Howto make more space for applications on your iPhone

I have a 4gb hacked iPhone running 1.1.2 and I recently ran out of space on the root partition after having installed a bunch of nifty little applications.

So, to make more space on your iPhone for more applications, you need to do this:

#1. Edit /etc/fstab and remove the ",noexec" part. Reboot.

#2. mkdir /var/root/Applications

#3. ln -s /var/root/Applications /Widgets

Editing the fstab is the key here. Otherwise, applications won't be able to run off of the /var partition.

The /Widgets directory is a special directory that the iPhone can use to locate installed applications. Linking it to /var/root puts it on the larger disk partition and in your root home directory. Then to move an application from /Applications to /Widgets, just type:

mv /Applications/Apollo.app /Widgets/

Now, restart Springboard or your phone and the application should run without problems.

I suspect you can also just symlink /Applications to /var/root/Applications, but I didn't feel like experimenting and I'd rather just manually move applications to /Widgets.

Java 6 dp8 finally available on OS X

Apple finally made Java 6 dp8 available on OSX 10.5.1 to ADC members (free account). It has been fairly inexcusable and just a huge bummer that it was not available earlier. I really wish Apple would take Java more seriously. Even Landon Fuller got it out before Apple did. Come on Steve, please allocate more resources to it.

Update: I just tried to install it and am getting the error message "Your computer does not need this update." Oh, I can't even begin to tell you how wrong that message is. Dear Matt Drance, please come back from vacation soon! =) I just filed radar bug #5663661

Update 2: It turns out that my Mac is a Core Duo and not a Core Duo 2 so the 64 bit version of Java won't work on my Mac. =( Bummer.

GKnol.com: Artist Statement, Support Wikipedia!

Google recently announced a new project called 'knol.' This is in direct competition to the efforts at Wikipedia.com. Instead of donating money and resources to Wikipedia to improve their systems, Google has decided to make an alternative solution. I love Google, but what happened to "Do no evil"?

Therefore, I have created GKnol.com as a functional art piece that uses Google to make money from Google. You will help raise funds for Wikipedia because I will donate a portion of the proceeds back to Wikipedia. Feel free to please share this site with all of your friends.

Also, you can make GKnol.com your browser homepage and use it for all of your google searches! By default the cursor will appear in the search bar. So, when you open a web page, all you have to do is start typing.

Enjoy. =)

MacBook Pro iSight stopped working

While trying to film a friends reaction to 2girls1cup I found out that my iSight camera on my laptop was not working. Google to the rescue. I found this and then this. Step 4 "Reset SMC or PMU" fixed the problems. I shut down my Mac, pulled the battery and power, held the power button down for 5-10 seconds and then started it up again. Now the camera works just fine.

Hacked iPhone 1.1.2 Crashing Solution

I've got a hacked iPhone. I love it. It is by far the best tech gadget I own. Problem is that when I moved to 1.1.2 the phone started crashing all the time after I installed SummerBoard and various other apps. I thought that I was just going to have to live with it. So, after about a month of frustration with using my phone and considering un-hacking it, I finally got it together enough to search the internets for a solution. It turns out that SummerBoard has an option to 'Dim Wallpaper' and that feature is buggy and is the cause of most crashes. I turned it off, rebooted and haven't had a crash again. Yea!

Update: SummerBoard 3.0 final was just released. I just tried turning on this feature again and my phone has been stable. They must have fixed the issue.

Duelity

"Duelity is a split-screen animation that tells both sides of the story of Earth's orgins in a dizzying and provocative journey through the history and language that marks human thought."

The anti-pedophile coloring book

SF Gate's Mark Morford has another funny article on the new coloring book from the Church. He got it from this newsweek article.

"Remember kids, when putting on (or taking off) your vestements with a priest in the room, always have a couple of perky angels hovering nearby. You know, just in case. "

There has been so much terror as a result of the abuse in the catholic church that it even gets its own website on the Boston Globe.

And then there was this last weeks shooting at a mega church in Colorado. "A gunman attacked worshippers at a Colorado Springs, Colorado, megachurch Sunday afternoon, killing one person and wounding four others before being killed by a security staff member, the city's police chief said."

Then you have to wonder... Who started giving guns to the mega church rent-a-cops? According to Rev. Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church, the church had a security plan in place.

"I'm proud of the way our team responded," he said. "Many, many lives were saved because of the quick action of some committed volunteers at our church."

Oh wait, they were not rent-a-cops, they were "committed volunteers"? Now I'm really confused. But even more confusing is this quote further down in the article on CNN:

"The church was founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, an evangelical Christian leader who was ousted in 2006 after allegations that he had been a client of a male prostitute from whom he had purchased drugs. Haggard admitted to undisclosed "sexual immorality" and called himself "a deceiver and a liar" in a letter to the congregation."

Sweet. Now things have come full circle. What will the Church come up with next? A coloring book for how to purchase a gun?

Paypal announces it is officially slower than before.

I recently purchased some very cool Takashi Murakami artwork from Ebay because I'm interested in collecting beautiful pieces of art. Then, it was time to pay for it. When I signed into my Paypal account for the first time in a long time, I was greeted with the message above. Apparently, they think that good customer service involves telling their users that "From now on, it may take extra time for your latest transactions to appear in your Recent Activity." This is the company with an endless supply of cash and they can't come up with a system that performs? Instead, they tell you how much they are going to suck in a nice popup when you sign in. For a company that originally reformed online payment systems, I'm so not impressed. What happened?

Geek: Flot

Wow, I just found out about Flot, a JQuery based Javascript graphing tool. It is so cool! I'm continually impressed with how JQuery has redefined client side development. Graphs have always been a pain to do because it is always related to creating an image on the server side and serving that up (like the new Google Graph API). I think Google missed the boat this time. Nobody wants to use an API with a 50k usage limitation. With Flot, all I need to do is write a little bit of JS and send it some data. I can't wait to find a use for this one.

Unicorns

http://www.mcphee.com/items/11674.html

"I highly recommend this product to homeschooling parents. As
far as I'm concerned, nothing better explains the complexities
of the Cold War to children than unicorns. Nothing. I am
particularly impressed with the names of the two unicorns:
Commie and Freedom. U-S-A! U-S-A!" -- GeekDad