Category: musings

Updated Info:  Since I first wrote this post a lot has changed in the world of iPhone hacking.  The best place to start now is with either Independence or ZiPhone.  I’ve only used Independence and it did do the job.  You only need to use one of those two tools to put a package installer on your iPhone and you can then install whatever you want directly on the iPhone itself.  You don’t have to mess with any of the stuff I mention below.

Original Post: After a few failed attempts I finally was able to ‘hack’ my iPhone so I can ssh from it onto other servers (from which I can actually do useful things). I ended up using iFuntastic to ‘jailbreak’ the phone. I tried some other methods and none of them worked. That one worked great for me. Once that was opened up I could install sshd on the iPhone (start at step 3 and skip step 5) to allow easy access from my Mac. I then installed MobileTerminal as well as the iPhone openssh binaries to provide me with an ssh command line client. While I was tinkering I also installed the Lights Off iPhone game, which is actually a lot of fun.

This took me longer than it should have and I had to restore my iPhone from a broken state once during the process but now it’s working and it’s pretty nifty. Wahoo!

When I’m on a website and I have to pick my country from a long list of countries of the world it really bugs me when it’s 100% alphabetic and United States is way down the list below Uganda. I KNOW people from the United States must be a lot more prevalent on ANY website than people from Uganda. I’m not saying United States should always be at the top of the list, but I do think the most common choices should appear at the top with the full list below. I apologize to people in Uganda!

I ride a bicycle to work every day and I’ve noticed something curious. Legally, bicycles are supposed to follow the same laws of the road as cars and stop at stop lights, stop signs and everything else. Most drivers in San Francisco expect bicycles to NOT stop at stop signs though, and will even wait if they see a bicycle coming to let it pass before proceeding. I don’t know if the drivers are just rewarding us cyclers for being good citizens of the Earth or if they’ve just been trained by years of bicycles on city streets ignoring stop signs, but I know what I see now.

In general this behavior rewards me as I can safely roll through most stop sign intersections. I do still slow down when there are cars very clearly already ready to go and generally try to be safe but I appreciate being able to roll through many intersections. Maintaining momentum is critical on a bicycle!

Anyway, the curious part of this is that every so often, maybe once every couple of months, somebody in a car kindly (or not so kindly) ‘reminds’ me that I’m supposed to stop at stop signs. I don’t know if these people just haven’t gotten the universal ‘be extra nice to people on bicycles’ memo (I never got it myself, actually), if they just don’t think bicycles deserve special treatment, or if they just hate me in particular.. but it’s strange.

If I were to actually stop at every stop sign like I’m supposed to it would result in confused drivers probably 80% of the time. People would lose all understanding of who should be going next and over time their perceptions of reality would probably start to erode and they would go mad. Ok, maybe not, but it would actually end up WASTING TIME because a lot of people would actually stay stopped and impatiently wave me through AFTER I’ve come to a complete stop myself. Then I’d have to start up from a stop taking probably twice as long to get through the intersection (with everyone watching me) after already making the people wait long enough to wave me through. Do you see where this is going? It’s just better for everyone to let me always go through intersections without having to stop!

We Are Scientists is a newish indie rock band I just read about yesterday. I checked out their album, With Love and Squalor, and it’s pretty good. To me it’s not as good as bands like Spoon or Modest Mouse but it’s got some similarities and if you like those you’ll probably find something you like about it. I’m going to give it some more listens myself, as I really liked some parts of it but other parts not as much. The really interesting thing about them is they’re from The Claremont Colleges, where I and all of the founders of my web hosting company went to college. Even more interesting is the fact that the drummer actually went to our college, Harvey Mudd (The Claremont Colleges is a collection of 5 smallish colleges)! The article I read was actually in the Harvey Mudd periodical magazine. The issue detailed some HMC graduates doing some interesting things off the beaten path a bit.

Anyway, the music sounds like it would translate to a pretty good live show so if you catch wind of them playing nearby you, go check it out!

I bought two 8GB iPhones at the San Francisco Apple store tonight. I got there at around 8:30 pm and there was no line to get into the store. I asked one of the store employees, “Can I get an iPhone?”, and he directed me to go either ‘upstairs and to the right’ or ‘to the left and towards the back’. I chose upstairs. There was hardly a line (just a couple of people asking questions) and there was a stack of iPhones piled behind the counter waiting for me. I paid my money and the device some people had waited the better part of week for was in my hands. It was pretty painless overall and the people who waited in line better have some very good stories to show for it.

My thoughts so far… garsh it sure is beautiful. We just took them out of the box and cradled them lovingly in our arms for awhile before even hooking them into the computer to set them up. Ok, not really. The setup process through iTunes is amazingly quick and easy and the phone is working pretty much immediately. I’ve never known a cell phone service to work so well. I’m gushing now…

I’ll have to use iPhone (it’s weird to refer to it as simply ‘iPhone’, isn’t it?) for a bit to see how it stacks up against my trusty (if a bit unstable) Treo. I think there are likely some things I’ll miss about the Treo (like just holding down ‘v’ for a couple of seconds to dial Vida), but the email and web on the iPhone are leaps and bounds better than anything I’ve had on a mobile device before.

I got an email from Netflix telling me they’re lowering my price and I don’t have to do anything but pay less. How nice of them!

Here’s the letter…

Dear Dallas,

Great news! We’re lowering the price on our 2 DVDs out at-a-time plan to $13.99 a month plus applicable taxes. Now you can enjoy Netflix for less!

You don’t need to do a thing – except pay less. Your membership will automatically move to the lower price and be reflected in your Membership Terms and Details. The lower price will take effect beginning with your statement on or after June 28, 2007.

Your $13.99 plan gives you 2 DVDs out at-a-time and you can also watch 14 hours of movies and TV episodes instantly on your PC each month – for no additional charge. Click here to check it out.

Enjoy!
Your friends at Netflix

A funny thing has been happening over the past couple of years. As DreamHost has grown into one of the top 10 web hosts in the US the reaction from the community has been interesting, to put it lightly. Our unique and fun way of operating has always brought us fans and there have also always been people out there that just didn’t seem to ‘get’ us. Lately, though, we seem to be downright controversial. It seems like anyone who has heard of us has some sort of opinion, positive or negative, and many people are quite vehement about it.

Discussions about us often become heated and people on both sides, yay and nay, have strong opinions. It sometimes even devolves into personal insults. We’re controversial enough that we regularly make it to the top of Digg.com and people now seem to be blogging about us specifically to try to gain some attention from their association with us. I guess it can’t be said that we’re boring!