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This is to remember that I have been using my iPhone for over a year now. I remember I was on a business trip to Prague on the 13th of September 2007, and on the way I stopped in Bratislava to check something. I went and fetched my emails, and from an RSS feed I read that someone wrote a console command that “could” potentially unlock the device. Since I had the iPhone for 2 weeks already, I carried it with me everywhere to unlock it as soon as I find a solution. I needed nothing more, I plugged in the iPhone to my laptop and started hacking it. In a matter of an hour, I had it unlocked, and for the very first time, it started operating on Orange SK (Slovakia) network. Ever since, I never put it down, it came with me everywhere I went, and it has never let me down once.

My iPhone was roaming in the following countries already:

Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, England, Russia, United Arab Emirates, China, Hong Kong and the list is still growing. I also took it to Japan, but there was no GSM to support international roaming, so I only used WiFi there.

I plan on keeping it for as long as it falls apart, and to tell you the truth, its still witout a single scratch. I protected it well in a sock-like sleeve and it has kept it like new.

I know this post might be boring for most people, but from time to time I need to get the geekyness out of my system

I had to do this many times, but still not enough to stick to my head, so I always end up googling for it. I decided to Blog it now finally, so I will always have this information handly, and hope to help others too.

My Distribution is Debian Linux, but I assume it will work on others too.

To set your time-zone, do the following:


ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Budapest /etc/localtime


that is if your time zone is Budapest. Just browse the /usr/share/zoneinfo/ folder and see which location matches you.
When that is done, you need to adjust your time. Lately on systems that have internet connectivity, I just use a Time Server which keeps my time updated hourly, as I set a Cron job to do so.

To get this done, I install “ntpdate”


apt-get install ntpdate


Now I set cron to run the job hourly, but you can set whatever timeframe you want:


crontab -e


Here I added the following line:


#Setup NTPDATE
@hourly /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate


then restarted cron


/etc/init.d/cron restart


and that was it. Our hourly automatic time update is set. Now to test if all went well, I manually updated the time:


/etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate


and checked if it was okay. If you see the right timezone and right time, just save it to the BIOS clock as well so even offline the time will remain correct more or less:


/sbin/hwclock --systohc


and we are done. Enjoy having a Linux box with never failing correct time!

Hi

Long time no updates, I am really sorry for that. Life has turned upside down since the recent move. It has been a month now, so we are in the calming stage already, and hopefully I will have more time to maintain the blog.

But just to give you an update, I have already started building my newest and first to Dubai project, a HTPC aka Home Theatre PC.

We purchased a Sharp Aquos 32″ LCD TV, which is small, but perfectly fits in size to our anyways small apartment. But since a TV by itself is just plain boring, I went looking for options. And of course added the fact that I am an Apple geek, I had to go down the proper, Apple road.

After having read extensive amount of articles about options, I have decided to go with a Mac Mini as the head unit, and it will be wired to the LCD TV via HDMI to DVI cable for best quality. I will have internet, emails, iTunes music and videos, and of course DVD and “other” video playback. This will become our entertainment centre, and to have the best control over all this, I purchased a Belkin MediaPilot keyboard, which is wireless, has a mouse built in with an intelligent Remote Controller on board. So one device will drive it all.

This was just a teaser, stand by for the outcome. I ordered via Amazon to a US address to eliminate the horrific UAE and in general non US Apple prices. There is a company called Aramex who provides a US shipping address, I ship everything there, and they forward it to the UAE, to our doorstep.

More later cheers, I am off picking up my wife from her lunch gathering…

Ben

Hi

So finally the day has come, the Macbook Air arrived to Hungary. My mother in law brought it over from Tokyo. So that the bag wouldn’t get scratched, I also ordered a Fabrix case from Singapore, which I earlier mentioned, and she was bringing the two together.

As I don’t have much time now, need to catch an early flight tomorrow, I just thought of tossing out a few pictures, for teasers.

Enjoy, a full review will come shortly,

Continue reading »

Hi

NOTE: There is an update below in the text as Firmware 2 changed things a bit

If you own an iPhone, you know this. The built in Camera application takes pictures and names them IMG_xxxx.JPG, where xxxx is an ascending number starting at 0001.

This is to keep images named differently, so even if you put them all in one folder, all has a unique name, and nothing gets overwritten. Now this works great, up unitl you decide to flash your firmware, and upgrade. If you do that, this counter gets reset, and the naming starts again from IMG_0001.JPG, and on.

I am on my 5th firmware, so you can imagine the flustration. I have IMG_0001.JPG 5 times already, and need to rename them one by one to eliminate confusion.

Just recently I was wondering if there was a way to alter the Camera’s naming, and sure enough, I found the answer on a popular iPhone forum. Read on for instrucions if you are interested….
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So the 1.1.4 Firmware was out for a while now, and many have upgraded to it without any real issue, so I decided to take the plunge and do it myself. I was on 1.1.2 prior to this upgrade and since I had no problems with it, I kept delaying the upgrades.

1.1.4 has a few neat features, like rearranging the icons, and locating yourself via cell triangulation on a Google Map, but that’s all there is to it. The main reason for my upgrade was that new software is built for 1.1.4 mainly, and I wanted to be able to try them and use them.

The upgrade went fine thanks to the fine folks at the iPhone Dev team, Aviegas and Geohotz who all contributed to this solution. I used iPlus 2.0b which takes the freshly restored iPhone on 1.1.4 firmware, jailbreaks it, unlocks it, and does it all with no harm to the iPhone itself. The process is completely reversible, which make it a friendly solution should a hardware damage occur and I have to take the phone back to Apple.

Here is a screenshot of the About screen on my iPhone, you can see its on the 1.1.4 firmware.

Read on for further details….

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In our line of work, often time we deal with broken Hard drives, failed components. The obvious question comes to mind, what to do with a failed Hard disk? Should we just toss them into a recycle bin, and have the cleaners take them? Well, that might not be a very good idea after all, provided the technology that’s out there to recover data basically from any hard disk in any state.

What I chose to do might seem agressive, but gets the job done. I take a flat head screwdriver, slide it between the casing and the shiney cover, and pry it open. If you have the special screw driver for opening them, it must be a nicer process, but I dont have them. Once the lid is off, I just smash the “disk” into pieces, and then spread them to various containers around our building.

BEFORE

AFTER

Hi

So I had purchased the AirMail from Manillamac, but since that has not arrived yet, I needed another case for the shipping. The MacBook Air is being brought to Budapest by my Mother in Law from Tokyo, and since I want it protected, I need to send her a sleeve case she can place the precious MBA in.

I went on googling, and found a very nice and in-style sleeve called Blue Suit from Fabrixcases, a company based in Singapore. Since I want it sent to Japan, it actually makes sense to order from the Far East, and of course quality-wise the Far East is unbeatable. I wanted to order in Japan, but the lack of credit card acceptance put me off.

This is how it looks, more on this later once I have it in my hand.

Hi

So the bag I ordered from Australia has finally arrived. It is just like what I expected, its handmade, perfect, and gives good protection to the iPhone. For more pictures, read on.

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Hi

Happy Ben reports the purchase of a MacBook Air as of yesterday 11PM CET . I must say I am really excited, I was almost unable to fall asleep from thoughts in my head. Yes, before you say it, this is a definate sign of geekyness, and I am most definitely a geek.

Read on for details of the purchase, and proof

Continue reading »