Howto downgrade iPhone from iOS 4 to 2.2.1 or 3.1.3 and all other firmware versions
Posted by lars | Filed under Gadgets, Lifehacking, Mac, howto, iphone
This evening I’ve downgraded an iPhone 3G from iOS 4 all the way back to 2.2.1. It was a little bit tricky but I finally figured it out. I’m back at 3.1.3 since not enough apps worked on 2.2.1 (for a brief iOS history on what has changed, see here).
Should you ever want to do it, this is how you do it. Note: The guides that were out there did not work for me, I kept getting Error 1600 all the time so this is what I did to make it work.
First off, at least for me, I could not jump straight from 4.0 to 2.2.1, you have to downgrade in steps. This means we first have to go from 4.0 to 3.1.3 and then to 3.0 and then to 2.2.1. Going from 3.0 to 2.2.1 also requires iTunes version 7.7, so if you’re on a Mac with the latest iTunes, you’re shit out of luck – get on an old PC or run windows through a VM. I had to run iTunes 7.7 on an old crappy XP machine to make it work right also, it didn’t vibe well with Windows 7 x64.. And YES, I really had to go from 3.1.3 to 3.0 and THEN to 2.2.1.
To get a hold of all the old firmware revisions for the iPhone visit this page and select the right one, remember, you have to do it in steps, so if you want to go from 4.0 to 2.2.1, first you got to hit 3.1.3.
You’re also going to be needing a tool called iRecovery to get the iPhone out of DFU mode. If you’re on a Mac, unpack the tool into some directory then navigate to that directory (for instance Downloads) and in terminal type:
./iRecovery -s
Yeah that’s right, I had to drop in an absolute path to make it fly. Oh and if you’re going to be using iRecovery on Windows, instead of in Mac, don’t forget to install this little bad boy (Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package), otherwise the executable won’t work!
Anyway, to downgrade, you can follow this guide for instance, but don’t forget about the extra stuff I told you above – this is the shit that took me time to figure out.
Tags: 2.2.1, 3.1.3, apple iphone, downgrade iphone, error 1600, ios, ios 4, itunes, jailbreak
Speed up Safari 4
Posted by lars | Filed under Lifehacking, Mac, Software, howto
Safari 3 started up a whole lot faster than Safari 4 final and it’s been annoying me up until now. Disable some of the rather useless eyecandy for Safari 4 to restore the more speedier Safari:
Bring back old progress bar, this I don’t do for speed but because the old one actually showed PROGRESS which the new one does not
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool FALSE No go, doesn’t work :(
Disable bookmarks cover flow. Who uses bookmarks anyway?
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool FALSE
Get rid of Top Sites. Cool but useless feature.
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE
Just copy and paste the italic text into terminal and hit enter and reboot Safari 4. Voila, feel free to clock the difference, it is noticeable faster at least for me.
Tags: boot, safari, safari 4, speed, startup
Dreambox Hell
Posted by lars | Filed under Lifehacking, TV, howto
FEAR ME! Take me to your leader! All of your bases! I am the FUCK-YOU- BOX
Oh my god. I finally got everything working on the box from hell, the fuckyou-box. Rest assured I will write a detailed guide for how to set up a DM 800 with Canal Digital. I got the error “Tuning failed / Tuning misslyckades” when I tried to set up the HD channels but after altering my Diseq settings that all worked out too and I’m now watching glorious HD.
Now I just have to read on various forums how I will be able to set up my favorite channels, which involves third party (windows only) software and the extensive editing of XML files.
I was stupid enough to read the manual of the thing and therefore invested in an USB to RJ232 converter..I also bought a cable, which turned out to be the wrong kind (I needed female – female but got female – male..which is what you used to use for NORMAL devices). So after dishing out some cash I dissected two other RJ232 and then put it back with a lot of electric tape and patience only to conclude that I could just upgrade firmware via the browser. Awesome.
The manual also failed to mention if the chip of the card was supposed to be up or down, in my previous settop box it was up..so I initially had it up on the Dreambox also..which is wrong, it should be down. Although that really didn’t matter since I had not gotten the “newcs” binary running..or had the correct Diseq settings…
Anyway. I am off to a well deserved sleep. Pimping aint easy..
Update August 2009: Running Nabilosat Blackhole 0.11g COMPLETLEY elimnates ALL tuning failed errors. PLI Jade sucks in comparisom!
Tags: dm 800, dreambox, settings, tuning failed
Facecamping
Posted by lars | Filed under Funny, Lifehacking, howto
Do you facecamp? Do you punk?
Yesterday when me and some random dude, Axel (pronounced “ASS-el”), started a conversation in a comment thread of an old study mate of mine I realised we – inadvertedly - had invented a new phenomen. Perhaps people have been doing it for a while but me thinks none have invented this nice catch-phrase for it and therefore I rule and yes I invented it. It is awesome.
Facecamping
Two people having a random or related conversation about a subject in a comment thread on anything in Facebook.
Example: Your friend (A) changes his/her status to “I am bored”. You (B) and another friend (C) subsequently starts to comment this persons status by you (B) asking your other friend (C) how his/her day has been. You must also ignore all comments from your friend (A).
Now in these examples it only involves to people, of course the awesomeometer only goes up the more people you include in this. Just think of it as the digital version of going to a friends party only to have everyone including yourself ignoring the host.
Tags: facebook, facecamping
Automator folder action upload to ftp
Posted by lars | Filed under Mac, Personal, howto
Automator ftw!
I haven’t really tried out folder actions all that much but today I decided to give it a whirl. Usually when I write a blog I’ll end up wanting some movie poster..or like with this post, an icon, to go along with whatever crap I’m writing. I don’t really like hotlinking images from others since I wouldn’t really like anyone to hotlink my stuff and steal bandwidth.
So lately I have been downloading whatever image that I want to use and then upload it to a Google Pages account that I have and then linking to that image – this because I don’t really want to host these random images myself.
Today I wanted to make life easier for myself so I wrote a small folder action and used the automator app “Upload to FTP” in order for me to be able to just download/save and image from a webpage to a certain folder and when that image hits this folder it automatically gets uploaded o a free webhost that I signed up for.
Here is a short tutorial how to use Automator to automatically upload a downloaded image to a custom FTP:
- Get the Upload to FTP application, install it
- Open up Automator and create a workflow that looks like this
but with your FTP/folder details filled in of course - In Automator, Save As Plugin and make sure to select that it’s a Plugin for “Folder Actions” and select the folder you want this action to run on
- Boom, there you go
I also modified my WordPress install a bit so that when I insert an image from an URL now it automatically suggests my host and I just have to add in the filename.
Tags: apple, applescript, automator, folder action, Mac, upload ftp
IMDB Movie Ratings in WordPress
Posted by lars | Filed under Movies, Software, howto
Edit March ’09: Duh. Imdb provides well hidden RSS service for this, this is an example of my IMDB vote history RSS feed: feed://rss.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=8062614
You can just grab that feed and change my number “8062614″ for your own number and add it to your site. Just use the WordPress plugin I mention below that shows RSS feeds from your sidebar and you’re golden.
Edit Jan’09: Here, I made a service for you, just enter your IMDB ratings page to scrape and go nuts!
I have been looking for different ways of getting my IMDB movie ratings into my blog. I found this script called PIMP that was a PHP scrape from the “my movies” page in IMDB. After looking into it for a while though it seemed like an overly complex solution..and then I remembered Dapper.
Dapper is a web service that makes it easy for anyone to scrape pretty much any content from any website into Dapper XML or RSS. In my case I set up a Dapper service to scrape my IMDB movies page. To do this first of all you need to make your IMDB movie ratings public, the rest is very easy in Dapper. The result can be seen in my sidebar. I just selected the table cells and set the movie titles up as the RSS title and the movie ratings as the RSS pubdate field. After that I used the KB Advanced RSS plugin for wordpress in order to customize the RSS widget.
I thought about extending this into also parsing in my comments on IMDB but the requirements of at least 10 fields for IMDB comments just kills it for me, usually I just want to go like “crap” or “decent flick”. I’ll extend it some ohter way later me thinks..or not..I’m lazy.
I made my Dapp App (My Movies IMDB Final) public (it’s extremely simple..). Feel free to go nuts. If anyone want a tut, drop a comment.
Tags: dapper, imdb, imdb wordpress, my movies, ratings, scrape, scraping, wordpress
Large contact pictures in iPhone
Posted by lars | Filed under Mac, howto, iphone
I just tried a Facebook app that automatically fetches pictures and birthday dates from Facebook and profile pictures. Thing about this app is that it “downgrades” any eventual full sized contact photos you are already using. I think it’s pretty much an undocumented, the fact that if you use a large photo within the iPhone to set a picture for a contact – it will fill the screen instead of just showing a small thumbnail to the upper right.
Here, lemme break it down. If you set pictures for your contacts using the Adress Book in your Mac, only small pictures will show on the iPhone. If you set pictures for your contacts using the iPhone – it will use large photos.
I don’t use the app mentioned above for this reason, nor do I use the Adress Book at all to set my pictures, I’ve done it all from within my iPhone to get the nice looking full screen photos. Below are screenshots from the iPhone showing the differences.
Here I have set the image using Adress Book in my Mac
Here is the same photo, set within my iPhone
Tags: adress book, contacts, iphone, large, photos, pictures
Dishwasher + Mac keyboard = tru
Posted by lars | Filed under Mac, howto
Spilled almost an entire bottle of coke all over a mac keyboard (not the alu version) and it completley clogged up and stopped working. On a whim I put it in our dishwasher (no detergent) and let it dry out for like a week. It now works again, except for the space bar being a little annoying (but that has probably more to do with me brutally ripping it off.
Tags: dishwasher, mac keyboard
Display the Date and Week on the Menubar in Leopard
Posted by lars | Filed under Mac, howto
I have been looking for a way to show the date in the menubar of Mac OS X Leopard. I found a couple of guides, including this one over at Lifehacker and I just could not get it to work. Finally I found a tip from the last comment that I had to enable “seconds” for the clock in order to get this to work. Now finally I got it to work.
Not only does it now show the date it also shows the current week which means I can get rid of the widget I had been using for this purpose. Here is a screenshot of my menubar now:
Tags: date, leopard, Mac, menubar, os x, week
Macbook Pro with Swedish Keyboard layout
Posted by lars | Filed under Mac, Swedish, howto
I’ve had my Macbook Pro now for a while and ever since I got it basically from the US I have been wondering how to enter the < sign or the > sign. Today I found it by mistake. It’s the tilde sign located to the left of nr 1. Hoppas det här hjälper för de som precis som jag köpt sin Macbook/Macbook Pro i USA och sitter med svenskt tangentbordslayout inställd på ett keyboard som är amerikanskt.
Nu kan jag skriva < och > när jag vill.
Fantastiskt.
Uppdaterat/Update: Om du vill skriva ett tilde tecken på en svensk Macbook eller en svensk Macbook Pro så gör du såhär. If you want to write a tilde sign on a swedish Macbook or on a Macbook Pro this is how you do it.
Tags: >, GREATER-THAN SIGN, LESS-THAN SIGN, macbook, mindre än, större än, tilde
