Jared Mendelewicz » Personal

Hori Smoku – Sailor Jerry

jared — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:29:07 +0000

Rarely do I spend money on iTunes, however, my inability to find this documentary anywhere, I bought this gem last night.

I suppose you may need to be interested in tattoos to like it, but it’s really great.

Disabling that Pesky Trackpad Rotate Feature in Photoshop CS4

jared — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:37:05 +0000

I use photoshop for various things, but, after my most recent Macbook Aluminum purchase and my upgrade to Adobe Photoshop CS4, I’ve noticed that stupid compass showing up as I work. At first, I had no idea what it was, couldn’t find anything about it online- but, more importantly, I couldn’t find a way to disable it.

After tinkering for a little longer, I saw I could rotate the canvas using two fingers on the trackpad. Still, I hate this feature and it annoyed the hell out of me.

A few weeks later, I googled around and found an Adobe-issued plugin that disables the feature for trackpad users. Here is a link to the Adobe download page:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4337

Once downloaded, move the plugin to your Adobe Photoshop CS4 install directory plugins folder and restart photoshop. Works like a charm.

Booya. Damn, I hated that feature.

iPhone 3GS Poor Signal, Bad Reception

jared — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:30:18 +0000

I just purchased a 16 GB White iPhone 3GS and am having terrible signal issues. At first, I thought it was only my local tower, maybe even only my phone. After consulting a couple people around the office who recently purchased the iPhone 3GS, I realized that they are all having the same problem.

If anyone else is experiencing this, please comment and let me know if Apple/AT&T can do anything about this. This is becoming extremely frustrating. I am right next to a window and I’ve receive three voicemails from people trying to reach me this morning! This seems to be an intermittent problem.

Laffy Taffy used as Electrical Source?

jared — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:10:47 +0000

Being the candy connoisseur that I am, I frequently find myself chomping down on some chewy (and delicious) Laffy Taffy candy. I’m not quite sure what the recommended serving size is, but I’m sure I exceed it by at least… 5 times per sitting.

That being said, there is one thing I’ve noticed when opening an exorbitant amount of these little devils consecutively:

The wrappers almost always have a static cling/charge that keep the wrapper stuck to my hands, arms and other inanimate objects in the room.

Being a neat-freak, I try very hard to keep them wrappers together, but their cling makes it almost impossible.Just thinking about it makes me angry.

I HATE OS X HOT CORNERS

jared — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:41:12 +0000

Apple computers are so amazing, but HOT CORNERS is the absolute worst invention ever. Anyone who likes them is crazy.

Airport Express problems joining Linksys network

jared — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:59:55 +0000

I recently tried to extend my Linksys wireless network using an Airport Express. Every time I’d select my wireless network and set the password (it automatically filled it most of the time) it just wouldn’t work.

After further investigation, I found that the WEP encryption level on my Linksys router was 64-bit and the options on the Airport Express were 128-bit, 40-bit and Transitional WEP Settings.

The solution was to use the 40-bit encryption option, even though my Linksys router’s encryption was set to 64-bit. Works like a charm now. Booya.

The Sound of Metal

jared — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:15:30 +0000

My brother, Ben Mendelewicz, created this animation for his senior project.

Macbook Flickering Screen Backlight Warranty Repair

jared — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:22:46 +0000

Throughout the past two years, my 13″ Black Macbook has experienced four repairable issues:

Hard drive failure
Light to medium flickering backlight
Light flickering backlight
Cracked wrist support edge plastic

Each time I brought the computer in for these issues, the Genius (tech support) immediately smiled and admitted my machine for warranty-covered repair. Always renew your Apple Care. If you stumbled upon this blog and have not renewed it, consider it a lesson learned. Just go a few days before your computer’s one year birthday and spend the money to renew. Mine has paid for itself more than three times by now.

iPhone and iPod Touch Corrupt Camera Roll File Fix

jared — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:16:59 +0000

Twice- recently, I’ve experienced an issue with my iPhone’s camera roll/photo albums. I would take a photo and iPhone would act as if it were saving it, but, when I would attempt to view my Camera Roll, it would show only one blank white square thumbnail. Whenever I’d try to open the photo, the photo application would completely quit/fail.

After reading around online, I ended up attempting a restore, which lost a bunch of data the first time around. It did fix the problem, so I didn’t really care that much. The other day the same problem happened- so I pushed off restoring because I didn’t want to deal with it, let alone lose any data.

I had recently purchased software called MegaPhone for iPhone and iPod Touch which helps you retrieve photos and other content from an otherwise inaccessible iPhone or iPod touch. Using this software, I was able to view all data files on my iPhone and navigate to the /DCIM folder and deleted all three folders within the directory. This immediately fixed the poroblem and I was able to re-sync my old photos.

As you can see in my previous post, the software is relatively inexpensive and has saved my ass more than $20 worth since I purchased it.

Why Facebook Chat Owns Your Face

jared — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:16:51 +0000

Facebook has recently released Facebook Chat. There are a few reasons why this new feature not revolutionizes digital and personal relationships, but completely owns your face- and all of our faces.

I don’t know about anyone else, but Facebook, in and of itself, really helped me get in touch with people from high school, middle school and even elementary school who I never would have spoken to again.

Over the years, Facebook has not only allowed us all to reconnect with these people via messages and wall posts, but they even created a semi-creepy news feed feature for us to spy on our friends!

With the release of Facebook Chat, Facebook has turned our grade school and college acquaintances into real people, online RIGHT NOW. You’re not only looking at news feeds anymore, you’re looking at these people real-time!

Many of my Facebook friends aren’t my friends in real life or on AOL Instant Messenger, so seeing them online and being able to chat with them truly brings my online network to an entirely new level.