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Thursday, November 25, 2010

5 Reasons HTML5 is Awesome

1: Video and Audio

What is that exactly? — Well, the video tag and audio tag are embeddable into your html5 page and make use of the browser's media player instead of requiring the browser to have a specific plugin to playback any video or audio.

It's also great because it's fully styleable as well. You can use javascript, or CSS to manipulate the size, color, etc. on the fly. Another really cool feature of the new video tag is called "poster". You can add a screenshot frame for when the movie isn't playing. Look at the example below:


Sorry, your browser doesn't support the HTML5 Video tag yet :(




Code:
<video src="http://dillonchristensen.info/cinema/ap.mp4" poster="http://dillonchristensen.info/cinema/ap.jpg" width="320" height="280" controls></video>


2: New Input Types and Attributes

What's so great about these? Well, for a few they add extra features to the generic inputs. tel, for iPhones make the telephone keypad come up instead of the full keyboard forcing the user to have only numbers, star and pound as options. email, again for the iPhone makes the keyboard with "@" and ".com" appear in place of the space bar.url, makes the iPhone keyboard with ".com" and "/" take the place of the space bar.search, isn't iPhone exclusive. Search-type input gives the user an 'x' button, or a clear field button, inside the input after the user has typed something.number, requires the user to use numbers only, no letters or special symbols can be inserted.


Besides new types though, there's a new attribute called "placeholder". This one is great! How many of you can type:
<input type="text" name="user" onfocus="if(this.value=='Username'){this.value='';}" onblur="if(this.value==''){this.value='Username';}" />

...in your sleep?

But it was pretty awesome to do that! Well, now it's soooo much easier. You literally set the placeholder attribute to what you want your example value to be and you can forget javascript altogether.
<input type="text" name="user" placeholder="Username" />

iPhone users, test these fields out.

Tel:

Email:

Url:

Search:

Number:


3: Cut Out Extra Meta Crap

I didn't know to describe this one. But for me it's a plus. Basically I'm trying to refer to how the doctype declaration was shortened, meta charset was shortened, and stylesheet's types aren't necessary, neither is declaring your <script> as type="text/javascript".

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
...

This makes it easier to remember how to properly code without needing a template. You could just start it up from scratch. Not a huge deal, but I like it.


4: Phasing Out <div>

Html5 started using a <section> tag which is basically the same thing as a div, but sounds cooler. With section, you can add a <header> tag and place your h1,h2,h3's and so forth inside to signify the heading of the section. You can also add a <footer> to signify the about properties of the section. All in all, weak, but new.


5: Five Reasons is Hard

I really was excited for the video and audio tags, but, really that's all that's awesome. When I write a CSS3 post, I will have almost unlimited reasons why I'm looking forward to CSS3 becoming standard! So reason five will be, canvas. I totally forgot about canvas. Canvas is actually pretty cool. Basically it's like the browser rendering an image based off math. So, if you're good a math, it's cool. I made a square. Then again, canvas isn't made to replace img but still, that's what I want!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Team Coco Shirts for Free

If you're on twitter a lot, or never even, but you like Conan O'Brien you should follow @teamcoco for a free shirt tomorrow. The deal is posted on their site teamcoco.com for the full scoop. But the long and short of it is, they're giving away 1,000 free shirts to the first people to use the promo codes they tweet for 10 days (10/31 is day two, so you have eight more days/eight more shirts). 1,000 a day. So if you miss the message and check it 30 seconds later, it'll be too late. @Teamcoco has 83,483 followers as of now. So make one of them the 'out-of-luck'ers. After all, it's free. I got the zombie one today! Whoo!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Visit Pawnee, OK

Pawnee Oklahoma

Why do you need to visit Pawnee? What the heck is Pawnee? Well, the answer to both of those questions is, I eat massive amounts of spaghetti. Pawnee is named after the Pawnee Indians. They were known to be bloodthirsty mad men. And the town reflects this history. It's a tiny place with a little over 2,000 inhabitants. Largely Indian population of course.






This past Monday, my wife and I and one of our friends decided to travel down to Pawnee, my wife's old stomping grounds. We left for there at about ten at night. It was starting to cloud up overhead, and the moon was full and gorgeous! It really was a perfect night. Our first stop was my wife's old home, which her mom still owns, that is currently vacant. We dropped off our supplies, guzzled some Amps and hit the town. Our first stop was the lake.


Pawnee Lake


We went to the lake and the wind was so strong. There was clearly a storm coming our way. It was seriously such crazy strong wind, we wondered how bad the storm was going to be. The wind was howling so loudly in the trees nearby. So spooky, and awesome! After we toured the lake and the bath house, we headed to the cemetery.


Cemetery


We stopped by the cemetery, and walked through to see what was sparkling back at us as we parked. It was shining bright at us, but it turned out to be a stupid shiny piece of paper. There was a weird glowing cross gravestone though. That was super creepy. But after the cemetery we parked the car and walked the town.


Downtown


We walked all up and down downtown. One of the biggest deals, aside from Indian stuff, in Pawnee is Dick Tracy. Yes, Dick Tracy. Every store sells Dick Tracy stuff, or has a Chester Gould mention, he created Dick Tracy. Chester Gould was from Pawnee, and Dick Tracy is Pawnee's claim to fame.


The Orphanage





The Orphanage is the creepiest place of all. The video is a walk through I did of the building. The door was literally wide open, totally inviting me inside. My wife was too scared to go inside so she stayed outside in the car. The story behind the orphanage is a weird one. The caretaker of the orphanage that had recently taken over, was not a people person. She certainly wasn't a "children" person. She thought the orphans were deplorable. So one night, as the kids were being particularly noisy, the caretaker locked them all in the upstairs for the night. Well, unfortunately, a fire broke out and the little girls couldn't escape because of the door being locked. All twenty of them burned to death. I don't think the holes in the floor in the video are from the fire, but, that place sure is in disrepair.


Those are just a handful of the millions of reasons you should visit Pawnee, OK. But if you don't live anywhere close, don't waste your vacation.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Two Year Wedding Anniversary

I've been distracted the past couple days trying to get ready for my
second anniversary. I know it's not a huge deal, but we're extremely
excited. It was last night, October 18. It was tremendous fun! Our
parents had a little shindig and we watched movies. Great times! I
wanted to dedicate this post to my wife. I really cannot imagine my
life without her. I'm so fortunate to have had the opportunity to
marry my best friend. I know it's cheesy, but I love her with all my
heart! Here's to many more anniversaries to come!

And to my fellow bloggers, I'm gonna catch up with you guys! Thanks for reading!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Where to Find New Music

hypno-cat Where to go to find great music. What to do when you find it. Well, I suppose it depends on what kind of music you like. If I'm totally bored with the groups I listen to, and I really want something new, I go to Blalock's Indie Rock Playlist. I'll download a torrent of the month and run through it, weed out what's great, and what's not so awesome. Another cool place to try, for Indie Rock, is Indie69.com. They list several playlists every month to sample. They're not as great as Blalock, in my opinion. But hey, you were bored to begin with right?

Now, once you've decided to go ahead and download a torrent, are you done? No. You have to have a BitTorrent client to use the torrent and complete the download. Basically, a torrent is a shortcut telling the BitTorrent client where to download the files from. Now, some people use BitTorrent for piracy, and they infringe on copyrights. This is ill-advised. The sites above, are not mine, and I did not post any music on the internet.

If you don't have a BitTorrent client, I recommend uTorrent. I use it, and it's a very quick, small-sized client. And, one more little trick to boost your download speeds:

  1. Open the torrent with uTorrent
  2. Let uTorrent assign you "seeders"
  3. Click the "Trackers" tab at the bottom
  4. Right-click one of the web addresses and click "Add Tracker"
  5. Erase all but one address, but then add a random number in the address somewhere
  6. This will make uTorrent not find the tracker, hopefully boosting your down speed

I use this trick all the time, and with my phone tethering, I can get about 500kb/s. So, in closing, if you aren't a fan of indie, I'm sorry. But hey, you never know, you may find something that tickles your fancy. And if you do like indie, I hope you enjoy checking these places out for some new toonskies.

Please, share where you get ideas for your new music in the comments!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Double Rainbow

If You Haven't Seen It, You Haven't Lived

Tosh.0 is one of my favorite shows. I see so much crap on there that just cracks me up to tears. I can't remember if this exact video was on there, or if I saw it on knowyourmeme. Either way, my friends and I can not stop quoting this guy. It's so hilarious. One of my new favorite YouTube videos out there.

It's not too short, but watch it ↓





"It's starting to even look like a TRIPLE RAINBOW." That's got to be my favorite line for sure. This guy had to have been so high, I mean come on. I'm not saying it isn't magnificent, but, wow dude. Thank you for recording such a crazy rant for mother nature. May it live long deep within the internets.

Know Your Meme Episode: Double Rainbow





If you haven't visited knowyourmeme, you've got to try it out. There's literally every internet phenomenon listed, in detail, for you to browse. Hours upon hours of hilarity. Double rainbow is just one awesome example.


Share your favorite memes in the comments below! I'm always looking for new ones.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Tetherme and Gameboy4iphone

I have always raved about how great MyWi is because I hadn't ever seen
anything work so well. I tried out pdanet, but it's run as a dialup
connection and isn't anywhere near as fast as MyWi when tethering.
MyWi is great for the wifi capability. If you have an iTouch laying
around or laptop that needs Internet, MyWi is your man. But I don't
really need to worry about wifi. I have a desktop and I need a solid
USB tethering fix. So while I was looking around at other options, I
stumbled upon a package in Cydia called tetherme. Basically,
all it does is force-activates the iPhone's built-in tethering feature
without you having to add tethering to your plan and roll your
unlimited data down to 2GB. If you're on AT&T like me, that is.
Anyway, tetherme is a paid app offered by BigBoss repo so it should
already be listed in Cydia on your phone. However, if you'd like to
try it out first, you could add http://ihackstore.com/repo
(touch and hold the link then copy address) into your custom sources
in Cydia. It may give you a warning about illegal content (ie
cracked apps) but just click okay. And try tetherme for free. But if
you like it and intend to use it, I strongly recommend you
purchase the legitimate app from the Cydia store. Support these
programmers that unlock some amazing potential.
That was just
on my mind, the real app I'd like to blog about is a gaming app.

Gameboy4iPhone

Gameboy4iphone is, like you might've guessed, a gameboy color emulator
for the iPhone. It's from zodttd, a default source so you don't have
to add any sources to Cydia just search for gameboy4iphone. It's
totally free! The thing I love most about it is that it has the option
to use a wiimote instead of the touchscreen thereby turning your phone
into a portable console with a wireless remote. As you can see in the photo, go to Settings then flip the Wiimote Control switch to on. After you've activated the Wiimote Control option, exit the game back to the homescreen. Make sure to turn off bluetooth in settings, otherwise the app won't be able to start the bluetooth stactk which is what syncs up with the Wiimote. After you've got that settled, you can play whatever games you have! Getting roms is pretty easy, a google search will suffice or you can find tons of roms at Coolrom or Doperoms. You can either unzip these files on your computer and SSH them into your phone or just use iFile to unarchive. But that's a walkthrough for another day.

Looking Back at 10/10/10

I know I missed 10/10/10 for this post, but I still want to share! I work in Loss Prevention and I started a tradition where I take home a snapshot of the entrance doors at the time of day where the day, year, month, hour, minute, and seconds match up! I wanted to post these couple of pictures earlier but I didn't have a chance. I can't wait until 11/11/11 now! I'll also have to take pictures 1/1/11. If you have any pictures with the full timestamp, please post them and leave a link in the comments! I am looking to expand my collection! But until next time, I've gotta go because I'm starving! Enjoy looking at these nachos from Pablo's Mexican Restaurant.
10/10/10
9/9/09

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Greenpois0n Delayed

Today was supposed to be the day of the final jailbreak! Greenpois0n was supposed to be released today to jailbreak all newer generation iDevices and set them up for future exploits permanently. But iPhone Dev GeoHot released Limera1n last night and made the dev team decide to not release their jailbreak and give Apple two exploits to patch. So, Greenpois0n is holding off on the SHAtter jailbreak and they're implementing limera1n to Greenpois0n. Download Limera1n Now! I downloaded Limera1n early this morning and everything is running great on my iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1. I highly recommend not waiting, and free your phone now!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Never Talk to the Police

The other day my friend sent me a YouTube video about why no one should ever talk to the cops, especially if they are a suspect. I was not only entertained by the pretty long video, 27min, but was very interested. Professor James Duane, a once defense attorney, teaches at Regent Law School. He made this video with 7 reasons why interviewing with the police will only be bad for your situation. Again, it's a long video, but enjoy!



The video ends with him giving the stage to a local police officer, Officer Bruch. Bruch has had over 28 years in law enforcement and he continues off of what Prof. Duane mentioned. Listening to this officer was pretty entertaining too, but I feel like I learned more from the professor. Go figure. It's still worth watching if you're interested. It's another long one, like 22min. Enjoy!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Thanks for Following!


100 Followers! Thanks for the support! I do it for you guys! I've got to really buckle down and quit making filler articles like websites and celebratory paragraphs. But until then, thank you for the support! Much love from Adam, the Motherbluffer. As part of my thanks, please print the cash coupon above to use at any location that accepts money! I wouldn't advise any of the above though.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Blogger Design Templates

Blogger templates are a dime a dozen these days. But the crazy thing is, is that no one really takes advantage of them. I'll admit I wasn't the least bit concerned about how my blogspot looked when I started. But then I every once and a while I'd see a spectacular theme! One that'd really impress me and I wondered what I could do to spice mine up. So I searched google for blogger templates and the first result was all I needed. It took me to BTemplates. There are literally thousands of different templates to choose from and every last one there, is completely FREE. No piracy, just a little copyright on the bottom much like the default Blogger templates. The theme I use is called Borealis Blue. I am so glad I found that place to brighten up my blog. I suggest you visit BTemplates if you get a chance or if you're looking to change up your blogspot.

Adding the Template

Once you've found a template you like, save it to your computer and unzip it. The '.xml' is the only thing you'll need. Next log into your blogger account then go to Design > Edit Html. Important reminder: if you're planning on trying out a template, be sure to first save your current one in case you change your mind. Templates are very lightweight XML files and take up like no space on your computer. So be sure to have saved a backup of your current template before changing. Next though, choose the file of the template you downloaded and then click upload. That will set up your template for you and confirm the merging of any widgets not built into the template. Pretty simple.

A Few Tweaks

When I got my templates I noticed that they didn't have ad widgets built in. Not a big deal, blogger will see that you have ads and will suggest to add the adsense widget to the newly imported template.

Another thing was my blogger navbar had disappeared but was still counted as being on in blogger's page elements settings. It turns out that the template had hidden the navbar through the CSS. If you'd like to keep your navbar visible, simply go to the 'edit html' portion of design and then hit 'ctrl+f', or however you access the find feature of your browser, and type 'navbar'. If it finds it in the text box with your template's code, you may see something like this:
navbar {

  display:none;

  visibilty:hidden;

}


In order to make the navbar visible again, just erase that whole portion. Erase the word navbar and the brackets and everything between. That will make the navbar go back to whatever you have it set to through blogger.

One last thing that I had to customize were the extras that the template had. Borealis Blue comes with a twitter and rss follow button, your ad here's, and tabs on top. I didn't want any of these things so it took some CSS investigating. I use Google Chrome so I can right click on something in a webpage and click 'inspect element' to see it's CSS properties. You can view the page source and look for what you want to disappear, then remember the CSS class name. Go back into the 'edit html' part of design for your blogspot and then use the 'find' feature on your browser to pull up the part of the template code that has that CSS class listed. Then just change it to display:none. If it's in a div then you can just erase that div and you should be fine. Worked for me.

I hope this helps. And just to clarify, I enjoy everyone's templates. They're all uniquely special! So, don't take this as a, 'hey you need a mint?' kind of thing. I was just wanting to share some great looking templates!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Make Yourself a Website


Making a personal website is so easy and inexpensive! I literally bought a domain with my name for $1.24 for an entire year! That's hosting included! GoDaddy.com is who I use for domains and hosting. The only problem I've ever come across is unrecognized filetypes. I tried to host iPhone ringtones on a site of mine but the m4r extension threw the server off and acted like the files didn't exist. So I just zipped them and reuploaded them. The cheapest domains are .info domains. They were 89 cents when I bought mine. With taxes and some fees it brought the total to $1.24. Now they offer paid hosting, but their economy (free) hosting has plenty of storage and bandwidth for a personal presence on the web. The only thing is, economy hosting has ads. This was very annoying to me. Especially since I used a few 'position:absolute's in my CSS and the ads pretty much threw everything off. I found a workaround though. And it took me a while but it's so simple.


When removing ads, all you have to do is add one short line after all your page's HTML code. Literally right after the closing </html> tag, just add:

<textarea style="display:none;"> 

Even if you use a program to design your webpages, you can employ this workaround. You don't have to know anything about HTML to learn how to use this trick. Just open your page with notepad and add the code above at the bottom of all the code. Pretty easy right? You see, the ads are added on the fly. Godaddy doesn't edit your webpages to have the ads built in. Godaddy adds the ads when someone pulls up your page. 
So by adding an open-ended textarea, the browser thinks everything added after the textarea is just well text so it doesn't process it as the JavaScript it should. Plus with the display set to none on the textarea you won't see anything at all. By adding this to all the pages you want to be ad-free, without purchasing a hosting plan, you can have a much more professional-looking site without all the cost.


As for the hosting, there are two different types of servers Godaddy offers. Windows and Linux. So if you have ASP.net pages get windows or if you're PHP get Linux. I go with Windows since it handles both pretty well. Now as for content, well that's up to you. I use Dreamweaver to make my webpages. I code because I think it's easier than messing with dreamweaver's individualized settings. But there are several designer programs out there. If you would like to learn HTML I'd recommend W3schools.com. They have some amazing tutorials and they are a great resource when learning to code in HTML.


Even if you don't need a website, they're so cheap, it's like why not? I mainly did it so I could have my name as an email address. But I have also made a webpage for my dog and a fake movie studio! It's a hobby for me. Anyway, I hope this helped if you were looking for a cheap place to get a website!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

UPDATE: Greenpois0n to be Released This Sunday Morning!

greenpois0nSo who out there is dying for greenpois0n?! (For those that are unfamiliar with what Greenpois0n is, it's the next jailbreak for iDevices with the newest iOS. If you're not a big iPerson none of that explanation will help and I'm sorry.) I've upgraded my iPhone 4 to 4.1 and I love the HDR but I miss my jailbreak. I'm really tired of seeing how there are people out there phishing and scamming people. Of course with how long these types of scams have been around I'm surprised there are people out there dumb enough to give out their info without doing research. I've searched on google a dozen times for Greenpois0n and haven't come across one phishing site. The legitimate site is greenpois0n.com, right now it's just a picture of the logo which I have used in this post. There were a few YouTube videos with bogus links but, it seems like google does a pretty good job keeping the scammers away. It's supposed to be released soon, so I've signed up for quickpwn's email newsletters and I check greenpois0n.com daily. Anyway, I was curious about the fake install that's supposedly floating around. I read how there's a download full of Trojans. Has anyone actually come across a phony download, or even run across one of the phishing sites?


UPDATE

Geohot.us, iPhone jailbreaker George Hotz author of the blackra1n jailbreak, posted that the greenpois0n jailbreak is confirmed to be released Sunday October 10, 2010 at 10:10 AM GMT. Click here to visit his blog and read the article yourself. So set your clocks, and get ready all you iPhone 4 , iPod touch 4th gen, or iPad owners! It's almost time to jailbreak!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

It's Time I Share Some Movies

Let me just say, these are old movies. So don't hold them against me. I'll post the one series I have ever made. It's called Dizzillionaire Vs. Remixer. Not sure what that meant, but after you watch the first one, you'll see who's who. So, to preface the movie, my sister and I were bored one day and had nothing better to do. So we made a random movie and really enjoyed it. Honestly, the best part is the final duel and watching the dog in the background tearing up some furniture (pyramat, remember those?). Try and enjoy lol.


Dizzillionaire Vs. Remixer — 2006



Tell you what, if you didn't watch the first one, or quit midway, the second one was actually a little better. We added very lame effects to this one which made it our favorite. I'm not going to say it's great, but it kind of is for me. As far as the story goes, the remixer died in the first movie, but somehow, she is back? Dun dun DUN!


Dizzillionaire Vs. Remixer 2 — 2007



So again, the remixer is dead. For good. Or is she? Of course not. Which is why we made a third one last year. This one changed studio hands. I stepped my name up to a classier sounding company name. Turns out Dillington is some place in the UK. Guess I can't come up with anything original. Oh well. This followed suit in the DVR series. We were bored, therefore we created a movie. ContentID flagged the music, if you recognize it, then that's amazing. I used the Silent Hill OST for another movie we made called Blackout. The funny version of Blackout was pretty good, if I say so myself. But I have yet to upload it. Here though, is the third and last (so far) installment of Dizzillionaire Vs. Remixer.


Dizzillionaire Vs. Remixer III — 2009



Are you begging for more? Well, you're in luck! We've agreed to work on another. We'd like to adapt the story Sam Sunday and the Strange Disappearance of Chester Cats. So we'd like to work that into the series, of course change the characters name to fit the DVR franchise. It's a pretty great children's book that really deserves to live on in YouTube.


Now then, I have a feeling I'm going to have a lot of comments deleted. I can already feel it, haha. But it's time for your help. Where should the story go? What do you want to see happen in the next movie in the series?

Friday, October 1, 2010

Bioshock: Infinite

Are there any Bioshock fans out there? Of course there are. So, what do you think of Infinite? Are you as excited as I am to play? If you haven't seen the gameplay trailer yet, watch it now.




I remember buying the first Bioshock when it came out. I had seen it before in ads online but didn't really know what it was about. So on payday back in '07 I just bought it. I judged the game by it's cover, and I got lucky. I loved it! It was unlike any game I had played before. New story, new enemy type, new atmosphere. Then Bioshock 2, didn't really impress me with a story, buy the gameplay was fantastic! A terrific upgrade from it's predecessor. Now looking at Bioshock Infinte, I'm not sure quite yet what to expect. But the one thing I'm confident in, is the fact this game will not let the franchise down. It's going to be great.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Choose Wisely

If you had to pick five, and only five third-party iPhone
apps, what would they be? These can be from AppStore or CydiaStore
whatever, it doesn't matter. Just five apps, and why.


Pic related, it's my springboard

My Five:

  1. MyWi

    I use MyWi all the time! It's an Internet tethering app from Cydia
    that allows you to share your phones 3G with other devices. It's great
    for laptops if you want to use wifi, and great for desktops because
    you can tether through the USB cable also. This is what we use at my
    house for all of our Internet needs. Speedtest.net always ranks us in the
    high 3mbps. Which is good enough to watch netflix, and get a torrent
    going on the side.
  2. Netflix

    Ever since the Netflix app was released, all productivity stopped.
    Seriously, it's amazing to be able to watch your whole instant queue
    whenever you want. Why would you even need to sync movies to your
    iPod? Tv shows maybe? Which brings me to...
  3. Hulu+

    For shows you can't find on Netflix, try Hulu! With the plus
    subscription you get access to everything Hulu has to offer. Yes the
    ads are annoying, but think of all the shows you can watch!
  4. Words With Friends

    This one isn't really a recommendation to everyone, unless you really like Scrabble. This has just grown on me the past few months and now I'm addicted.
  5. Carcassonne

    A game I had never heard of before, and one day my brother-in-law gifted this to my wife and I. We tried it out, and didn't know what the heck was going on. As we figured it out, it quickly became one of our favorite games. Not only is a challenge mentally, but it looks great! It was one of the first apps we had with full retina display support. It looks fantastic! Greatly addictive.

So, those are my five. Please share which apps you can't live without!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Favorite YouTube Video

If you had a friend or relative that didn't get around the interwebs much, and had never heard of YouTube, what is the one video you would show them on YouTube to start them out?

Sadly this is all that comes to mind for me



Update:

Okay, I thought of another video I would show! Keyboard Cat! Duh! I love this video, and I can't explain why. It's just, genius! And of course the best part is when the cat leans his head back on the first song. He just looks like he is in the groove. Anyway, enjoy the video and pick up the iPhone ringer if you like the first song!




iPhone Tone: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DNUUAXXK

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Kmart Fails

I have found a few things at Kmart that made me kind of, back up and take another look. Let me know if you kind of get a, wtf feeling.

Pedo Fusebox 
It's my **** in a box

Saturday, September 25, 2010

iPhone Ringtones

I've needed to share some of my iPhone ringtones for a while. These have all been cut by me, and they're all .m4r ready to sync with your phone. They are also about 30 seconds in length. I wish there was a way to just download them on the go. Oh well, hope you enjoy!


Friday, September 24, 2010

How do I jailbroke iPhone?

If something does go horribly wrong, sorry. Lol, but seriously, don't forget to Back Up your phone. I've had to restore my phone several times in the past, this jailbreak seems pretty stable, but it's still risky. Just so you know, Apple allegedly will not work on jailbroken phones. If something has messed up in your phone, that isn't jailbreak related, and you need to take it to the store, then you need to restore your phone before taking because they will refuse service to you and your devil phone. Also, don't go crazy with utilities and patches, because your phone is super awesome, but still contains flaws. So, just exercise caution and you'll be fine. Hope you decide to come to the dark side.


Now then, I'm going to give you a list of things to do, taking them one at a time. One very important thing you need to do, is make sure and back up your phone. It is very possible that the jailbreak will screw up your phone in some small way, or brick it (render your phone valueless, other than using it as a paperweight). Granted, these flaws are rare, and I've jailbroken my phone about 30 times. The reason the number is so high, is because I get carried away with adding so much extra jailbroken crap to my phone, it overwrites too many essential files, and sooner or later my phone would stop booting. So, it's important to have your phone backed up before proceeding.


The List


  1. Back up your phone
  2. Go to blackra1n.com on your computer
  3. Choose either windows or mac at the bottom
  4. Save the file to your desktop
  5. Make sure only one iPod/iPhone is connected to your computer before opening blackra1n
  6. Click "make it ra1n"
  7. After you see Geohot, the author of blackra1n, on your phone (don't worry, it only does that the one time while your phone is being jailbroken) you can close the blackra1n app on your computer.
  8. Now your phone is jailbroken

Basically, this was the easiest jailbreak ever. As soon as your phone restarts, scroll to the last open spot on your springboard (iPhone desktop) and find blackra1n and open it up. You can choose what to install, but I highly recommend Cydia. It works very well, and can be trusted. I've used it in every version of iPhone jailbreaks, 1.1.1-3.1.2. It will organize data on the first launch, and will ask you to update the Cydia app after the first run. Go ahead and do so, just to keep it happy. Now, depending on what you want to do, there are several Repositories or Repos which are basically just new sources to download apps from. You see, Cydia runs on a user developed system, where anyone can make an app, upload to their own server, or have it hosted, and then make a repo to catalog them in Cydia for anyone to download. Cydia comes stocked with essential repos, unless you want to watch megavideo on your phone, you probably won't need any new repos. Or if you want that YouTube download manager I have, you'll have to add a repo.


Enough about repos, let's get into what apps you'll need. First of all, let me tell you about queueing on Cydia. While you're looking through apps, and find one to install, you click the blue install button and then a confirmation pops up. After you click "Install", you've reached the point of no return. Once the confirmation pops up, you can confirm and commence the download, or you can hit the "cancel/queue" button and save it in the queue for later download, or clear all. So, if you hit install on an app you don't really want, BUT you already have a queue, then you either have to add this sucky app to your queue or start all over again with the queue. I use queue when I first jailbreak mine, because I have a long list of things I want. And sometimes, certain apps require restarts, or resprings (restart of the operating system without shutting down, basically like logging off then back on) and those are time consuming. So I recommend using the queue for the first few apps you get.


What to get


I have some absolute favorite/necessary apps that I'd like to share with you. One of the first ones I get is called Winterboard. Winterboard is what gives you themes for the iPhone. And believe me, it's popular. You'll find tons and tons of themes in Cydia. When applying a theme, just click on it and check it, then hit the home button and it will apply immediately. Great app, something to note though, is every change you make in Winterboard makes you respring, so, don't flip out if your phone takes a minute to wake up after you exit Winterboard. The theme I use with the wooden shelves is called "Wooden REALIZE". Beautiful theme, with a ton of icons. One more thing to make your phone look pretty is the Five Icon Dock. It does, just exactly what the name implies.


Another great/necessary app, is SBSettings. SBSettings is a shortcut to the general settings of your iPhone, with more addon toggles available in Cydia. Once you install, I believe you have to restart your phone, but when it comes back on, you'll be able to swipe your status bar, on any screen (go into settings > SBSettings to make swiping on lockscreen available) and SBSettings will show up. Or down, in this case. If you click on the "More" button, it will take you to the SBSettings menu. In this menu, you can go to "Extras" where you'll see all sorts of things to enable. Definitely enable the Numeric Battery. That one is very useful, and is available to 3GS users without jailbreak, but we got screwed. While you're still in the SBSettings menu, go to themes, and the one I use is "Tennuis Matte", at least I believe that's how it's spelled. Very pleasant looking, although, the toggles on the icons aren't actually slidey, you just click them on or off. You can download more themes for SBSettings in Cydia


One last absolutely necessary app, is called dTunes. It does a number of things, first of all, and most importantly, it enables downloads in Safari. Yes, you can download MP3s, AACs, MP4s, Whatever, with Safari now. It gives you a media player that will continue playing even after you go back to the home screen, but when it's running in the background it's not as stable as iPod is. To copy these MP3s to your computer, is a breeze also. This requires a package from Cydia called "afc2add", this package is only part of the solution. Afc2add just enables USB data transfers between your iPhone and your PC. Now, you need the PC program to get you ready for those transfers. The program is called Disk Aid. It's here at their website. This is just a two week trial, maybe worth buying, but eh. Once that's installed, you can open it up it'll let you know at the bottom if it's connected to your phone. As soon as it does, you'll see in the left pane of the window a folder named "Start Here". Ignore this, go to the bottom of the screen in the far left corner and click on the text there and select root folder. This will allow you to see/modify/remove any file within your iPhone. The location for all downloads from Safari is /var/mobile/Library/Downloads/. This is where all of your MP3s will be downloaded. You can just drag and drop files from out of the window into any folder of your PC.


Now, for the YouTube download manager, you'll need to add a repo to Cydia. Open Cydia, let it download it's releases, and then go to Manage, and click Sources, then hit edit and go to add. You're going to need to add the Fishbone repo, they specialize in Georgian utilities. The country, not the state. The address to add into your sources is http://fishbone.ge. Cydia will check it out, then reload it's data again, making you wait. But as soon as it's done, Return to Cydia, and go into Sections, then find Fishbone. At the bottom of the Fishbone category, you'll see YourTube. Install that, and as soon as it's finished, you'll see the download button in the Native YouTube app after you click on a video for more info. In the YouTube app, you can also go to More > Edit and drag your Downloads to the front page of the YouTube app. And that's it.

Top Ten Jailbroken Apps

All jailbroken apps are usually great. I say that because if you can only get them on a jailbroken phone, then Apple is keeping you away from them. Of course the gateway to all jailbroken apps is Cydia. If you're not familiar with Cydia or jailbreak, then consult this page. But, we'll keep going on as if you're already set up with a jailbroken firmware. This list is in no way definitive, or to be quoted as a good reference. Hopefully though, you will benefit from it in some small way.


  1. Tethering & MMS for iPhone 3G

    • What does it do?

      It's all in the name. This enables your phone to tether your 3G data connection to your PC.


    • Why should I want this?

      Because it's the very reason I decided to jailbreak my phone. My wife and I don't have Internet at our house. We have an unlimited data plan for our iPhones 3G though. When iPhone OS 3.0 came out, we were so excited to find that easy hack to enable tethering. But once we updated and found out that the loop hole was quickly eradicated, we needed to find a new solution. Enabling tethering on our phones allowed us to watch our NetFlix movies online, watch Hulu videos, and do anything a normal internet connection would allow. We never had issues with speed at all, besides uploading (3G upload speeds are about 50-128kbps). By installing this patch to allow you to use your phone's internet connection on the PC, you don't need an Internet Service Provider anymore. WARNING: There have been reports of people tethering their phones and downloading so much data in a month that they get overage charges, even with an unlimited data plan. Unless you have one of the original 'Unlimited Data Plan' plans, if you download over four gigabytes of data you will get overage charges, and it will not be pretty. That in mind, make sure that there is no cap on your unlimited data plan before starting to watch megavideo through your 3G tether.

    • Where do I get it?

      Sinful iPhone category. See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category.

  2. QuickReply SMS

    • What does it do?

      QuickReply SMS, replaces your standard pop up for new text messages. While it still features the 'close'/'view'/'reply' options, it has a much needed change. When you click on 'close' it dismisses the pop up. When you click on 'view' it takes you to your conversation in Messages. But when you click 'reply' it does not force you to leave the app your in to reply, instead it opens up a translucent window on top your active window for you to write your reply.


    • Why should I want this?

      QuickReply (SMS), takes the frustration out of receiving texts while you are in an app and want to reply. For instance, let's say you love Monkey Ball (who doesn't?) and you're doing really well in the level you're on. You get a message from your wife asking you if you're home yet. You want to reply, but if you hit reply now, you'll lose your progress in the current level. If you don't reply now, you know you'll forget and she'll get mad. Now, add QuickReply to the equation. You receive the text, you hit reply, QuickReply opens up a translucent window on top of your currently open app with the message at the top and the input bar and keyboard at the bottom. You can reply instanly and as soon as you've hit 'Send', you're back to your app without any downtime. This is such a time saver, especially if you have an iPhone 2G and you were on Safari prior to receiving a message you had to reply to. Another great reason for getting this app is, unlike most other SMS managers, this one is unobtrusive, and doesn't replace your Message.app, instead it just makes it even better. Also, it's free!


    • Where do I get it?

      I have not seen QuickReply SMS available anywhere but at Sinful iPhone. See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category.

  3. Winterboard

    • What does it do?

    • Put simply, it 'skins' your iPhone. Using Winterboard, you can change your lockscreen: background, slider bar, slider arrow, clock, charging battery graphics, and more. Springboard is your iPhone desktop, or home screen. Springboard is especially themeable with Winterboard because you can add wallpaper, change certain icons that are contained in the theme, and fonts. Some Winterboard themes can change your iPod layout, they can change Safari, E-Mail, Messages. My favorite theme is called "WOODENRealize". It makes the springboard background a set of wooden shelves and changes most icons to nicely illustrated icons. This theme is free of charge available from iSpazio repo. We'll talk more about repos later.


    • Why should I want this?

      You should really consider getting Winterboard because it gives you freedom when it comes to the look of your phone. Another great thing about Winterboard is that it's absolutely free, without pirating. Apple decided that all you can change in your phone is the lockscreen. That's fun, but having everyone's phone look the same just doesn't cut it. The iPhone looks great as it is, but why stop there? Make it your own. Winterboard is a must-have when it comes to jailbroken phones. When I reccommend jailbreaking a phone, I use Winterboard as a main selling point. It catches people's eye to see how different my phone looks compared to their black home screen.


    • Where do I get it?

      It should be listed in the iSpazio repo (source) in Cydia. Cydia comes with the iSpazio repo pre-installed, so you should be able to find Winterboard as soon as you have Cydia on your phone. The best way to find Winterboard is by searching on Cydia, but you must way down to the bottom to find the app that just says 'Winterboard'. Most of your results will be Winterboard themes, so it can be tricky to find the actual Winterboard app.

  4. iFile


    • What does it do?

      iFile is a shareware app that allows you to have access to all the files contained in your phone. Let's break that down. Shareware means that you can download the full app for free, but some features aren't available to you. Trials suck, but shareware at least means that you keep the free parts. Yes, the trial never expires; You just never get the full version for free. Besides, the parts that are locked out are: Wi-Fi Sharing, opening up your phone to access all files through any internet browser connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your phone. Nice feature, but not necessary by any means.

      iFile has a built-in media player for any songs or movies you download. You don't have to load a media player and exit iFile, it just plays them right then and there and you never leave the app. iFile makes it easy to cut/copy/paste files and folders to different locations. iFile even lets you email files you have saved. Emailing files is beneficial when you have Cycorder, a video camera for iPhone 2G/3G. Even when you download a .zip or .rar file, iFile can extract the contents into a new folder named after the original archive file. It always works, rarely crashes, and has a nice clean-cut design. Another neat thing is you can add bookmarks at certain folders to save you time from navigating through system files. I use iFile to change my text ringtones.


    • Why should I want this?

      Since it's a paid app, it's harder to just say you need this app. But because of it being shareware, it's worth getting the trial. Unless you have crazy ideas for themes, and system sounds, or even fonts, maybe this isn't for you. iFile can be dangerous if you're poking around in your system files without knowing what the consequences are. In fact, I had made a pretty large faux pas the other day. I was changing the default system font in my phone. To do this, you must navigate to the fonts folder, rename the default system font (Helvetica.ttf) to a backup name (Helvetica.bak.ttf), just in case of error. I then pasted the 'Prelude' font, the system font for the Palm Pre, into the fonts folder and renamed it to take the place of the default system font. I recognized there was a problem as soon as I exited iFile and tried to open my Photos. It would start to load then crash. I gave up and then tried to open my Messages. Again, there was another crash. I thought about it for a minute then restored the backup font file and erased the 'Prelude' font. What do you know, it worked. I must have had a bad copy of the font or something, but my phone did not like it at all. That could have potentially bricked my phone. Therefore, if you're a casual hacker, maybe this could be fun, but if you don't mess with any system files at all, you should probably keep it that way. Just to be safe.


    • Where do I get it?

      You can buy iFile from Cydia. I believe it's hosted by BigBoss repo, which is a default repo in Cydia. However, I've found another repo that hosts iFile for free. Go into Cydia, under the 'Manage' area, click 'Sources'. Once you're in sources click 'Edit' at the top, then the 'Add' button will appear at the top left, click that. Then in the pop up, after, "http://", type in, "sinfuliphonerepo.com". Cydia will probably pop up a disclaimer saying that there have been reports of illegal apps on this repo. Just click 'Add Anyway'. Once Cydia updates, you'll see a 'SinFul iPhone' category added in Cydia. Inside that category you'll find many cracked jailbroken apps. iFile is one of them.

  5. iBlacklist


    • What does it do?

      iBlacklist is a paid app. iBlacklist does what donotcall.gov could only dream of. In case you were wondering, donocall.gov is a website where you can register your phone number not to receive calls from certain numbers. Long story short, it does not deliver great results. iBlacklist, on the other hand, kicks butt. You can have several different databases for storing phone numbers to block, or phone numbers to allow through if you've chosen to block all but known numbers. Not only does iBlacklist block certain calls, but it can give the blocked caller a busy tone, preventing them from leaving a voicemail. I use this feature a lot! It automatically removes the blocked caller from your recent calls, but you have the option of keeping them stored there or in the app itself. Another great feature, is block texts. If a certain number is on the blacklist, you have the option of blocking text messages from them as well. This is a very nice feature, and really important for me. Last but not least, there's an option to schedule blacklists. Say, you're working, you don't want your pesky neighbor to bother you. Simply add his number to a blacklist and set a schedule to apply the blacklist during specific times. As I mentioned before, this app kicks butt.


    • Why should I want this?

      You should consider getting this app because it does an excellent job blocking creditor calls, promo offer calls, unknown or blocked numbers from bothering you. Even though it's a paid app, it is definitely worth it. To find out how to try it out for free go to the bottom of this story.


    • Where do I get it?

      It is for sale in Cydia, under a default repo. A cracked version is available from Sinful iPhone. See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category.

  6. Safari Download Manager


    • What does it do?

      Safari Download Manager makes it possible to download just about any file to your phone on the go. With an unjailbroken phone, the only way to get files onto your phone would be by using apps such as 'AirSharing', or 'iDisk'. These are paid apps, that basically allow you to put whatever type of file onto your phone in their specific directories. The only catch is that you must use a wireless network to transfer files. Using Safari Download Manager, you can download zips, mp3s, movs, and more. This allows you to locally play music and movies back without having to reload them in Safari. Safari Download Manager automatically comes with an 'Open in iFile' button for music and videos. I believe this is a paid app, but I've only ever seen it for free. To see where to get this app see the repos part of this story at the bottom.


    • Why should I want this?

      Using Safari Download Manager makes collecting music a breeze. Beemp3.com is a great search engine for free mp3s online. Finding a song and clicking on it, Safari Download Manager will ask you if you'd like to save it or open the file. It's very easy to use, and adds a special icon for current downloads in the MobileSafari.app user interface. Another great selling point is, you can have multiple downloads going on while you continue to browse. Before, there was an app called 'dTunes' that augmented Safari to allow you to download files. It only worked as long as you kept that page running, and it didn't look nice at all. It was very 'code', and looked very raw. Safari Download Manager has a nice look, icons for appropriate file types, and smooth animations. Overall, this is a great addition to Safari.


    • Where do I get it?

      I haven't seen this app for sale anywhere. What I do know for sure is that it's available in the Sinful iPhone category. See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category.

  7. YourTube

    • What does it do?

      YourTube, adds downloading to the YouTube native iPhone app. Yes, like the Safari Download Manager, it takes a great thing, and adds the ability to download. Except, going beyond just saving videos, you can choose High (Wi-Fi) Quality or Low (3G or EDGE) Quality videos when saving. YourTube plays videos back in the same app, no new media player has to be opened, and everything is arranged in the downloads area of the YouTube.app.


    • Why should I want this?

      YourTube is on the borderline of being a necessity. YouTube doesn't make it readily available to save videos from their website. There are several websites that you can submit the YouTube video URL and in return you'll get a link to download the video from YouTube. Since YouTube does not allow you to save videos from their site, it's safe to assume that they don't particularly wish for anybody to save them. YourTube, however, isn't breaking any copyright laws, since anything posted on YouTube is to be copyright-free. YourTube makes it so easy to save a video, and play it back whenever you need to without loading everytime. Having the High Quality download feature is great too, because, despite what you may think, 3G (at full strength) is very close to DSL speeds when downloading (~256kbps-512kbps, on a good day). Videos download very fast, and you keep them even if they get pulled from the YouTube servers. If you hate it when you try to show someone a video on YouTube, only for your phone to take forever loading then give you a 'Cannot connect to YouTube' middle finger, then you should definitely download YourTube


    • Where do I get it?

      YourTube is also on sale at the Cydia Store, under a default repo. However, it's available for free download at Sinful iPhone. See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category.

  8. Install0us


    • What does it do?

      Install0us allows you to browse through and download and install cracked appstore apps. By downloading cracked apps and/or installing them, you will be infringing on copyrights. Install0us is an app designed purely for illegal purposes. Downloading Install0us is ill-advised.


    • Why should I want this?

      If you are at all like me, you want to give some AppStore apps a try, but do not want to pay for them only to find out you did not want it. Install0us lets you try apps before you buy. Of course, I am sure the majority of people using Install0us don't ever actually buy the app they have pirated. I only have ever used Install0us to 'try-before-you-buy'. I have tried some great apps using it, and I have spent a lot on unwanted apps too. Install0us is very nice for trying out apps, but using it to rip off the AppStore is a shame.


    • Where do I get it?

      You have to add a new source in Cydia to download Install0us. To add this repo, go in Cydia, then hit 'Manage'. In 'Manage', hit 'Sources', then in 'Sources' hit the 'Edit' button. You'll see an 'Add' button appear at the top, hit that then type this in following the, "http://", in the pop up. Type in, "cydia.install0us.com" (that's install-zero-us.com). Afterwards, you'll see an Install0us category appear in Cydia. You'll find Install0us there. But that's not all. You'll also have to download either 'Installd' or 'AppSync X.X'. Install0us won't work without one of the two patches mentioned. You should be able to find AppSync for your firmware version in the Sinful iPhone category.See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category. Another neat thing in Sinful iPhone is called 'The Cracked Store'. 'The Cracked Store' is a replacement home screen for Install0us giving you more options for finding cracked apps (.ipa) online.

  9. 3G Unrestrictor


    • What does it do?

      3G Unrestrictor allows you to choose certain apps on your phone to fool them into thinking you're always on Wi-Fi. YouTube for instance, could always show you high quality videos if you add it in the Unrestricted apps in 3G Unrestrictor.


    • Why should I want this?

      3G Unrestrictor may sound like it couldn't be as good as you would think. You may think that 3G isn't that fast. Well, really, you can achieve great download speeds with 3G. Sometimes, you can get DSL speeds with a full signal of 3G. In reality though, your download speed is only as good as the server's speed. If the server is crowded, then your download will be slowed down. Therefore, you might not ever notice a differenct between updating a large app on 3G using AppStore and updating a large app on Wi-Fi. How can that be? Well, Apple servers are constantly in use. I usually never get anything better than about 128kbps download speed from Apple. 3G can handle that speed with ease. The main reason Apple blocks you from download apps larger than 10 megabytes is because they try to help AT&T keep the traffic down. AT&T doesn't need this though. The network can handle it. Therefore, the main reason you should want this app is because you can update/download any app from the AppStore without ever needing to worry about getting Wi-Fi.


    • Where do I get it?

      3G Unrestrictor is available for free at Sinful iPhone. See iFile 'Where do I get it?' to see how you can get sinful iPhone category.

  10. afc2add


    • What does it do?

      'afc2add' enables you to browse your iPhone's system files on your PC. It basically is a way to open up the USB connection for your computer to use. However, you must download 'DiskAid' before you can take full advantage of this patch.


    • Why should I want this?

      This allows you to add files from your PC to your phone. Any files to any location. Likewise it allows you to copy files, like factory ringtones. The only other way to do all of this is by using SSH which requires wireless network. 'afc2add' lets you skip the Wi-Fi and just stick with the USB cable. 'DiskAid' has a trial available for download. Just search google for the exact location.


    • Where do I get it?

      You can download this patch as soon as you have Cydia installed. 'afc2add' comes in a default repo.


  • Honorable Mention: MakeItMine

    • What does it do?

      It allows you to change the carrier name in the status bar and/or the clock in the status bar.


    • Why should I want this?

      It gives you another avenue in which you can make your iPhone uniquely yours.


    • Where do I get it?

      Just search for 'makeitmine' (all one word) in Cydia, it should be in a default repo.

Of course, the single most important app for jailbroken phones is Cydia. Without it, none of these other ones would be available for download. If you have any questions/comments/concerns, please feel free to post them in the comments.