My friend Peter was kind enough to bring me an iPhone from New York. It looked cool, but initially it was locked to AT&T and therefor useless in Europe. But luckily I found an unlocking guide on the web: iPhone in Switzerland.

It looked tough, but doable. So Stefan and I decided to go for it.

• First we had to do some coding. Easy, except the HEX editing which was a bit tiring.
• Second we had to open the device. Hard, since you constantly have to worry about breaking the device.
• Third we had to connect a circuit with a capacitor on the motherboard. Impossible, since those gates are only 0.08mm tick. But somehow we managed it.

After seven hours of sweat and pain we reassembled the device. And...
NO SERVICE, PLEASE INSERT AT&T SIM CARD
Agrr...

But wait, we forgot to enter:

AT+CLCK=”PN”,0,”00000000″
AT+CLCK=”PN”,2

And surprise, surprise: the iPhone is now unlocked!

Labels: Apple, coding

Four weeks ago, Samuel and I started to run. Five times a week. 30minutes each. From the start we knew, motivation is key. We both want to run. Why not motivate each other? If Samuel runs, I pay him 10€. If I run, he pays me. If we both run, no one has to pay. A very simple schema, but surprisingly motivating. Each week we kept running. Attracted by our success, this week, Johannes joined and I hope more will follow.

Last week I bought additional motivation. It's called Nike+iPod and snaps on your iPod and in your running shoe (doesn't have to be a Nike). It measures your time, speed and distance. And it gives sexy voice feedback on the run. After running when you connect your iPod with your PC (doesn't have to be a Mac), you get stats which of course you have to beat next time.

With Nike+iPod I set myself three goals for the next four weeks:

• 20 runs
• with an average speed of less then 5min30sec/km
• and 100km in total

I will report back on how it went. read it

Labels: Apple, Economics, Incentives, Patrick

Since recently I promote Apple products. A great job. I do what I do anyway and earn some money. Very flexible. So, I don't have to give up study time. I see interesting places. Like last week at the Klangbilder Messe in Vienna, this week at the Interpädagocia in Linz. And I learn alot. Like talking, teaching, showing, explaining. It all goes very natural. I enjoy working with Apple products, and I may even share that joy with some people.

Labels: Apple

Having upgraded to Mac OS X Tiger, all programs just worked fine without reinstalling. All my files and configurations where I left them in Panther. Except two. SerialSeeker and DVDBackUp. Two important hacker tools. I could reinstall SerialSeeker but DVDBackUp is brocken in Tiger. Coincidence? Or is Tiger a sheep? Beside that, Tiger looks great! I'm not to sure about Dashboard. But Spotlight really does search my harddisc in fractions of secounds.

Pixar Sheep

Labels: Apple

Sony may lost the MP3 player market*, but they still drive in video. There new High Definition camcorder (QUALIA) surely looks like a promising hardware. At the same time Apple released a new Final Cut Studio on the software side.

It's fun to watch Sony and Apple rival in audio while they work side by side in video.

*Partly because those players don't even play the MP3 file format.

Labels: Apple

I always loved those Apple PowerBook's. The Pismo (left) and the still very famous Titanium Powerbook Steve Jobs introduced in 2001.
And now you can get one of those gorgeous Apple Cinema Displays with a 30inch diagonal and hock it up to your PB.

The new 1.67GHz 15-inch PowerBook supports the massive 30-inch Cinema HD Display.

Labels: Apple

• from 8am till 10am, during breakfast: checking mails, news, todo's
• from 10:30am till 2pm, in the Cafe Prückel: working on my Web Engineering Homework
• back at home: I'm charching up the battery...
• ...and keep it runnning for quick reference
• it's 8pm and I'm back in the Prückel

Taking a look at the Battery Life Cycle of my PowerBook, makes it possible to predict my timetable. Connected with a logfile of my wirless activity someone could easily monitor my life. Scary?

Labels: Apple

...is a beautiful movie directed by Wong Kar-Wai. Wonderful pictures from Christopher Doyle and the song Magic is the Moonlight by Nat King Cole makes this movie a favorite of mine.

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung
Enjoy the trailer and get the movie.

Labels: Apple

Is it mind control if Apple promotes to think different? Is the Apple logo a sigh for the evil apple, the snake forced Eva to bite off? Is Dr. Richard Paley's article called Creation Education a hoax? Take for example Apple Computers, makers of the popular Macintosh line of computers. The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism. With his arbitrary assumptions, Dr. Richard Paley brings Christians in a bad light of mistrust.

Labels: Apple

In college I will attend courses just like at Stanford. I already use my PowerBook to write all my daily notes on derbaum.com. I want to write my lecture notes on my notebook as well. It would have many advantages. But, besides all that great technology, I need to be aware that it should never be more complicated, or slower to write, than a college block. So in order to collect and share all this information, I need a working system. A System that supports me, instead of holds me back. If I can not add a formula or graph right away, the system failed. The focus should be on the content and not on where to save or how to format my lecture notes. I will need to prepare myself in advanced so everything works smoothly right from the start. That's why I need a simple, working system to write all my lecture notes. The system needs to be extremely flexible, but still based on structure to make it easily accessible. The big test will be my summer session this year, where I will actually sit in classes and try it out.

A few things to do

• Since lessening to the lecture and watching the blackboard is the most important part in a lecture, I need to be perfect in typing.
• All things like formation text, mathematic formulars, tables,... should be possible while I'm totally focused on the class (not on the task of writing the formular).
• The process of starting, saving, editing, linking,... Lecture note should be totally easy or done in the background.

Things I can do with PHP

• file management
• text manipulation
• the starting, saving, editing, linking,... Lecture note process
• sharing lecture_notes
• sort, search,... Lecture notes

Things I can't do with PHP

• drawing small notes, graphs,...
• spell checking
• mathematic formulas

Programs watch out for

• Mathematica 4.1 (export in MathML)
• MS Office v.X (templates*, Apple Script)

Why don't base the hole system on the code of derbaum.com?

• show_lecture_note($class, $lecture_note_id)
  Almost like derbaum.com, $class would be $topic, $lecture_note_id would be $story_id.
• Would it be a problem if I have hundreds or even thousands of $stories?
• What would I have to rewrite?
  • STYLE! First of all I wouldn't want the left bar like on derbaum.com
  • The get_the_story_formatted as well as the submit_a_story function would be replaces with something which fits my needs.
• Ether way to keep on working on derbaum.com, with the idea in mind that I may use the code to collect lecture notes is the right way for now.
  • Work around the topic system.
    • Each topic has a folder where I can add pictures, tables,...
    • Better way to link to the folder (I could replace "/" with "pictures/NAME_OF_TOPIC/").
    • A description for each topic is very important in case I use the system for my lecture notes because I will probable show lecture notes (stories) by courses (topics) instead of a chronological order.
• I will run two (compatible) system so it would be easy to link around, just like the sections system on Slashdot. Which brings up the crease thought that I could try the, much more powerfully, slashcode. Ahhrr...
• Two equal programs, so what if I improve one of them, how can I upgrade the other? (Templates?!)
• Actually I can't see a good reason why not using the derbaum.com-code, it's just a question of adjustment

Labels: Apple, Stanford