It's adigitalife!

iPhone 3G with iOS4, jailbreak & unlock

Aylwin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:38:05 +0000

Right after iOS4 (formerly known as iPhone OS 4) was released I found out from the Dev-Team that it was already possible to jailbreak and unlock it. The whole process is very easy so how could I resist? Of course, there are a few different ways but here are the basic steps I followed:

Update iPhone to standard iOS4 via iTunes.
Run redsn0w (found HERE) and follow the on-screen instructions.
Using Cydia, install ultrasn0w for carrier unlock.

The first thing I noticed was that my iPhone was now very slooow. I guess iOS4 isn’t really meant for the iPhone 3G. At least I haven’t heard of many 3Gs users complaining about the performance. It’s kind of a trade-off though. Apps are now a lot slower to load and respond. On the other hand, iOS4 allows for apps to remain in memory and remember their state. So switching between recently used apps is now much faster.

Another thing I noticed is the battery life. It doesn’t last nearly as long anymore. Personally, this isn’t really a problem for me because I will anyway charge almost everyday. So as long as the battery lasts for a day (with iOS4, it probably lasts 2 days or so) then that’s enough for me.

As for the features, well, there are lots of reviews already out there. All I want to say is that I like that I’m now able to organize my apps in folders. It’s good to keep similar apps together and I can now make do with only 2 pages of apps. I used to hate having to flip through several pages of apps to find the one I want to run.

WordPress 3.0 and Gallery 2

Aylwin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:00:11 +0000

WordPress 3.0 was released the other day. To my pleasant surprise, it appears that WPG2 (version 3.07) is still working fine. WPG2 is a WordPress plugin that seamless integrates Gallery 2 (I’m using version 2.3.1) with WordPress.

I haven’t fully tested everything yet but so far I haven’t noticed any problems with the basic functionality.

ScribeFire: Blogging Add-on for Firefox

Aylwin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:09:22 +0000

This is another test post and I’m using another cool tool for blogging. This time it’s a Firefox add-on called ScribeFire. It supports several blogging systems, including WordPress. It has split-screen mode that opens an editor on the lower half of the browser window and leaves the upper half for browsing. I guess this is perfect for blogging about stuff you see on the internet. You can type and see the website(s) at the same time.

By the way, if you’re using WordPress and your web host is using a PHP version older than 5.2.9 then you might need to install a WordPress plugin called LibXML2 Fix. This plugin is a “work around for some versions of libxml2 2.7.x that strip out brackets when parsing XML.

Windows Live Writer

Aylwin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:22:10 +0000

This is test post. I’m writing and publishing it using Windows Live Writer which is available as a free download for Windows. Up to now, I’ve always been writing my posts online via the web interface. If this works, I think it will be more convenient to use Live Writer.

I don’t know why I never thought of using a desktop blogging client before. Then again, I’m not much of a blogger. I rarely post anything. Perhaps the added convenience of using a desktop client might get me writing more? Nah, I doubt it.

Anyway, while we’re on the topic I thought I’d have a look at what other options are out there. After a quick Google search, I found these articles:

I’m sure there are other clients out there better than Windows Live Writer but I can’t be bothered to test them. I’ll just use this one for now and see how it goes. Of course, if anyone knows a much better alternative that’s also free then please let me know.

Here we go again

Aylwin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:27:32 +0000

The webhosting company I was using is gone and so are my old sites. I have a lot of old files but no recent database backup. So it’s easier if I just start over.

One of my old sites was my Dev Site where I had quite many WordPress themes that were optimized (modified) for use with WPG2 (a plugin that integrates WordPress with Gallery). I’ll try to add them to this site but they’re mostly old themes and may not be compatible with the latest versions of WordPress and WPG2.

In the meantime, there’s still a lot of rebuilding work to be done…