Engineering Manager | Trail Runner | Stockholm, Sweden
I suppose after a certain age - or kindergarten - everyone is familiar with the joke in which the patient repeatedly touches various body parts and complains of pain which, in turn, gets identified as a broken finger. Following this analogy if a series of endeavors all turn out to be failures of differing degree then how's that to be interpreted as anything other than an issue with the attempter.
Do. Not. Try.
The City & The City by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book really doesn't hold your hand while reading; quite a bit is up to free interpretation. Also, the use of English is nothing short of exquisite. Sentences are masterfully embedded into one another, often making it a quest to untangle the meaning. What isn't too convincing though is the actual storyline/investigation: the excitement didn't live up to the hype for me.
Some of the music from the game Portal 2 is now downloadable gratis from Valve's site. The industrial tracks come complete with a neat cover image and properly tagged. Additionally ringtones for Android phones and the iPhone are also available.
This is so fresh it just came out yesterday. I don't know who she/he/they is/are but morningdeer's new LP, days, is quite an interesting listen. Expect experimental avantpop sometimes spiced with unlikely sound effects that reminds of Émilie Simon. The whole shebang is free on bandcamp and available in both lossless and lossy formats. I recommend checking out floor at least:
It's been very much like a roller-coaster these days. Had I ever tried drugs I'd imagine the highs to be comparable. And the lows, well, I'm no stranger to deep dark ones anyway.
It's all good, though, since were I not experiencing this oscillation of moods I'd complain about the lack of it for sure. It's better to live than vegetate. And this time I won't give up my dreams so easily.
People who know me or at least follow me on Twitter know that I've been plagued by a nasty bug with the hacked iPhone software since I started using iOS 4.1. During normal daily use the phone would flicker feebly then reboot for no reason whatsoever. To make matters worse in these cases the OS loaded several minutes slower than a normal boot would.
A few days ago finally decided I've had enough. As the first step I tried to re-jailbreak the phone and reinstall 4.1 from DFU mode. After restoring from the backup - even though the firmware felt much snappier - the problem surfaced again. Next I tried omitting the backup entirely and set up a new phone. No luck, the following day I had a random reboot again.
Then I realized (the blog post must have slipped my attention) that there actually exists a version of Pwnage tool that installs 4.2.1 without modifying the baseband. This is important because the ultrasn0w carrier unlock only works on specific baseband versions which are usually updated when new iOS versions are released.
So I updated to 4.2.1, set up as new, and finally I got a stable phone. Only there was a nagging issue: push notifications stopped working. Even though I've had enough life lessons about 'if it's not broken, don't try to fix it', I set out to get push back.
One offered solution is Subscriber Artificial Module (SAM), a piece of software that spoofs a fake SIM to iTunes and lets you activate as if you had the correct carrier's SIM. Only it would have been too easy if it worked: I couldn't find a single option that was accepted by iTunes as a Softbank SIM.
Then it occurred to me, why can't I just restore from backup with the 4.2.1 software? After all it was - seemingly - the firmware that caused the restarts, it had nothing to do with the backup, and also I did have push before - even on 4.1 - probably as a remainder from the legitimate Softbank activation. So after several cumulative hours of flashing, organizing apps and synchronizing now I have an iPhone 3G that runs 4.2.1 with active push and no random reboots.
I could have done this sooner. Partly I was lazy to do the whole boring process of updating again and again and I was afraid I'd lose the only phone I have and can afford. Turns out I could have been more optimistic and self-assured: if I want something bad enough, keep on trying no matter how much time it needs to be done, and never give up... then it might just happen.
Recycled content. -- In another life, I went to the Budapest Zoo. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it is, after all, a great place. In the end I almost ran out of CF card space.
I just remembered I had the pictures because Semcon was doing some decoration and we offered our pictures to be framed for the office walls. Mine didn't get used, but I was reminded to make a Flickr gallery of my favourites.
Also, the white wolves are the coolest.
I really only seem to have time for music posts.
Trinity Orchestra is the only fully student run orchestra in Ireland. In this video they are playing Daft Punk's album Discovery in Trinity College Dublin's Exam Hall. First of all, let the sheer awesomeness sweep over you: the many instruments, the arrangement and the enthusiastic musicians. Secondly, how great is that study hall of theirs?