March 28th, 2008 by ubi
After about 2 days trying to follow the wiki on Google Code iphone-dev with no success at all, I decided to finally look around and see if someone had succeeded in writing a proper how-to to install the unofficial SDK for jailbroken iPhone.
That’s right, Apple, I’m not content with the official one, especially for the proof of concept applications we’re trying to demo.
a search reported this amazing step-by-step tutorial on Cocoa Machine on installing the toolchain (I skipped some steps, as parts were already successfully installed via the wiki on iphone-dev), and finished compiling/installing the whole.
what’s really great about this guide, is that the author patched the XCode templates as well, and is giving instructions on how to modify the Makefile for code downloaded from code.google.com or others.
everything explained.
it’s now time for me to get to it.
March 28th, 2008 by ubi
Having had the chance to appreciate this man’s writing in his book “the nudist on the late shift” (which I recommend to every geek around),
I was reading through his website in search of trivia and other funnies.
I stubled upon the Apology Engine.
wonderful.
March 14th, 2008 by ubi
we finally moved out of Plesk :)
thanks rick

March 10th, 2008 by ubi
This morning I went checking my Flickr recent activity and found a comment.
unbelievable.
and the person’s account pictures are even creepier

March 8th, 2008 by ubi
Interesting quick post by Daron Bauman on Kottke,
about the difficulty of the english language
Four words that prove how difficult the English language is: lose, loose, chose, choose.
Update: Doug points out more: bough, cough, dough, rough, through.
being a non native english speaking person, but rather italian (we’re well known as not exactly the best english speakers on the globe),
I found myself facing one of the words that I think belongs to the longest list of this kind.
the word is “steak”, and in amsterdam there’s plenty of “steak houses”.
we italians end up asking for something that is closer to “stick” than “steak”.
we tend to pronounce the “ea” group as it is in the word “weak”.
this list of words is my favorite as it takes to our concerns
- stake > OK
- skate > OK
- wake > OK
- weak > OK
- break > can live with it but…
- steak > ???
damn you, english language!
March 7th, 2008 by ubi
Why hasn’t anyone asked about this?
- You can test your application on an iPhone/iPod Touch through the dock cable.
- Remote debug and such
- performance tuning
- use the iPhone/iPod Touch as a real platform for your app (no Emulators etc).
can you “leave” the app on the device and run it on the go?
I think for a developer this is very important.
You can do it on Symbian with developer certificates tied to your IMEI, and you can do it with J2ME.
IS IT GOING TO BE POSSIBLE ON THE IPHONE???
March 4th, 2008 by ubi
If you were patient enough and didn’t listen to the hype of
- 3.9 is the official Ziphone BootLoader
- 3.9 is the future
- we really really really need LocateMe function to work
and such, you can finally enjoy a safe iPhone BL downgrade to a 3.9FakeBlank (because it contains a few blanked out bytes 0xFF that allow for some really geeky magic).
I think this is just great news.
I’m going to downgrade later today and feel safer.
patience is golden ;)
on Hackint0sh
UPDATE:
I’ve successfully run my iPhone through a new automating app that does all is needed automatically.
Thread on Hackint0sh
this process worked beautifully and painlessly for me.
now I have BL 3.6fakeblank, FW 1.1.4, BB 04.04.05_G, but can get back to the original BL 4.6 when I want.
February 29th, 2008 by ubi
Although I think these are somewhat funny and well produced,
I have to say this to my friends at W+K:
It DOESN’T taste like Coke.
come on…
it tastes like Coke Light… just slightly different.
watch the ads at Passion’s site

February 29th, 2008 by ubi
I really dig this now.
maybe because it’s fresh out :)
ChalkWork on MezzoBlue
please note that in the install instructions you have something to correct for the theme to be visible.
where it says to install in
/var/root/Library/SummerBoard/Themes
this only works on older os revisions
on 1.1.3 (and think 1.1.2 as well) the themes are in
/var/mobile/Library/SummerBoard/Themes
of course being /var a symlink to another directory, the full system path is
/private/var/mobile/Library/SummerBoard/Themes
but you don’t need to know this.
enjoy my screenshots :)


February 27th, 2008 by ubi
At yesterday’s announcement of the new MacBook Pro, I had a “finally!” moment when I read that the right Enter key was deprecated in favor of another Option (ALT) key on the right side of the keyboard.
If you’re a keyboard freak as I am, you have probably cursed Apple for this missing feature.
Well… it seems that you’re now able to shell some cash out and get a new laptop and throw away the one you bought 9 days ago.
Just Kidding.
Mine is from last august and this is just a tease to whoever bought one last week :D
A bit happy for the newcomers and a bit disappointed for myself, I started wondering whether there’s some utility out there that can do the same.
Well… I stubled upon this great japanese dude who programmed one for his own usage (Emacs etc) and made it available to the public.
Greet KeyRemap4Macbook, everyone.
The utility is confirmed to work on MacBook/MacBook Pro and Mac Mini (not sure which) and is Universal Binary.
I can confirm it works on my MBP 2.4
Personal usage scenario:
having Spaces remapped to ALT rather than CTRL, having a right ALT key makes me super happy (and will soon give me RSI)
below a screenshot of the configuration I used.

February 25th, 2008 by ubi
Since I started IdontNeedYouTube.com, I had to face a little annoying detail of posting from the “share” link on YouTube.
The way the post is formatted is not cleanly parsed by xmlrpc.php on WordPress.
Basically the title is not recognized and is instead part of the post body.
the way I solved it:
- duplicate xmlrpc.php
- call it xmlrpc_custom.php (the main reason is preventing overwriting when you update WordPress… which is lately happening very often)
- look for the function blogger_newPost
at about line 844 you can find $post_author
paste this snippet of code
$htVar=html_entity_decode($content);
if($stIndx=strpos($htVar,">")+1){
$enIndx=strpos($htVar,"“);
$post_title=(substr($htVar,$stIndx,$enIndx-3));
$content=substr($content,$enIndx+5,strlen($htVar)-1);
}
right after
$post_title = xmlrpc_getposttitle($content);
now you just have to change the script URL in your YouTube blog settings.
I’m quite sure this could be done easily with RegExp, but I really never had time to learn all that complicated stuff.
enjoy
February 21st, 2008 by ubi
While working on some project for a client, we had the need to remove the taskbar from windows machines, in order to use it as a kiosk running a not full-screen application on a 42″ display.
While part of our past framework applications did this, the current set did not include the functionality.
I had to ask Saver to program these 2 quick apps for me so I could launch them at system startup.
Feel free to use them, just let us know how/when you do.
[twodotone]
downloadtaskbar_controller.zip
February 9th, 2008 by ubi
well…
in the end I bought one. just for fun.
of course it was locked on UK’s O2 network.
the lucky side?
the 8GB’s they have there are 1.1.2 with the old bootloader.
took me a while to get to jailbreak/unlock/update, but now it works perfectly (still 1.1.2)
I’ve used iphoneunlockuk.com, not because they give you any special software or what (just a custom unlocker),
but because it’s the only source of information that I can define complete compared to all of the mess out there.
honestly I think who really wants to unlock it with not much hassle can contact them.
I shelled the £ 39,00 happily.
the guys did a great job in giving instructions and packaging supporting files.
they deserve the cash.
remember that you do this at your own risk.
you can seriously break your iPhone and render it unusable (or unrecoverable).
I’m going to bed now.
February 8th, 2008 by ubi
I got an N958GB phone…
It stayed pretty unused in the backpack as I’m a loyal E61i user,
but today I ran off of battery on that, and the N95 was fully charged.
Placed my SIM card in it and am using it.
Only problem is that I never synced it.
I’m in london with no internet connection, and jumped into the Apple Store on Regent st.
One of the guys was so polite to let me plug my charger (MBP out of juice as well) and let me stay here.
N958GB has a different ID, so it didn’t work with Nokia’s iSync plugin.
A quick google search brought up Jussi Edlund’s custom iSync plugin.
The usual hack of course, and it works.
see the post HERE, and enjoy your N958GB.
January 29th, 2008 by ubi
Today Jason Kottke published a blog entry about The Remedi Project.
my whole flash programmer life flushed before my eyes.
niko was commissioned a piece and of course I programmed it.
I remember creating this progressive multi-file loader…
damn! I was just a beginner.
now because of multiple updates to the Flash Player a lot of stuff is broken, but it’s still pretty enjoyable.
Issue 8 : gmunk+niko stumpo - contention
http://www.theremediproject.com
thanks kottke.