I started the upgrade and held my breath. First iTunes was upgraded to version 8 (more about that here) which went smoothly (as expected). I had already downloaded the 2.1 firmware so I located the place in my Library where the firmware was kept and copied it there. (I just looked for it again, but I can’t find it. You’re best bet is to just let iTunes update it for you.)

The upgrade went fine, my iPhone restarted and (holding my breath) … it started syncing, finished (still holding my breath) and that’s it. No questions asked, no Pwnage tool, no QuickPwn, it just worked, like some others I’ve read about.

One thing, though, I’m missing cydia and installer which is not a big loss, since I didn’t use them very much anyway. I think that may be the key to upgrading smoothly. If you haven’t done it yet and you’ve got a lot of 3rd party (i.e., non-official) apps installed, go in and un-install them all (you’ll lose them anyway during upgrade). I suspect many of the errors are due to conflicts with certain non-official apps.

Still, I will kind of miss the application that allowed me to stream live video to Qik. Even though I hadn’t used it very much, I had great plans for it.

Mostly, the reason I like having my iPhone pwned is that I am living in The Netherlands, and although they sell the new 3G version of the iPhone, they don’t offer official service for the original version. So, it’s either cough up the money for a relatively expensive voice and data plan for two years, or use my original iPhone which I already had anyway.

PawSense

CatNip

Cat on iBook

Leopard attack

Bosnian folk music

Japanese Labour Thanksgiving Day

Babelfish translation service

Gigazine.net Pudding of Man article

Chinese Noodle Ball

US Black Friday

Other Black Friday references

This is the podcast where I, the Nervous Podcast Guy share tips with you on how to make a video podcast. Dimitry, ex-KGB, also makes an appearance to share a new “gadget” with you. Episode 4.

Kinetoscope

Potato Chips

Potato Chips Advertisement, “How You See It” and “Thanks for being with us” films courtesy of Archive.org
“Crisp, Fresh, Potato Chips”

“How You See It”

“Thanks for being with us”

One MacBook with a Thinkpad keyboard please (or OS X running on Windows, when hell freezes over) by ZDNet’s David Berlind — Just because almost everybody is doing it, does that mean it’s a good idea? Or does that mean that we’ve somehow been hoodwinked into thinking this makes sense. I’m talking about touchpads. Somehow, users have been convinced that these kissin-cousins to the digitizing tablets that graphics artists use (where the technology benefits productivity) make [...]

Is this guy on crack or something?  Sure, I agree with him about trackpads.  Who really uses the trackpad on their mac laptops anyway?  I’m a macfreak but I avoid using the trackpad on my powerbook as much as possible.  I’m also a productivity freak so I use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible.  But pointing sticks?  Please, that’s so 90’s.

My only brief experience with a  pointing stick was when I had to help a friend with his Toshiba back in the 90’s.  My only hope was that I could get the job done as soon as possible so I wouldn’t have to use that stupid, little pointing stick anymore.

Sure, it was fast.  Too fast.  Speed went up and accuracy plummeted.  The fact that it may be harder for manufacturers to make or maintain is not the real reason why it has never caught on.  People don’t like them.

Want speed and accuracy?  Use a mouse.  Want productivity?  Keep your fingers on the keyboard as much as possible and use shortcuts.  That is unless you get paid by the hour, of course.  In that case, feel free to use whatever outdated, outmoded technology you wish to use.

Technorati Tags: productivity, trackpads, pointing-sticks

Seven Sleepers video

The Cave of the Seven Sleepers

Septic Goleta

Entire account in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine

Shanghai Workers

Guy in suit video

Crash Test Dummy

This actually goes for anyone who is trying to make a presentation or a video of some kind which will be displayed in front of a larger audience like a church or even distributed via the internet.  It’s my understanding that if you’re just showing the video/presentation to a small audience in your own home then you’re safe to use whatever kind of music you want, however, if at some point you decide to post it on your blog or show it to your church on Sunday morning, then you’re going to have either redo your presentation using copyright-free music or obtain a costly license to use the music.

Well, here are some links to places that offer free music that you can use for just about anything except for commercial purposes (some of them can even be used for that).  Please refer to the license information provided with each song or on the website itself.  Some artists do ask to be notified if it is going to be used publicly, and some of them ask you not to remix the music in anyway (using excerpts notwithstanding), but others place absolutely no restrictions at all on their music.  Two of them are secualr websites where you might find some Christian music and the last one is specifically worship:

Podsafe Music Network
macjams.com
freeworshipmusic.com

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Pownce is kind of like twitter, right?  I also have a twitter account, but I never use it.  Apparently twitter is one of those extremely useless, highly addictive things.

Anyway, I have 6 invites.  Who wants a pownce invite?  I’ll warn ya’ though, it’s gonna cost ya’!  Ha ha.  How about a link exchange?  You provide a link on your cool, hip blog read by thousands of actual people to my uncool blog read by, well, actually I think even the spambots have stopped dropping by.

People hate comment spam, but I actually kind of liked it, because they were just about the only comments I was getting.  It made me feel a little less lonely.

Anyway, if you want an invite, leave a comment with the link to your blog. Maybe I’ll be in touch.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, I guess I left out this part - pownce.com/thedonkey is my address.