Author Archives: Justin

About Justin

Justin is a fine art photographer, new media marketing consultant and gadget obsessed technophile. He writes about the events surrounding his life and travels, and the gadgets that enhance and enchant his existence.

Eastbound and Down

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May 29th I will be taking flight to the East Coast with a singular purpose, to see you New Yorkers. This jaunt will be followed by a trip down to visit my friends in Washington DC before heading back west June 6. It’s a short trip but I plan to fill it with oceans of fun.

New York City Skyline

I would love to see you all my New York City friends and my Washington DC friends on this trip. I think the easiest way for us to do that is to choose a night to all meet up for dinner, drinks and debauchery. There are only a couple of nights in New York City that this can happen but I will also be free during the day for coffees, lunches, museums, etc.

Take a look at that schedule and let me know when you’re free to hang out. Feel free to suggest things I should do, places I should eat and bars where I should have a drink. As far as New York City, I still have never seen a Broadway show, gasp, and have only been to a couple of museums. So if either of those whet your appetite, let’s make it happen! Looking forward to seeing you guys.

Washington DC and the White House

As far as my time in Washington DC, well I have a lot more of it. So let’s get creative about the time we share together in The District. I’m even tempted to add on a night in Philadelphia but with the tight schedule I have, that might not be possible.

Jason Mraz on I Won’t Give Up

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Jason Mraz Love is a Four Letter Word

I’ve been a huge fan of Jason Mraz for the last eleven or so years. His music has always spoken to me and his personality on stage, in interviews and in person is as authentic and kind as anyone could hope him to be.

Anyways, his new album came out yesterday (link to download in the image above) as did an interview with CNN. I Won’t Give Up was the first single off of the album and when asked what the song was about Jason explained:

Traditional marriage between a man and a woman, and trying to put that into a law or a rule, is basically saying that gay people aren’t real. Well, gay people are very real. It is treating our gay and lesbian citizens like second-class citizens. I think it is the final step in the civil rights movement.

So that’s pretty cool. I’ll leave you now with the video for I Won’t Give Up.

Now if only we can get the loud minority of this country to agree with him.

V-Moda Crossfade LP Review

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The excellent Klipsch Image One headphones I reviewed last year have been my default headphones since I bought them. At $150 I feel that these headphones are the best option around. However, what happens when a $200 headphone drops to $100?V-Moda Crossfade LP

The retail price for the V-Moda Crossfade LP headphones is $200, a $50 premium when compared to the Klipsch option. But with the V-Moda Crossfade LP2s on the market, the originals are going for a song! With a drop in price that drastic, I figured it was time to see if these guys are worth the rock bottom $100 street price. Continue reading →

My Rant to Inside Columbia Magazine

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This is in response to an email I got this morning from Inside Columbia Magazine:

I simply cannot believe you guys are obfuscating the unsubscribe options from your emails. This is a violation of MailChimp‘s terms of service, which I am sure you already know.

White text on a white background is a deceptive way of hiding the unsubscribe option as well as your physical address. This is a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. I recommend whoever is running your email marketing read up on the FTC‘s rules. I’ll be as kind as to provide a quick link.

Here also is an excerpt:

Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future.

I’ll even provide a screenshot of what I was sent so you can see the issue at hand.

I would not have unsubscribed, or blogged this situation, had you guys followed the rules. I’ve also informed MailChimp following instructions on their abuse page.

-justin
http://itsjustjustin.com

iPhone 4 won’t update to iOS 5.1

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UPDATE: It’s been fixed! Thanks to my friendly and always helpful Twitter friends @jdyates, @mrfrank505, @ropiko, @richmackey, @josephjaramillo, @Apple9511and @shuether for their suggestions.

Turns out the fix was as easy as using a different computer. Turns out (and I only sort of know what I’m talking about here) the issue came from when I used an iOS jailbreak tool to unlock an iPhone for my trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia. It redirected the activation from Apple to Cydia which is why I got the error message below.

There are two fixes, either edit the host file through Terminal or just do the update on a different computer. Since the command I had to fix through terminal didn’t work, I tried the update on my MacBook Pro and it worked like a charm!

iPhone 4 will not update to iOS 5.1

So I have this iPhone 4 which is in absolute perfect physical shape, only has three months of use yet after around iOS 5 Beta 3, the phone stopped working correctly, the digitizer stopped working reliably. That is, sometimes after unlocking the phone, you could not swipe to unlock, the screen was remapped and a swipe to the bottom didn’t do anything, sliding across other parts of the screen would move the unlock button to a degree but never enough to unlock.

I had to keep this phone unlocked 24/7 or risk having a phone that was unusable. I eventually was forced to buy the iPhone 4S. Since I was running a beta version of iOS and couldn’t undo that after Beta 4, Apple would not honor the warranty.

Do you have any suggestions? DFU restore and regular iTunes restores do not work. I’ve tried numerous times to upgrade this phone to the latest version of iOS 5 and 5.1 with no luck. I have even wiped it from its built in restore feature but that hasn’t worked.

Hopefully someone reading this will have an idea as I am all out of them!