Houdini or “no jail can hold me!”
After Thursday’s night marathon (last post), I decided to tackle it last night. Well, wada you know? After a scant 15 mins (maybe alittle less), I was unshackled from only Apple Store apps.
Another 45 mins of restoring my downloaded Apple Store apps and resyncing my data/info. Order was once again in my little iPhone world.
This is just another example of how technology issues can be either agonizingly long or quick and easy!
Well, my iPhone is once again in jail from 3rd party apps.
It all started with Categories. An app from Cydia to organize your apps in to folders instead or in addition (like me) to the pages. i forgot that it takes a few seconds to open a folder of apps verses just swiping pages back and forth. I decided to remove the app but forgot to empty out the various folders I created. Because of this oversight, I no longer had a “Settings” to change things. Plus my folders were still there after uninstall. One folder, the one that had the setting wouldn’t even open any more. So because of this, I decided to try the 2.21 update which looked to be able to jailbreaked. I’ve done it a few times before with little problem.
4:30PM, Thurs: I updated to 2.21 and attempted a QuickPWN (Mac). All seemed OK but it got hung up during DFU mode. Disconnected and oh-NO, it’s dead or bricked. Finally got back up. Did a normal Apple restore and tried to JB but same prob. Tried QuickPWN )PC), same issue. Tried PWNTool (Mac), still no luck. Various seemly bricks and restores later, I gave up at 1:30AM.
So far what I miss the apps I miss the most from being JBd are:
SB Settings: a fast toggling to switch services and other things. Now it takes me about 15sec & 7-8 taps to toggle both WiFi and BT where as with SBS, it took my just 3sec and requires 1 swipe and 2 taps!
Clippy: copy/paste app
QuickGold: predictive App, Contact, URL searcher. Would be perfect if it could search notes, calendar too!
Winterboard: themeing/moding the GUI.
Wide Sliders Concept: easier to unlock/answer with wider slider buttons.
On the the way home, my rear/passenger tire blew out while on the freeway. The night before I heard a ticking noise but cuuldn’t locate the source. Later in the evening, I noticed the sound gone so I thought whatever it was dislodged. I heard it again while drive home from work and finally saw the nail head. Arrgh, again! I figures I go to tire shop tomoroow since it was Saturday evening already. Last time (Feb 8 ‘09), the guy at the shop said it was OK to drive on it as long as you’re not losing air, so I didn’t think much of it.
15mins of street and 10mins of freeway, the tire blew after I was changing lanes towards the shoulder in case the tire lost air. Didn’t EXPECT the blow-out!
Car immediately swerved to the the right, I steered back to the left and braked to attempt regaining control but start to spin back across 3 lanes toward the concert barrier.
My wife woke up at this point in time to see us skidding towards the barrier.
We continued to skid backwards but the momentum was slowing and the car spun alittle more. We finally came to a stop and fortunately, everyone behind us had stopped and there were no chain reactions. Since the traffic had stopped, I quickly saw my chance to drive over to the right shoulder and did.
A good samaritan came up to help and right away open his trunk and pulled out a small floor jack but I declined since I already called AAA. CHP sho
wed up should after the AAA truck arrived.
After having an iPhone for a little over a year now, I’m very pleased to see a surge in apps available for it.
Some of them are quite productive and others are plain fun. Recently, I couldn’t notice that alot of the new programs deal with fart sounds.
Mine’s even jailbroken to try to take advantage of more apps but even outside the App store there doesn’t seem to be any fart apps.
Sure, it’s all in fun but is this what we’ve reduced the iPhone and all its capabilities to?
Yesterday I inadvertently placed a bluetooth handsfree set on the palm rest of my work’s laptop. On the back on the BT set are some fairly strong magnets to hold to the visor clip. When I palced it down, the drive area started to make a moderately loud chunking noise. Didn’t think much of it at the time and then the laptop went dead.
Apparently, the strong magnet bent the drive’s arm thus making it pretty much gone. The real stupid thing was just before it happened I had gotten a coffee and was going to back-up then but decided to do it at the end of the day after more data entry. Boy, should’ve done it, huh? Not only that, I found that I last backed up 20 days ago. Normally I back-up every couple of days.
I used a drive from an extra external drive to replaced the dead one. As of now, it’s been restored back to Oct 6th data-wise and I figure a week or so to re-enter the lost data.
This year’s Blue Angels show brought me to two new locations. One I thought about more recently and one I dreamed about for years. The recent one was pretty good and made a new friend.
Thursday – Survey flights and some practice. Got some good shots and the place wasn’t terribly crowded. They started with four planes and the two solos. After about 15-20mins of nothing, we thought they were done and we left and got some coffee. I then went back to work to get my car and saw them flying again. So I dashed back to where I was shooting (running maybe 1/4 mile while being out of shape) and got back just in time for a practice sneak-pass.
Friday – full practice. Using the more familiar Canon system now though not the 1D Mk II I usually use, I decided to use the new 50D and a 100-400. I had called earlier to have the guys charge up the battery and I topped it off while killing time. So, when I get there and shoot maybe 20 shots, weak battery! Fortunatley, my new friend Dave was there and he allow me to use one of his spare batteries.
Saturday – Showtime! I’m at my dream location of many years. Gorgeous view of Alcatraz and the bay. I decided to go back to the Nikon D300 and 70-300VR. I also brought a video camera just for fun. Well. I wasn’t quite what I envisioned. Great to just watch but visibility was a little limiting.
Sunday – Encore performance. Back to my no longer “secret” spot but required a pass to it was almost as good a being secret again. Getting there was hell between the Niner game, Italian parade and the Fleetweek crowd but we (Dave and I) managed. I brought the video camera again. Last night while reviewing the footage from the day before I had 40mins of battery life. As I was setting up, I had 5mins! Aarrgh! Not a battery issue again. I figured I just got be careful and time it right for the sneak-pass which what I brought for. Checking my script which was nearly perfect on Friday, they jumbled their routines alittle. Leaving was another matter. Originally, I thought if I can’t get to the parking lot I could park at my sister’s which was about 7 blocks away. Well, it took about 20mins to a 1/2 block and 45mins to get into moving traffic.
Summary.
This past 10 days actually as not been particularly good for me.
Solutons:
It’s got to get better right?
Oh, one thing did work though not perfectly smoothly. I got the iMac to talk to the Vista PC for network printing since they’re in separate rooms. The glitch was getting the PC IP address for the iMac. One digit off = 20mins of trouble-shooting.
Just got back from a short trip in Vegas to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday. Once again, our cab ride from the airport to the hotel was $26 via the “fastest way” requested by my brother-in-law. Ha-ha! And this time, my wife and I paid the return trip to the airport instead of the other way around and the fare was $15. Ha-ha again!
Once at the Bellagio, my wife and my brother-in-law pooled our separate rooms into a 2 bedroom suite. Not only was it a 2 bedroom suite but it had 2 full baths in each of the master bedrooms.
Being the foodies we are, we ate the following:
I also went to downtown Vegas. Took the bus from the Ventian and got off at Stratosphere and then walked the 2.5 miles (in 100 heat no less) to the Fremont Experience. Not particularily interesting during the daytime.
While looking for updates on my JBd iPhone’s Cydia, I came across “Searcher“. I read that it can basically do a global search or spotlight search for you Mac users on your iPhone.
After install, I found that it can search in the following databases or modules as they call them:
You can choose how many results, reorder and disable modules too! Searches also do not have to be the entire word and searches go as far as into the body of text. And right now, it’s even Free !
Next up, copy/past!
After upgrading to 2.0.2, I began jailed again. Previous upgrades didn’t do this and thus I was in a quandary of leaving it or not. Of course, typically JBing the phone means that I have to reload notes and such back in to it. After a week of the chore of seven clicks four times a day to turn off WiFI and turn on BT when leaving the house to work. Reversing upon arrival. Repeating when leaving work and again when arriving home. For such a generally well designed UI, this part sucks.
First I tried the JBing on the Mac. Last time was pretty painless. Current version doesn’t work yet with 2.0.2.
Came across QuickPWn for Vista. Hmm, just got a Vista box, let’s try that. First few attempts didn’t work. Couldn’t build a new “ISPW” file. Tried my custom file, nope. Tried the original one from the Mac and that worked. 20mins or so later, it was free again but the best part was that everything was still THERE! Cool!
So these are the Apps I put back into it
Still wailing for others Apps to get updated to 2.o like
Once again, all modifications are done so at your own risk.
