Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Getting back to this blog...
So I haven't blogged in some time. I thought my latest geek adventure would be a good excuse to start up again.
I jail broke my iphone 3Gs this week (here's how) . Wow, what an amazing difference it makes after you do this. It allows you to do a bunch of stuff, but there are some very useful ones for me. I give credit to this website for getting me to do this and following this guy's directions - http://thebigboss.org/why-jailbreak-iphone/
My favorites (a subset of bigboss's list) -
#1 Winterboard - allows you to make theme changes to your phone. I tried a bunch and settled on, 'Framed Black'. Cool. I also found a cool Mayan Civilization theme which is nice. I was even able to get a video background going (the video is of my original iphone - also jailbroken - taken with the 3Gs).
#2. SBSettings. This is awesome. It's a pain to go back and forth from the 'settings' application if you ever want to turn off your wifi, bluetooth, or 3g. SBSettings makes it super easy as it just drops down with a diagonal swipe from the top left of the screen towards the center. This is great if you have ever wanted to turn off the phone/edge functionality of your phone but keep the wifi on (as far as I know the only way to do this is to turn the phone off and turn it back on and NOT enable the SIM - a total pain). Why would you do this? At home my phone sits in a radio dock and always has that awful interference from the AT&T network. If you want to listen to Pandora it makes it almost unusable. This fixes that completely.
#3 SMS Quickreply. This is a timesaver. If someone sends you a text message you can now answer it without leaving the app you're currently using. You don't appreciate how irritating that is until you get to try one of the apps for this. I went with 'BiteSMS'.
#4 Cydia. This is the way to get third party applications onto the phone. For all the great apps not blessed by Apple....
#5 Music Controls. One of my favorites. This allows Pandora or Lastfm to run in the background the same way your ipod does. Start your favorite station playing, press the home button to leave the app and it continues to play! Go check your email, browse Safari, whatever. Double click the home button to bring the controls up just like the iPhones already does for the iPod. This is worth the price of admission alone!
Anyway, I'm excited. I was nervous to do the jailbreaking but it was a piece of cake. I'll never go back. The whole reason I did this was in response to Apple pulling the Google Voice applications from the App Store. I'm going to start using Google Voice before too long and I won't have Apple or AT&T tell me what I can or can't do. Yep, that's right, I'm sticking it to the Man!
Sunday, December 03, 2006
I'm going to start writing about all the computer stuff I do just to share it with people. I find endless fascination in using my computers and other hardware to build the perfect home theatre. The focus will be on using my various computers, Macs and PCs, to watch movies, tv shows, etc. I use a combination of hardware and software.
The list of stuff I have is :
1 HP XW8000 Workstation running WinXP xp2. dual 3.06 Xeon processors, 4 gigs RAM, tons of hard drive space. This thing is a beast and I use it as the primary workhorse.
2 Mac Mini G4 1.25 with 512megs RAM and small hard drive. This is a little toy compared with the other machine, but I find it useful to run OSX frequently. I'd like to move this up to a better machine at some point, but can't afford to currently.
3 Xbox with XBMC software. This thing is amazing. I bought it from eBay for $190. More info can be found by google searching XBMC, but in a nutshell it is the perfect media bridge between all the media on the computer and being able to enjoy watching your movies and tv shows, listen to your music, etc. in the living room. It's like what Apple's iTV will be, but much more versatile.
4. Lots of software, but the important ones are DVD Decrypter, AutoGK, DVArchive, VLC Media Player, iTunes, Bits on Wheels (Mac), and the website, 'thepiratebay.org'.
5. A not too sophisticated home network based on a D Link wireless router, a couple wireless bridges (dlink also), plenty of Cat5.
6. A couple ReplayTV 5040s with the commercial advance features. Mine are just the 40 gig versions (although I'm thinking about upgrading them to more space), and one is connected via ethernet and the other one is dial up. These are awesome.
The list of stuff I have is :
1 HP XW8000 Workstation running WinXP xp2. dual 3.06 Xeon processors, 4 gigs RAM, tons of hard drive space. This thing is a beast and I use it as the primary workhorse.
2 Mac Mini G4 1.25 with 512megs RAM and small hard drive. This is a little toy compared with the other machine, but I find it useful to run OSX frequently. I'd like to move this up to a better machine at some point, but can't afford to currently.
3 Xbox with XBMC software. This thing is amazing. I bought it from eBay for $190. More info can be found by google searching XBMC, but in a nutshell it is the perfect media bridge between all the media on the computer and being able to enjoy watching your movies and tv shows, listen to your music, etc. in the living room. It's like what Apple's iTV will be, but much more versatile.
4. Lots of software, but the important ones are DVD Decrypter, AutoGK, DVArchive, VLC Media Player, iTunes, Bits on Wheels (Mac), and the website, 'thepiratebay.org'.
5. A not too sophisticated home network based on a D Link wireless router, a couple wireless bridges (dlink also), plenty of Cat5.
6. A couple ReplayTV 5040s with the commercial advance features. Mine are just the 40 gig versions (although I'm thinking about upgrading them to more space), and one is connected via ethernet and the other one is dial up. These are awesome.
Monday, September 18, 2006
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About the King....Papa.
- King Papa
- I'm Dave. I spend lots of time investigating all kinds of technology developments. I'm just here to share my findings.
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