Blog of Josh Hall

And now, the reason why these topics have a picture of a smiling kitten next to them.  No matter how down I am, I’ve never been able to spend a few minutes on http://icanhascheezburger.com/ without feeling better and laughing.  I don’t even like cats that much, but I’ll be darn if those pictures aren’t some of the funniest and cutest things I’ve ever seen.  It’s a tool of mine, whenever I’m said, go take a look at I can haz cheezburger.

This post is classified under "memories" for those facebook readers that don’t see categories.  I wanted to write down my memory of the day I found out my brother had passed.  Mom – be warned.

Caleb and I slept in what would be called "Uncle Jay’s" room together when we lived at my Grandma’s house.  He slept in the queen bed and I slept on the cot right next to it.  I remember that when I woke up, I used to wake Caleb up, talking to him, or checking to see if he was awake.  I got in trouble once or twice for it.  I don’t remember what day of the week it was, but I remember waking up, and going downstairs, thinking not to wake up Caleb.  As I sat and watched TV at the table and ate breakfast, my mom went upstairs to get Caleb.  Moments later, My mom was yelling, "Mom!"  I saw her carry Caleb down into the living room and put him down on the couch.  A large EMT lady showed up with ambulance a while later.  I’m 8.  I don’t remember any other siblings being home but me.  I remember my dad coming to the back door and telling me to get Pap-pap.  I think there was a little bit of tension with letting my dad into the house, but ultimately, he ended up to being able to come into the kitchen at least.  That’s where I remember holding a 2×3 photo of Caleb and crying in the arms of my dad, saying things like, "Caleb is gone", but I can also remember not really understanding what that meant.  I just felt like that is what I should be doing, as if I was just doing it because that’s what they do on TV or something.

It was Friday, January 26th, 1990.  Caleb was turning 10 on February 9th.  I assume we had the funeral shortly after.  I remember school at Bentleyville Wesleyan was canceled for the funeral.  I saw a lot of people at the funeral.  I remember Uncle Kenny playing a song he wrote and leaving a casette tape in Caleb’s casket.  I want to say I even put in one of his wood cars.  The weird memory is that I remember Jim Henson dying around the same time, and images of all the Sesame street characters showing up at his funeral, and thinking about those same characters showing up at Caleb’s.  Jim Henson didn’t die until May 16th, but I guess the memories were still fresh enough in my head to make that imprint, or it’s been so long that they just seem to overlap.  I remember Jesse and Uncle Tom coming up.  Honestly, I’ve had quite a few funerals, most at the same exact place, so a lot of the memories I have in my head right now, are bluring together, so I’ll stick to the ones I’m sure of…at least, as sure as my memory let’s me believe.

This isn’t a How-To jailbreak your iphone.  It’s just some top reasons to jailbreak your iphone, based on my personal experience.  There are a lot of jailbr0ken apps that are used far more than any that I will list, but they’re the reasons why I’m jailbroken. 

Right now I’m on 3.1.2 on my iphone 3G.  Version 3.0 addressed a lot of what OS 2.x lacked, things like landscape keyboard, video recording (on the 3GS), MMS, and copy & paste, and a few others.  There are still a bunch of things that 3.x doesn’t do that the jailbreak community has enabled (reply to SMS messages without leaving your app, tethering, turn by turn directions, google voice, etc). You might even say that the jailbreak community (Shout out to Saurik) even did it first.  It’s hard not to think that Apple wants to offer the features that people are drawn to jailbreak.

There’s a huge library on Cydia of cool apps, like a gameboy and NES emulator, putting your icons in categories/folders, creating blank icons for organizing, or icons that "spring" you to a certain app page.  You can do things like add people to a black list, record your calls, save youtube videos, basically, anything you can think of, someone probably feels the same way, only they have the ability to write an app for it.  If you fancy customization, jailbreaking is worth it.

10.  Unlocking – Don’t wan’t to be on AT&T?  That’s fine.  You can still use your iphone on another provider without the full functionality. 

9.  SSH – This stands for Secure Shell, which can cross the line into geekiness, but basically, you can use your iphone as a big old memory stick.  You are able to copy and manipulate any and all files on the phone.

8.  5 docked items – Why not?  I use my calendar, phone, email, text, and safari all pretty regularly.  Why should I be limited to 4?

7.  Cyntact / ContactFlow – Cyntact takes your existing contact list, and puts the person’s photo (if you have it stored) as an icon next to their name.  ContactFlow takes that one step further, and your contacts are actually stored in a "flipbook" style app, just like you do with albums.  These two apps are certainly dependent on a respectable collection of photos for your contacts, but with googlesync and any of the apps that will sync your contacts with the photos of your facebook friends, it makes it a very pretty addition.

6.  Weathericon – If the calendar icon updates to display the real date…why doesn’t the weather icon update?  Well, now it does.  No more waiting for the weather app to load.

5.  Multiicon Mover –This is one that I’m sure will be implemented in a later Apple firmware.  hold down an icon to get the icons to wiggle like normal, then just tap on the icons that you want to move.  Each tapped icon will then show a little check box letting you know they are selected.  Scroll the page you want them on and press the home button and they’ll all move there.  EASY.  Just as it should be.  No more trying to drag across 4 pages 1 icon at a time.  It’s so simple, it’s genius.

4.  Cycorder – I’ve been able to capture video on my iphone long before Apple released the 3GS, and I can still capture it on my 3G.  Why not use the hardware to it’s full capabilities?

3.  StatusNotifier / Intelliscreen – When you have new mail or a new text message, StatusNotifier will put an icon on your lockscreen or up in your statusbar.  Heck, it’ll throw the weather up there for you too if you like.  Intelliscreen takes it even further and creates all kinds of gagdets / widgets for email, stocks, notes, alerts all displayed on your lockscreen for easy reference without having to unlock and go through all the apps.

2.  SB Settings – A quick swipe of the status bar, and you’ll bring up this cute little menu screen that you can customize to have icons to quickly change brightness, airplane mode, process kill, reboot, and a whole bunch more.  SB Settings is one of the most used apps for anyone who jailbreaks.  You can also hide any icons with this (like stocks.  WTF looks at stocks on their iphone?).  SB Settings has a lot of uses and it’s pretty and convenient to boot.

1. Themes / Lockscreens / Fonts – Here we are.  Numero uno.  CUSTOMIZATION, PLEASE.  I don’t want a black background and boring or ugly icons.  There are THOUSANDS of themes to pick from, and a lot of tools to create your own.  It’s so much more aesthetically pleasing to have icons that look like they go together.  I chose ones that match my case; a light blue.  I don’t want a boring old swipe to unlock, I want a pac-man character that chases a ghost, or mock fingerprint scanner that looks legit.  Change the fonts around, and now you got something classy and fun.  No more instutionalized experiences!  

I think that’s it.  If you have any questions, I’m glad to help.  Here are some cool links to check out:

http://cydia.saurik.com/

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailbreak_%28iPhone_OS%29

www.engadgetmobile.com/category/os-x/

Had this idea on our honeymoon to chichen itza.  You used to be able to climb up the pyramids, but since 2005, after someone fell down them and died, they have been closed off.  I wanted nothing more that day to go up those steps.  There’s even a doorway at the foot of the pyramid that you used to be able to tour the inside.  The root of the idea is everything has a price.  If I paid someone enough money, they would let me do it.  It’s just a matter of finding that person and negotiating with them.

So that’s what this company does.  We go to popular destinations like chichen itza, sports stadiums, etc and draft a contract with them.  Each contract would have to be custom tailored to protect the interest and investment of the site and the members.  Things like only 5 members at a time, have to be a site staff person with them, only able to go after hours or certain times of the years, etc.  The site has the benefit of free advertising through our website and brochures etc.  So we’d have sites interested in offering us a special service, maybe even to the point where they would approach us once it got popular.

We could also have members make requests for a specific event or site.  We would act as the broker for them, building upon our previous reputation and experience.  There could be different membership rates and options.

  We’ll call it the Blue Jacket Members club or something.  The logo would be a capital M with a circle above it, to look like someone in a jacket.  We’d put little logos at the ticket counters of each of the spots we had agreements with.  The long term goal is to just keep on building up a portfolio of places to see and experience to the point where common conversation is "oh yeah, we went to that place too, but we did the Blue Jacket Members Tour and it was a blast." 

I don’t want it to be sad.  I’d hope that friends and family that know me well would throw up gang signs in jest at my funeral.  Maybe even going as far as pouring out some champagne on the floor.  If I died in an accident, I’d hope that someone would do an impression of me saying, “what the crap” or “that was ballz.”  Death hath no sting.  I wouldn’t want to be remembered for being a boring “stand up citizen” or a “good person.”  I’d want to be known as the guy who just wanted to have a good time, love people, explore, and be creative.  I’ve said a few times before, I’d love to be buried viking style; body set on a raft and then set on fire and pushed out to sea.  I’d be screwed if we could feel pain after death…but whatever.

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

– Edgar Allan Poe