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.

Ahh..bliss…first of all, visit this site, CAT that has TV Calendars. Sign up, select your shows and then just add the ICAl file to your Google Calendar (oh, and if you’re a Swede like me, set your time-zone) – voila! Now you can check when your favorite shows airs in your favorite calendar!

• Via mlevit, this dude also has full instructions

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.

I’ve had a great weekend playing some computer games with my friends. After fucking around with Cider Ports and CrossWeaver for Games and Urban Terror I had enough and this morning I got up and installed Boot Camp. Both Martin and Jörgen did the same, Jörgen however ended up with some trouble and it took us basically the whole day of fiddeling around to get everything working. But this time we are ready for the next LAN.

Apple and Mac might be great for a lot of stuff but unfortunately it is still true that if you want a hassle free gaming experience you have to go Windows. Lucky for us that we had Boot Camp. I went up on Steam and bought Counter Strike Source (again I might add, I have lost one Steam account) and we tried it a bit before packing up. The next time though we are all set up (you reading Zek:) and ready to go.

I finally found way down in a forum thread howto change the default input on my PV60. Walk up to the TV and hold down the volume/change channel button. While you hold it down hit the TV/AV button three times on the remote, the “hotel menu” will then appear which will allow you to set the default input to HDMI 1 or 2. Juicy!

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!

If you find Windows Remote Desktop annoying with the constant logging in/out (and don’t care to much to patch it for concurrent connections) you’re most likely going to go with VNC for that Windows install of yours.

Here is a tip, if you are running a VNC install on your Windows machine, say TightVNC, you can then in Finder just go to the menu and select “Go” and “Connect to server” (or just do COMMAND+K). You can then type in vnc://your.ip.adress:port and voila…you don’t have to use a VNC client for your Mac but can use the built in.

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.

If you use FireFox, give this a whirl. Seriously cool and gives a neat alpha preview of the future.

I use a dashboard thingy (EPG) to see what’s on TV but I don’t really have all of the channels there since it would fill up my entire dashboard. Today I wondered if there isn’t some way I could use Keywurl or something else to be able to just type in like “tv tv4film” in my Safari location-bar and get info on what was on that channel at the moment. Turned out it was really simple. I could just use Keywurl and the regular tv.nu since they had logic URLs (tv.nu/kanal/tv4film). Now I can just type in “tv *channel*” and I get what’s on the tube. Man am I bored not only doing this but also blogging about it :)