Which brings me to the post.  Disclaimer….if you are from AT&T or Apple Legal, then be advised that this entire post is a work of fan fiction from one hell of an angry ‘fan’.

Why?

So I have this extra 2G iPhone lying around that was gathering dust (reason #1).   We like to keep it around as a backup, so selling it off on eBay was not an option.    Dagny is cute (reason #2) and always tries to play with our phones (reason #3).  In fact, Dagny has learned how to unlock an iPhone without missing a beat.  She’s so good at manipulating our iPhones that we can no longer let her near them (reason #4) (deleted apps, random dialed calls, removed contacts, etc).

I figured I would simply back up, then do a factory restore on this old 2G iPhone and hand the new baby rattle over.  Without a SIM card, Dagny couldn’t dial out, and who cares what else she did, ’cause I could just restore it over and over.    But that’s where AT&T and Apple screwed me and my toddler over.

AT&T Executives:  “Sorry, consumer.  That phone that you paid $200 for a few years ago is a stupid glass monolithic brick.  You don’t reallly own it…think of it more like an extended $60/month lease with a big down payment.  In it’s current state, it wouldn’t even interest a 6 month old.  Would you like to buy a data plan and a hefty 2 year contract?”

Me: “Screw you, AT&T and Apple.   I’m jailbreaking this thing so that my toddler can play with it the way Geek intended.  After all, the iPhone 2G is a marvelous baby rattle and a baby rattle needs no cell tower access!”

How I did it

Disclaimer:  This post is for informational purposes only….and might even be a work of fiction. Any instructions in here are merely illustrative of what one could do if one lived in a realm free of retarded government regulations, Bristol Palin and AT&T.  Don’t do anything illegal, okay, even if you own the device outright and want it to just f’ing work without needing a 2 year contract to a horrible service provider.

As of November 2010, unlocking a 2G iPhone took about a day of dedication, as the jailbreakers out there don’t actively support the older phones (e.g. the 2G iPhone).  I had to piece some things togther, but managed to get it done with a few tidbits of luck.   Those sneaky details are below.

Step 1:  Gather ye tools

You will need PwnageTool 3.1.5 (the 4.1 line doesn’t support the 2G).    I am told that google has said links to said torrents.  On the mac, Transmission.app is seemingly decent at getting ahold of torrent files.

You are also going to want a copy of the iPhone1,1_3.1.2_7D11_Restore.ipsw file.   The IPSW (iPhone SoftWare) file can also be found around the net.  You could use 3.1.3, but I stuck with 3.1.2 out of blind luck and stubborness.  PwnageTool will take this off-the-shelf .ipsw file and create a custom one capable of unlocking your iPhone.

Step 2: Create your custom .ipsw file

I then followed a great post on iClarified on how to use pwnagetool to unlock your 2G iPhone. The most important step here is to use the Expert setting and make sure that openSSH is installed with Cydia.   We’re going to need this later to fix some Cydia crap.   I eventually learned that Cydia is like the AppStore for unlocked iPhones, there’s a lot of cool free and paid stuff in there, and it serves as a sort of central distribution point for getting things on and off the unlocked phone.

While I was at it, I installed some other packages. However, not all packages work with 3.1.x and they won’t tell you this until too late, so be careful here.

Now, finish up and create your custom .ipsw file and save it where you can find it.

Step 3: Load your custom .ipsw file

Follow pwnagetools guide for getting your iPhone into DFU mode.  In this mode, iTunes will ask to restore the software, and that’s exactly what we want.   Once again, we’re following iClarified and their sweet post.

So, you’ll launch iTunes and it will ask you to restore the phone.  The little trick here is to hold the option (or “alt”) key down when you click the restore button.   This will get iTunes to ask you for the location to your custom .ipsw file.   Thanks for loading my hacked file onto the phone, iTunes.  You’re like a free piece of music software to me.

Step 4:  Allow your phone to do its thing

This isn’t really a step, but your phone will get all the bits onto it, then it will reboot (with the hacked pineapple logo from pwnagetool) and then it will upgrade stuff for a few minutes and then it will reboot again and you will have an unlocked phone in less time than it took to read this long runon and poorly structured sentence.

Step 5:  Now the fun begins

This is where the instructions leave off, and my possibly fictional help leads you to unlocked bliss.

First, get your wifi connection up and running (just as you normally would).

Second, launch the Cydia app that is on your phone.  It’s slow as a dog, but eventually should show something.    But when I tried to apply it’s upgrades or install packages, I would keep getting error messages, and this is where it got interesting. (If your Cydia app works fine at this point, then there is no reason to read further…)

After much stumbling, re-installing of the .ipsw file, re-tweaking of the installed packages, etc….I pieced together some posts and figured out a sequence of events that mostly worked.

Step 6: Getting Cydia and installed packages to work

First, SSH into your device.  (Under your iPhone settings, to to WiFi and figure out your iPhone’s IP address).  On your mac, launch Terminal.app and type ssh root@my.ip.add.ress

Your terminal will freeze for minutes as the iPhone generates a series of ssh keys.   Eventually you will be asked to accept the fingerprint of the iPhone, and you obviously agree.

The password for this version of pwnagetool/cydia is alpine.  (You can change it from your iPhone’s command line by using the passwd command).

Wow…..you’re in!   If you’re a geek, you are excited by the fact that you are on the command line of your iPhone.   If you’re not a geek, you may never get this far, or are pissed off at having to type commands to get simple things to actually happen

On the command line of the iPhone:

• su to get to root access
• dpkg –configure -a to fix the messed up package system
• apt-get update
• apt-get install cydia (or  apt-get install cydia –fix-missing)
• apt-get upgrade

But that didn’t seem to work completely for me.  I kept getting errors from other packages.  The super secret trick.

• cd /usr/sbin
• ls -a check to see if there is a file “nvram”.  Most likely it isn’t there
• touch nvram create a file that apparently was missing in the first place
• apt-get -f install
• apt-get -f update
• apt-get -f upgrade

That did it.   By creating the nvram file, I was able to re-run the other commands and get them to work.  If the “dpkg –configure -a” command still doesn’t work, you may have to remove some packages that aren’t compatible.  At this point, “apt-get install cydia” should work as well.

Step 7:  Final tweaks

I was still getting some Cydia issues when starting the app.  It would get stuck on some repositories, and make the app almost unusable (Dear Cydia, your timeouts are too long.)   First, try to figure out what repositories are not responding (Cydia will typically pop up an error message with the link names that failed).

Now, fire up Terminal.app and SSH into your iPhone.  On the iPhone’s command line:

• cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
• Depending on the version of Cydia, you will either see one file (“Cydia.list”) or several files.  I had to go through each of the files (using either “more” or “less”) to find the repository in question.
• rm name-of-file to get rid of it.

Once you re-open/re-launch Cydia, it should no longer look for the repository you just removed.

Living with the jailbroken Baby Rattle

Dagny just loves her new phone.  However, we learned two things quickly.

1. We desperately needed a soft case on the phone to keep her from chewing on the metal/glass.
2. Once we give the phone to her to play with….. we don’t get it back!

Making the baby rattle better

I immediately signed Dagny up (using a junk email address) for an iTunes account without a secured credit card).  That enabled us/her to download free apps, like Animal Sounds Free and other age appropriate tidbits.

I also took a little Daddy time and played with Cydia and some of the nice apps out there.  After all, if I can be interested enough to play with a baby rattle, it’s a pretty fun baby rattle.  Note that there are some Cydia apps that supposedly enable backups of unlocked apps to be downloaded through iTunes — this should make restoring a bit easier should something go awry.

Keeping the rattle jailbroken

Once I had Cydia fixed and things stable, I immediately made a backup through iTunes.   Hopefully this will provide a parachute for when Dagny inevitably messes up some key setting.

That said, I also plan to never allow iTunes to upgrade the firmware on the iPhone. This is key to keep things unlocked.

Wrapping it up

Sorry if this wasn’t the most complete tutorial, and I hope soembody finds the last few command line tidbits useful.   After all (1) this isn’t a bad way to get some utility out of an older backup phone that you might have lying around and (2) it was kind of a fun side project.

Kelty Carriers (5 stars!)

The TC 3.0 by Kelty is a great all-around carrier with a small profile.

Dagny outgrew her Baby Bjorn a long while ago, and we inherited an older Kelty carrier and absolutely loved it.  Dagny enjoyed being up high where she could look at people eye-to-eye.  We immediately went out and bought Steph the smaller Kelty kids carrier, the TC 3.0 (we think “TC”is short for “Transient Child”).

The TC3.0 comes with a canopy (shown in the picture) and a changing pad (works well for on-trail field changes).  There is plenty of room and support and Dagny is comfortable in it for well over an hour at a time.  Along with plenty of storage space, the carrier section collapses when there is no child in it (making it a slightly larger than normal backpack).   Another super benefit is that the ‘burp cloth’ area in front of the baby disconnects and is machine washable (something a lot of the other carriers didn’t do).   The surfaces of the carrier wipe down easily (vomit tested – check).   Oh, and being built by an outdoor gear company, the pack is comfy with a well padded waist belt and is rated up to 40 pounds!

The FC 3.0 is all things good with more carrying capacity and even acts like a high chair.

We loved the TC3.0 so much that Steph got me the FC 3.0 for father’s day (in the “curry” color of course).  The FC (where FC must stand for “Feral Child” carrier) has similar features to the TC but has more carrying capacity with an additional bottom pocket that is big enough for two cantelopes!   The FC also has an awesome kick stand that expands when you take the pack off.  This essentially converts the carrier into a high chair (well, a low-chair actually, but perfect for sitting at a bench with your child in front of you as you sip a coffee).   The FC is rated up to a whopping 50 pounds, so it’s going to last us for quite some time and is a great way to get some excercise with your child.

There are a few annoyances present in the FC that we did not find with the TC carrier.   First, the ‘burp cloth’ area does not come off (we just tuck in a burp cloth instead).   The second annoyance (for me, a 6’1″ tall guy) is that the strap system is not designed for someone my height or chest width.   I find the strapping a little out of proportion and have had to fiddle with it for a bit.

We love both the TC and FC carriers for both strolling around town and on hikes.  In a crowded coffee shop, these packs take up much less room than a stroller and we find ourselves far more maneuverable as well.  On trails, both packs are comfortable for Dagny and have enough carrying capacity for her required necessities.

If I had a rating system, these Kelty Carriers would be at the top, for sure.

It’s Awesome

The Aosom is awesome!

The Aosom play pen (we think it’s pronounced “awesome”) fits its name.   This thing is a basic play yard without all unnecessary frills.   Here’s what we like about this thing:

• It’s well priced.   In fact, it’s price per square foot puts it on the low end of offerings.
• It’s made of unadulterated wood. Translation: It doesn’t have some unknown varnish applied in China (full of lead and melamine, etc) — it’s just natural, pleasant to touch and smell, bare wood.
• It was simple to set up
• It’s stable enough, yet lightweight at the same time.
• Dagny can pull up on the bars without a problem.
• There’s so much visibility and room that Dagny gets the illusion of freedom! This is the ‘hugest’ win of all and provides us with free time to do office work.

Surely at some point in your life you have purchased a new product you were just super excited to try. You were so excited that you rushed home in excitement in order to open the box (that you just paid for) like it was some gift from a far off land (China), even though it wasn’t a gift (you paid for it). Perhaps it was a new phone, or some tool, new blinky shoes, a gadget, or something else.

So you get the product home and rip open the cardboard (perhaps you even show enough patience to read the manual and assemble the darn thing correctly) and start using your new “toy.” And then it hits you…..there is one feature missing. A feature so simple and obvious that you can’t believe they forgot to include it. Sometimes it is even a feature that would NOT add any appreciable cost or complexity (ringer-off switches on phones, for instance). Sometimes it is a feature that is absolutely critical to how a user interacts with the device that you have to hold it funny to use it in your left hand.

This ongoing rant looks at some of my favorite products. These are products I use everyday, all the time or simply rely on to get-r-done. And, of course, I rant about how/where these products fall short. This is not about the super-bad products (the ones that suck and have no hope), but rather about the ones that made it 99% of the way to glory and got hit by a stupid stick, or rushed out the door.

RANTING

4-23-2005………Portable Hammock Stands….here

First, the praise: Hammocks are nice and comfy. But not everybody has 2 stout redwood trees in a sunny spot in their backyard spaced a perfect 15 feet apart. Portablee hammock stands neatly solve the problem. They are stout steel frames and are easy to assembly and locate anywhere you have a flat open space.

Second, the silliness and The Rant: The one problem with the “Portable” stands is that they are so awkward it takes two able-bodied adults to move them. What’s so portable about something that takes 2 people to move. The device is not so easy to disassemble, either. Furthermore, given the simple construction, dragging it is nearly impossible. This is a classic example of how a product can get 95% of the way and fall short. I want to be able to follow the sun (occasionally repositioning the hammock throughout the day). On hot days, I want to move my hammock into the shade. I want to be able to move my “Portable Hammock Stand” on my own and I simply cannot. Sure, I have a bad back and all, but that’s not even the problem. This blood thing simply needs a cheap set of wheels!! Is it so hard to put wheels on a hammock stand? The thing already costs $80, so what’s an extra $5 for some cheap-ass wheels?

How to work around this shortcoming: Check this photo and this photo. Piece of cake. I had an old scooter sitting around in my backyard, so I removed the plastic wheels off of that. Then, I found a closet rod lying around and figured that it would make a good axle. Sure enough, it fit inside the square steel tube perfectly. Cut that rod to length, put a few fender washers between it and the wheel and then “thread” a bolt in place. That’s it. 30 minutes of scrounging and hacking and I had two wheels on my NOW-portable hammock frame. I totally recommend this hack (don’t have a scooter, use wheels off of an old lawnmower or something). The best part is that it works so well, I can even roll the hammock across the grass with somebody in it! I simply lift up one end (the end without the wheels of course) and push/pull the hammock frame to where I need it.

4-18-2005………The Litter Locker…..here…here…and here

First, the praise: I use this product daily and love it. It captures and contains the smell, nastiness, and foulness associated with the poop of litter-using life forms. You can go a good week before having to take the entire device out to the garbage. The refills are available and easy to install and the bag plastic is tough enough to never break or split (unless drastically overfilled). A typical refill cartridge lasts for a good month, too! The wind-up feature on the side gives plenty of leverage. There is even a handy razorblade-thingy inside for cutting the bag (so that you can tie it off and dispose of it). It even comes with a matching colored scooper that lasts fairly well.

Second, the silliness: So, there are two silly features with this product. I can live with them since they are minor design flaws (at least they tried). First, the scoop is wider than the input to the plastic containment chute. If you miss the chute, on the floor goes the poop. The other silly feature is the “scoop holder” on the back side. In all honesty, if you were to use this deep drawn “bucket” it would fill with all sorts of yumminess and need frequent (and difficult) cleaning. Since this bucket is physically inside the envelope of the “locker” they could have perforated the bottom of the bucket and let litter simply fall through and be capture for later disposal.

Finally, The Litter Locker Rant: So where did this beautiful product fall short by 1%?? Put yourself in the user’s shoes. If you are using this, you are lazy (like me) and only willing to take the poop out once a week. You will probably (since it is full of foul smelling fermented feces) want to handle this disposal outdoors so as not to make a mess. In order to handle the disposal, you need to carry the thing outside. The trouble begins, for the Litter Locker “Plus” (no Pro or Extreme version is available yet) has no handle. No only that, if you try to carry by the upper portion, the clam shell hinges open and the bag of FFSFF (see above) falls to the floor. So, you decide to carry it by the two twisting handles on either side…..same problem. So, you resort to holding the locker close to your body like a smelly plastic teddy bear. Blech. Get it right, guys!!!

How to work around this shortcoming: To enable your Litter Locker Plus (and turn it into the Extreme Litter Locker Pro 256 XGL VSLI) you need to do at least one of the following two modifications. Modification #1: Drill holes on the very bottom of the clamshell on both sides (just under each of the blue wheely thingys) and string some twine over the top. The twine needs to be loose enough to allow you to open the clamshell, yet tauught enough that you can balance the unit with your thumb (this does work….it’s what I do). Modification #2: Find a way to make the closing snap/clasp something REAL. Perhaps a brass swing-hook or a sheet metal screw. Even if you do this Mod, you may still need a stable handle of some sort.

WARM-UP TO THE RANT

Stop for a moment and think about the various Standards that surround you.

I’m not just talking about the obvious Standards (like USB, IEEE1394=Firewire, 802.11abcdefgthruz), but also about the subterranean foundational standards (ANSI screw sizes, ASCII, double-click-to-open-files). Standards are literally everywhere, and more often than not, I bet we are totally unaware of their existence. In fact, good standards fit into our lives seamlessly and fail to get in the way (unlike the current alphabet soup in a blender that is USB/IEEE1394/802.11/RS232/blahblahblah).

How about some other standards that we all take for granted:

• The size of a milk carton or jug
• The size of a 12oz cola beverage
• The location of pedals in automobiles (whether it be a sports car, stick shift, automatic or Big Rig).
• The standard lightbulb socket.
• The cigarette lighter in your car that is now really just a power port.
• Common Batteries (at least the good ones…see below about the bad ones).
• Toilets (at least those in the “Western World”…Japan had some interesting hole-in-the-floor contraptions that scared me).
• …and thousands of others…

No, this is not a rant opposed to standards.

In fact, I think well applied standards, or even well-evolved standards are wonderful things. The more static a standard (think nuts and bolts or the span of a railway track) the more comfortable we feel with it.

I’m not even going to rant heavily about standards that can’t make up their own friggin’ mind. For this we have 802.11*, USB123, BlueTooth and all the other jokey never-got-it-right-in-the-first-place standards. Give me RS232 and ethernet baby. Standards of a different era that have STOOD THE TEST OF TIME.

Heck, and I’m not even going to devote this rant to DVDs and HDCDs, even if they deserve it.

But real quick: Why the F#*# are there so many gosh-darn DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD!R, DVD#R, DVD@R, DVD%R, burning standards? It’s almost like they decided to fit every single SHIFT-# between the letters “DVD” and “R” and make a standard for it. Worse yet, why the F*#* are there 2 groups working on the next generation DVD standard!? Why do we need HDCDs and $3000 audio cables?

THE RANT BEGINS

What I am here to rant about tonight is the LACK of standards on certain products that have been around for quite some time and DEFINITELY NEED STANDARDS. As a user, I suffer because of these Reinvent-The-Wheel-Jockies. For instance:

Microwaves

We’ll start the list with a ubiquitous item that isn’t really seen as a “tech” item anymore. Microwaves have been around for decades, yet every single microwave I have ever used has it’s own bloody interface. Could we please standardize on the method of nuking food? Is it so hard to unify COOK–1-0-0-START for a minute’s worth of radiation? If that’s too much for the little 8-bit microcontrollers, then we can cut it down to 1-0-0-START. I have a microwave that makes it that easy and I love it. On some, I have seen the TIME-1-0-0-START, which scares me into thinking I am actually setting the microwave CLOCK TIME instead of nuking the bacon (setting the clock time on this particular model is its own joy). For gosh sakes….CALCULATORS DO FAR MORE THAN MICROWAVES AND ARE FAR EASIER TO USE (except, of course, for bloody reverse pole calculators…those things have terrible interfaces). And I haven’t even begun to berate Microwave “defrost” settings, power settings and autocook settings (never use ‘em). Time to start knocking heads at GE, Sunbeam, Daewoo and all of the other jokers who claim to “design” microwaves.

Voicemail

Another ubiquitous yet reinvented interface is voicemail. At this time in my life I have 3 different voicemail boxes AND A DIFFERENT INTERFACE ON EACH ONE. On SBC, it’s “1″ to repeat, “2″ to save and “3″ to delete, yet I have no idea what fast-forward and rewind are. On my AT&T wireless it’s “3″ to fast forward, “7″ to delete and “9″ to save…I think. At work (I’m not making this one up) it’s “D” to delete, “K” to keep, “P” to play again. What’s funny is that some idiot decided that “D”, “K” and “P” were easier to find on a phone than the big bold numbers printed on the center of each button.

So, can we please just standardize on one bloody voicemail interface? It’s not like there are that many commands one needs for a voice message (save, delete, play, pause, fast forward, repeat). Email is far more techno-seeming, yet has kept the same set of headers for decades.

Cell Phone & Laptop Batteries

Nothing irks me more than the downright lameness that is the tech industry when it comes to rechargeable batteries. I like my AA and AA and 9V batteries. You notice how C & D cells are almost nonexistent nowadays? Well, when it comes to the world of laptop and cell phone batteries, they make you shell out between $40 and $120 for a custom packaged battery. Sure, some cell phones share, but there must be at least 2 dozen different cell phone battery sizes out there. Same thing for laptops! There is no need for that array of sizes (I doubt there are that many different voltages or communication standards for all those batteries).

Could you imagine if every car you bought had it’s own special fuel requirements? This is what cellphone and laptop manufacturers require of their users. You would have to buy a tanker full of “Special Fuel” that would last (if you’re lucky) for the life of your car. Even if you had 2 cars of the same make, forget trying to swap fuel around…wouldn’t work. Worse yet, if you had a vintage car, they would stop making your special fuel. The car analogy is a good one for the tech industry to be embarrassed by. Face it, we spend nearly as much on computers as we do on automobiles (at least I do) yet we accept >10x the product abuse from our computers (ever had to reinstall the OS in your car or virus scan your engine?). Seriously…..time to slow down the product differentiation and standardize on a few package sizes and colors!

Inkjet Ink Cartridges

Speaking of flagrant user abuse, the printer industry should be summarily executed. For the last couple of years, there have note been enough giant leaps in inkjet cartridge technology to merit the hundreds of various cartridge sizes out there. Truth be told, the manufactures make money on the ink and they will even admit to that fact. However, it is the users (and landfills) that suffer for all of the poorly manufactured, one-time-use, non-cross-functional cartridge designs. Like laptop batteries, Inkjet Cartridges should have fewer standards than I can count on my 10 stubby fingers. Go to a reputable art store and you won’t find the same variety of paint brushes that you find in inkjet cartridges at a Fry’s. It just doesn’t make any sense.

DVR’s

One word: TiVo. If you’ve ever tried or spoken to users of any of the other DVRs you’ll find that they *think* they have TiVo when in fact they have nothing more than a VCR+ enabled hard drive. TiVo rocks and has a user interface that simply kicks ass and runs circles around all of the other knock-offs and re-invents. Comcast finally woke up and signed a deal with TiVo. DirecTV is threatening to break with TiVo (and will lose my business as soon as they do). Simply put, the world doesn’t need a bunch of DOS-like knockoffs winning the market over on cheap price and monopoly deals (think Windoze vs. MacOS…..which interface stays out of your way and lets you get the job done….it certainly ain’t the clunky-ass ExPee).

So, I would love to see us all standardize on the TiVo interface and QUICKLY. Sure, TiVo may come and it may go, but things like the 7 second back button and the wish lists and the preferential season pass manager and the To Do List and the Program Searching and the Suggestions and the Messages box and the cute little guy that stands in your corner waiting for you to select your Now Playing choice in less time than it took to write this run-on sentence. I vote for TiVo!

THE RANT ENDS

So that’s all my Products That Need Standards rants for now. Maybe in the future I will add more listings, but right now I got some Modern Marvels episodes saved up on my TiVo.