by ·0 Comments

After the upgrade to iOS 6.1.3, I experienced massive degradation on the battery performance; to a point where the phone was unusable. I’ve tried many things, from turning off gps locations, turning off wifi, setting it in airplane mode, removing access to calendars, turning off iCloud related functionality, and closing out all the apps.

Temporarily Fixed.

I think I found a decent solution. It seems that iOS 6.1.3 somehow breaks the push and exchange process, by turning off push on exchange accounts, my phone seems to work normally again. the only drawback is now when getting email, you have to load up mail for it to go fetch.

by ·1 Comment

I’ve attempted to compile a decent mix between, good places to go and the somewhat “must do” things on a trip to the big apple. New York is the best state i’ve ever lived in and as such i wanted to give it the culinary respect it deserves.

* denotes a McCoy recommendation. Peter John Martin McCoy is my favorite person, and as i’ve said 100s of times he’s a quasi Asian. His sushi making abilities are second to no one except maybe Jiro

//———————
// Upper West Side
//———————

not much to do up here

Flor de Mayo – decent peruvian, try the chicken
484 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10024
(212) 787-3388

//———————
// Upper East Side
//———————

MET (touristy) – i prefer the MoMA
1000 5th Ave
New York, NY 10028
(212) 535-7710

Guggenheim (touristy) – its smaller than what it looks like in movies
1071 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10128
(212) 423-3500

//———————
// Flatiron
//———————

ABC Kitchen – american/french food
35 E 18th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 475-5829

Gramercy Tavern – decent american food
42 E 20th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 477-0777

Eataly – lots of italian food, upstairs is a beer garden
200 5th Ave
New York, NY 10010
(646) 398-5100

Shake Shack – usually compared to In n’ Out burgers, its different, more gourmet; multiple locations
E 23rd St & Madison Ave
New York, NY 10010
(212) 889-6600

//———————
// Midtown -ish
//———————

Yakitori Totto – japanese, awesome skewers
251 W 55th St
New York, NY 10019
(212) 245-4555

MoMA (touristy)
11 W 53rd St
New York, NY 10019
(212) 708-9400

Times Square (touristy) – see all the lights and stuff, better when dark
Broadway and 42nd St
New York, NY 10036

Grand Central Terminal (touristy) – check out the whispering archway, iconic terminal
42nd St
New York, NY 10017
(212) 340-2583

Empire State Building(touristy) – wasteful to go up, unless you’re into that
350 5th Ave
New York, NY 10118
(212) 736-3100

Kyotofu – nice dessert place, tofu centric
705 9th Ave
New York, NY 10019
(212) 974-6012

//———————
// East Village
//———————

Ippudo – japanese, best ramen, soup base is good, noodles are not so great; their pork bun thing is ok.
65 4th Ave
New York, NY 10003
(212) 388-0088

Artichoke Basille – like eating pizza with a thick clam chowder on top
328 E 14th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 228-2004

*Pommes Frites – belgian fries, lots of sauces, better when drunk
123 2nd Ave
New York, NY 10003
(212) 674-1234

Chickalicious – dessert stuffs
203 E 10th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 995-9511

Sake Bar Decibel – nice japanese feel, sake bar
240 E 9th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 979-2733

//———————
// Lower East Side
//———————

Il Labratorio Del Gelato – best sorbet every, wide variety of interesting sorbet, their gelato is ok
188 Ludlow St
New York, NY 10002
(212) 343-9922

Katz (touristy) – known for pastrami
205 E Houston St
New York, NY 10002
(212) 254-2246

Elsa – one of my favorite bars, try the black book
217 E 3rd St
New York, NY 10009
(917) 882-7395

*Top Hops – awesome beer place, has all sorts of beers in refrigerators
94 Orchard St
New York, NY 10002
(212) 254-4677

WD-50 – very interesting one of those molecular gastronomy places
50 Clinton St
New York, NY 10002
(212) 477-2900

//———————
// West Village -ish
//———————

Minetta Tavern – best burger ever ($25), its called black label
113 Macdougal St
New York, NY 10012
(212) 475-3850

Babbo – Mario Batali restaurant
110 Waverly Pl
New York, NY 10011
(212) 777-0303

/———————
// Lower Manhattan
//———————

*Public – nice brunch place
210 Elizabeth St
New York, NY 10012
(212) 343-7011

/———————
// Brooklyn
//———————

Grimaldi’s (touristy) – pretty good pizza, there are multiple locations
1 Front St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718) 858-4300

Brooklyn Bridge (touristy) – you can walk across, its nice
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Brooklyn Brewery – avg priced beer
79 N 11th St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 486-7422

Peter Luger – really big steak, has a mafia-like feel
178 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 387-7400

/———————
// Other Touristy Stuff
//———————

Battery Park – see the statue of liberty from here
State St & Battery Pl
New York, NY 10079

World Trade Center – the waterfalls are nice, need to make reservations
http://www.911memorial.org/
1 Albany St
New York, NY 10007
(212) 312-8800

SoHo – South of Houston, where all the shopping is done, spend all day here

5th Ave – more shopping, more expensive stores, the glass apple store
767 5th Ave
New York, NY 10153
(212) 336-1440

Central Park – its big, you can walk around

/———————
// Cautions
//———————

Momofuku – there are different ones, the Ko is probably worth going to, the regular one, not so much
Any restaurant mentioned in a movie – they all suck (ex: Serendipity, Cafe Lalo)
Baked by Melissa – horrible mini cupcakes
Try not to eat in Times Square, super touristy
Circle Line (boat tour) – waste of time
Gray’s Papaya – just sweet sauce on a tiny hot dog
Crumbs,Magnolia’s – pale in comparison to Sprinkles cupcakes
Continental – cheap drinks, 5 shots for $10, watered down, super young crowd

/———————
// Notes
//———————

* Starbucks – are your friend, theres almost one every corner; use them for bathrooms
* Public transportation – 3 or more visitors, cheaper to take taxi
* smart phone users should download NYCMate – for a compilation of subway, transportation maps

Michelin Stars

Three Stars:
Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare
Daniel
Eleven Madison Park
Jean Georges
Le Bernardin
Masa
Per Se

Two Stars:
Atera
Corton
Gilt
Gordon Ramsay at the London
Marea
Momofuku Ko
Soto

One Star:
Adour
Ai Fiori
Aldea
Annisa
Aquavit
Aureole
A Voce Columbus
A Voce Madison
Blanca
Blue Hill
Bouley
The Breslin
Brushstroke
Cafe Boulud
Café China
Casa Mono
Danji
Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen
Del Posto
Dovetail
Dressler
15 East
Gotham Bar and Grill
Gramercy Tavern
Hakkasan
Jewel Bako
Jungsik
Junoon
Kajitsu
Kyo Ya
Lan Sheng
Minetta Tavern
The Modern
The Nomad
Oceana
Peter Luger
Picholine
Public
The River Cafe
Rosanjin
Rouge Tomate
Saul
Seasonal
Spotted Pig
Sushi Azabu
Sushi of Gari
Tamarind Tribeca
Tori Shin
Torrisi Italian Specialties
Tulsi
Wallse
Wd~50

by ·0 Comments

I was building stuff for production when I noticed that Coda, screws up javascript. Especially when typing things such as (c) it replaces it with a ©, which makes it difficult to troubleshoot. I’m switching over to TextMate.

by ·0 Comments

so lately Apple has been blocking the java plugin, this is due to some of those crazy java exploits out there. but for those that NEED to have Safari work with the java plugin, here is a little hack that fixes that.

Apple writes out to a file in:
/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.meta.plist

to block minimum java plugin versions. I attempted to use the one provided by Oracle, but still had issues, so to temporary hack is to change the version.

here is a script that does that (must run as sudo):

#!/bin/bash

echo "default is java version: 1.7.11.22"

JPLUGIN_VERSION="1.7.11.22"
JPLUGIN_NEW_VERSION="1.7.11.1"

if [ -n "$1" ]; then
JPLUGIN_VERSION="$1"
fi

echo "search for: $JPLUGIN_VERSION"

#cd /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources
cp XProtect.meta.plist XProtect.meta.plist.bak
sed 's/$JPLUGIN_VERSION/$JPLUGIN_NEW_VERSION/g' XProtect.meta.plist.bak > XProtect.meta.plist

echo "modified to: $JPLUGIN_NEW_VERSION"

download here:
java_version.sh

usage:

$ sudo ./java_version.sh


$ sudo ./java_version.sh 1.7.11.22

by ·0 Comments

the other day, on the plane, the flight stewards asked for anyone with a spare AAA battery for someones Bose headphones. I happened to have one, and i notified the stewards. They came by, told me that they had already found the battery, but appreciated my generosity.

The first class cabin steward then came by and promised me some red wine. When the time came for beverages on the flight, i ordered a rum and coke with the intention of paying. The stewardess waived off my payment and received a free drink. Later when they were collecting trash they asked if i had ever received the red wine that the first class steward had promised, and i replied with no, and before i could mention my free previous drink, i ended up with a glass of red.

2 free drinks for just the intention of performing a good deed.

by ·0 Comments

In June 2011, I upgraded my macbook pro (MacBook Pro 13″/15″/17″ Unibody with Core 2 Duo “Penryn” and 9400M G chipset (Mid 2009): max, 8GB), with 8GB of RAM. I bought the Corsair RAM (CMSA8GX3M2A1066C7) from newegg.com

At first (running Snow Leopard OS X 10.6), it crashed every once in a while, but I figured that going to OS X Lion (10.7) would fix it. I was wrong. Lion seems to magnify all there is to these crashes. I would get the grey screen of death as well as applications randomly quitting. These issues seem to escalate as I kept updating from 10.7 to 10.7.2

As always, I thought it was the install of my Lion, as I had just updated on top of Snow Leopard, which on forums was said to be a bad practice.

Finally I got sick of my crashes and googled around and found this forum where they mentioned that it was Lion and its finicky-ness with bad memory. I had never thought that the memory would be the issue. here

So the forum member suggested running rember which is basically a os x wrapper over memtest

I started my system in single user boot mode and ran the test. Unfortunately the forum describes the wrong procedure to run the test, I’ve included it below:

  1. Download rember and put it on the root of your HD
  2. Start up in single user boot mode (hold down Command-S)
  3. Navigate to rember (/Rember.app/Contents/Resources)
  4. Execute memtest with default settings (./memtest)

After removing my 8GB RAM and reinstalling my 2GB standard RAM, it seems to become more stable.

by ·0 Comments

Recently I purchased the Syma S107G mini helicopter for $27.25 (helicopter). Its a very nice lil helicopter that holds its charge for about 6-7 minutes and has some pretty intricate parts. Unfortunately when you crash it a bunch of times as a newbie, it will start acting funny. Here are some ways to troubleshoot this guy.

Helicopter seems to fly, but flies in a slow circle

First thing to check is the connect buckets – see if they are connected from the balance bar to the main rotor assembly.

Helicopter lifts off ok, but immediately the blades seem to collide like it got shot out of the sky

First check the connect buckets, if they are connected then the second thing to do is to check the main rotor assembly. On the rotors below the balance bar, there is a “t” shaped connector that exists on the same plane as the rotors. Most likely those pins have broken off. In the picture below its the 3rd horizontal cross. From top to bottom, the first horizontal cross holds the balance bar, the second horizontal cross attaches the rotor assembly to the main rotor shaft with 2 screws, and the third cross contains the rotor blades.

I actually fixed it one time, by super gluing the pins back on, but you have to be pretty accurate, easier to just buy the replacement parts. I found them on amazon prime for $10.88 (replacement parts)

by ·0 Comments

Sometimes at the end of youTube videos that you have embedded on an external site will display a list of related videos. This does not help with your site continuity.

Luckily there is a way to disable the related videos feature. Your embed code will most likely look something like:

What we want to do is to add to the iframe src, we just add the parameter:

?rel=0

So now we have:

and you are good to go, no more related videos.

by ·0 Comments

Wadsworth constant is a meme that states that the first 30% of any video can be skipped because it contains no worthwhile or interesting information.

Youtube actually allows you to apply this constant and allows you to skip the first 30% of the video. Comes in handy when listening to trance/electronica music.

apply this to the end of youtube video links:

if the ? does not exist use:

?wadsworth=1

if the ? already exists use:

&wadsworth=1