona tumular resembles that in some depictions of the Sto. Niño): Ellis Manuel Mendez' personal replica at Fli...

Quick AdWords keyword match formatting in Google Docs and Excel

If you often work on AdWords text ads, you'll like this little spreadsheet that will make the keyword matching tags automatically for you. As you know, the matching convention for keywords is: Exact Match Phrase Match Modified Broad Match [this is a keyword] "this is a keyword" +this +is +a +keyword Imagine how tiresome doing this would be, for every word, if you have hundreds of keywords (or search terms). Here's a Google spreadsheet that will do this for you: Keyword Match Tagger . You just paste your search terms (one search term per line) on the "Keyword" column, and the other columns will populate with the keyword matching tags which you can then copy to your own spreadsheet. If you pasted in keywords with duplicates, those will be highlighted in red. Since modified broad match does not consider the order of the words in a search term, the "MMB Duplicate Detector" column will rearrange the words alphabetically in a search term and highl...

Logo for a quilting business (Inkscape)

A friend requested a logo for her home quilting business named QuiltDat! (The spelling, I was told, is a Louisiana thing.) No color specified, no style specified. I like this kind of design challenge – you're basically free to come up with your take on the business name and no pressure for perfection (no time limits, although I think they wanted this quick). The risk, though, is that those who requested it may not like your design. Collaboration is still the best way to design a logo since the ones who will end up using the logo know their business and usually know what they want (or, at least, will have no one else to blame if the design turns out bad since they were in on it). Here's the logo (no color decisions yet – they like the yellow one over gray, although I meant for this to be like Japanese family crests or kamon/mon , where it's usually white or light colored over a darker colored background): It represents a "sunrise" letter 'Q' using q...