Four Island

iOS 4.2.1 (not iOS 4.2--that was never released because it had quite a few holes in it) for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad was released today! This brings AirPrint and AirPlay to all devices as well as multitasking and folders to the iPad! While this certainly is a great upgrade (especially if you have a Mac and have used the AirPrint Hactivator which will allow you to AirPrint to any printer that is shared by the hactivated Mac (otherwise you're restricted to a very limited number of HP printers)), we warn you:

IF YOU RELY ON A JAILBREAK OR UNLOCK, DO NOT UPGRADE YET.

Yes, while you may have a pwned-for-life device, if you want an untethered jailbreak, you're going to have to wait a bit. However cool AirPrint is going to be, I don't think it's worth giving up your jailbreak for any period of time. This may be different for the iPad--multitasking is a pretty big feature and it may possibly be worth it to some people to give up their jailbreak for a while so that they can enjoy these iOS 4 features, but if I had an iPad myself, I'd just install Backgrounder and get on with it. Don't upgrade if you want to keep your jailbreak. Just wait, and hopefully the awesome people behind the jailbreaking scene wil release a new tool or a new version of a tool that can jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 in short time.

The other day, I was searching the web for fantastic applications for Mac OSX because I'm obsessed and they're pretty. Anyway, one website suggested "MarsEdit" as a must-have. "Okay," I thought, "It's probably a text editor. It probably doesn't compare to TextMate, but I might as well give it a look." Yeah, it wasn't a text editor. It was a desktop blogging client, and it looks awesome. :D

Okay, this post isn't (entirely) about how I was taken by some smooth advertising, it's about how my blog sucks. No, really. I'll fully admit it: since realizing that Four Island was ready to be rewritten again, I have found so many thing wrong with it that it's just amazing. Obviously, I can't enumerate all of these to you, but the ones that bothered me into writing this post are:

• The custom BBcode system is stupid and insane. "Seriously, let's use a half-baked BBcode system that butchers Unicode characters instead of HTML." No, really, the admin panel should be able to use the full spectrum of HTML elements, plus some timesaving shortcodes. Comments should be allowed to use whitelisted HTML elements. This BBcode system is insane and I regret it so much.
• The current layout is a bit hideous. Yes, it's revolutionary in that it does so many things that the previous layouts didn't, but seriously, it just doesn't look nice. The blog is seriously difficult to read and a nice clean layout would make things much nicer.
• The admin panel, while much better than the original (which actually still exists on the server somewhere... shivers), is still pretty basic. No autosave, no revisions, no tag suggestions, etc...

The place I'm trying to get with this is that while my website may be completely written by me, and I'm proud of that, it lacks a lot of useful features that a real solution like Wordpress would have. Namely, in this instance, an implementation of the MetaWeblog API allowing me to write and edit posts from a desktop client. It would be so classy! For one, the autosave feature on its own would snag me. In fact, I actually lost this post while writing it the first time due to a kernel panic--if I had been using a desktop client like MarsEdit, I would've had an autosave copy of the post waiting for me when the computer rebooted. What style. Do I even need to mention the number of posts that I've lost due to the fact that it took longer for me to write it than it took for my session to expire? I've now grown the habit of hitting Cmd-A, Cmd-C before I save the post in case the session expired.

This, along with many other reasons, is why I've decided to fully implement the Wordpress XML-RPC API (which means I also have to implement the MetaWeblog and MoveableType APIs) in Four Island 3. It'll let me use MarsEdit on my computer and the Wordpress app on my iPhone to write posts, which will be pretty awesome. It's an arduous task, due to the fact that the relevant documentation is pretty mediocre. But, I'm getting through it. The Wordpress app still crashes every time I reload the posts, but that's development for you! :P However, I bet that when Four Island 3 is done and everything has been released, it'll not only be easier to write posts, it'll be more fun. And when it's more fun, it's more likely that I'll do it! :P

So, I wanted to ask, who else writes from a blogging client rather than from the admin panel of their blog? Sure, the admin panel is usually pretty intuitive and easy to use, but in my opinion, desktop clients are just so much better! What do you think?

And, no, this post wasn't really written in MarsEdit. My evil custom BBcode system prevents that. Someday, though, someday Four Island 3 will be out and I'll be writing from MarsEdit. How fantastic! :P

It's time, folks! If you're jailbroken, backup your SHSH blobs! If you're not jailbroken, but want to be, backup your SHSH blobs! Don't know what they are or why you should do it? Well, to make a long story short, since the new bootrom version of the iPhone 3GS, iOS updates have been very controlled. Apple has set it up so that, if they are not currently offering SHSH blobs on their website for the pair of your iDevice and a specific iOS version, you are unable to load that version onto your iDevice (this obviously doesn't apply if the software is already installed). So, ever since then, jailbreakers have had a way of getting around this by backing up the SHSH blobs for their iDevice and iOS version so that if they ever need to downgrade to a specific version of iOS, they can. Note: you can only downgrade if you already have the SHSH blobs for that iOS version, and you can only backup your SHSH blobs while Apple still offers them. So, yeah. If you don't know how to backup your SHSH blobs, perform a Google search on a program called "TinyUmbrella".

Anyway, why am I saying this? Two reasons: first, it's November now, so, if we can believe Steve Jobs, iOS 4.2 should be coming out this month. If you upgrade to iOS 4.2 and are unhappy with your inability to jailbreak, if you have your iOS 4.1 SHSH blobs, you can always just downgrade. Second, there has been some exciting jailbreak news even before iOS 4.2 is out:

Anyone with blobs for 4.1 or earlier should be able to get an untethered 4.2 jailbreak; this is not done but is being actively worked on.

comex

It seems that this may work by pwning an iOS 4.1 IPSW and somehow using that with iOS 4.2; I don't quite know. :P Note, it may not be out very soon because:

However, a 4.2 jailbreak might be delayed because Cydia doesn't work on 4.2 yet. Not sure how close @chpwn is to finishing his fixes.

comex

Regardless, we can expect an untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.2 and until then, I'll be staying on iOS 4.1.

Finally, I think we can expect iOS 4.2 pretty soon because, not only is the iOS 4.2 GM release already out for developers, Apple has responded to the current problem with iOS 4.1 and daylight savings time. They have posted a support document to their website saying that you will need to set your alarms to repeat "Never" until November 7th. Whether the date specified is the release date of iOS 4.2 or it's just specified because that's when daylight savings time starts is unknown.

Okay, as mentioned previously, I greatly dislike Ubuntu 10.10. You may too! And if you do, I want you to check something out. Does your computer have an Intel-based graphics card? You said "yes", right? Okay, good. Because then I have some good news: apparently the Intel driver for Ubuntu sucks. Oh, wait, that wasn't good news, but this:

How to install an updated Intel graphics card driver for Ubuntu 10.10!

Since installing this new driver, stuff has stopped getting stuck on my screen. I searched for this driver after a particularly annoying incident with a random square on the screen that wouldn't invalidate, so I had to kill X. Note: this won't fix some of the other annoying bugs, like the super slow gnome-terminal, the mouse with a mind of its own and the multiple attempts to unlock the keyring when I log in.

Anyway, yeah, if you've been having troubles with Ubuntu 10.10 and are ready to install Mac OS X illegally but have an Intel graphics card, first, wait: try this. If it doesn't work, then you can illegally install an OS. Not really.

EDIT: After some more annoyed yelling, I discovered that my mouse problems are likely the fault of Ubuntu 10.10's touchpad driver. I found tons of errors like the following in syslog:

[69276.814022] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 4 bytes away.
[69277.333722] psmouse.c: resync failed, issuing reconnect request
[69293.813324] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 3 bytes away.
[69294.826388] psmouse.c: resync failed, issuing reconnect request

I found some other people who have the same problem. We're having tea on Tuesday, wanna come? /jokewhat Anyway, I hope this gets resolved soon because December 25th is still like two months away.

It was a good idea. :P

Okay, folks, as I mentioned last week, Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat came out. I decided to use it for a week before writing a post about it (9.10's was a bit hasty). And, you know what? It's just getting worse. Kind of makes me happy that I like Macs now because Ubuntu is kind of starting to anger me.

Okay, first of all, the upgrade itself. The upgrade was fantastically easy. I'm telling you, the upgrades are getting easier, but the OS is getting worse. But last time, easy meant "torrent the alternative CD from Windows and install half of the packages from there". This time, easy meant "click Upgrade." Really, I went to Update Manager and I clicked Upgrade. And it worked. Wow.

Anyway, I then had Ubuntu 10.10 and was find that I liked quite a lot of things about it. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, the Ubuntu Font. It's just freaking awesome. It's used pretty much everywhere now and combined with rounder controls and a pastel-ish color scheme, Ubuntu looks prettier than ever. Not prettier than Mac OSX, though, but still, pretty nice.

The second thing I noticed was that the flashing problem had diminished. In Ubuntu 10.04, whenever I closed the lid of my laptop, when I opened it again, EVERYTHING WOULD START FLASHING. For a while. It was UNBEARABLE. Well, in 10.10, the problem is mostly gone. It now only flashes once or twice. Not as annoying.

However, the good things seemed to stop there and the whole experience started to get very, very annoying:

• I found that, with certain wireless access points, my computer absolutely refused to co-operate. It would (sometimes) let me connect and occasionally allow me to load a page or two, but it would be infinitely slow and it would just stop serving me pages. I eventually found out that blacklisting a bunch of alternate drivers for my wireless card fixed the problem, but still. Very annoying.
• Slow. SLOW SLOW SLOW. What has happened? For one thing, the mouse occasionally just gets "stuck". And by occasionally, I mean increasingly frequently. And sometimes, the mouse moves as if it had a mind of its own: the other day, the mouse was actually avoiding Drifty's name as I tried to initiate a chat with her (I eventually used the keyboard). Also, when I use the terminal, text appears very slowly.
• When you start to drag an image, and then let go because you've changed your mind, it gets stuck there until you restart X. Actually, it's not just images, random stuff in general can get stuck on your screen. An autocomplete popup is now stuck on my screen. I am very, very angry.
• Okay, for some reason, GNOME just went insane. Both the dock and the panel at the top vanished and a Nautilus window filled the screen. I found out that the display was semi-frozen--moving the mouse around changed the cursor and made popups appear and I could click on menus, but I had no clue what was giong on. I had to kill X. With all of this X killing that's going on, I'm losing a ton of work. This is really frustrating.
• After another week of testing Ubuntu 10.10, I've found that a whole ton of things can get frozen on the screen accidentally. You can usually remove them by repeating whatever trigger caused them to appear in the first place. However, it's still very annoying and argh, Ubuntu 10.10 is just so slow. Today, the mouse suddenly froze for a very long time (about 5 minutes) while the wireless disconnected (though I was in a high-signal area) and refused to reconnect until I restarted the computer.

All in all, Ubuntu 10.10 really annoys me. Really can't wait until I get a Mac. :P

While working on the rewrite of Four Island (go 3.0! :D) in Ruby on Rails, I hit a roadblock. Four Island, since perhaps Layout 3, has had an old concept of multiple layouts and since the Theme Switcher, has had the concept of being able to switch between them. How was I going to go about this in Ruby on Rails?

Well, actually, it's quite easy with the help of an awesome gem, [themes_for_rails](http://github.com/lucasefe/themes_for_rails). Note that's the Rails 3 version, if you still use Rails 2 (and most people do), you'll need [theme_support](http://github.com/zedalaye/theme_support). theme_support does technically work for Rails 3 as well, but I don't like it because you can only override views; if there's no corresponding view in the app/views hierarchy, it won't work. This annoyed me because my plan is to have the main site layouts in themes and have the admin panel in app/views because the admin panel never changes but, while pre-3.0 layouts share a ton of code, they are rather different.

Anyway, this was going really well, but there were three things I had to know. First, did it support asset hosts? Second, did it support HAML? And third, did it support SASS? Asset hosts allows you to specify that all assets (javascripts, images and stylesheets) be loaded from an alternative, cookie-less subdomain. And yes, it worked. HAML is an awesome alternative to RHTML/ERB that is really elegant and organized. And yes, it worked. SASS, a sub-project of HAML that is used to generate stylesheets, allows you to nest declarations which I believe makes things make so much more sense. And no, it didn't work.

What? Why? Well, the way SASS works is at runtime, it reads your SASS file and converts it to a CSS file. Since my stylesheets were stored in the themes hierarchy, SASS didn't know where to find them and thus the CSS files weren't generated and my layout couldn't find the stylesheet. However, I wrote a small script that you can place into your config/initializers directory to get SASS working with themes_for_rails:

# Adds Sass support to themes_for_rails

themes = Dir.new 'themes'
themes.each do |theme|
  unless theme == ".." or theme == "."
    Sass::Plugin.add_template_location(
      Rails.root.join("themes/#{theme}/stylesheets/sass").to_s,
      Rails.root.join("themes/#{theme}/stylesheets").to_s
    )
  end
end

And there you go! Sassy themes. It'll probably work with theme_support too, but you may need to modify it a bit.

While yesterday was quite a bad day, my luck today has turned for the better! For one, I'm not angry at geohot anymore. Nope, when I finally got home to my Windows laptop today, I plugged my iPhone 4 in, synced it and ran limera1n. And, you know what? It didn't work. :( However, I tried again, this time closing iTunes before jailbreak and guess what! It worked! :D

Once again, I kind of jumped around in excitement, screaming "OMG YAY JAILBREAK OMG SCROBBL I LOVE YOU" until people started staring and I realized that those "people" were the voices inside my head....

Anyway, I'm very happy to now be jailbroken because there are some really awesome things that you can do with a jailbroken iDevice, some I had used before, some that I only tried out today:

• Scrobbl - This may be the biggest reason that I jailbreak and that's because it's just so awesome. Without a jailbreak, to scrobble songs to last.fm, you have to sync your iDevice with iTunes and use the last.fm iPod scrobbler, which, as we've seen, doesn't work too well with iOS devices. I mean, seriously, last week, I scrobbled my iPhone and found that while a whole ton of songs got scrobbled, it somehow completely forgot to note that I had listened to the album Fantasies by Metric three whole times. It often gets things wrong and requires you to sync to scrobble, and is just so annoying. With Scrobbl, songs are scrobble AS YOU PLAY THEM. You can set it to only scrobble via WiFi and to ignore podcasts (which was another problem I had with the official scrobbler--who cares about the podcasts? I don't want to scrobble them!) and it's just fantabulous. One of my favorite jailbreak apps.
• Backgrounder + MultiFl0w - Backgrounder is an amazing app that brings true multitasking to iDevices. Not iOS 4's fake multitasking (which, however, is in some cases more apt for the job because developers can specify actions upon task switching, like pausing your game), but true multitasking that can be enabled/disabled for certain apps at certain times. I really love this because it allows me to background Palringo and go watch a video and I'll know if someone's trying to talk to me because I'll hear a noise and then I'll go check Palringo and omg! Someone's talking to me! :P MultiFl0w is a replacement for iOS 4's task switcher and it's really quite pretty--it shows up to 9 open apps using an Exposé-like display. Note, MultiFl0w does cost $4.99. Backgrounder is free.

• SBSettings - Short for SpringBoard Settings, (yes, that's what those SBs everywhere stand for), SBSettings is quite a useful tool for iDevice users. It allows you to swipe across the status bar (gesture customizable) from any app and have a screen appear with options and settings in it. The best part is the toggles: you can have a bunch of toggles sitting up in your SBSettings tray and when you want to do something like turn off Cell Data or turn on Bluetooth, you simply have to swipe across the top and tap the toggle. You can also download additional toggles: I downloaded one called Rotation Inhibitor which allows you to toggle whether or not the current app will rotate automatically--and yes, it actually allows you to lock rotation in landscape mode. Horray. You can also theme SBSettings--in the picture on the left, I'm using a theme called "Bold Retina" (there is a variant that works on non-Retina displays). Finally, for you iPod touch users who are want to see how much battery life you have left in percent (because this feature is built-in on iPhones), you can enable this under "System Options" in SBSettings.
• Infiniboard (and Infinifolders!) - Infiniboard, Infinifolders (and Infinidock) are a series of awesome, SpringBoard-enhancing tweaks by chpwn. Infiniboard and Infinifolders are great for organization. With Infiniboard, you can put as many apps as you want on one SpringBoard page and just scroll through them vertically. Infinifolders is very similar: it allows you to overcome the 12-app limit on iOS 4 folders and lets you scroll through folders vertically. They're both pretty great: Infinifolders has the advantage of having being a named group, but Infiniboard has the advantage of actually working on iOS 4.1. Currently, Infinifolders just blanks the screen if you open a folder with more than 12 apps in it. Ouch. These apps do cost money, but they're pretty useful.

• LockInfo - I am absolutely in love with this. I didn't even know about it until I noticed that TimTam tweeted using it. I looked into it and it's a whole lot more amazing than it appears! First off, the basics: the Apple iPhone mysteriously lacks the ability to show the owner any useful information besides the time and any notifications that have popped up (such as SMSes) on the lockscreen. Users have to unlock the phone to see stuff. It's confused me before; I can never remember if I just received an email or not. LockInfo allows you to display information on newly received email, upcoming calendar events, missed calls, SMSes... But it's more awesome than just that: there are plugins available for LockInfo that lets you see more information on your lockscreen; Twitter, for instance. Yes, awesomeness. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a plugin for Things, the to-do app I use. Splendid! But by far the best part of LockInfo is the InfoShield (pictured on right). While your iDevice is unlocked, simply swipe down from the status bar and the InfoShield will appear, containing all of the information that LockInfo shows on the lockscreen. It's like the notifications tray on Android phones. Very awesome. :D This app does cost money, though, but it's so totally worth it.

Some other awesome apps you should try if you're jailbroken are MultiIconMover (a convenient tweak that allows you to move multiple icons at once (note: does not work with folders)) and WinterBoard (allows you to theme your SpringBoard and lockscreen. Some would advertise this app more prominently, but I don't really use it that much).

Wow, I didn't really expect to be reviewing all of my favorite jailbreak apps when I started this post, but at that point, I didn't even have LockInfo yet and I'm in love with it, so, :P. Anyway, the other reason why Sunday Is Funday is the fact that Ubuntu 10.10 came out today! The upgrade itself was pretty easy (easier than 10.04--nothing went wrong!) and nothing seems to be going horribly so far. I'll write a full post about 10.10 when I've used it for a bit and discovered any horrific problems that need to be ranted about (and besides, this post is plenty long already :P), but let me just say now: I really love the new Ubuntu Font. It's just so fantastic and pretty. <3 Ubuntu Font.

If you haven't been paying attention to the updates on my previous post, well, strange stuff has been happening in the world of iPhone jailbreak. A long-dead hacker named geohot famous for his blackra1n jailbreak has mysteriously reappeared a claimed to have a jailbreak named limera1n which will be released October 11th, the day after GreenPois0n.

Well, that seems to have changed. Because it's out. Now. Whut. There's only a windows version available (that's why I'm frantically trying to get a tiny netbook working with my iPhone--I don't have my Windows lappy with me), but this is just... wow. I know, I'm excited about jailbreaking my iPhone, but geohot is really placing the jailbreak community into an odd place. Chronic Dev now has to decide whether to burn SHAtter, or try to implement limera1n. It's kind of insane. And it's making me doubt that GreenPois0n will come out tomorrow. Which means that, if limera1n doesn't work for me, I will be angry. Very angry.

A FEW MINUTES LATER: It's not working. And I'm angry. Because GreenPois0n may not be released because of this and that means that geohot just took my jailbreak away. I'm annoyed. There better be a jailbreak that works by 10-10-10 10:10:10.

EDIT: I do not recommend trying limera1n. I've been trying to jailbreak for a few hours now and my iPhone is now stuck in recovery mode and I can't get it out using iRecovery. So, basically, I'm screwed. Wait until tomorrow and see if Chronic Dev does anything awesome. Don't try limera1n. Geohot is an a-hole.

EDIT 2: Okay, I managed to get my iPhone out of recovery mode using a Mac and I'm not totally screwed anymore, but I'm still going to wait until tomorrow for news rather than try using limera1n anymore. I'm angry at you, @geohot.

EDIT 3: iPhone Dev Team has just made the announcement: They're not releasing GreenPois0n tomorrow. I, for one, am disappointed. Thanks, @geohot, I'm angry with you. That is, unless, I get home tomorrow to my Windows laptop and find that limera1n actually does work. That'd be great! :P

YES. YES. YESSSSS.

It may be a week later than I hoped, but IT'S TOTALLY COMING! This Sunday is a very special day for people who are obsessed with repeating dates: This Sunday is October 10th 2010. As in, 10-10-10. And something else special will be happening on Sunday. At 10:10 10-10-10, THE IOS 4.1 JAILBREAK WILL BE RELEASED! I AM NOT SPECULATING, IT HAS BEEN CONFIRMED! :D

Things have progressed to the point where we don't expect anymore roadblocks. ETA for greenpois0n is 10/10/10 at 10:10:10AM

p0sixninja

FINALLY! :D I'm so excited, this is going to be great-tastic!

UPDATE: SHAtter will be for fourth generation iDevices only (a.k.a. iPhone 4 and iPod Touch fourth generation).

UPDATE 2: And it's definitely going to be untethered. This just keeps on getting better and better! :D

UPDATE 3: More info has come in! It appears that SHAtter is not technically untethered. However, Comex, the guy who brought us the awesome JailbreakMe jailbreak, has utilized one of his apparently large array of userland exploits to make GreenPois0n untethered. What this means is that on iOS 4.1, GreenPois0n will be untethered, but after Apple fixes the exploit, you'll only be able to get a tethered jailbreak. This isn't too bad, though! First, your fourth-generation iDevice is still jailbreakable for life. Second, Comex could possibly release another userland exploit if the current one is patched. Third, if you don't upgrade to anything above iOS 4.1, you'll be fine! :D

UPDATE 4: What is this? MORE NEWS! Not only is GreenPois0n going to be released on Sunday, but rumors AND CONFIMATIONS have come in saying that geohot, a hacker famous for the blackra1n jailbreak, has returned to the jailbreaking scene and is planning to release limera1n, a jailbreak based on a bootrom exploit completely unrelated to GreenPois0n's, on the day AFTER GreenPois0n is released. Most notable is the fact that limera1n should be able to jailbreak third generation iDevices (iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3rd generation) that were left out in between redsn0w and GreenPois0n's jailbreak windows.

yes, the news about geohot is true, the day after we release ETA he decides he wants a piece of the #pie

p0sixninja

and yes it is a different bootrom exploit, he wants us to use it in GP, but there's no way we'll make our ETA if we do

p0sixninja

We are not changing our release date. If we can implement @geohots before 10/10 we will use that, otherwise we're using ours. #roadblocks

p0sixninja

UPDATE 5: There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the suddenly announced limera1n jailbreak. The Chronic Dev Team, for one, are not amused. Specifically, they're pissed. The dilemma is that if GreenPois0n and limera1n are both released now, Apple will be able to fix both holes by the next generation of iDevice (or sooner :O) and two perfectly good bootrom exploits will have been "burned". The current state of things seems to be that Chronic Dev is trying to implement geohot's exploit as quickly as they can, but if they can't do it before tomorrow, they'll release GreenPois0n. This is mayhem! Depending on who you listen to, everyone's the bad guy, but apparently, geohot discovered his exploit months ago and was sitting on it until Chronic Dev announced an ETA for GreenPois0n. Some say that he thinks that SHAtter is better than limera1n and is trying to save it for later by forcing Chronic Dev to not release, some say that he's a a-hole who's just trying to get some publicity. However, his timing may actually just be coincidence--October 11th 2010 will be the one-year anniversary of his famous jailbreak blackra1n.

What's going to happen? Who the candy-cane knows? All I hope is that I'll be able to jailbreak my iPhone 4 tomorrow morning and that nothing will threaten my jailbreak-happiness.