Sunday, February 20, 2011

Scientific Snippets

  • Bdelloidea, a class of tiny aquatic rotifers that have lost the entire male population somewhere in the evolution process. In addition to the bland asexual reproduction, Bdelloidea absorb and incorporate any DNA that is floating nearby.Sound's like a Lamarckist's wet dream.
  • In addition to stretch marks and permanently dilated pelvis, pregnancy is found to lower one's IQ and possibly cause permanent brain damage. Hiring a surrogate mother is worth more than vanity, perhaps. 

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

No More Procrastination

Just somehow dig in and make a start, the rest should be easy.


Alternative colour scheme can be found here.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Tips for Greenpois0n RC5 Jailbreakers

Okay, RC5 is finally out and working to provide untethered JB for 4.2.1 on all devices, what does this mean?

  • Although this had not been officially confirmed, the exploit used here is, more likely than not, the long awaited SHAtter. I am fairly sure because the JB comes with custom boot logo (and it is even animated) so it has to be an iboot/kernel level JB which is not exactly abundant.
  • Chronic Dev Team was going to hold onto SHAtter for as long as they can, however it has been patched in beta versions of iOS 4.3 therefore there is no longer any point to save it anymore. They were almost pushed to use it for 4.1 back in October; however limera1n was released just in time so it did not happen.
  • There is currently no usable exploit for 4.3 and up, however Redsnow's Monte mode should allow JB on all future versions as long as you have the shsh blobs for 4.2.1. (The essence of Monte is to insert a patched earlier kernel version at iBoot level, hence the blobs are needed by iTunes to sign the kernel and allow it to load untethered)
As for the greenpois0n software itself, it is still barely usable at the time of writing. You might remember that it took four RC revisions to get greenpois0n working as it should for 4.1; well RC5 and the latest RC5_2 are still buggy like a roach-infested hobo shed. You think geohot is the irresponsible Maverick? Greenpois0n is so crudely assembled that it did not even bother to include activation bundles, you are pretty screwed if you restored a locked phone to default before trying GP. (Solutions are available, read on)

There are plenty of tutorials out there, however I am going to provide my workflow that is least likely to have many hiccups that you might come across otherwise (mainly the issues with activation and the utterly broken Cydia loader in both versions) This also allows for offline operation in case you don't have access to data service or wifi.

  1. Turn on your iPhone, connect it to your computer, back up everything in iTunes just in case. (nothing sould be lost unless you screwed up massively)
  2. Close iTunes, shut down iPhone by holding the Sleep button and slide the red slider as it appears. 
  3. Run redsn0w 0.96rc8, choose the factory 4.21 firmware for your device, follow the instructions and choose "Install Cydia" when prompted. For 3Gs unlockers only: You can choose "install iPad baseband" at the same time to streamline the process.
  4. Run redsn0w again as in step 3 however choose "boot tethered". 
  5. You should enter a fully jailbroken state, run Cydia to initialize it, check other system applications like Safari and make sure everything is working before turning the phone off again. Don't bother downloading any packages yet, we can leave this for later. 
  6. Run greenpois0n RC5, follow the instructions. Note that there is a 5 second countdown at the start for "getting ready", this can be somewhat confusing if you become used to redsn0w's DFU routines. 
  7. Keep the Home button pressed the whole time even after it says "complete", your iPhone should boot up in verbose mode in a minute, simply watch and you should be able to see the boot animation pretty soon.
  8. The phone will turn off automatically when everything is done; simply turn on the phone again to enjoy the benefits of untethered JB.
  • Whenever errors come up or the phone gets stuck at any step for more than 5min in verbose mode, simply force power off by holding Sleep+Home for a few seconds and start over. It actually happens more often than thought so don't panic, just keep trying and it will work eventually. In the worst case you can always use trusty redsn0w to boot tethered and start over from step 6.
  • Unlike limera1n, RC5 does not contain any activation bundles. If you are having trouble getting past the activation screen, you will have to run redsn0w 0.97beta6 to hacktivate. The usual precautions of hactivating still apply and it is always better to activate using the right carrier's SIM.
  • RC5 is Mac-only and will fail within virtual machines or hackintosh. RC5_2 is said to work with VM at least however I still recommend getting hold of a Mac before wasting your own time due to pod2g's own impotency.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Positivity and Cold War Relics

The more things change, the more they stay the same. What I really need to remind myself of:


* The beginning is probably the most difficult part. Think how you struggle to get out of bed every morning thinking that you are about to die, only to sober up in a few minutes like it never happened.
* Stop worrying that you are not doing good enough. The one who laughs last is not the best player but the one who made the least mistakes. It is always too early to give up.


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I was driving home yesterday when I saw an old acquaintance.



The 1973 MiG-21 was imported in the 1980s through a third country to Australia with the intention of selling it to the RAAF for combat simulation, however the Cold War ended too soon for the jet to me put into real use. The sale fell through, and the aircraft somehow ended up in God's own country following some ambiguous circumstances.

The last time I found it in a derelict hanger in Christchurch airport, I did not have the chance to take a photo however I remember it was already in a dire condition however intact. It also did not have the BOOB 8008 marking. I wonder if the number actually meant anything.

It was put on auction last year without the flaps and some other small bits. Right now it is sitting in a makeshift pen in Penrose and missing her wingtips. I have no idea who bought it to Auckland and why, however I really suspect that it will eventually be scrapped and turned into cans and windows frames.

The laws of nature never gets old.