Jakob Montrasio’s Net.

CSS Text Shadow added.

// February 26th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Internet, Technology

I tweaked around the blog some more and decided to add a nice text-shadow to the headlines. If you’re using a 3rd-world browser, you probably wont see it though, it’s a Safari only supported CSS thing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been using FireFox myself for quite some years, hell, we even organized a release party for it back in, uhm, 2003? for the very first release in Heidelberg, Germany.

But when digital friend Ben introduced me the Safari plugin Saft, I tried it out and sticked with it, never looking back. Safari & Saft together kick the Fox really in the nuts. It has so many features, check it out here. It costs near to nothing for all the brilliant features offered and is a must-have for serious bloggers and surfers.

The thing is that Safari makes websites look so much better by using some kind of anti-aliasing on the text. If you surf a lot and read a lot it’s so much more comfortable.

Anyway, back to the CSS. So how do you use the CSS declaration in your style sheet?

Here are some examples.

You can only read this with Safari.

Above paragraph uses the following text-shadow settings: text-shadow: #000 0px 0px 3px; color:#fff;.

How about a red shadow?

Above paragraph uses the following text-shadow settings: text-shadow: #f00 2px 2px 2px;.

Elegant headline shadow needed?

Above paragraph uses the following text-shadow settings: text-shadow: #aaa 1px 1px 1px;.

Here’s some shadow above the text…

Above paragraph uses the following text-shadow settings: text-shadow: #666 0px -5px 1px;.

Blue shadow far off? No problem!

Above paragraph uses the following text-shadow settings: text-shadow: #00f 15px 15px 3px;.

Last example: Extreme blurred shadow!

Above paragraph uses the following text-shadow settings: text-shadow: #6f0 3px 3px 5px;.

Nice, right?

It’s quite easy to apply, generally you have four values to set up your shadow:

1. First you set the color of the shadow. #f00 for red, #0f0 for green and so on. Any hex color is possible.

2. Now you set the horizontal space to the text (the x-axis), 5 pixels for example (5px). Can be any number, I suggest using px here.

3. Then the vertical space relative to the text (the y-axis), 3 pixels for example (3px).

4. The last setting is the amount of blur that the shadow should have. A value of 0px gives the shadow no blur at all while any setting over 5px makes the shadow completely unreadable. I suggest a setting between 1px and 3px.

Oh, and Safari is also available for Windows now, if you want to give it a try… Download the beta here!

As you can see (if you use Safari), this is quite a cool declaration and quite useful for styling headlines and such without having to use images. If only other browsers would support it, too…

Let’s see what the future brings!

Spottt: Free Link Exchange.

// February 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Internet

Regular visitors don’t only know that I’m playing around a lot with the themes and CSS of this blog, they also probably spottted the new ad I’m running on the sidebar.

It’s a new service called “Spottt” (yes, three t’s) by the guys from AdBrite.

Let’s give it a try! They will, after they reviewed my blog, put ads from other blogs there. In return, my ad will show up on other blogs. It’s a bit like that BlogRush widget that is in my sidebar, too. Only smaller and hopefully with cool and funny advertisements.

In a couple of days we will see what kind of impact this has - I’ll keep an eye on my Google Analytics statistics to see how many new visitors it brings.

Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem Trailer!

// August 26th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Videography, Videography - Movie Trailers

So much gore! So much violence! So many aliens! So many people! The army! Oh! My! God!

We finally get what we’ve been waiting for.

ANIMOTO: Sweet!

// August 17th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // People's Republic of China, Videography

That’s a nice answer to YouTube and flickr: Mix these! With ANIMOTO, you can take pictures from your flickr account and animate them with music. You can choose music from ANIMOTO’s library or upload your own mp3. ANIMOTO analyzes the pictures and music and creates you a cool video out of it.

Now to the downside: You can only creat free videos that are 30 seconds long. For 3$, you can create a ‘full-length’ video, which means more then even 10 minutes, I guess. Actually, I wanted to invest the 3$ to try it out, but you can only pay with Google and for their service you need a credit card which I don’t have. Why can’t I choose to pay with PayPal, damn it!

Above is a 30 second clip I made with the site. Pretty nice…

Insanely funny porn titles.

// July 30th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Videography

‘The Game Gods‘ (whatever that has to do with porn) have published a list with the 69 ‘worst’ porn movie names… But honestly, they are not bad, only incredibly funny. Thanks to many comments there are even much more than only 69 by now… It absolutely worth a quick read! But watch out that you’re not drinking, you will laugh so hard and spray it out of your nose.

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RUSH HOUR 3: Now in Europe.

// May 4th, 2007 // No Comments » // Videography, Videography - Movie Trailers

L.A., Hongkong, now Paris: Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker seem to fight their way systematically through all continents. Will RUSH HOUR 4 play in Africa or Australia? Whatever may be the case, I loved the first two parts, and the trailer for the third installment looks quite alright. The story is something like this: Jackie and Chris travel to Paris and get coincidentally mixed up into the search for the baddest criminal gang on earth. Gorgeous women and insane fights once again, now in the city of love. Will the movie be fun like the first parts or a pain in the ass like third parts often are? We’ll see. For now, check out the trailer: 480P (47 megs), 720P (110 megs), 1080P (180 megs).

My new favorite colors.

// May 2nd, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Internet, Technology

Here are my new favorite colors. From left to right:

#09f911 #029d74 #e35bd8 #4156c5 #635688 #c0.

Hope you like them!

My computer, my programs.

// January 15th, 2007 // 5 Comments » // Internet, Photography, Technology, Videography

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.

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