Rev’s Thought Dump

So you’ve decided that the iPhone SDK was either too little, too late or both. And so you’re going to jailbreak again. Perhaps you’ve downloaded iNdependence and you’re going to give it a whirl. Well, if you’re like me the app will crash the instant it goes into recovery mode and won’t start properly while it’s attached to the system. So enjoy that restore in iTunes.

While you’re waiting for the phone to finish restoring you might poke around at other options. Maybe you’ll take a friends advice and try iPlus. After googling and digging around looking for the actual files and not just blog posts about how teh awesome it is. You’ll eventually find this download page. And you’ll download the whole package and give it a shot now that your iPhone has finished restoring to 1.1.4 and synching all your stuff.

You might freak when it says it’s just going to go ahead and jailbreak AND unlock your phone. Whoa whoa whoa… you’re already paying AT&T and people who unlock often get screwed with firmware updates. So you go back to the site and find the download that says it’s for jailbreaking ONLY.

Unzipping and looking at the jailbreak only it doesn’t seem much different but you give it a shot. Seems to go well. But… then it sits saying you’ve successfully completed the jailbreak and it’s rebooting. Only, it’s not. Just spinning away. You look at the message on the iphone screen and it says it can’t find the reboot script. Because it’s in the payload that’s not in the jailbreak only bundle. Doh!

So you force a reboot of the phone and yup, no jailbreak. By now of course you’ve found the guide that takes you through the install and you note the point that at which is says

“If you only want to jailbreak your iPhone (you have an AT&T account set up as an iPhone and you don’t want to unlock your iPhone), type ./iplus -j instead.”

So you go back into the first iPlus package you downloaded and you run iPlus with the -j option. Woot! It works! Right on.

But wait. No YouTube. I know, I know. Who cares. Well… you do because you paid for this thing and you want to use it all and then some. So you have SSH on there and Terminal and being a security minded individual you make sure to hop right into the shell and run passwd and get that default password (alpine) changed and fast.

Then you set about getting a few good apps installed. One of which is a handy tweak you found that will fix the YouTube problem. You exit the installer and reboot. WHOA.. wait.. where did all the bookmarklets on the spring board go? Why is it telling me how to move and delete icons from the spring board? Why is it rebooting?! And again? And again?! And… (You get the picture).

Well, crap. Is it a brick? No. Digging around you find that if you connect the phone to the computer and then fire it up holding the power button and the home button (not just the home button like you found earlier) that it’ll go into recovery mode and you can begin the tedious process of restoring your iphone through iTunes. Phew, your ass unpuckers.

While you’re waiting for the restore you go over what you did wrong. Perhaps that “fix” for YouTube wasn’t such a good deal after all. You vow to skip that this next go around and after getting some coffee and going to the bathroom you come back to find the restore finished. You launch iPlus again and go to put the kids down.

Coming back you’re ready to go. Drop to shell, passwd away the security problem. And you set about checking that everything is working. Hrmm well no.. the browser crashes. What gives? Well, maybe you need to reboot to kinda flush things out. Oohh ooh! Yup.. you’re in that loop again. Well, crap.

While you sit and wait for the restore (how many has that been?) you’re online with your friend who is currently running Mono on HIS jailbroken phone. And he suggests maybe ZiPhone. Hrmm okay.. why not? It’s not like you’re the type to learn your lesson. You grab it while your phone is still restoring and get ready for some command line fun. But.. it’s an .app. Okay ready to go… iPhone is restored. You run the app. You click jailbreak. And like that you’re done.

But now YouTube works… everything seems to work. You go into the installer app. Start to set things up, apparently the BSD subsystem isn’t installed by default. As it installs it warns you NOT TO CHANGE THE PASSWORD WITH PASSWD, because it’s borked and it will make your iphone reboot over and over and over…. GAH! That would’ve been nice to know! Wish someone would’ve blogged that, eh?

So, now all is good with the world. You install your apps. Though VTerm won’t install. But you can just grab that here. And you find a site that explains how to change the password if you need to and suggests installing Services so you can turn off SSH to save battery life and keep from tempting folks when you’re not using it.

Phew… well, that’s over. Good job! Now let’s see about Mono.

If, like me, your iPhone camera suddenly stops saving the pictures it’s taking then you’ll be happy to hear I’ve done all the digging and found you the answer. Find it here on the Apple support forums.

I read about FIOS (Fiber optic internet) actually being rolled out in certain areas by Verizon. I have to admit I actually called. Fortunately/unfortunately Verizon doesn’t serve the area I’m moving to.

My father, on my recommendation of course, finally ordered himself a Mac Book Pro. After months of building and rebuilding the system in his shopping cart he finally clicked through to the finish when I gave him the high sign. He’s got a new Santa Rosa chipset MBP with the 17″ glossy high res screen and all the bells and whistles.

While he waited for his new machine to arrive he ran out and grabbed all sorts of accessories. One of which was this sweet bit of mousieness, the Logitech VX. He already had is new camera and he was ready to jump into the Apple world and Aperture.

So the MBP finally arrives we get everything setup… Firefox, adium, skype, etc etc etc. And then… Kernel Panic. Within the first 24 hours the system grays out on him and prompts him to reboot.

Now, my father isn’t the most patient. So needless to say he’s upset. But he reboots and keeps using it. Then it happens 2 more times over the next couple hours. ACK! Gives a call to Support and they tell him to just send it in.

(Time to shorten this up a bit)

So he packages up his new $3.5k machine and sends it back. He gets a new one. Sets it up and BAM! Kernel Panics again.

Drives it to the apple store… many miles away… to take it back and get his money… pissed now… They of course tell him they can’t take back an online order. But the manager offers him $200 to package it back up and send it back for another one. To keep the order alive. He’s pissed… says no.

After much hemming and hawing he comes around… sends the machine back with the thought that.. hell.. how could it happen 3 times?!

Gets the new machine… sets it up and…. (say it with me) Kernel Panic!!

At this point he’s achieved that kind of Zen.. that calm quiet that happens just before said zen master makes someones head explode with shear rage. Of course I’m scampering thing.. Jesus.. how is this possible? Gotta fix this.

This is awfully long perhaps I should just get to the point…. The mouse… it was the logitech drivers. For what ever reason… the drivers give OS X fits. Just google it and see.

So we removed the drivers - he went so far as restoring it to make sure they were completely gone - and he’s been running perfectly ever since. Still using the mouse. But without the drivers from Logitech. Phew…

In a way.. I’m glad this happened. Considering I’d been thinking about the same mouse. But anywho… if your Mac is freaking out and you have a logitech mouse, try removing the drivers and see if that takes care of the problem.

I’m not sure how deep the install goes. Not sure if the reimage/restore is needed or not.

Obviously I wasn’t the only one having this issue. But after a little research I’ve found a thread with some answers and two solutions.

The apparent cause is with mp3s “…encoded to 56 kb mono @ 44.1 kHz sampling rate…”. Converting these to AAC will supposedly solve the problem. But since it then knocks the files out of your podcast section in iTunes, it’s not really valid. This also explains why my AAC podcasts didn’t seem to have a problem.

Solution 1 - Roll back to 1.1.1.
I don’t know if I like this solution because, since Apple has had all their iPod updater download links redirect to the latest, you’ll have to go to a third party site to download the downloader (the link can be found in the thread about half way down). I’m not keen on getting things like this from other sites.

Solution 2 - Set the EQ to spoken word.
This seems to be a solid solution for folks. I haven’t tried this yet - listening to The Distillers at the moment. But it appears to work. Since most of what I listen to is podcasts I guess this’ll work fine. But Apple really should address this issue.

I guess that kinda blows my conspiracy theory that Apple was trying to nudge us into buying the new generation of Nanos. Or does it?

So, after diving down a few links from Digg today I came across this site - www.appledefects.com. It scared the piss out of me. More specifically the section on MacBooks.

There are plenty of people who are nothing but pleased with their MacBooks. And videos like the one showing off what I intend to do with my MacBook swing me to the other side of the pendulum and make me ecstatic at the thought.

I know that Stacia’s iBook runs pretty hot when plugged in but she doesn’t seem to have to be too concerned with it since it runs great. She has some discoloration on the palm rest. *shrug* I guess it’s good I’m getting the black one. The things that conern me at the expanding batteries and the burning adapters. I’ve heard videos of the “Mooo”. But I hear the firmware update for the MacBook Pro fixed the on/off issues. And honestly, after using some of the old beasts I have and using the MacBooks at the store I can’t believe how quieter and cooler they are. I’ve got an old Toshiba that burns my leg, weighs five tons, and sounds like a jet engine.

I guess… I just don’t want my new MacBook to explode or catch fire. =)

I’m still gonna get one. I’m just gonna return the thing at the first sign of trouble.

Anyone else out there with a Mac Book care to comment on their experience?

Here’s a cool site I dugg the other day on game programming.

Amit’s Game Programming Information

I started my copy of Tetris on Sunday after reading some of this page and listening to the interview with Ryan Gordon from Icculus and SDL on FLOSS Weekly last week.

Everyone says write Tetris. Which makes sense. And is proving to be pretty fun. I’ve only had time to write code while on the Ferry to visit family. I’m holding off looking at any other code so I can see after the fact how terribly hacky my version is. As per usual I have grander ideas for the tool that you can use to create custom blocks than I do for the game itself. I’m such a tools guy.

Other news:

If I can sell off our ‘74 VW Bus. I’ll be able to pick up a nice new MacBook. Gonna get the 2Gigs of Ram off NewEgg and a copy of Parallels. =) I’ll be set. Then I have to move my office out into the Garage where the Bus used to be. Anyone in Washington looking to have a nice VW Bus?

Digg’s new Version 3 upgrade busticated my “Rev Digss” tab. They have an RSS feed for it now. I’ll figure out what I’m going to do with that later. For now you can view my diggs here http://www.digg.com/users/RevFry/dugg. Maybe I should just update the tab to point there.

Having problems attaching to running processes with VStudio 2k5. It’s just my spazzing I’m sure. I’ve got several files to register and usually I just generate an install with my NaNT script, install it, and run to test things out. Well, when I was using VStudio 2k3 for the project it was just find to attach to the already running MMC and things worked fine. Now I get all sorts of complaints about no debug information and what have you even though I follow the same steps. Oh well.

My boss gave me a copy of Vista to install and try out. I don’t have a machine with a DVD drive though. =) Maybe later.

Uhh can’t think of much else. Later.

I made the move to update one of my servers to dapper because I’d heard that they’d made changes that had the Atheros wireless chipset working a lot better… no more static IP. Well… I’m not sure yet. First thing that happened is Shorewall refused to start because they’d changed the config files. So I had to go in there and adjust that. All of my wpa_supplicant files were made into .bak files and restoring those still doesn’t get me a connection. I have umpteen million errors listed on the interface. Oh well. Keep on keepin’ on.

On my work box that I did update to dapper I’ve got about a dozen packages - OOo2 among them - that refuse to upgrade/downgrade/or otherwise get the hell off my computer. This is an interesting problem.

Oh and is Webmin part of the dapper repository? I went to install it and it didn’t come up.. I’ve got universal selected and all. Oh well.

Nice to know I’m consistant. =)

Someone lent me a 256MB USB Key so I can shuttle project files back and forth to work. Last night I spent all night - when I wasn’t trying to keep the kids happy - designing a database I need for the latest feature for my project at work. I had a nice little ER diagram all done up in Dia. Exported it to a png file that I could bring to work, print, and doodle on. Plugged in the USB key and copied it over and then promptly yanked the key out. I set it on the nightstand and drifted off to sleep.

I got to work this morning and plugged it in and no file. I’d noticed that with a couple files yesterday as well.

My guess - since I’ve seen hints of it elsewhere - You have to UNMOUNT your key. Not just yank it. =/ As I was yanking the usb key out with much flair I had a flash that this might be the case. But I figured I was paranoid and went to bed.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not right. *shrug*