how to

How To Prepare a Mango

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Mango is the “King of Fruits” and definitely brings a taste of the exotic to the table.

It’s not the easiest fruit to prepare, being so juicy it tends to slip and jump out of your hands. There is a better way.

I will show you how to prepare a mango with the minimum of fuss and mess. This method will help you extract the most flesh from your ready to eat ripe mango and keep the juice from escaping all over you and the kitchen!

Follow these easy steps and you’ll look like a professional mango connoisseur.

  • Wash your Mango
  • Leave the skin intact
  • Hold the Mango so the pointed lower part of the mango is facing you and the top pointed upper part is facing away from you
  • With a sharp knife slice the right hand side of the mango.
  • Repeat on the other side. You should now have three separate bits of mango. Set the middle core section aside for now but do not discard.
  • With the same sharp knife, score vertically across the flesh of one segment, but do not cut through the skin.
  • Using the same segment, score horizontally across the flesh. Again, do not cut through the skin.
  • Turn the mango over so the skin is facing you and turn the mango inside out – pushing with all your fingers (see image below)

You should now have something that looks like this

Follow my steps to easily prepare your mango
Follow my steps to easily prepare your mango
  • Using your knife, cut off the raised segments into a bowl. Discard skin.
  • Repeat above on the second half of mango segment

To remove the flesh from the core

  • Using your knife, slice either side of the main core so you have two thin strips. Carefully remove the skin from these strips and chop into chunks.
  • Discard the skin and main core
Minimal mess and lots of sweet mango pieces to enjoy.
No mess and lots of sweet mango pieces to enjoy.

Functions in Pages that are different on the iPad and Mac

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Apple’s Pages is their equivalent to Microsoft’s Word and is available on both the iPad and Mac. You may have discovered a few differences on how to achieve the same result or thought that some options are just not available. However, some of the functions in Pages can be accessed a different way depending on what device you are using.

Here are a couple of functions in Pages that are different on the iPad and Mac and how you can still access them by navigating to them a slightly different way.

HOW TO LOCK AND UNLOCK OBJECTS

Sometimes you need to lock or unlock an object such as a photo so that it does not move and stays in a certain area in your document – for example the object moves with text or the text wraps around the object.

Mac version

  1. Select one or more objects, then tap the brush icon
  2. Click Arrange, then click Lock. If you don’t see Lock then the object is probably set to Move with Text. To turn that off – Click Wrap and turn off the Move with Text option.

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How to make Lace in Photoshop

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I thought I’d try to make some lace in Photoshop and then define it as a brush preset so that I can stroke a path around some material to make a lace edge. I’m using Photoshop CS5.

Open a new Document – File → New Document and set the workspace to 270 x 270 px.

Next, select the Custom Shape Tool

In the options bar, click the Polygon options menu and check smooth corners, star and smooth indents boxes. Change the indent sides by to 10% and the number of sides to 12.

Set the foreground color to black and then drag your mouse so that the polygon shape fits within the document.

Polygon Shape
Polygon Shape

Pick the Ellipse tool and ensure that paths is selected on the options bar. Draw an elliptical path inside the polygon shape.

Select the brush tool and pick a hard round brush. Set it’s size to 20 px and its spacing to 180%.

Create a new layer above the polygon layer. Set the foreground color to white. Select the ellipse tool and click on the Paths tab. Drop down the pop out menu and select stroke path. Choose Brush from the menu and the simulate pressure box remains unchecked. Click OK and you should now see the following image.

After stroking the path you should now have a circle of white dots.
After stroking the path you should now have a circle of white dots.

Check that the ellipse tool is still selected and draw a smaller path in the middle of the polygon. Select the brush tool again and change the size to 7 px. Spacing should be set to 150%. In the preview you should see a smaller chain of dots.

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How to make realistic rivets in Photoshop

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I decided to try my hand at making some realistic looking rivets in Photoshop and share the steps here so you can go ahead and make some too.

I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS5. So if you’re ready, open up Photoshop and get ready to learn how to make realistic rivets that can be used on many things.

Start by opening up a new file.

File → New. As this is a test document set the size to the following dimensions:-

Set up your file using these dimensions
Set up your file using these dimensions

Double click the background layer to unlock it.

Fill the space with either a pattern or a style of your choosing.

Add a new layer. Check the color you have set as the foreground and change it to a grey color. I used #a3a0a8.

With the new layer active, select the Ellipse Tool and drag the mouse to make four circles near the edge of your pattern. They will autofill with your selected foreground color. You may want to make a new layer per circle so that you can move them about in your scene, especially if you want to line them up one under each other. To make a perfect circle don’t forget to hold down the shift key as you drag the mouse.

They don’t look much like rivets just yet so we’re going to add some effects to these flat looking circles to make them stand out and add some shine.

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