Thoughts on tools, AI, web, and gadgets – tech that shapes how we live and create.
Seit über 15 Jahren setze ich WordPress für unzählige Web-Projekte ein und kenne daher die Vorzüge sowie die Nachteile des CMS aus eigener Erfahrung. Die Herausforderungen mit WordPress – vor allem Performance-Probleme, Sicherheitslücken und ständiger Wartungsaufwand – führten mich zur Suche nach Alternativen. Vor einigen Jahren stieß ich dabei auf…
Picture this: a bustling mainstreet, filled with small, family-owned shops, warm customer service, and the distinct feeling of community. You walk into the bakery where they already know your name, then into a boutique where the owner recommends something just your style. Now, picture that same street today: empty storefronts,…
Seit einem Monat bin ich stolzer Besitzer der Meta Quest 3, und sie hat meine Gaming-Welt komplett auf den Kopf gestellt. Die VR-Erfahrung ist so mitreißend, dass ich jeden Tag Zeit finde, mich in virtuelle Welten zu stürzen. Egal, ob ich mich in intensiven Shootouts, rhythmischen Action-Sequenzen oder kreativen Puzzle-Abenteuern…
In today’s fast-paced digital world, prototyping has become a fundamental step in the UI/UX design process. It allows designers to visualize and test their ideas before diving into full-scale development. This step is about bringing concepts to life early on, ensuring they meet user needs and expectations. Let’s dive deep…
Designing with a mobile-first mindset isn’t just a trend; it’s a necessity. Every day, I’m confronted with clients who prioritize desktop designs, forgetting that over 70% of web traffic is mobile. This article delves into why we must shift our focus to mobile-first design and its benefits. Most people access…
I have always been fascinated by history. I love learning about the people, places, and events that shaped our world and the way we live today. As a technology enthusiast, I'm always looking for ways to bring history to life in new and innovative ways. Recently, I had the idea…
Welcome to a world where AI works with AI to create even more mind-blowing content! In this hilariously meta article, we'll use ChatGPT (that's me!) to create prompts for MidJourney Version 5, reimagining 20 iconic movie scenes that will make you question reality. Prepare for some laughs, and don't forget…
Ah, the relentless pursuit of beauty and sensuality – a timeless endeavor that has spanned centuries, from the delicate strokes of a painter's brush to the sultry gazes and poses of pin-up models. And now, in the digital age, we've reached the pinnacle of this quest with advanced AI algorithms…
Are you tired of using the same old boring wallpaper on your smartphone or desktop? Look no further than our collection of abstract art wallpapers! Created using MidJourney's innovative image generation software, our wallpapers feature stunning visuals with intricate details and vibrant colors. Our collection includes both portrait and landscape…
The Fujifilm GFX 50S II is a medium format camera that offers photographers a unique blend of cutting-edge technology and traditional film-inspired design. The camera is a perfect choice for photographers looking to take their work to the next level by capturing stunning images with incredible detail, resolution, and dynamic…
Nachdem das Thema Xennial in den letzten Tagen immer wieder in meinem Facebook Feed aufgepoppt ist, hab ich mir es mal genauer angesehen und drüber nachgedacht – es ist vollkommen richtig: Als 82’er Jahrgang bin ich eigentlich weder Generation X, die die 80’er voll und ganz miterlebt haben noch ein…
Nachdem ich im letzten Toskana Urlaub meine Nikon D2x samt mehrere Linsen dabei hatte, merkte ich, dass es mir zunehmend lästig wurde, immer so viel Equipment rumzuschleppen, zumal ich eigentlich nur noch zum Spaß fotografiere. Darum hab ich gestern meine Nikon D2x auf eBay gestellt, sowie drei weitere Linsen in…
Irgendwie seltsam mit der HoloLens. Sobald Apple einen Stift für 100 Euro vorstellt, bloggt jeder darüber, und man kann sich vor Memes auf 9GAG kaum retten. Doch entwickelt man eine Revolution in der Computerwelt, und heißt dazu noch Microsoft, scheint das keinen mehr zum jubeln zu bringen. Hat Microsoft sich…
Ende Juli bekam ich ein Nokia Lumia 930 und hatte somit bisher etwa zwei Monate Zeit, es intensiv zu testen. Zeit, das Gerät zu rezensieren! Wie die Überschrift verrät, ist es ein absoluter Traum für Fotografen jeder Art. Zum einen hat es eine tolle f/2.4 PureView Linse aus dem Hause…
Nowadays it's rare that you miss out on something, thanks to the internet and its many sudden notification systems. The more stunned I was when I stumbled upon "Empire Avenue", which is an awesome stock market simulation. The twist is, you are a stock, and so are you friends. Those…
Since a certain government decided that websites such as Facebook or Twitter could harm the harmony, they were unavailable here in Shanghai. When that happened in 2005, I actually asked my wife to call the internet company and to tell them that I am a foreigner, hoping that they'd 'unblock'…
While looking through some older posts of mine, I realized that even some chinese people wrote comments. Why? Because I live in Shanghai and sometimes I write something in chinese characters, just for fun of it mostly. So I just realized, in order to gain a broader audience, why not…
Quite a surprise, the price of the 8 gigabyte model of Apple's iPhone dropped a whopping 125 dollars since the last time we asked! Back in December we were running around in that big electronics store at the Hong Kong plaza and back then the price was almost 650 dollars.
I've been searching a lot around the net lately for a decent shopping system that is PHP/MySQL driven, and the best thing I found was osCommerce - so far. I noticed today that there is a new shopping CMS being developed at Intersprire which is called StoreSuite. The biggest problem…
You've created the Google Sitemaps file with one of the many available Wordpress plugins? You added it to your Google Webmaster Tools account? You added it to your robots.txt file? Good. I did that, too. But all that work, just for Google? Of course, Google is the mighty giant and…
So Tarantino's part of the Grindhouse series titled Death Proof finally reaches Germany. They are going to show Death Proof in cinemas first, and Rodriguez' part Planet Terror one or two months later. Since there are no Matinee-cinemas in Germany it makes kind of sense - you have to adjust…
Yepp, that's fun. I love spam!
Sweet Jesus, I got more birthday emails from some internet-bots than actual calls from friends and family. But nobody mailed me a cake!
Uhoh. This is exactly what Safari looks like when you try to open Wikipedia or, in the past, blogger.com. Now this shows up when I try to open Twitter. I just wrote something on Twitter, then BAM! gone. Hope they're not blocking everybody's new web 2.0 darling now, too! They…
Es ist vorbei. Und es fängt an. Die Blog-WG wird geschlossen. Jakob Montrasio's Net startet durch. Hausmeister Jérôme hat uns alte WG-Mieter informiert, dass im Juni Schluss ist. Kann ich verstehen, ein Blick auf den RSS Feed der WG zeigt mir, dass in letzter Zeit nicht grade viel gebloggt wird.
It's over. And it begins. The Blog-WG gets shut down. Jakob Montrasio's Net goes full power. Janitor and landlord Jérôme told us old members, that we have until June to move out. I can easily understand that, looking at the Blog-WG's RSS feed indicated that nobody is blogging seriously anymore.
Here are my new favorite colors. From left to right: #09f911 #029d74 #e35bd8 #4156c5 #635688 #c0. Hope you like them!
I wanted to write something about this guy Justin since weeks. So he lives in San Francisco and he has a mobile web-cam that he never turns off. He is live 24 hours a day. On the internet. Via live-stream. On the domain justin.tv. I guess he hooked up his…
Funny. I just saw 'New AOL.com Beta Rips Off Yahoo! Home Page' on digg (but TechChrunch reported first) and it's so true! Seems like AOL is yet another Microsoft and can't figure out to make their own design, see Windows Live aka MSN and Google. Well, better a good copy…
I like pictures. I like to take them with my Nikon D50, I like to share them on flickr, I like to show them off on my blog. Sadly, there seem to be very few elegant Wordpress themes that support a 'normal' blog as well as an image blog. Why? Because most themes try to get the content into a 400 pixel or less wide space. Sure, makes sense, as it is much better readable than a 600 pixel wide content area. But how about making it 500 pixels wide, exactly enough for the so-called 'Medium' resolution that flickr has to offer? And in return, making the content font a few pixel bigger? When it comes to blogging flickr images, you can go with 240 pixel wide or 500 pixel wide images, and 240 pixel were just too small for my taste. A workaround is to download the images you want to blog, resize them in Photoshop and host them yourself. But what do I pay flickr for? So I sat down, designed this theme, and since I release almost everything under Creative Commons, why not this Wordpress theme, too? There is another interesting thing about this theme that I didn't mention yet: The content comes first in the source code, then come the Google ads, then the menu and sidebar. Look at the code if you don't believe me! This way, the advertising bots from Google read my content first, then the menu and the sidebar. This way, the ads should be even more focused and related to my entries. Tricky, huh? Well, the technique I used was called on some other blog 'a weird method, that only print designers use'. I don't care, works fine for me! The magic is: 'position:absolute;' in the CSS file. With this attribute, you can position whatever you want wherever you want.
Since we have neither the space nor the money to buy a real Piano at the moment, I decided to present my wife a MIDI-USB keyboard that she can use on my PowerBook from Apple. She loves to play but has left her 'standalone' keyboard at her home in Xi'An…
Reading about other's people computer and software is always fun, so why shouldn't I share my system information and software with you? Maybe nothing in this entry is new to you, but maybe you'll find something you didn't know before. Maybe you recently switched to Mac system and you want to know about cool software? Who knows! Let's get started. This is my setup, as in the picture above: I got a Apple PowerBook G4 with 17" from 2005 (yeah, I don't have the money to witch to a new system every year...), additionally I got a 250 Gigabyte sized external hard-drive from Maxtor, a Mighty Mouse, a Logitech headset for Skype and Sharp stereo boxes - for music, what else! What I do? I create web-sites (for fun, mostly), edit images, create video pod-casts and lots more.
Apple's new iPhone. Let's start saving!
So now that Skype has finally released a beta for Mac containing video chat function, I set up my desktop to chat with this feature - but not with a ordinary webcam, since I got none. It was really easy: Plugged in the XL1s from Canon via FireWire (over the…
Dank der genialen Software Tor kann ich wieder alle, ich wiederhole: ALLE Webseiten aufrufen. Google Video, alle Google Blogs, der Google Cache, Wikipedia, ... Keine Error-Meldungen mehr! Die Installation war kinderleicht, einfach dem simplen Tutorial folgen, und schon läuft alles. Danach noch Firefox mit dieser Extension ausstatten, und fertig. Wow.
Oh Mann. Ich hasse die ATMs hier in Shanghai. Ist aber wohl überall im Ausland so? Folgendes ist mir jetzt schon zum zweiten Mal passiert: Ich gehe zu einem ATM, stecke meine deutsche EC-Karte rein, und will Summe X von meinem Konto bei meiner deutschen Bank abheben. Der ATM fängt…
Der Preis einer SMS in China. Wollte ich nur mal gebloggt haben. Auch nicht uninteressant: Wenn man auf dem Handy angerufen wird, zahlt man mit. Nur ganz wenig, aber man zahlt mit. Ausserdem gibt es keine Verträge, sondern ausschliesslich PrePaid Karten. Ich habe vor einer Woche umgerechnet 20€ draufgeladen, telefoniere…
Witzig: Grade lese ich diesen herrlichen Artikel auf golem.de über ein Spiel namens Chinese Hero Registry, während hier auf meinem Tisch so ein komischer Adapter der Firma Shanda liegt, die auch dieses kommunistische Online-Spiel entwerfen. Seltsamer Zufall, wieder einmal. Ein Freund meiner Mitarbeiterin Julia arbeitet für diese Firma und hat…
Back in November 2004, something extraordinary happened in the digital world: the release of Firefox 1.0, the first stable version of Mozilla’s open-source web browser. For those who may not remember, the internet landscape back then was a very different place. Internet Explorer dominated the market, with little competition. But…
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By Jakob Montrasio