Using Torn paper brushes

Select the brush from the toolbox
Set the correct size! (beyond 100px)
Set gradient either as FG to BG or FG to Transparent.
Click multiple times to "tear" the edge off.

Importing Photoshop Brushes into Gimp

Download brushes (maybe unzip)
Move file into <gimpDirectory>\Share\gimp\2.0\brushes 

Found on: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/ss/install-photoshop-brushes.htm

How to drag a cell in OO Calc

How to drag a cell in OO Calc

Calc is much clumsier than Excel in this regard. You can only drag areas which are highlighted (black); you drag them by clicking and dragging the black area. 

The trick with a single cell is to get it selected: you have to click, drag out of the cell (now two cells turn black), then drag back into the first cell, and now you have a single black cell you can drag to another location. Remember to drag by clicking in the black area, not on the border like Excel.

You can also click on the cell, then Shift+click to select it (black), then drag it--but it's easier just to do it all with the mouse, since you're going to drag it anyway.

Edit: Note: OOo version 3 or later uses a transparent blue highlighting, instead of the plain black, reverse video-style highlighting.

Found here: https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12466

How to add a transparent background to an image in gimp

I would need to make it a little more watermark like before I could use it as a background image otherwise it could make it hard to discern any text on the page. To turn the image into a “watermark” I’d need to make it partially transparent by altering the image’s opacitysetting in GIMP. Here’s how to do that:

• open the image with GIMP,
• use the top menu bar to browse the Windows menu and move your cursor downwards to Dockable Dialogues then select Layers. Alternatively, press Ctrl+L,
• the Layers dialogue box has an Opacity slider control. Ensure your image is highlighted then move the slider to your desired opacity level (50% is generally good enough),
• next we flatten the image by right-clicking over the image, moving the cursor to Image then selecting Flatten Image. We do this to ensure that the opacity is preserved when we save the image as a jpeg, gif or png etc.
• Voila! Save the image.

Taken from http://journalxtra.com/easyguides/how-to-make-a-semi-transparent-image-using-gimp/#Make-a-Complete-Image-Semi-Transparent