The Lifestyle and Culture Online Magazine

ChangeUpMag.com was a Lifestyle and Culture Online Magazine showing young adults how to live the good life on a budget in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Their mission was to find the most affordable locations, events and local culture in each city without sacrificing quality. This was the magazine's website. Content is from the site's 2011 archived pages.

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Finding a balance between work and pleasure can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be expensive!

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Mind Your Composites

Published on April 01, 2011

Is it the fault of the erudite that they demand profound insight within the pages they read? They try to assimilate themselves with the masses, but John Grisham just sucks so bad. Nothing is simple in reality - just because you wear round glasses doesn't make you John Lennon, even if it makes you feel like a Beatle. Arising from the depths of obscurity is a new era of literary enlightenment. Five young men from the Maryland/D.C. Metro area have taken it upon themselves to offer a respite from the onslaught of popular ‘literature’ that our culture has been inundated with over the past decade or so. Shame on you, John Grisham…

Launched only less than a month ago, Composite Minds is an online literary website that offers freedom to those who subscribe. All you need to do is sign up – an extremely facilitated process thanks to the talented programmers who helped create the site – and you are immediately able to upload or copy and paste any original content that your little heart desires. Oh, and it’s free.

The site is aimed to group together writers, period. That is, whether you are a fiction nut, an essayist, or a poet; Composite Minds wants you on their site uploading content, sharing content, and interacting with its users.

Matt Sammons, one of the creators of the site’s entire premise, says that the site is based on three main pillars: Sharing, collaboration, and publication. Sounds like the makings of a porno. Well, get your mind out of the gutter… unless you are actually writing porno scenes, in which case, keep on keepin’ on. Composite Minds welcomes all styles.

The element of sharing is simple enough: those who subscribe may upload content, therefore sharing that content with the world. Others can then read and comment on that content in a user friendly environment. Collaboration and publication functionalities are still in the works, Matt says. Yet these elements are huge incentives for writers to sign up and upload content now.

“Our collaboration engine will allow writers to select the works that they’d like others to review. Writers and editors will then engage in a constructive relationship to review and revise a particular piece.” -Matt Sammons

Composite Minds is essentially creating its own online writing club, with the most avid connoisseurs of the keyboard interacting – a self sustaining wealth of writing knowledge being exchanged instantaneously.

That’s not even the best part; an online publication is the ultimate goal of Composite Minds. The prospect of publication is huge incentive for writers to get on Composite Minds and start uploading content now. When Composite Minds begins their online magazine, users can allow selections of their submitted works to be eligible for publication. Members will then vote on which works they think should make it to the magazine’s electronic pages. Depending on the month, Composite Minds will center some of their publications on different themes, styles, or even competitions. The site will become a breeding ground for writers of all forms. Whether you are ambitious and passionate or leisure-minded with your writing, or a combination of the three, this is the type of cataclysmic return to pure literary content many authors have been looking for.

Awaken weary writers; the hibernation is over! Composite Minds calls for an enlightenment period that is upon you to grasp, suffocating the windpipes of run-of-the-mill fiction. Grab your pens in Earnest, For Whom is the next Hemingway?

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Our Loss Is Your Gain

Published on April 04, 2011

At ChangeUp headquarters, we rely on technology to do pretty much everything; from making coffee, to publishing articles, to stalking our exes (I hope you’re reading this Sheila). Anyway, if we had our way, we’d have a lot more gadgetry filling the corners of our palatial Baltimore-based office space. If money was no object, we’d have a bagel toasting robot, a George Foreman grill with George Foreman flipping some no-fat patties, and a couple of souped up Vespa scooters to ride around town to see who Sheila is hanging out with (it better not be that asshole Brett). Unfortunately we have way too many children who keep claiming we’re their daddies and besides, we spent all our money on paying George Foreman for the right to say “grill”.

However, when the occasion presents itself, we do get the opportunity to purchase gadgets for use around the office and at our events. In one such case, we recently decided to splurge and buy a few tablets for collecting information from interested ChangeUp fans. Cool, right? Would have been, except we made one crucial mistake – we ordered them from The People’s Democratic Republic of China.

The advantage to purchasing these devices from China was immediately apparent – they were the cheapest we could find. That theory also proved to be the disadvantage, as well, and over a period of 35 seconds we realized that these tablets were insufficient for our needs. Bummer for us, probably the coolest thing to ever happen to you.

Today is your lucky day, folks. Our loss is your gain. We can’t exactly walk into a store and return these puppies, so we’ve decided to give them away to a couple of creative readers. They’re no iPads but since you already own 3 generations of iPods and you’ve dropped your iPhone 5 times since starting this article, a free tablet sound pretty nice.

If you want one, leave a comment below or email us explaining what you would do with a fake iPad if you had one.

Our editors will pick the best two replies, and those lucky SOB’s that win will actually get to use the tablets the way the great General Mao intended. We’ll even ship them in real iPad boxes so you can feel like you actually won something cool. We’ll pick the winners next week and send the goods shortly after. So, how will you turn our mistake into your fortune?

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Foo Fighters Haven’t Been ‘Wasting Light’

Published on April 04, 2011

When you’ve been to as many Grammy shows as the Foo Fighters, the pressure is on to make a great album. Their seventh studio album, Wasting Light, does just that, marking a triumphant return to the primal rock of their early days. And the setting for laying down such an album couldn’t have been more awesome: Dave Grohl built a studio in his garage in San Fernando Valley last year and hired producer Butch Vig (Nirvana’s Nevermind) to help them record to analog to keep everything sounding as raw as possible.

Despite the revived aggression that was lacking in some of their previous efforts, the Foo Fighters manage to throw in several ridiculously catchy poppier songs amongst the grungy metal tracks. Official release of Wasting Light is slated for April 12

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Meteorology Battles Censorship

Published on April 04, 2011

With today’s technology increasing at an algorithmic rate, people are becoming more and more needy about their shit. Put more eloquently, with the ability to share information more rapidly, there is a higher demand for that information to in fact arrive rapidly.

That information is included but not limited to the weather. And I don’t just mean the weather, I mean The Fucking Weather, ok?

Through pseudo-intense research, the creators of this genius online meteorological stream were unable to be identified. The Fucking Weather not only gives you the current conditions with emphatic vulgarity, but you will also get an aptly descriptive adjective serving to illustrate the outside world.

Too bad for me it’s 48 degrees outside, which parleys into ‘fucking all right…and wet.’

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By Brian Birnbaum

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This was a great mag while it lasted. I was able to keep up to date on events and news that were of interest to me and my friends. I even learned about a cool e commerce site called SiammPatra that sold the best silver and gold statement rings+ and the hppest choker necklaces. I still buy my jewelry from this store. The designer / owner of the store has captured in her jewelry a sensibilty that resonates with me and my friends. SiammPatra believes in the power of style that creates an impact through the art of accessorizing. I love the philosophy. I love the jewelry. So thanks ChangeUp Mag. You may have bit the dust, but this particular recommendation lives on.

ChangeUpMag.com