Monthly Archive for May, 2008

What is Jailbreaking for the iPhone? In layman’s terms.

Published
by
cdeagle
on May 14, 2008
in Technology
. 0 Comments

I’ve read a lot of articles about Jailbreaking, but they all assume that the reader knows what it means to “jailbreak”.  Seems like a silly supposition.  Well, ever one to fill in missing pages, this is a brief explanation of what it means to Jailbreak an iPhone.

Until the next software revision for the iPhone (Slated, I believe, for June ‘08) there is no “API”.  In programming, an API (or “Application Programming Interface”) is a means by which a first party developer (in this case, Apple Inc.) gives third party developers the ability to modify a proprietary system.  I promise that’s the most confusing sentence in this post.

The proprietary system in question here is the iPhone.  You probably aren’t surprised that some people didn’t like the idea of waiting until June of ‘08 to create programs for the iPhone.  In fact, the problem wasn’t really with creating applications for the phone, since the phone is, basically, running the same OS that modern Apple computers are running.  The problem was that no tool existed to install those programs on the phone, or integrate them into the phones operating system.

Enter reverse engineers.  I don’t know how long it took, I’m sure it was impressively fast, but that’s not really pertinent to this discussion.  Clever hackers found a way of installing whatever they wanted, by modifying the actual iPhone Operating System.  Think of the phone the same way you think of your PC.  The Operating System is MacOS or Windows.  Now imagine that you operating system is in “Lock-down” and there’s no way of installing anything.  These hackers re-wrote a part of the iPhone Operating System, and added a utility called Installer.app, which is a sort of package management system.

Installer.app looks at a few servers on the Internet and gets a list of available applications for your iPhone.  With a few clicks (or, touches) you can download and install anything from that list.  Applications are added almost daily by independant developers.  A wide variety of applications, from programs that update Twitter to calendars that keep track of menstration (no lie!) are now floating around out there.  There’s even an app that you can use to update your netflix queue.  I know, right?

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  So how do you get “Installer.app” on your iPhone?  Remember, to have it you have to update your phones Operating System.  To do this, you use an application called Jailbreak.  It’s pretty straightforward.  Download Jailbreak on your PC, connect your phone to your PC, and run Jailbreak.  Your phone will restart twice and when it’s done Installer.App will be on your iPhone’s desktop.  Easy enough, eh?

Now for the caveat emptor.  This process is not supported by Apple.  In fact, it is a direct violation of their End User License Agreement. 

“But it’s my phone!  I paid $400 and I can do whatever I want with it!”  Believe me, I agree!  Apple will agree with you, too.  And that’s exactly what they’ll tell you if your phone stops working after you “Jailbreak” it, and you try to get them to fix it under warranty.  They’ll gladly say “It’s your phone, you paid $400 then voided our warranty with Shenanigans.  You can do whatever you want with it!”  And if they’re really helpful they might give you some ideas of what, exactly, you can do with it.  Like, use it as a paperweight.  Throw it at people you don’t like.  Perhaps a coaster?

I have never heard of the jailbreaking process destroying a phone.  If your phone becomes unstable after you’ve performed a jailbreak, you can restore it to factory defaults which completely reinstalls the original operating system.  I decided to jailbreak my phone, and I’ve had no problems with it.  But there is a possibility of this process causing problems.  It’s not a likelihood by any means, but it’s out there.

Day’s end, journeys beginning

Published
by
cdeagle
on May 12, 2008
in Writing
. 0 Comments

Solace.  I don’t seek it out of a need for comfort, or protection.  It’s not out of a desire to escape, or avoid the world.  Sometimes, I just need to be in that place of endless summer mornings and long footpaths, where the trail is both known and a mystery, where there is a journey of discovery taking place around each bend, but I am innoculated against the dangers of the unknown, as  children are…to a point.  It’s that point, that knifes edge realization, that gives us our first taste of adulthood.  There are things in that dark wood, things that kill and destroy.  Things that reap ruin.  The realization cuts, and it sets us on a path of growth, all purposeful.  Uncover the things in the wood, know them, explain them, reason with them or subjugate them, so that they cannot destroy you.  So that they cannot bring wrath.  These wrathful wraiths.  In our journey to own the wood, to dispel the darkness…in our battle, we make the monsters that we fear…real.  We give them power over us, not by running from them, but by trying to defeat them.  We legitimize them by creating battle plans.  Our natural state, our childlike fearlessness, perhaps it’s a bit more reckless, a bit less thoughtful, than an adult ought to be, but it’s also impervious to the shadow-creatures.

So I look for Solace, a land of my own, where the woods are free of sinister creatures, and the shadows are never so heavy that they do more than dapple.  Each curve in the trail is a discovery, and nothing dangerous lies beside the way, waiting in ambush.  In this summer country the wind and sun do not shine and blow, but caress.  The smell of the earth is sweeter, here, and the turmoil of my days, with it’s shadowy wraiths, fades.  Under an old oak, beside a creek, I’d take off my shoes and let the grass grow up between my toes.  I look for this state of mind…Solace, and I find it here, in writing. 

Once I’ve found this state of mind, I can look at my day.  With it’s ups, and downs, and confrontations and confusion, and take them all as part of the whole.  Take that whole as a very small part of a greater picture.  In this way, I might learn, as Rudyard Kipling says, “To meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same.”

Perhaps it wasn’t as good or as bad as my aching shoulders are telling me it was.  I carry my tension there, the weight of my cosmically insignificant world, and at times they protest…but they’ve got no perspective. They have no summer-country rich and vivid, no place to stand and look at the whole picture and know that, today, more was built than was destroyed.  They’re liars, but what they lack in understanding they make up for in ferocity.

Evening

Published
by
cdeagle
on May 8, 2008
in Writing
. 0 Comments

It’s five o’clock, I’m laying in bed with my eyes closed.  Just got out of my work clothes.  Next to me, on the floor, Macy is making short work of an empty waterbottle. Chew chew, pant pant, chew chew.  Outside, three boys are playing basketball on a worn out hoop, and in the kitchen I can hear Kim preparing hamburgers for the grill.

God knows, I’m a lucky man.

Patience is a Virtue

Published
by
cdeagle
on May 6, 2008
in Life and Writing
. 0 Comments

I love that the link I click on to write a blog entry is “create”.  I don’t think of writing as an act of creation, but of expression.  Maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it…It’s informed by my understanding of what I’m doing.  I’m not writing down something new or interesting, I’m just sort of..documenting what’s in me.  I think that’s why I like the Neil Gaiman quote that I posted a few months ago.  We’re all overflowing with worlds.  Hundreds of them, maybe thousands.  And I’m lazy about writing, so the only thing that gets out is the world, or the idea, or whatever, that pushes itself to the top, that bangs against the side of my head and screams its throat raw.

And then I only write it because it needs to be sanitized.  You can’t just SAY “I cut the daisy from my throat” — you can’t say that you write something because if you don’t, you’ll have to crack your skull open to let it out, because it amplifies, and roils, and pushes, until it’s all you see when you close your eyes and all you hear when the radio turns off and the neighbors dog stops barking and the traffic is phased out by that part of your brain that decides what is, and is not relevant.  So I write it, I write it because I’m afraid of what I’ll say if I don’t sanitize my outputs.  And Natalie says that the goal should be learning to avoid sanitization, learning to speak frankly?  That’s crazy.  What would the neighbors say?

 

That’s not what I meant to write about. 

Patience is a virtue, which I do not possess.  When you find out that something you’ve been waiting for is about to become very, very real, it’s easy to get excited about it.  When you find out that you have to wait, it’s frustrating.  I’m glad we don’t have to induce, that’s awesome, but I (greedily) hate that I have to wait.

The joke at the time of the wedding was “Are you ready?”…I think the expectation was a look of nervousness, or fear.  A split second.  In body language, they’re “Micro gestures”, the moment before you gain control of your face, erect the facade, when you are accidentally honest in your expression of whatever emotion you’re feeling.  I may even have pandered to that joke, said “Well, I guess”, fabricated a hesitation or a grim smile, as one going to the gallows.  If I did, it was because the alternative was ridicule.  Ready? Yes.  Really?  Absolutely. 

Impossible.  The arrogance of youth.  This just proves it, doesn’t it?  Not ready, has no idea.  Doesn’t know what he’s getting into.

But I felt ready, and if the last three years are any indication I was sufficiently prepared.

Here we are then.  It’s going to turn my world upside-down.  I can’t prepare for it.  Nothing anyone says is going to tell me what it’s like and I simply can’t be ready for it.  Impossible.  I can only speak from ignorance, and I’ll certainly be regretting that, mark my words.  I should be happy that I have another week and a half, though it won’t come close to preparing me!

Spare me that. 

I’m ready.  I am eager.  In the core of my being I am deeply unconcerned.  Which leaves only impatience.  To see, to touch, to smell, to hear, and to know.

But mostly, I want to eat her toes.