Carpet Cleaning? Use SoCal Steam Clean

SoCal Steam Clean San Diego rocks! One of the best services that I found on Yelp! not to mention, friendly, organized, meticulous, and detail oriented. Check out my full Yelp! review.

Justin has some of the best top-notch equipment in the business. The chemicals that he uses are perfect; environmentally friendly and non-toxic. He mentioned all this to reassure me and my 18th month old that I have crawling all around that it'd be a-okay. I moved a lot of the furniture and trinkets on the floors prior to him coming over and he did the rest. I can't keep mentioning that he was well-organized. He called me the morning of to confirm the appointment and was even a few minutes early to the house.

Giveaways, Instagram and OOTD #1

I don't usually win anything when I enter various online giveaways but maybe that's about to change! Last night, I threw my name in the hat because I thought, there's really nothing to lose and low and behold, I won! Easy as regram'ming @cityofgentlemen's post showing off the Microtouch Classic ONE Razor and following him (which I have been now for a while), I was notified early last night that I won. The reviews of the Microtouch are mixed on Amazon and it's the one that you see being marketed by Pawn Stars' Rick Harrison.

I'll post a review with my first experience with using a double edge safety razor here as soon as I get the chance to shave with it! Good thing I have my full Art of Shaving Kit to lather me up.

Since our correspondence last night, I told @cityofgentlemen that I've been wanting to post some pictures from time to time of my "looks" / OOTD but I've been hesitating since I'm not that relevant in my opinion. He said just do it so here's the first:

shirt: Gustin Blue-Hunter Gingham
glasses: Warby Parker Roosevelt Striped Chestnut
belt: Gustin Classic Belt
jeans: Gustin Heavy American
shoes: Allen Edmonds McAllister Wingtip Oxfords

and my staples of my Citizen Eco Drive Blue Angels and Tiffany Atlas Bracelt. If you like any of my Gustin clothing and are into raw denim, please use my referral link and get $5 off too!

Minimally Minimal Goes with the iPad Air

Andrew Kim on the iPad Air.

Honestly, for most people, the biggest debate with tablets right now isn’t if you should get an iPad or a competing product. The debate is if you should get the iPad mini with Retina display or the iPad Air. You could argue that the iPad mini now offers the same functionality for a lower price in a more condensed package. However, I would argue that the iPad Air offers the benefits of a larger display without the weight/size disadvantages it once had.

photo by Andrew Kim

I'm receiving my iPad mini with Retina Display in a week or two and will post insights then. Only until I've come to grasp the productivity and consumption aspects within my daily life as a pilot will you see my post. Stay tuned.

Greg Laswell for Under 10,000 feet

Since all the hoopla with the ability to now listen, play, and read your iPad, iPhone, Kindle or any other portable electronic device, I've been turning my ear to musician and artist Greg Laswell. Just last night, a friend of mine upped his stock and recommended that I buy ALL his albums. I figured that I'd do the same and pass it along, with this post. We'll call this the beginning of Thursday Tunes. Download Three Flights from Alto Nido to start. You might have heard of him already as his most popular track, Comes and Goes (In Waves), and a few others have been featured in various television shows. A rather popular track "Off I Go" from Take a Bow, will hit all you Grey's Anatomy fans as the theme for when George O'Malley leaves at the end of season 5. tear

The music is perfect and so soo good but while we're at it, it's also about supporting a native San Diegan!

Microsoft's 2nd Try with the Surface Pro 2

As much as I wanted to like Microsoft's latest Surface Pro 2, the price doesn't justify it's target utility. At $999 for the 128GB model, Apple's MacBook Air is the better laptop and the cheaper iPads or even Android tablets are the better tablet especially when it comes to using many of the apps we are already familiar with. I'm glad to see the upgrade and refinement but I'll be waiting for its next iteration. Until then.

Until then, the Surface Pro 2 is a great machine if you can deal with some of the compromises. If you can't, there are plenty of great tablets, and plenty of great laptops.

via The Verge

Great Sleuthing by Ars Tehcnica on the Artificial Note 3 Benchmarks

Once again, Samsung inflates their numbers by artificial boosting their devices and going so far to as trick the applications running the tests to max itself out. Caught in the act again.

Above is a picture of Geekbench and of Stealthbench, which is identical to Geekbench in every way except for a different package name. With Geekbench, System Monitor shows the CPU is locked into 2.3 GHz mode and all cores are active, but in Stealthbench, the CPU is allowed to idle, shut off cores, and switch power modes, the same way it does in any other app. We have successfully disabled the special benchmark mode.

"Geekbench" is a popular benchmarking app, so the Note is programmed to give it special treatment. It has never heard of "Stealthbench," though, so despite being the exact same app, it does not get the special benchmark boost. The Note will run this benchmark like 99.99999 percent of the other apps on the device. The next step then, is to run the two benchmarks and compare the CPU's benchmark mode with non-benchmark mode.

The file we ended up with is called "DVFSHelper.java," and it contains a hard-coded list of every package that is affected by the special CPU boosting mode. According to this file, the function is used exclusively for benchmarks, and it seems to cover all the popular ones. There's Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack, GFXBench, and even some of Samsung's own benchmarks. The two functions applied to this list seem to be "PACKAGES_FOR_BOOST_ALL_ADJUSTMENT," which is no doubt the CPU booster, and "PACKAGES_FOR_LCD_FRAME_RATE_ADJUSTMENT," which makes it sound like the phone is also altering the display frame rate.

via Ars Technica

Samsung's Galaxy Gear

Save $300 dollars and read the review.

As it stands today, though — unintuitive, oversized, overpriced, and in constant need of a Galaxy guardian — the Galaxy Gear might have been better off staying on the drawing board.

via The Verge

Why Rent a Router?

Okay, there are a couple of reasons and excuses that people come up with renting a router from a cable company, but after a year, you'd be paying for a reasonably great router that you could have owned.  You might be able to return it whenever it goes bad but that's a rarity.  In fact, I still have one of the original 802.11b routers from 2000 that I used alongside my Ti PowerBook G4 Gigabit Ethernet. So back to the topic at hand.  Once again, I'd have to recommend Apple's Airport Express for those that want something easy and sweet.  The setup is a dream, the wireless printing options and AirPlay option make it an easy go to for those invest within the Apple ecosystem.  If you feel like stepping it up a bit more for Time Capsule / backup capability, the Airport Extreme is another good best.  Just my two cents.

If you're the type to nerd out, install DD-WRT or other choice firmwares and tweak the router out to its max performance, the world is your oyster.  The Wirecutter recommends the ASUS RT-66u but it currently on a hold due to the onslaught of 802.11ac routers flooding the market.  The price will eventually come down too so hold up a bit if you're looking to pull the trigger.

I ended up Kickstarting one bad ass router and can't wait to get my hands on it.  It's called the Almond+ 802.11ac by Securifi who also hold the #1 spot on Amazon for their Almond.

The Whole Package

Impressive.

Its hardware and software make it the best smartphone on the market.

via WSJ: All Things Digital

The iPhone 5S is, in some measures, computationally superior to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro from just five years ago. In your fucking pocket.

via John Gruber's Daring Fireball

Anand on Apple's iPhone 5s

Just my two cents, don't buy the iPhone 5c.

As much as it pains me to use the word futureproof, if you are one of those people who likes to hold onto their device for a while - the 5s is as good a starting point as any.

via Anandtech

And then via Twitter:

I just spent the past week doing the best I can to understand Apple's A7 SoC. In short? It's insanely fast. http://t.co/AgWzGv1ljr

An Awesome Belt by Gustin

I remember Gustin from their Kickstarter days and boy have they taken off! Who would have thought crowd-sourced / funded clothing would be this awesome?! And to have it delivered to you wholesale??? I'm at a loss. With an emphasis on fit, fabric and finish... I can't stop admiring such a great company. They have yet another 'Classic Belt' round up for funding. Ever wonder how belt was crafted? If you need a belt, want a new one or want to simply own something of magnificence, support this bad ass accessory! If you're in doubts about buying this amazing classic belt from Gustin, check out the video below!

Only if the artist who handcrafted my belt could sign it. Hmmm.... guys?

I'm not going to mass email you guys but check out the referral email below! Get $20 off your first order. Hey!

Have you checked out Gustin yet? They are the first fully crowdsourced premium menswear company. That means you get to decide what they produce and get it all at true wholesale prices!

If you create an account using my referral link you get $20 off your first purchase!

https://www.weargustin.com/invite_from/1356

Thanks!

I already own two of their amazing pairs of jeans. I'll be slowly replacing all my other pairs shortly. Maybe a road trip in the books!

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Version 2

Looks like Amazon's own leak led to the early unveiling of the next generation Paperwhite.  Being dubbed as version 2, Amazon's best e-reader & in my opinion, the best way to consume ebooks is out for preorder today!  Click on the picture or use my link below to get yours shipped on or by September 30th! Here's the quick run down:

• higher contrast
• next generation built-in light
• 25% faster processor
• 19% tighter touch grid enhancing accuracy

Is it worth the upgrade?  I'll be honest that these features alone won't cause me to sell my version 1 on craigslist just yet but if the light is indeed that much better, you can count on it!

Amazon Paperwhite (next gen)

Watermarking

I haven't solved my post processing / editing workflow problem yet and keep on delaying.  I've come up with reasons such as, I don't have my new MacBook Pro Retina Display w/ Haswell yet or I don't have my new iMac setup or my home cloud server isn't setup the way I want it, but nonetheless, I'm falling way behind.  Yesterday when I posted a couple of images, I thought about watermarking.  I know that you can use either Adobe's Lightroom or Apple's Aperture photo editing software, but because I don't have a computer to install these applications on (another excuse), I was left to find something minimal.  And I'm glad that I did. I stumbled up Photobulk by Eltima Software.  They are having a 20% off sale right now on the Mac App Store or you can download a free demo from their website.  Takes seconds and the results were as expected.  The biggest draw to me was that it was drag and drop.  You can even set multiple presets and bulk edit your pictures.  At the sale price of $7.99, it's a no brainer.  And no, I was not paid to post this article.

http://youtu.be/uZnZnyo8qbg