Homage to Tupac?

•January 20, 2009 • Leave a Comment

I I just watched the movie Notorious, and early in the movie when Biggy is about to rap battle for the first time there is a poster of Tupac’s movie Juice in the background. Here is a screen someone sent me.

Nice little hidden extra in the movie. At this point in the movie he was supposed to only be 17 I believe which according to his birthday would make the year 1989, unfortunatally Juice didn’t come out till 1992. Oh well still pretty cool seeing that.

Redsn0w the iPod Touch 2G Jailbreak is here.

•January 14, 2009 • 1 Comment

Well if you head over to www.redsn0w.com, a site owned by a member of the iPhone Dev Team which also has a name very similar to their 3G unlock yellowsn0w. At the site you’ll be confronted with an updated image that is confusing at first, but if you look in the center of the star you can see a zoomed in image of the iTouch 2G ARM processor.

Also looking on Twitter MuscleNerd has posted a few tweets to lead me to believe it is the touch jailbreak. His lastest one as of this writing is “that “3295…” in corner of http://is.gd/fPIP is: a) an escrow hash b) a very good week for devteam c) a bad week for apple d) all the above”
http://twitter.com/MuscleNerd

But its his post in the iPodtouchfans.com forum that confirms it.
“In its current (very preliminary, less than 6-hour-old) state, the ipt2g jb is for 2.1.1. It is easily patchable to 2.2. But right now it’s a little cumbersome for both versions, so we’re trying to reduce that pain for both versions.”
http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1159207&postcount=2160

Big news for iTouch owners.
UPDATE:
They have released the tethered jailbreak of redsn0w. Just head over to www.redsn0w.com and take a look at the bottom. I haven’t tried it but it’s not for the weak of heart, and you should have a good idea of how to work the command line to do it.

Also you have to do it every time you restart your iPod Touch. Granted probably not that often, but if your not around a computer when you do it your touch will be bricked until you do. I’d say hold off until an untethered jailbreak.

Hey Genius!

•January 4, 2009 • Leave a Comment

heygenius

Hello all, i figured a recent update on my personal life (and a post in general) was in order.

Things have gotten pretty exciting for me in the past few months. In a few weeks I am getting to fly out to Seattle, WA and have a second round interview with the one and only Microsoft. This is so huge for me I still can’t believe it’s happening. Let me give a little update to let you know how I got here.

As I said before I am a Computer Engineering major and I have a part time job as a contract programmer at a local government agency. This job was/is the first job I had when I actually got to see and write code for a company. Before this job I had a small internship at a local software development company and my main job was testing the software.

Skip ahead to my school Career Fair in the fall. I honestly didn’t plan on going because most companies I would want to work for would most likely not be impressed with my GPA due to some rough pre-reqs I had to get through. But my friends convinced me it couldn’t hurt so I went. I talked to one company (I can’t remember the name) but I did remember the guy basically saying “You have a good start, and maybe someday we could take a closer look at you, but right now your not what we are looking for.”

A great start to a new career fair, I took that pretty personally and felt that most companies would say about the same since I talked to IBM the year before and was basically laughed away from the booth. But I kept walking around, mostly just to waste time and maybe spot someone I know.

Then I came across the Microsoft booth, the line to talk to them was fairly long and just about each one of them had a business suit on, while I went with my “dressy casual” look some khakis and a nice button down long sleeve shirt. All i could think about was IBM the year before and feeling that was going to happen again. But when I got to the front the interviewer was a former student at my school and someone who I’ve met before. What got his attention was my work with software testing and after I explained the process I knew to him he seemed to get more interested and asking me a lot of questions. After about a 10 minute talk he said thanks and said they will send me a email in a few weeks if they want to follow up.

I honestly didn’t think much of that besides some luck on my end but I didn’t feel it was enough to merit a interview. Low and behold a few weeks later I am contacted by Microsoft and they were sending a rep out to my campus and wanted me to interview with them. I read an entire textbook on Java before the interviewer came and I was given a bunch of pointers by a friend who works out at Microsoft and told me how I should act.

The interview went well, I answered all his questions both programming and non-programming, as well as just talked for awhile. After the interview he said they would email me regardless of their decision. They stayed in touch basically just saying “your still on our radar” in emails every few weeks. But then on New Years Eve I get a call from them telling me I they want me to fly out for another interview.

So like I said I will be flying out in a few weeks for the last interview before they decide if they want to hire me as a intern over the summer. I plan on taking this interview more serious than my finals and I will be reading plenty of books before I go out there. This is the chance of a lifetime and I don’t want to let it slip through my fingers.

iPhone 3G Unlock stolen and being sold

•January 4, 2009 • Leave a Comment

iphone-unlock

I am posting this just for those who may possibly read this and may possibly want to unlock their 3G iPhone.

The iPhone Dev Team is a group of hackers who have been on the iPhone scene since it came out and have been providing the jailbreaks and unlocks for almost every firmware.

On New Years Day they released the much awaited 3G unlock for the iPhone which allows any GSM carrier to work with the phone. Their program is completely free and is even open source. You can read all about it here:

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/67797811/dont-eat-yellowsn0w

These guys are some of the best in what they do and they ask for nothing in return. They don’t even take donations.

Moving on to why i’m posting this. A UK man named Jody Sanders who runs the site iphoneunlockuk and has released “his” tool for unlocking the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately he took the dev teams source code and changed some things around and called it all his doing.

Jody is selling this tool online as well as offering to have his “company” do it for a little extra. This is illegal and just plain ass hattery (a phrase i feel fits in well). I am just doing my part to help the dev team spread the word about this fake and if you think you might be able to help the dev team they can be found reading the comments on their site:
www.blog.iphone-dev.org

The Science Behind Beer Pong

•November 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

pongcover

(pic from file)

As I was cleaning out some old files on my external HD I came across a draft of a group project I did in Physics. The project was to find a system that is commonly used and try to improve it. Us being college students we defaulted to doing what we know and we all knew Beer Pong. Anyway I doubt it’s perfect though we did get an A on the project, as I said this is just a draft.

But for those of you looking to become a better Beer Pong player enjoy the read and Take Notes!!

Science of Beer Pong

DMB Sax player LeRoi Moore has passed away

•August 20, 2008 • Leave a Comment

Founding Dave Matthews Band member LeRoi Moore has died due to complications spurring from a ATV accident on June 30th this summer. After the accident Jeff Coffin from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones filled in for LeRoi. The announcement by the band can be see on their website. Being a huge DMB fan this is truly sad, not to mention the sudden departure of long time keyboard player Butch Taylor at the beggining of the summer tour. Cheers to LeRoi.

If I go before I’m old
Oh brother of mine please don’t forget me if I go

Oh and if I die before my time
Oh sweet sister of mine please don’t regret me if I go

-DMB

From the DMBand.com Road Page Notes

“We are mourning our fallen brother. As we sat this afternoon, contemplating the news we had just received, we wondered how we could possibly do a show today. Dave put it into perspective stating, “There’s no place I’d rather be than here with you guys right now.” We cherish special memories of our lost friend. Tonight, Dave told a story about LeRoi at a bar in Virginia where the cash register was near the stage, and LeRoi leaned on the register because “standing had become a chore” and then played the most beautiful version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Dave said, “that was the day I fell in love with him.” It’s safe to say we all were in love with him. “It’s always easier to leave, than to be left.” -DM

The DMB Crew
Wednesday, August 20
12:09 AM PDT”

Now I’m Starting to See…

•August 6, 2008 • 1 Comment

closeupeye
After a few days of watching the clock tick until I got something assigned to me that will take more than 3 min. This morning I got started, albeit slowly, but finally got moving into it and then, after awhile, a milestone. Now I can really see why I want to be a programmer.

Let me explain, at my new job I am put in with other students working on the same or similar projects for my company. The application we are building is in a late phase, therefor getting close to being done, so I have been looking over the source code I now have access to. I am not all that great at VB .NET yet but I can read code a lot easier than I can type it so I understand 90% of what I am looking at, though to most people it would just be a bunch of colored text on a white screen (exciting right?). Before today I decided to be a programmer because I love the lone developers out there, just programming for fun, or open source teams just doing what they love to offer more to the world.

“A Doctor may see 100 patients a day, developers can get their work out to millions, in just a day”

But today, I have come to realize why I know I’ll love this job.

Alas I must go into another anecdote…before this job I worked at a small software development company that ran out of a house and had about 8 employees +1 intern (me). I started working there last summer as a bug tester for both their Windows Mobile application as well as their web application. Bug testing was easy for me, no matter how stable they claimed their applications I found ways to break them, and although I wasn’t a developer at the time I still knew enough about the programs to know where their faults can/will be. After working there over school breaks for a year I got let go, I assume it was because they were so close to deployment and didn’t need a tester anymore. Though on a side note I have since been contacted to come back and try to help them out, I politely declined :)

So fast forward to about an hour ago, I am looking at the form that I am assigned to change around and clean up and I come across two fairly large bugs. It is now burned into my brain to write down the bugs and report them, so I write them down and get ready to e-mail my boss about it to work on getting these fairly large bugs fixed…then I realized how I am now a developer and its MY JOB to fix it. So after reading through the code (luckily this form is only 250 lines) I saw what needed to be added/changed and to my surprise I knew more than I thought and I fixed the first problem, pretty easily actually. The next one took a little more trial and error and some googleing but I fixed that one as well.

Now why is it significant to be doing my job? Why is this such a big deal? I now realize that I have full access to the code of a rather large application (source code is about 60 MB) and I also have the ability to change anything and create anything, just with a few changes here and there.

This shouldn’t sound exciting or thrilling to anyone but a developer, but for a *very* new one this is a big step, and I know this is what I want to do.

I’m Back

•August 5, 2008 • 1 Comment

hello

(pic from kaleidoscope via Flickr)

I am back at school and I just started working at my new job. I am employed via a contractor that hires students and has us work at people looking for developers. My new job consists mostly of VB .NET programming, but I assume I will get pulled into Oracle soon enough.

The company I work for is owned by the state so I have a lot of downtime and figured I might as well start writing again to see if I can come up with anything interesting.

Since I’ve been gone a lot has happened on the iPhone front, there is a new Pwnage Tool and Winpwn out for you iPhone/iTouch hackers out there. If you have updated to 2.0.1 firmware neither will work as they haven’t released an update for it yet.

The main new feature of the 2.0 firmware the App Store is a huge success. There has been 2 applications so far that have gone over 1million downloads, Facebook(iTunes Link), and Tap Tap Revenge(iTunes Link) by Tapulous and Nate True. Apple with being able to control and offer up their servers for the distribution of 3rd party apps, marks a change in software development. Never has it been easier to make your application so easily accessible (and billable) to your entire market before the App Store.

More later, I finally got some work to do…

Clinton still around in case Obama get’s Assassinated?

•May 24, 2008 • Leave a Comment

Kingdom Lores (Alpha) availible for download

•May 20, 2008 • 1 Comment

Comeing from the same developer as Yeti3D and Pac3D for the iPhone/iTouch, Marco Giorgini. I came across this great game from him for the iPhone but it is still in Alpha so you will run into a few bugs. But the game play isn’t unbearable. Here’s a screen shot of some game play.
kingdomlores

You can download it directly from here or read up a bit more on Marco’s site over here. Unfortunatly he won’t put it into his repo because of the alpha status and it isn’t on another one to my knowledge. So you have to manually install into the /Applications folder on you iPhone/Touch.

Note if you wish to install you need to fix the permissions on the KLores file inside the KLores.app (located inside the zip file) to 755 permissions. You can either do it via a SSH client (WinSCP for windows or Cyberduck for mac), or you can do what I did and use MobileFinder. You can also just give full permission to the whole .app folder by using this command in MobileTerminal (or vt-1000)
chmod -R 777 /Applications/Klores.app

Short video from Touchpodium can be watched here.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: The game is now availible in Installer via the BigBoss source or Marco’s source www.marcogiorgini.com/iPhone/plist.xml

 
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