Blog - george mastro https://georgemastro.com/ web developer, photographer, filmmaker Tue, 13 Dec 2022 13:32:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://georgemastro.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-mastro-avatar-square-32x32.jpg Blog - george mastro https://georgemastro.com/ 32 32 106946828 How to Turn Your Hobby into a Business https://georgemastro.com/how-to-turn-your-hobby-into-a-business/ https://georgemastro.com/how-to-turn-your-hobby-into-a-business/#respond Wed, 29 Apr 2020 12:10:07 +0000 https://georgemastro.com/?p=1475 I’ve gathered some useful sources of training about starting your own business based on your hobby! [Online Seminar]: Shopify Academy – Turn Your Hobby into a Business Make Money from your Hobbies How to Turn Your Hobby into a Career: the Complete Guide 5 Tips to Turn a Profit on Your Passion [Book]: Turn Your […]

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I’ve gathered some useful sources of training about starting your own business based on your hobby!

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How to install AMP on your WordPress site https://georgemastro.com/install-amp-wordpress-site/ https://georgemastro.com/install-amp-wordpress-site/#respond Sun, 11 Feb 2018 20:09:58 +0000 https://georgemastro.com/?p=268 AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages Project and you can read more about it here https://www.ampproject.org Installing it on your site is quite straightforward, although not very easy. The best plugin of all IMHO is “AMP for WP” and you can find it here https://wordpress.org/plugins/accelerated-mobile-pages/ After installing it, you must activate it and follow these steps: Press Start […]

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AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages Project and you can read more about it here https://www.ampproject.org

Installing it on your site is quite straightforward, although not very easy. The best plugin of all IMHO is “AMP for WP” and you can find it here https://wordpress.org/plugins/accelerated-mobile-pages/

After installing it, you must activate it and follow these steps:

Press Start

Then choose your logo

Select the pages that you want AMP to be enabled. I suggest selecting pages that don’t have any special or weird mechanisms that rely heavily on JavaScript.

Then set your Google Analytics Tracking code

Select your desired style from the 3 pre-installed

And you’re all set!

There are some more thing you can do to refine some settings. Head on to the preferences of the plugin here

On General->Settings page you can change the pages where you want AMP to be enabled. In my case, I only want it for my blog, so this is how it looks like:

I suggest turning on “Meta Tags from Yoast”

Turn on “Minify AMP Page”

Make sure you have Structured data enabled for posts and pages

You can also enable Facebook’s Instant Articles. Just be sure to Re-Save permalink when you enable this option.

Turn on “Mobile Redirection”

On Design->Global page, choose your favorite color palette and add any CSS needed for typography that doesn’t match your main theme

Add Navigation on your AMP pages

Then go to your WordPress Appearance->Menus and add your preferred menu to your AMP theme

As a last step go here https://search.google.com/test/amp and check if one of your pages can be read correctly from Google. If so, it should look like this

Hit “SUBMIT TO GOOGLE” in order to be processed from your Google Console faster. After about 24-48 hours, your search results should show the familiar AMP lightning icon

That’s it!

If you found this article useful, don’t forget to check my channels:
Insta: georgemastro
500px: georgemastro
Twitter: george_mastro

or contact me here https://georgemastro.com/contact/

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How to build a minimal photography website https://georgemastro.com/build-free-minimal-photography-website/ https://georgemastro.com/build-free-minimal-photography-website/#respond Sat, 03 Feb 2018 00:11:17 +0000 https://georgemastro.com/?p=206 I’ll be honest. I was searching for the perfect minimal theme for my photography portfolio over two years. Yes! TWO YEARS. I couldn’t find the perfect photography theme/platform until I saw this post https://colormelon.com/free-portfolio-website-tutorial/ It is a clean minimal WordPress theme and it is absolutely free! What else can you ask? WordPress is pretty easy to […]

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I’ll be honest. I was searching for the perfect minimal theme for my photography portfolio over two years. Yes! TWO YEARS.

I couldn’t find the perfect photography theme/platform until I saw this post https://colormelon.com/free-portfolio-website-tutorial/

It is a clean minimal WordPress theme and it is absolutely free!

What else can you ask? WordPress is pretty easy to handle, and the theme comes with everything I needed.

  • Minimal aesthetics
  • Focus on content
  • Fast and light
  • Nice looking gallery
  • Pleasent blog
  • As clean as it gets

Contact me if you need any help installing it. You could use a developer’s/photographer’s perspective 😉

Extra tip!

The above guide will get you a near perfect site. But if you want to spice it up a bit, be sure to make it SEO friendly and fast. After a few tweaks I managed to get 98/100 on Google Pagespeed Insights.

Google Pagespeed Insights

IMPORTANT! Don’t forget to take care of the security, as WordPress is not very famous for it 😉

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Mac menu bar calendar like Windows https://georgemastro.com/mac-menu-bar-calendar-like-windows/ https://georgemastro.com/mac-menu-bar-calendar-like-windows/#respond Sat, 02 Apr 2016 23:44:45 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=90 Missed that old Windows handy calendar on the taskbar? There are quite a lot of menu bar calendar alternatives out there. Itsycal (link) Calendar (link) Fantastical (link) Day-O (link) CalendarMenu (link) Having tried all of the above, at least in Mac OS X version 10.11 El Capitan, I’ve found that the most practical is Day-O. […]

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Missed that old Windows handy calendar on the taskbar?

There are quite a lot of menu bar calendar alternatives out there.

Having tried all of the above, at least in Mac OS X version 10.11 El Capitan, I’ve found that the most practical is Day-O. That’s just simply because it can replace the original calendar and just show the little drop-down month view calendar as expected.

After you install the application, you’ll see two calendars on the menu bar.

Screenshot 2016-04-03 02.31.32

Just click the new one on the right and hit preferences. Now check the settings, so that it looks like the original.

Screenshot 2016-04-03 02.34.07

Don’t forget to uncheck the “Show Icon” checkbox. All you have to do now is to hide the original time on the menu bar. Click on it and hit “Open Date & Time Preferences…” and then uncheck this and you’re done.

2016-04-03 at 02.37

Now everything should look like this:

Screenshot 2016-04-03 02.39.03

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Be careful for fraud/fake Apple e-mails https://georgemastro.com/careful-fraudfake-apple-e-mails/ https://georgemastro.com/careful-fraudfake-apple-e-mails/#respond Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:44:29 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=85 Some new fake Apple Store mails are appearing these days on many people I know. The e-mails look exactly as a normal Apple mail but if you take extra notice the mail’s sender you probably are going to tell the difference. You can also hover on any link before you click to actually see where […]

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Some new fake Apple Store mails are appearing these days on many people I know. The e-mails look exactly as a normal Apple mail but if you take extra notice the mail’s sender you probably are going to tell the difference. You can also hover on any link before you click to actually see where the link is pointing at. Take a look at this screenshot:

apple-fake-email

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Gmail Hotkeys on Polymail https://georgemastro.com/gmail-hotkeys-on-polymail/ https://georgemastro.com/gmail-hotkeys-on-polymail/#respond Fri, 26 Feb 2016 18:25:47 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=78 Great news! You can use Gmail’s hotkeys on Polymail. Polymail now supports all the gmail’s keyboard shortcuts you are used to. Just go to advanced in Polymail’s preferences and click here: You can press cmd+/ anytime to see the shortcuts

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Great news! You can use Gmail’s hotkeys on Polymail.

Polymail now supports all the gmail’s keyboard shortcuts you are used to. Just go to advanced in Polymail’s preferences and click here:

polymail-gmail

You can press cmd+/ anytime to see the shortcuts

gmail-polymail-hotkeys

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Nikon’s response to the Sony RX100 https://georgemastro.com/nikons-response-to-the-sony-rx100/ https://georgemastro.com/nikons-response-to-the-sony-rx100/#respond Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:13:47 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=63 Is Nikon awake? When I saw my RSS feeds yesterday, I didn’t bothered opening the articles mentioning the new compact Nikon models, but today in my FB timeline I came across with an image of the DL. My eyes just popped out! Is that a Nikon? wow! I had Canon and Nikon written off my wow factor list […]

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Is Nikon awake?

When I saw my RSS feeds yesterday, I didn’t bothered opening the articles mentioning the new compact Nikon models, but today in my FB timeline I came across with an image of the DL.
Nikon-DL18-50

My eyes just popped out! Is that a Nikon? wow!

I had Canon and Nikon written off my wow factor list of brands for the past 5 years. It may not be a camera for my taste, but it is clearly a sign that one of the two sleeping giants is waking up from it’s lethargy. From the first headlines I understand that there is a frustration about the decision about the naming given to the new models. I find the namings absolutely perfect! It’s perfectly clear what each of this “points” at. Can you imagine, each one having a code name? Could you then remember which is for the wider shots and which is for the tele shots? Now, if you have just an absolute basic knowledge about lenses you practically know which one you want.

In the first hours from it’s announcing most people in dpreview.com seem to be a little more into the DL18-50.

nikon-dl-comparison
dpreview trending

This is also a fact on Google Trends

nikon-dl-google-trends
Google Trends about the DLs

Take a look at their specs side-by-side with their main competitor here http://bit.ly/1UkRf0f

Biggest differences are the price, the minimum macro distance, the number of focus points, the touch screen and the continues drive. Big plus also is the feature of Super Macro Mode (1:1) on Nikon DL24-500.

Will I buy it? Probably not, I a big prime lens fan, but who knows?

nikon-dl
The DL trio

Some cool references for the DLs:

  • http://www.dpreview.com/news/3646441843/dl-or-no-dl-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-nikon-dl-compacts
  • http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dl/index.htm
  • http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/22/11095670/nikon-dl18-dl25-announced-specs-vs-sony-rx100

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My new book https://georgemastro.com/my-new-book/ https://georgemastro.com/my-new-book/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2015 16:34:11 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=59 Check out my new book on Blurb.com Street on RailsbyGeorge Mastro | Make Your Own Book

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Check out my new book on Blurb.com

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Drupal ckeditor IMCE upload button missing https://georgemastro.com/drupal-ckeditor-imce-upload-button-missing/ https://georgemastro.com/drupal-ckeditor-imce-upload-button-missing/#respond Wed, 08 Oct 2014 15:29:46 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=54 Many custom themes conflict with the javascript from IMCE and the upload button doesn’t appear. Download themekey module from d.o. (https://www.drupal.org/project/themekey) and enable it. Then build a rule to use the admin theme on “imce” path like this: drupal:path = imce -> Seven or in my case Shiny

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Screenshot-2014-10-08-13-19-20

Many custom themes conflict with the javascript from IMCE and the upload button doesn’t appear.

Download themekey module from d.o. (https://www.drupal.org/project/themekey) and enable it.

Then build a rule to use the admin theme on “imce” path like this:

drupal:path = imce -> Seven or in my case Shiny

Screenshot-2014-10-08-13-17-16

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How to change the avatar in Mac Mail https://georgemastro.com/how-to-change-the-avatar-in-mac-mail/ https://georgemastro.com/how-to-change-the-avatar-in-mac-mail/#respond Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:28:15 +0000 http://georgemastro.com/?p=51 Are you seeing yourself as a parrot or an eagle inside Mac Mail but you have set a different picture for you account? Well you can change that very easily: Go into your Address Book, find the contact that relates to you, change your avatar there, and it updates everywhere including Mac Mail.

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parrot-eagle

Are you seeing yourself as a parrot or an eagle inside Mac Mail but you have set a different picture for you account? Well you can change that very easily:

Go into your Address Book, find the contact that relates to you, change your avatar there, and it updates everywhere including Mac Mail.

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