Ahmed Dawn YouTube Banner Refresh | Ahmed Dawn Website Banner Refresh

Ahmed Dawn Dot Come Banner & YouTube Banner Redesign

Not exactly sure when I had my last banner designed, but it’s been a few years and it’s time to refresh. My current banner was nice and visually pleasing, but I wanted to have something similar, but better.

I put up a work order on a freelancer site and within less than an hour I received 50 designers interested in work. It was difficult to pick, so it took me some time. But after sorting through all the responses, I decided to hire two designers for different perspectives.

I mentioned that I want a banner similar to my current one with different elements and designing. The 1st designer seemed to get it and sent me a beautiful new banner that I liked right away. However, the 2nd designer kept sending me something totally different and I had difficulty explaining what I wanted to him.

After some corrections and communicating back and forth, I decided on the 1st designer’s banner. The 2nd designer failed to come up with anything I liked, so I sent him what the 1st designer did and asked him to change the background picture only. The reason I chose two designers was because I knew one of them would not be up to what I was looking for.

Finally, after copying the 1st designer, the 2nd designer was able to come up with something I like, although he kept making mistakes and I had to correct him many times.

I am posting both designs here, so you can see what they look like. I will be using both designs and will change them back and forth.

I have no plan to change the banner any time soon, but who knows? Maybe after 3 or 4 years I might want something different – we will see.

Kindle Paperwhite: First Impressions and If It’s Worth the Cost

My First Kindle Paperwhite – Why I Bought An eReader

I donated 75% of my paper books a decade ago and have been sluggish about reading books since then. Most of my reading materials now are online. I attempted to read paper books every now and then, but it was unsuccessful because I felt weird reading something that is not a screen.

I saw people reading eReaders, but kept putting myself off buying one for the various excuses that my mind came up with. Finally, I forced myself to buy an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite to start a new tutorial series on my A Dawn YouTube Channel and my experience has been phenomenal so far.

I like the idea that I can take as many books as I want with me anywhere I go. This feature alone would be a huge plus for getting an eBook reader. Another big difference I noticed is that reading a book on an eReader (rather than a tablet or laptop) is that the screen mimics a paper page and is glare free. It doesn’t hurt the eyes and doesn’t feel like I am looking at a device screen.

The Amazon Kindle ecosystem offers overwhelming volumes of book options and a lot of them are actually free. My Kindle Paperwhite 11th Gen even synced all my eBooks that I bought many years ago and forgot about.

I liked my Kindle Paperwhite so much that I am planning to get another eReader, a Kobo Libra 2, which has a different ecosystem. One big advantage the Kobo has is that you can borrow a book from the Toronto Public Library and directly download it to your Kobo device without stepping foot in the library.

I will be sharing more posts about my Kindle and Kobo experiences on my YouTube Channel and on this site.

How to Cancel Your Spotify Account | How to Delete Your Spotify Account

How to Permanently Delete Your Spotify Account | How to Cancel A Spotify Premium Subscription

I used to love Spotify in the past. The Spotify app on my Smartphone was easy to use and it was a breeze to switch my music, artist, or playlist. However, these days I find it to be no longer user friendly. So if you want to cancel or remove Spotify from your phone or tablet, for whatever reason, here is a simple guide to do so.

How to Cancel Spotify Premium

If you have had enough of paying for Premium and want to stop paying, follow these steps:

- From Profile go to Account

- Go to Your Plan

- Go to Change Plan

- Choose Cancel Premium

How to Permanently Delete Your Spotify Account

There are different steps to follow to cancel a Spotify free plan and premium plan. Let’s look at both one by one.

How To Permanently Delete A Spotify Account If You Have Free Plan

- You have to go to the Support page and Spotify made it difficult to find their Support page from the Spotify website. You can search on Google for “Spotify Support” or here is the link: https://support.spotify.com/

- Enter close account in the search box on the Support page and go from there

How To Permanently Delete Your Spotify Account If You Have a Premium Plan

- You have to speak with Spotify customer support.

- Check their contact page. You may need to message them first to get a hold of a live person.

- Last time I checked, Spotify made it very difficult call them directly, as I couldn’t find any phone number.

Why I Bought My Surface 4 Intel Core i7 - 32GB Memory - 1TB SSD

Buying My New Laptop Microsoft Surface 4

I have been using my current laptop, an ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX370UA, for over 4 years. It still works and runs perfectly, but got notoriously slow for video editing. After researching a few other brands, I decided to go with Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 4.

Other brands that came close on my list are Lenovo and Dell, but I found it hard to pick one that offered 32 Gig RAM with an i7 processor and 1 TB space. Lenovo had one that came very close, but it was bulky and the price was not reasonable.

I was thinking of bumping up my RAM power to 32GB RAM from my old Asus Zenbook’s 16GB RAM. I chose 32GB RAM and a 15-inch screen, so it's slightly bigger than my Asus Zenbook’s 13.5 inch.

32GB of RAM costs $2849.99 (SALE saves CAD $300) before taxes. 16GB of RAM costs $2149.99 (SALE saves CAD $200) before taxes. These are Intel Core i7 processors. So, I paid $700 more just to get higher RAM and in the world of video editing this can make a big difference.

So far, everything has been going smooth with my new Surface 4. This is a sleek, skinny laptop that shows it is high end and performance-wise I can feel the difference in extra RAM power. I converted to Windows 11 from Windows 10 and it runs even better now.

My expectation is that my Surface 4 will serve me at least 5 years and anything beyond that is a bonus. What I have noticed is that these days computer and phone manufacturers make products in such a way that they don’t break but get so slow that it’s no longer usable – forcing consumers to buy new ones.

I am sharing my Surface 4 experience on my YouTube Channel here:

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 | Tips, Tricks, & The Basics

How to Use Google Pixel Camera’s Magic Eraser

How to use the Magic Eraser on the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro

Google Pixel phones are known for their excellent cameras and the latest version of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro take it further, offering professional grade photo editing in a snap.

Magic Eraser lets you remove or erase unwanted subjects on your picture by just rubbing it with your finger. Photo editing to remove something you don’t want could not have been easier than this.

Most of the times Magic Eraser works just fine. I noticed sometimes a minor hue or shadow of the removed object remains, but it’s not very obvious and hard to see.

When I created the video below, I tried removing a cork ball behind an apple. It worked fine, but if you look closely you may see some faded white leftover – but it’s really hard to see. On some pictures it worked very well – without leaving any trace.

How to Use Magic Eraser On Pixel 6 Phones

To use Magic Eraser, take a picture as you regularly would, then:

- Click on Edit
- Look underneath Enhance – Dynamic – Warm, where you will find another set of options like Suggestions – Crop – Tools
- Click on Tools and you will see Magic Erase and click on it
- Now choose what you want to remove and rub it with your finger
- Once you are satisfied, click Done and then Save.

Magic Eraser is currently available only on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. I hope Google will put this amazing feature on other Pixel phones as well. For step-by-step instructions on how to use Magic Eraser, please watch the video mentioned above.