There. I said it. Happy now?

Were you expecting some beautiful halloween effects roaming my webpages? An amazing new halloween theme for my blog? Maybe at Christmas, you never know.

Well it’s that time of year again, where all the little kids knock on your door and steal your sweets. As a sweet is given to a child, another part of me dies.

On a more serious note, this is why having locks on your gates is the best idea yet. Quick and easy, and stops all the distractions of badly-made costumes.

I think this is the end of my small halloween rant, yes I probably seem like a killjoy at the moment. Enjoy your halloween!

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Well I took a big step and have moved over to Ubuntu. Of course, I’m not completely using it though, I’ve dual-booted it with my Windows 7.

Ubuntu seems to a great operating system, very customizable, user-friendly, looks good. I’ve kept Windows 7 installed to be used as a backup, and so I can execute my exe files when I need to.

More than likely, I will be using Ubuntu as a majority. It’s great to be able to download files and not have to worry about those annoying viruses, attacks, and finding different drivers.

I suppose the only downside of it is the lack of linux support for some smaller programs that I use. It’s a shame actually, because I know it’s frustrating for some users who have linux installed and can’t run some programs, with Windows being the most popular operating system and all. There are, however, a lot of good open-source software to be used on linux.

If you haven’t yet tried out linux, I (highly) recommend giving Ubuntu a try!

P.S. To those interested in wordpress plugins, I’m currently working on more and if you have any ideas, feel free to leave me a comment and I may look into it

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The iPhone is well known to be jailbroken. This unlocks the firmware for you to give you much more freedom – You can install your own applications from other applications such as Cydia. It means you can find a much bigger variety of applications – Which you can download for free.

This tutorial will show you to jailbreak your iPhone 3G, running 3.0 Firmware. This should work on the original iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, and the iPod Touch too.

Just to get this out of the way, I am not responsible for any damages caused.

What You Need
Latest version of iTunes
3.0.0 Firmware + 3.0.0 Firmware Download File
Redsn0w 7.2
Windows XP or Windows Vista

The first step needed is to install iTunes. You can download it at Apple iTunes. The second step is to download Redsn0w, the software we will be using to jailbreak your iPhone 3G. You can download it at Redsn0w 7.2. The last file you need to download is the 3.0.0 File. You can download that at Apple 3.0 Restore File.

Now, you need to sync your iPhone with iTunes and then do a backup of your iPhone, still through iTunes. This is to keep your data. Next, hold the shift key and then press the restore button. This will allow you to choose the firmware. Choose the file we downloaded earlier, and allow it to restore.

This is the time where we need to run Redsn0w. Make sure that your phone is active at the moment, and has been activated. Open up the software and when it asks for the firmware, again, choose the file we downloaded earlier. Once you’ve selected the firmware, you need to turn off your iPhone, and get ready for some quick instructions from Redsn0w. Keep your fingers near the home button and the power button.

If you follow the instructions correctly, a hard drive icon should appear on your iPhone. Just leave your iPhone to finish and afterwards, it should load up normally. Enjoy your new jailbroken iPhone 3G! Remember that you can restore from the latest backup you have of your files through iTunes, too.

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Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn’t have a great choice of ringtones. The default ones on the iPhone aren’t great at all, and most people just want to use their own ringtones, like most cell phones can do. Luckily, it is possible to use your own custom ringtones on the iPhone for free, although it’s more work than usual.

The first step in this process is opening iTunes. Open the software, find the song in your Music Library and right-click it. Then, click “Get Info”. Open the “Options” tab.

The iPhone doesn’t support ringtones longer than 40 seconds, so you need to set the song to only play for 40 seconds. Enable the “Start” and “Stop” using the check boxes and then enter 0:00 and 0:40. Click “OK” and you’ll be back in your Music Library again. The next step is to right-click your song once again but this time click the “Create AAC Version”. This will convert your song into the correct format for a ringtone. When it’s finished converting (It shouldn’t take long), right click the new song (It should be below the original song on the list) and click “Show in Windows Explorer”.

For this next step, you need to make sure that you can see the file extensions of files in Windows Explorer. Click “Tools” and then “Folder Options” and then the “View” tab. Find the checkbox which says “Hide extensions for known file types” and make sure that the checkbox is unticked.

Now, go back into the Windows Explorer which shows your new created music file. It should be a .m4a file. Rename the file from .m4a to .m4r. You may get a warning about it from Windows, but just ignore this. Now you should have a .m4r file which is of 40 seconds in length. This is all we need.

Simply go back into iTunes and drag this new file into your library, and that’s the ringtone created. Just sync your iPhone with iTunes now and your ringtone should transfer. If you go into your iPhone and then into “Settings” –> “Sounds” and then “Ringtone”, you should see your newly created ringtone on the list under “Custom”.

You should now have your custom ringtone set on your iPhone, completely free.

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This is another annoying restriction set by Apple, which only let’s you choose an SMS Tone from several different options. On the plus side, it is possible to customize them yourself, but it’s a lot of work for such a simple task.

Before we start, let’s prepare everything we need. You’re going to need to jailbreak your iPhone. If you don’t know how to do this, you can find out in the iPhone Jailbreaking Guide. You’re also going to need a few programs installed on your computer. You need WavePad and WinSCP.

Once you have your iPhone jailbroken, you need to install OpenSSH, to allow us to access the key iPhone files. Open the Cydia application, click Manage and then Sources, and add a new source with the URL:

http://i.freemyiphone.com

This will let us download OpenSSH to the iPhone. Go into Search and type in OpenSSH, and install it. Restart the iPhone.

The next simple task is to open WinSCP. Once the software has opened, you will be asked for an IP Address, a Username and a Password. This is all we need to fill in.

To get the IP Address, go onto your iPhone –> Settings –> WiFi –> Click the blue arrow next to the connected network and you’ll see the IP Address. It may be something like 192.168.1.7.

Type this IP Address into WinSCP, and then use the other details below:

Username: root
Password: alpine

Try to connect. In some cases, it won’t work. Just keep retrying and you’ll get in eventually. Sometimes it takes a while for OpenSSH to start on the iPhone, so you can wait a while before you start if you wish.

Please note that your computer and your iPhone MUST be connected to the same network to do this.

Once you’re logged in, you need to navigate to the correct folder. You need to be in /System/Library/Audio/UISounds. This is where the SMS tones are.

With this method, you’re going to need to replace one of the existing SMS tones. This is the only way to get it working. The SMS sound files all start with sms-received and then a number, and then a file extension of .caf. For example, sms-received2.caf. Now it’s time to create your own custom sound.

Open the software you installed earlier, WavePad. With this program, you need to open the sound file that you want to use. With WavePad, you can alter the sound as you wish, but what you should do to start with is to shorten the sound file so that it’s only a few seconds in length at the latest. Once you’re happy with the sound file, you need to convert it through WavePad. Click “File” and then “Save File As”. The type of file we need is “Apple AIFF”.

Once the file has saved correctly, navigate to the file in Windows Explorer. You’re going to need to change the file name from what it is now (With the .aif extension) to sms-received2.caf. If you can’t change the extension, then it’s because you have file extensions set to hide in Windows.

You can change this by going into “Tools” –> “Folder Options” –> “View” –> Uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types”.

Now what you should have is your sound file called sms-received2.caf. You converted it to a .aif file previously, but now it’s a .caf file.

This is all the preparation we need. Simply go back into WinSCP and drag the new sms-received2.caf file into the iPhone, replacing the old one. Once it’s transferred, if you go into Settings –> Sounds –> New Text Message, you will see that if you play the tune “Chime”, it will play your tune instead. Set “Chime” as your tone and that’s it completed. Your custom tune is set.

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