Jul 19
JustinUncategorized
That was fast, wasn’t it?
TiNternet IRC in its previous form is no more.
After an unexpected power outage yesterday, I decided TiNternet needed to be moved to a real server, so it’s been moved to M1.
The move was seamless, and chances are you won’t notice any difference. All databases and config files were simply copied over.
Officially, it’s no longer called TiNternet, but I’ll always refer to it as such. 
Also, I’ve updated my blog to WordPress 3.0. Doing so was long overdue, and I finally got around to it.
You should notice no change, as the theme I’m using and all my plugins should still be working.
My advice to you if you have a blog you plan on updating: Backups.
Something did go wrong during the update, and if I didn’t have a backup ready, I would’ve been screwed.
Oh, and a little over a week ago, I finally got a car! 
It’s a silver 2008 Chevy Cobalt.
This morning I had to get up at 7:15AM for recall service on the power steering motor. Considering I usually don’t get up for another five hours or so after this, today’s dragged on quite a bit. Not to say today was bad or anything, just long. And it’s only 7PM.
All this to say, join the not-so-new, improved TiNternet IRC, still on tinternet.justindaigle.com port 6667. If you were on the old one, your nicks/vhosts/channels will all still be intact.
Oh, and I’m about to hit 2000 Twitter posts. Might be worth checking into.
http://twitter.com/jrdaigle1000
Just some random updates on my life. 
Did you waste about two minutes reading that? Probably.
Do I care? No. It’s my blog. I can write whatever I want.
Jun 28
JustinUncategorized
Edit: For those who don’t feel like reading through a bunch of crap, the server is tinternet.justindaigle.com, port 6667.
Be sure to join our official chat channel, #coffeeshop.
Yes, I’ve set up an IRC server.
Yes, there’s already plenty of IRC servers out there.
So you may be asking, what’s the point?
Well, I’m on 4-5 servers at any given time, and to be honest, I’m not happy with them.
So I set up my server and decided it would be different.
A. It’s 100% uncensored. I hate going on some server where warez talk isn’t allowed and even people I know are pro-warez get hypocritical about it and flame you out for supporting it. A note on the whole “uncensored” thing though. It really only applies to the official chat channel, #coffeeshop. The help channel, #help, is expected to stay on-topic, and chanops may run their channels as they choose.
B. On other servers, channels and nicks expire after a period of not being used. Personally, I want to know that my nick/channel will still be mine when I come back. I hate it when things expire from not being logged into. It actually happened to my DynDNS account a few days ago. On the TiNternet server, you don’t have to worry about this.
If you want to look at the config entries themselves, notice they’re commented out.
Anyway, the address is tinternet.justindaigle.com, port 6667.
Be sure to join #coffeeshop, the official chat channel.
And of course, it’d be appreciated if you told everyone you can. We’ve paved the way by being 100% uncensored and not having expirations on nicks/channels, but to truly be the best, we need a good community of users. Feel free to create your own channels about anything, and if you need help, just ask in #help.
Jun 18
JustinUncategorized
If you’re reading this, the DNS for my site has updated for you, and you’re accessing the copy of my site on the new server. Congratulations!
You’re also quite lucky. The DNS hasn’t updated for me yet, and I’m writing this post from the server itself (the first time in ages I have done so).
Anyway, if you’re reading this and you’re not an M2 Hosting client, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.
If you are an M2 hosting client, and your site isn’t working, point your domain to the new server’s IP, 91.121.152.14.
If your site still isn’t working, it’s most likely a database issue that you’ll need to tell me about.
Anyway, due mostly to the fact that I still don’t (and probably never will have) a car, I’ve been bored all summer so far and I’m personally handling most of the server move.
So far I’ve just seen a few movies and that’s about it. Not being able to go on an out-of-town vacation sucks.
That concludes my first post on (and from) the new server.
May 04
JustinUncategorized
Okay, so this isn’t the big iPad review everyone was expecting. And what I’m about to say isn’t what anyone wants to hear. I decided not to finish my review of the iPad. Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, namely that I accidentally lost a good chunk of the review, that there’s already numerous iPad reviews out there, and reviewing each included app in the detail I normally give app reviews would simply be too complicated, I’m not going to publish the review. As for my opinion on the iPad, suffice it to say the biggest reason I decided to cancel the review is that I’m too busy enjoying my iPad to write a long blog post about it. It does quite well as a laptop replacement though, as I’ve been using my iPad for most things I’d ordinarily use a desktop or laptop for.
Now for the main point of this post.
In the past, I’ve written reviews of my favorite apps. Now, assuming I don’t get too much demand, I’ll review any app the app’s developer requests me to. The only requirement is that I’m provided with a promo code for the app. I have past experience reviewing apps, as seen in my SoundHound and IM+ reviews. If an app has both iPad and iPhone versions, or is at least optimized for both, I’ll deal with both in the same review. Considering both my iPhone and my iPad are jailbroken, I will also review SOME jailbreak apps under the same conditions. However, I will do this at my own discretion. If I feel the app is harmful to my devices, I will refuse to review it. A few badly-written jailbreak apps HAVE caused me trouble before, so I am a bit cautious as to what I do and don’t install.
If you’re interested in my review services, please contact me at justin [at] justindaigle [dot] com.
Also, I’ve hidden my last post. Comex has released Spirit, so it no longer serves a purpose. It also was made the target of comments by a fake Geohot and a [questionably] fake Comex, as well as numerous ignorant hate comments.
Apr 28
JustinUncategorized
I know this is a whole 18 days late, but I just got the disc of pictures last Friday (and nah, I haven’t been busy the whole time… 10% busy, 90% lazy).
It was fun, and I had a great time regardless of the fact that the food wasn’t exactly the best (mini-review of Pujo Street Café anyone? 
).
The after party was also… interesting, although suffice it to say I’m not all that happy about people who screw up the perfectly ordinary game of ping-pong into something it’s not.
I documented it to some extent on Twitter, this tweet being my favorite:
http://twitter.com/jrdaigle1000/status/11976330565
On an unrelated note, I’m most likely going to replace the ThinkTwit widget on the side over there with the official Twitter one. ———->
Also, I’ll be publishing my review “Sent from my iPad” as soon as a jailbreak is released. I’ll have my work cut out for me, since I had quite a bit of it written up, I had issues with the WordPress app, and managed to lose a good portion of the review. Originally, I just had to jailbreak, get the iWork apps, add them to the review, and publish it, but I now have to rewrite the vast majority of the review. I’m really hoping for a jailbreak on Friday, so if that’s the case, expect the review some time this weekend. Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait…
Apr 12
JustinUncategorized
Perhaps many of you have made the same mistake I have: upgrading to iPhone OS 4.0 thinking there will be a jailbreak soon, then realizing it won’t happen until summer. And to make things worse, it’s buggy.
Well, I got myself into this mess, I got myself out. I’ll explain how and hope it’ll help some people out there. This information does NOT apply to the iPod Touch (as it doesn’t have a baseband) or the iPhone 3GS with the new boot ROM (since 3.1.3 can’t be jailbroken on it, and the combination of a jailbreak and 3.1.3 are required for this guide).
First off, here’s what you need:
1. An iPhone that isn’t a 3GS with the new bootrom (I did this on my 3GS with the old bootrom)
2. An iPhone OS 3.1.2 IPSW
3. An iPhone OS 3.1.3 IPSW
4. blackra1n
5. A Mac (sorry; see the next requirement, it’s Mac-only; ah well, it’s always fun to rub the occasional Mac-only application in the face of Windows users )
6. Pwnage Tool
7. [3GS only] SHSH’s on file on Saurik’s server
I know there’s other guides for downgrading from 4.0 out there, but they all involve iRecovery, which as far as I know isn’t supposed to work on the 3GS. Maybe someone can correct me on this. Either way, if you happen to have all the prerequisites I’ve listed, this should work for you.
Sorry I don’t have screenshots, but this obviously isn’t something that’s easy to do at will. This was something I had to do once and hopefully never again.
Now, let’s get started, shall we?
1. Make sure you have the entry for Saurik’s SHSH server in your hosts file.
74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com
2. Open iTunes, connect your iPhone, and Control-click on Restore. Then, select your 3.1.2 IPSW to restore to it. Let it restore. It’ll quit with an error in the middle of “Restoring iPhone firmware.”
Why?
It quits with an error while attempting to restore the baseband. It won’t let you replace the 4.0 beta’s 05.13.03 baseband with 3.1.2′s (or 3.1.3′s for that matter, which is why we’re going the indirect route).
3. Your iPhone will now be in recovery mode, demanding you connect it to iTunes. But, it’s actually running a fully-functional 3.1.2. Let’s get it to work now. Run blackra1n on it. Once it finishes, you’ll be greeted by a functional 3.1.2, but it can’t communicate with the new baseband so it can’t function on a cellular network. Time to fix that.
4. Run Pwnage Tool, using your 3.1.3 IPSW. Select your iPhone model, and when it asks that it’s already pwned select yes. In theory, you could just put it in DFU mode while you were still in 4.0 and answered no to this, but I didn’t get to test that method, so I can’t say if it works in practice or not. Assuming you have a regular AT&T contract, answer yes to that as well (or whatever the supported carriers in other countries are if that applies to you). Now, build the firmware and wait for it to finish.
Why Pwnage Tool here?
Pwnage Tool, especially the newest release, rebuilds the firmware and removes the baseband update, since it’s assumed by default that baseband updates are bad for people who want to use Pwnage Tool. Meaning it will restore without an error this time since it won’t try to overwrite the baseband. And yes, we’re almost done.
5. Place your iPhone in recovery mode.
Not sure how?
6. Open iTunes, and restore to your new custom firmware.
7. You should now have a jailbroken 3.1.3 that can communicate with the 4.0 beta’s baseband that you’ll unfortunately never be able to downgrade from.
8. Restore from your latest backup to get all your precious settings, contacts, and messages back.
Having trouble?
If you’re like me, you’ll encounter the misfortune of getting an error that says something about “the backup operation failed.” I have no idea what causes this, but disconnect your iPhone and reconnect it. Somewhere in all this, it should have re-activated your iPhone. Now, right-click your iPhone in iTunes and select “Restore from backup.” Now restore. It should work this time.
I hope this helps some of you who were in the same boat as I was.
Two announcements.
1. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Needless to say, this opens numerous review and tutorial opportunities.
2. Speaking of pictures, my school’s prom was Saturday. I should have a picture from it to post here soon.
Mar 31
JustinUncategorized
IM+ is probably the best instant messaging application for the iPhone. Sure, there are official AIM and Yahoo clients, but no client for Windows Live Messenger. Instead of bothering with a bunch of separate clients, why not use an all-in-one? As usual, I received a “free review copy,” but if that isn’t an option for you, it’s $9.99 in the App Store. Upon adding one or more accounts and signing in, you will be greeted with your contacts list. 
The IM+ Contact List Tapping the “i” icon to the right of any contact will provide you with details on the contact. 
A contact’s details, with the address removed for privacy reasons You can also opt into push notifications when a contact signs in. Unless you disable push notifications for the entire application, IM+ will send push notifications whenever you receive a new message from any contact, whether you have enabled push notifications upon their sign-in or not. This keeps you signed in even while the application is closed, and delivers messages, even while you’re doing something else. Tapping on the contact’s name will start a conversation. 
A conversation Conversations appear using a familiar chat bubble interface, somewhat similar to the iPhone’s Messages app. You can tap the caret-shaped icon to access options to invite contacts and send photos. 
The Status tab You can use the Status tab to switch between pre-defined statuses or create your own. The latest version of IM+ also finally supports multi-chat. 
A demonstration of IM+’s new multi-chat ability, showing a conversation with the fictional Miles Stone and a fake Steve Jobs While multi-chat is a step in the right direction, I’d still like to see proper Windows Live Groups support, although no other third-party client has it yet. Something I’d also like to see would be the ability to change your display name and picture from within IM+ as opposed to using a desktop client for these tasks. Overall score: 85/100
Mar 14
JustinUncategorized
Considering I didn’t want to bury one of these posts with the other, yet I wanted to post them at the same time, I decided to make them into one.
First off, I’m proud to release Justin Daigle (.com) v7. My blog is now using the Notepad theme by N.Design.
And to the right, you’ll find a link to the new public eyeOS install. If you want any applications added to it, contact me at admin [at] justindaigle [dot] com via WLM or e-mail.
I rather like this theme, and even people I figured would hate it only had positive things to say about it, so it’ll hopefully be here to stay for quite awhile. Still, to be perfectly honest, as my personal blog, the only opinion that really matters here is mine.
Anyway, for now, the eyeOS install provides 10MB of storage. It’s not much, but the M1 server is used for quite a bit. Depending on demand, I’ll raise or lower it.
Now for the SoundHound review.
For those who don’t know, SoundHound is an iPhone app that “listens” using the iPhone’s microphone to any music in the area, then provides the name, album, artist, album artwork, lyrics, and other information on a song that is played, sung, or hummed, if it recognizes it. It’s $4.99 in the App Store, and while I have a “free review copy,” I’d imagine it’s well-worth the money if that’s not an option for you.
The SoundHound main screen
SoundHound has various options, which can be configured in the iPhone’s Settings app. Listen on Start causes it to start listening instantly when you start it (obviously). I don’t really get the point of this option, as pressing the big button that says “What’s That Song?” isn’t really hard. The second (iPhone-only) option causes the iPhone to vibrate once it finishes detecting the song. I’m not entirely sure what the third option, “Use Bluetooth (Beta)” does. The Twitter and Facebook options provide integration with Twitter and (ugh) Facebook.
SoundHound’s preferences screen
Operation is easy. Just push the button that says “What’s That Song?” when you hear a song you want it to identify.
For the following examples, I will be playing music from my PC, in my room, at about the volume you’d expect to hear it in an average restaurant. I’ll have my iPhone 3GS about ten feet from my PC’s speakers. Even though it says to place your iPhone “as close to the sound source as possible,” in some places, that’s about 10-20 feet. Usually, when you need to identify a song, you can’t get right next to the source. Fortunately, it works quite well in my earlier example, a restaurant setting.
SoundHound correctly identifies Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”
It’s been able to identify almost every song I’ve thrown at it, even in noisier settings. It’s actually come in quite handy before, when I’ve heard songs before, and I’m lucky enough to hear them again some time later, whip out my iPhone, and use SoundHound to identify them. Now, let’s throw something a bit harder to identify at it, like the (as far as I know) unreleased Lady Gaga ft. Kalena – “Kaboom,” played at the exact same volume.
Strange…
To be fair, the copy of “Bad Romance” I played in the earlier example was at 320kbps, and “Kaboom” was at 256kbps. I’ll turn up the volume a bit…
Okay… I guess it’s just not in their database
Considering it’s “leaked” and “unreleased,” this doesn’t really surprise me. Still, I’d imagine enough people would have it to demand its entry into their database.
A feature I’d also like to see on their website would be a way to submit an MP3 to their database. I could find no such thing.
Let’s recap, shall we?
SoundHound is one of those apps I’ve long wished someone would make. Seems Melodis stepped up to the plate. It’s generally good at recognizing songs, even if they’re not all that loud, and there’s background noise, making it possible to use in practical situations. The only thing I could ask for is the ability for users to submit MP3′s to their database. I’d highly recommend SoundHound to anyone. Even if you already know every song out there, it’s still pretty fun to use when you’re bored at a place that happens to play music.
Overall score: 99/100
Mar 06
JustinUncategorized
No, I did not find the cell phone belonging to [insert name of random female celebrity here].
I DID manage to screw up my iPhone. AGAIN. For the second time this week.
This time, as opposed to by some random force (my final theory on last time is that Apple is disabling jailbroken phones somehow, considering I wasn’t the only person to report the same problem on the same day), this was caused by my own stupidity.
First, a bit of history for you. Back in 2006, before the iPhone was released, Apple had two teams working on the iPhone. One had the real hardware, running on a fake system software, and the other had the real software, running on fake hardware. This way, the whole thing couldn’t leak at once before it was announced. Only Steve Jobs and 8-10 other people had ever seen both at once. At some time last year, someone came across one of the hardware prototypes. Sporting an extremely ugly UI, it also had an app called SkankPhone.
For nostalgic value, I decided I was going to copy it from the leaked prototype firmware and attempt to run it on my 3GS, running 3.1.2. I copied in the app and frameworks as directed by a forum post, and surely enough the SkankPhone icon reared its ugly head on my SpringBoard.
Anyway, I tried running it. A screen came up for a split second showing the full version of the picture on the icon. Then it disappeared. Then, I tried possibly the worst idea imaginable. I went into Terminal and tried running the thing as root. What do I get for my troubles? A message simply stating “Killed.”
Later on, I reboot for something. It skips my passcode entirely and sends me to my SpringBoard, only none of my icons launch when tapped. I had to lock it and unlock it again, and then enter my passcode, to make them functional. Needless to say, this is a huge security flaw, so it’s restore time.
Fortunately, even though I feel really stupid now for screwing up my phone twice in a week, at least I have a backup from two days ago this time, as opposed to two months ago. I spend the next two hours getting everything back to normal. If you know me in real life, don’t get any ideas. My phone always requires its (very long, alphanumeric with special characters) passcode when it should once again.
Now for theories on what happened. To be fair, there were two other things I did that could’ve been the actual cause. For one thing, I copied in the frameworks supposedly necessary for SkankPhone.app to run. For another, I installed some extended preferences thing that’s enabled through WinterBoard, and then proceeded to modify it. I’m still suspecting the times I tried running SkankPhone.app though. I can’t remember all the details of what it does, but I believe it also functioned as a prototype SpringBoard of sorts, very well meaning it could’ve overwritten necessary settings files used by SpringBoard with prototype versions that don’t cooperate well with 3.1.2. Regardless of what caused it, I’ve learned something today [End South Park reference]. Copying in prototype apps and frameworks, and WinterBoard extensions that “extend” your preferences app, are all dangerous and stupid ideas.
Considering I have all my stuff exactly back to normal (getting it this way has become almost routine for me ), this incident won’t affect the review series I was planning on writing (the v7 release post will also include a review of one of my favorite apps).
Speaking of v7, sadly, some of my plans didn’t work out, but I will spill the beans on something. It does involve changes to my blog, and the result is stunning, to say the least. I have a fully-working copy of my blog in its v7 form, minus this post and the last one. 8 days and I won’t have to have a separate copy of my blog just for me to stare at all day.
Mar 03
JustinUncategorized
I’d hate to bury my last post already, but I’ve more or less decided what JDC v7′s going to be like, and I have every bit of it working already in some place or another.
I’m not giving out any details yet, but I can and will say that it has two major differences from the current (broken) v6, and one minor fix to something that’s been bothering people for quite awhile now.
Oh, and another cryptic hint at what it’ll be like, to add to the mix. I had to make sure I was posting this in the right place. 
In case you didn’t read the title/don’t know when Pi Day is, I’ll say it again. Justin Daigle (.com) v7 will be released on Pi Day 2010 (March 14).
No, Pi Day isn’t at all relevant to v7, I just traditionally do major changes to my site on holidays.
I’m not entirely sure I’m done throwing v7 together yet, so it may be an even bigger change than it is now.
Then again, I suppose it’s a fairly safe bet that most of the changes will be adding stuff, since my site is no longer the scattered mess it used to be. It’s basically my personal blog and file storage.
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