Though we will surely keep THAT dream alive, another option is to escape NYC and head to the equator. There is a promised land of palm trees, buckets of cerveza, and lightly-crashing, azure waters a mere 4-hour direct flight away. Its a place where slushy sidewalks and bone-chilling gusts of angry skies are distant memories. This year we were invited to slowly roast in the St. Maarten/St. Bart’s sun with Irene’s sister, Mel, and her bf, Aksel. With accommodations so graciously provided by Aksel’s fam, the trip was a no-brainer and only required around 43 seconds of thought and kayak.com processing.

The itinerary included a good amount of lounging around on the beach, eating well, and one of my favorite island past times, driving up steep meandering cliff-hugging roads on a 350cc ATV with Irene hanging on for dear life. Now with the sole life mission of building a house on St. Bart’s firmly implanted, it’s clear this is an experience that will surely one day be repeated.

Continuing the promotion of Cooliris and abstaining to foster facebook’s world domination, photos from our trip are available here.

less indie, more dnb.

overdue = reminds me of the honeymoon through Greece last summer.
turn up the music = just plain ol’ catchy, yet classy tune.

Spor - Overdue

Camo and Krooked - Turn Up The Music

Unbeknownst to me a few minutes earlier, it would also become an opportunity for me to reflect on my life experienced and not yet experienced..these life flashes being a direct product of the fact that the man who sat in the driver’s seat of the car I cherished and doted over for four years had absolutely no comprehension of how to drive stick…AND we were on an incline…AND there was a car right behind us the whole way, owned and driven by my wife [fiancee at the time] who would be my ride back to the apartment. Possibly feeling me cringe from afar, possibly hearing the transmission sputter in and out of operation, or possibly the fact the car was moving with gravity instead of being able to fight it like it had so many times before….Irene knew evasive maneuvers and 10x car lengths would likely be required to circumvent disaster throughout the 30-minute trip.

Flash Forward 2.5 years to present and it would be that grueling trip which marks the line in the sand between car owner and public transportation proponent. I had enough of the car insurance, finance charges, parking fees, annual registration costs, bumper-to-bumper dc traffic, rising gas prices, speeding tickets, recalls, and constant “accidents”.

public beatings to the very car photographed included:

• college-town keying of 3 out of 4 quarter panels
• parking garage pole massage
• “Toll Booth Sally” deciding to back up over my hood
• drunk DC biker side-swiping me
• sidewalk wheel grinding
• NYC dual side-mirror theft
• and lets not forget: HAVING MULCH SPRAYED INTO MY AIR DUCTS AND SIDE WINDOWS AT WORK leaving a stench of manure which would continue to surface years later no matter how many times the techs promised they got it all (a little present left for the new owner to discover if he ever uses the heat)

With such a track record, I am confident you too would be ready for the less stressful times promised by the tenets of public transportation.

If anywhere in the US could deliver in this department, it would be New York City. After our move north, the only stress involving transportation would become the variable scheduling of weekend F and V subway lines, the failure of my iPhone to appropriately sync what I really wanted to listen to on my bus trip to/from work, and hopstop.com’s inability to account for the # of cripz that would require time-insensitive on and off-ramping from the M14D (no joke, even the wheeled grannies look impatient as the bus hydraulics kick in).

And for a long time this greener method of getting around was an upgrade.

However, let it be known, as of T O D A Y, on this glorious New York [spring is at our doorstep] Sunday, I want out. I want the freedom of getting into my ride with my wife and just going for a drive. To where you ask? Who cares…anywhere….TARGET for pillow replacements, road trip to Quebec, IKEA for Swedish meatballs, or maybe next door to New Jersey for the very gardens it’s slogan promises…it doesn’t really matter! This is the freedom that cars offer and public transportation fails to offer…unlimited possibilities!

So mark my words, 2010 will mark the return of some sort of motorized wheels to this household..two or four, it doesn’t matter, enough is enough.

Because its been SO long, here’s a three-fer:

King Charles - Love Lust

Luv Deluxe - Cinnamon Chasers

The Sweet Serenades - Die Young

• ability to install most pay apps for free wirelessly – friends don’t let friends pay $99 for turn-by-turn TomTom navigation OR even $2.99 to sing like T-Pain!!!
• MMS before AT&T officially supports it (you’re a bad ass–now send photos in your text messages like one, damnit!)
• customized look-and-feel of your device with different “themes”
• iPhone can be used as a thumbdrive
• a portable hacking machine in your pocket
• music downloadable wirelessly for free
• VoIP over 3G and wifi – who needs that 1400 minute family plan?!
• the realization that you have dug your way out of Steve Job’s prison with a rusty ol’ rock hammer, Shawshank-style:
  
  

Let’s be frankenberries on this one, there is little risk and plenty of reward! Stop being a wuss and do it…

PRIMER:

Though Apple keeps the firmware aligned with each phone model (latest being firmware 3.1 on all of them), the actual .ipsw firmware files are different and should not be used interchangeably. At the time of writing this, you can jailbreak all iPhones on the latest firmware except for the new 3GS..suckas! My prediction though is that the capability to jailbreak this model of the iPhone will also be available within the week.

JAILBROKEN FIRMWARE:

Traditionally, the easiest method to jailbreak the firmware was to wait for the iPhone Dev Team to release a software application like QuickPWN, PwnageTool, or redsn0w on their website. All these tools basically do the same thing which is to modify [aka jailbreak] the same .ipsw file that is downloaded to your machine when you go through the regular process to update your iPhone in iTunes (in my case for v3.1, the file from Apple is called iPhone1,2_3.1_7C144_Restore.ipsw). You can get links to versions of the original files here if you need them. Its the modified version of this file that you want to get loaded on your phone instead of these files though (in my case, the modified file is called iPhone1,2_3.1_7C144_Custom_Restore.ipsw). This is the file that will allow you to do many of the things I listed above. The only software available [at time of writing this] of the three tools mentioned to do this necessary modification is PwnageTool. It runs on mac osx and according to the Dev Team’s site is available at these fine locations:

Official Bittorrent Releases -

* PwnageTool_3.1.dmg.5089960.TPB.torrent
* SHA1 = ccc1e5db026362fc7eb9a40c76322b1fdcc90332

Unofficial Mirrors

* http://downloads2.touch-mania.com/PwnageTool_3.1.dmg
* http://bentkowski.com.pl/PwnageTool_3.1.dmg
* http://www.iemanduitnederland.nl/PwnageTool_3.1.dmg
* http://miphone.ca/iphone-dev/PwnageTool_3.1.dmg
* http://dehek.us/PwnageTool_3.1.dmg

If you don’t have a mac or a mac osx hackint0sh vmware setup [like ahem...cough...someone], there is another option available to you. You can download the already jailbroken .ipsw created by someone else and install that in DFU mode. Give these a whirl:

* (iPod Touch 1st generation): http://rapidshare.com/users/16YYZ8
* (iPhone 1st generation): http://rapidshare.com/users/UX7Q20
* (iPhone 3G): http://rapidshare.com/users/L5RXK2

Google is your friend–if these links die surely others will replace them.

DFU MODE:

You must now prepare your phone to load your recently acquired custom .ipsw firmware. This is done by getting the phone into the Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode which is different than Restore mode, which you may accidently see a few times before getting it right.

1. Attach the phone to your pc/mac
2. Turn the phone off
3. Hold power and home together for *exactly* 10 seconds
4. Release power but keep holding home until the computer recognizes the USB device
5. At no point will the iPhone’s display come on. Now your restore should work.

If you see the picture of the disc and the cable displayed on your screen, you don’t have it. Try again until the screen is black. The video/tutorial on the following site may help you:

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1034

LET ITUNES DO THE JAILBREAKING FOR YOU:

Once in DFU mode you can just pop into iTunes like your normally would, click on your iPhone, and hold down the SHIFT key while you click Restore (option key on a mac). You can then just select your custom .ipsw file and poof, iTunes installs your jailbroken firmware. Look at you! You are such a success story! Don’t let Jeff from accounting tell you otherwise.

MMS:

As promised, you may be interested in MMS functionality because who the hell knows when AT&T will really deploy it….late summer, my ass! As far as I can tell, you do not need a jailbroken iPhone to install this, but still you’re a million times cooler if you do.

You can follow the guide here:

http://www.krillr.com/blog/N72ZCXJH/tutorial-mms-on-iphone-os-31-att

WIRELESS CRACKED APP INSTALLATION:

Use Cydia (the jailbroken equivalent to the App Store) to install Installous. You must first add a source. Go to Manager->Sources in the app and then add: http://cydia.hackulo.us/

Because the 12 yr olds are hax0ring your computer as we speak anyways, why not watch a video of one explaining how to install and use installous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C9biZRcf64

Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya….

Doo doo doo dooo dooo dooo dooo doooooo dooo:
the little ones - morning tide

AND that’s why its a real treat to have a hot minute for more creative pursuits [not that carnivorous slaughter of sidewalk fodder isn't creative--I ALWAYS give credit where its due]. This weekend, I was putzin’ around with the latest incarnation of Adobe PhotoShop and with the help of HOOKED ON PHONICS I read me up on a couple online tutorials. What’s great about others doing all the hard work is that it leaves only the basic challenges for the graphic design simpletons such as myself. I can generally overcome the small hurdles and usually do the basic reverse engineering for what goes unsaid in the guides. There’s always the part of the tutorial where it says, “…and here are the super sexy results I got from that last step” and it leaves out around 40 key pieces of information for you to do exactly the same.

I started with my rendition of the sky island, which seems to be pretty common on deviantART in the last year or so (click image to see larger version – wallpaper size here):

Then moved on to a watercolor piece dedicated to my wife (click image to see larger version – wallpaper size here):

Last but not least, the soundtrack for this post:
annuals - around your neck

In fact, its his overcoming this adversity, which allows me to now take 100% credit for Jon’s success in life since then: in business, his coming-of-age relationship with his now wife Heather, his ability to occasionally un-tuck his waterproof shirt from his khakis, and his maturing taste in music. Truth be told, I’d reckon that Jon wouldn’t be with us today if it wasn’t for me somehow……I mean, surely, like with the rest of us, there has been some life-or-death moment where only a hot dog or frozen 20-pack of chicken nuggets saved him from imminent demise and/or danger and/or catastrophic appendix failure. Jon was prepared because I instilled a sense of value and appreciation in him for the finer things in life. Hey, it’s what I do.

With all that being said, in addition to the countless wedding event photos Heather has posted on her Picasa account, I add a small collection to the mix here, which mostly features our smaller non-”fun bunch” circle.

Jon/Heather – congrats again! Enjoy a long life together…just don’t forget the DK survival kit!

This post’s soundtrack is a fun song for the summer:
the drums - let's go surfing

Irene and I were married on June 8th, 2009 on the island of Santorini in Greece.  Though it was just the two of us, we kept friends and family close to our hearts.

Immediately following our private wedding and stay in Santorini, we embarked on a Greek island-hopping honeymoon, which included time in Naxos, Mykonos, Corfu, Kefalonia, and finally Athens.  The photos from the entire 2.5 week trip can be found here.

I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND installing Cooliris prior to viewing our gallery as the 3D WALL functionality offers both a slick interface and an easy way to browse a large collection of photos. Once you are all set, go ahead and click into either the wedding or honeymoon albums from the link above and click the slideshow play button:

Lastly, why not have a soundtrack while you look around:

radiohead - everything in its right place (gigamesh remix)