The Bank goes bonkers!

Posted Thu, 11/06/2008 - 17:04 by garan

The Bank of England has just dropped the Base Rate to 3%, cutting 1.5% off the existing rate. About a year ago I was contemplating a fixed rate deal to try and protect myself against the rising rates. It's not going to give me any more money in my pocket each month though as I'll be rolling the money I would have paid into paying off capital instead of interest; the joys of flexible mortgages.

iPhone jailbreak

Posted Thu, 10/30/2008 - 17:20 by garan

I finally gave in to temptation and jailbroke my iPhone about two weeks ago. It's a 3G iPhone running 2.1 firmware. I followed the following guide that is suitable for OSX:

http://www.iphone-hacks.com/forums/about1709.html

The Monty Python'esqe pointy hands were a great help!

The only problem I encountered was that I needed to have iTunes able to connect to the Internet and to my iPhone at the same time which made it difficult as I was using my 3G Internet dongle to access the Internet at the time and the fat USB dongle covers the second port on the side of the Powerbook.

All in all it took about an hour to get it all done. I've got two firmware files as a result. One is the original Apple firmware that I can return to at anytime and the other is the Pineapple firmware that is installed.

Jailbreaking the iphone has given me access to Cydia. It's a gui for the ported Debian apt-get package management system and is great. It's like the App Store but it's all free! One of the first things I installed was OpenSSH so I can now get onto the iPhone over the network and fiddle with things.

At the moment the big plus points are:

  1. All of the App Store apps work - I can still use the App Store if I need to too.
  2. I can install my own themes and customise them to my heart's content. Boss Prefs and Winterboard allow me to show/hide icons, move things around, customise text etc.
  3. SwirlyMMS brings picture messaging to the iPhone. Just got to persuade O2 to enable it on my account but that's a story for a different day!
  4. I've got a Bluetooth on/off button on the front screen. This makes toggling Bluetooth much easier so I can get a lot longer out of the battery.
  5. I could use the iPhone as a modem if I wanted to. The modem apps on the iPhone create a SOCKS proxy that you can connect to over an ad-hoc wireless network. Not tried it yet but can't see why it wouldn't work.
  6. The FStream app allows me to stream BBC Radio streams meant for Windows Media Player
  7. I can go back to Apple's firmware at a moment's notice.
  8. Macman is great!

Note: If you want to Jailbreak your iPhone and your brick it then on your own head be it! I'm not responsible if it goes wrong!

Note 2: This is jailbreaking, not unlocking. It will allow you to customise the iPhone and the apps that are on it but it won't allow you to use a different mobile provider's SIM card in your iPhone.

Iron Man DVD Protection

Posted Tue, 10/28/2008 - 01:12 by garan

On a whim I bought a copy of the new Iron Man DVD to watch this evening. I put it in my PC to watch whilst I did some work and it hung Windows Vista Explorer. Turning the DVD case over, there written in little writing is 'This DVD is copy-protected'.

All I wanted to do was watch the DVD that I bought so here's how I got it working.. I downloaded the latest version of DVDFAB. It needs to be version 5.1.0.0 reading the forums. Now that I've gone to the trouble of installing this software maybe I'll rip the disk and give a copy of it everyone I know just because I can and it will annoy the people who printed that little message on the disk.

Bah.

Johnson & Johnson Acuvue Daily TruEye Contact Lenses

Posted Mon, 10/27/2008 - 13:04 by garan

I've been trialing some new contacts over the last week or so. For the last couple of years I've been using Acuvue Moist daily disposable lenses so when my optician told me about a new J&J product I had to give it a go. I've always had problems with my eyes drying out and going red towards the end of the day which has always meant that I wear lenses for a reason rather than on a whim. The new TruEye lenses have a higher silicon content which allows almost 100% of the oxygen that your eye would normally have through. It also makes them smoother which should make them more comfortable.

For me they've been a big success as I've been able to wear them all day for several days on the trot. It could be the placebo effect or it could be the changes.. dunno! But I've gone ahead and ordered a supply of them so I'm stuck with them for a little while. There's a small premium over the normal Moist lenses but if I'm able to wear them for longer then it's worth it.

Data centre cabling

Posted Wed, 10/22/2008 - 08:37 by garan

I'm always amazed at the nests of cables that are created in switch rooms. People start off with the best intentions in the world but eventually it ends up in a big tangle. I've had to bend tempered glass cabinet doors to get them closed in the past. Came across this example that made me go 'wow':

This is how you do it properly:

Photos were borrowed from this article:

http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/01/24/when-data-center-cabling-becomes-art/

BBC Weather Beta Website

Posted Tue, 10/07/2008 - 18:55 by garan

I spotted the beta button up in the corner of the BBC's weather website this afternoon. Looks very modern and has more information. Seems to associate Hook with Bracknell though - that'll effect the house prices!! ha ha.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/319?area=Hook

Check out the Android!

Posted Mon, 10/06/2008 - 09:35 by garan

Google have taken another step towards total world domination through the introduction of their new mobile phone OS. With the recent spate of Apple's lack of consistency with regard to what is and what isn't allowed on the App Store swiftly followed by extension of the developer non-disclosure agreement to stop folk publishing their rejection letters, maybe Android is the way to go?

Whilst I mull this over I think I'll have a play with the HTC Android emulator:

http://tmobile.modeaondemand.com/htc/g1/

App Store Rejections:

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/09/13/apples-app-store-rejection-policies-...

App Store Rejection Letter NDA:

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/09/23/apple-extends-non-disclosure-to-app-...

Drupal Acquia Marina Theme Update

Posted Wed, 10/01/2008 - 23:08 by garan

Looks like there's a bug in the Acquia Marina Theme. If I have all the blocks on the right then the green banners and white boxes don't work. A single block on the left makes both sides work.

Drupal Acquia Marina Theme

Posted Wed, 10/01/2008 - 21:58 by garan

I've applied the new Acquia Marina theme to the site. It looks good but looks better in the preview picture:

I can't work out where the white boxes with the green title bars surrounding the blocks have gone. Firebug is telling me that they are being overridden but that's not something to look at tonight!

The tag cloud has disapeared for the time being as it breaks the W3C compliance, as does the YouTube insertion that was here. The blue W3C logo goes better with the site too I think :)

Google Reader

Posted Wed, 10/01/2008 - 21:54 by garan

I've been using Google's RSS Reader recently to organise some of the stuff that I regularly look at on the wubbleyou wubbleyou wubbleyou. I'm using Google Reader to manage my subscriptions but exporting the OPML file so that I can use the Newsstand iPhone app to read when I've got a few minutes to spare. It seems to be working well.

I've exported some of my 'blogrolls' over there on the right. I can change what appears on this site by simply changing the tags on the Google Reader app.

I've exported the blogrolls with no title and no formatting so that I can control the look and feel myself by creating drupal blocks for each of the rolls. The only thing that I'm not able to control is the order. It's alphabetical.

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