Dave's Free Press: Journal

violence, pornography, and rude words for the web generation

 

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Mon, 4 Jan 2010

Broken out of jail

Today I jailbroke my phone, using the stupidly named blackra1n, and following the step-by-step guide here. There were a couple of points during the jailbreak at which iTunes tried to start - presumably something it did made the iPhone appear to have been just plugged in and so iTunes tried to start, and so I killed iTunes each time with extreme prejudice before it had a chance to communicate with the iPhone and potentially brick it. In retrospect, I should have turned that off in iTunes first before doing this.

Everything seems to have worked just fine.

So far I've found and installed the following apps:

  • Backgrounder
  • Categories
  • some five-icon dock thing
  • some five-icons-per-line launcher thing
  • SBSettings
  • OpenSSH

What other apps should I try out?

The quality of non-Appstore apps is definitely lower than that of officially sanctioned ones in the Apple Appstore - a few others that I've tried, in particular Winterboard and Terminal, have been quite buggy and I've removed them. Even so, it's the user's choice to install dodgy software from third parties, and Apple shouldn't make it so hard for people to shoot themselves in the foot if they want to do that. Either they should allow unvetted apps into the Appstore (and have it pop up a gigantic warning every time you try to install one, and segregate them in a ghetto so that you don't accidentally stumble across them) or they should officially support installing apps from third-party sources (again with warnings).

Posted at 00:20 by David Cantrell
keywords: geeky | hacking | iphone | phone
Permalink | 2 Comments
Mon, 1 Dec 2008

Ill

I am ill. I've been ill since Thursday, with a cold. You're meant to be able to cure a cold with [insert old wives tale remedy here] in 5 days, or if you don't, it'll clear itself up in just under a week. So hopefully today is the last day.

So what have I done while ill?

On Friday I became old (see previous post), and went to the Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was good. You should go.

Saturday was the London Perl Workshop. My talk on closures went down well, and people seemed to understand what I was talking about. Hurrah! I decided that rather than hang around nattering and going to a few talks, I'd rather hide under my duvet for the rest of the day.

I mostly hid on Sunday too, and spent most of the day asleep. In a brief moment of productivity, I got my laptop and my phone to talk to each other using magic interwebnet bluetooth stuff. I'd tried previously without success, but that was with the previous release of OS X. With version X.5 it seems to Just Work, so no Evil Hacks were necessary.

The cold means that I can't taste a damned thing, not even bacon. So now I know what it's like to be Jewish. Being Jewish sucks.

And today, I am still coughing up occasional lumps of lung and making odd bubbling noises in my chest, although my nasal demons seem to be Snotting less than they were, so hopefully I'll be back to normal tomorrow.

Posted at 10:26 by David Cantrell
keywords: culture | hacking | meta | palm | perl | phone | religion
Permalink | 0 Comments
Fri, 18 Jan 2008

Descent into Chavdom?

I just installed a Thing on my phone that lets me use MP3 files for ringtones. This is getting dangerously close to me being chav scum. Thankfully, unlike chav scum, I actually have pleasant tunes on my phone. For callers who are in my address book, it will play the Soviet national anthem. For those who aren't, Dueling Banjos.

But, even though I've not really descended, please keep an eye on me. If I ever start wearing jackets made of artificial fibre, or don't wear my hat straight, you have my permission to stab me in the face, to put me out of your misery.

Posted at 23:40 by David Cantrell
keywords: music | phone
Permalink | 2 Comments
Tue, 17 Apr 2007

Phone advice wanted

My trusty old 6310i is giving up the ghost so I need a new phone. And I might as well combine it with a PDA. Being a long-term Palm user I'm inclined to go for the Treo 680 (or whatever is the studliest Palm OS version is - not Windows because I'm not stupid).

Specific questions I'd like answers to, and which I can't find on Palm's webshite, are:

  • Can the mail client talk imap(s) and smtp, or is it crippled by being MS-ware only?
  • Can the web browser do the Google Maps dance?
  • How zoomy is the interwebnet connection?
  • Is there a decent ssh client and terminal emulator?
  • What's battery life like when (and when not) using it as a phone?
  • And of course, is it any good and where should I get it from?

Your time starts now, please use both sides of the paper.

Posted at 19:09 by David Cantrell
keywords: geeky | palm | phone
Permalink | 3 Comments

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