crazybobbles

At a disturbing word count of 38, 836 words, a disturbingly awesome poster presentation waiting to be printed off and a nights and nights of staying up late coding, report writing, and head scratching the report is FINALLLLLLLLLLLLY done! Woo!

Theres still other bits and bobs to finish, like database reports, web technology reports as well as prototype demonstrations but they are all small projects that can be done in a desperate night of struggle (like all the great projects men had set off to do in the last minute), but yeah. This was the hardest project I’ve ever done and I’m so glad to just hand it over to the uni people for it to be marked. Bit of an anti climax to be honest. I was expecting this rush after handing it in but nowt. Ah well.

I better do some relaxing now, my head is all tensed up, ready to explode so I’m definitely calling this a day, a of relaxing, a day of kings shall we say haha. A day where I can toss my shoes in the air and just set myself free (is a more toned down non hippy free love kind of way).

Ooh waiting for an awesome parcel arrive now Thank god I handed my project in early otherwise I would have went to a crazy Royal Mail car chase (with my imaginary car). Anyway… WOOO!!!!!

Deary me, I have a lot of phrases for this one, including “Geeks will always be geeks”, “They’ll never learn” and perhaps “Whats your logical intervention for all of this?”

Anyway, after a lovely lecture at Mobile Business today (as well as a nice talk about my project report with my supervisor). I had the urge to do something immediately when I got back home..

No not that (filthy minds you), and no not finish my report! Rather then following the crowd and continuing to juice out 60 pages worth of project banter, (I’m on 57 now anyway so I can take a break haha), I decide to.. FLASH MY PHONE!……….AGAIN!

Now I dont think I blogged about the time I flashed my phone (actually I just found it haha). But the first time I received my phone, I was instantly appalled by Orange’s stupid Homescreen crap they’ve put on the phone. These days, mobile operators would like meddle with a perfectly functional and cool phone firmware and shove alot of their operator specific crap in it to restrict users when using their phones. Usually its to protect themselves from people using other features etc. Anyway, the first time I flashed it I got it done professionally (though the location I got it flashed from wasn’t too professional looking, in fact it was their house and they just do it with their laptop haha (they have the gear before you ask!)). Anyway, that was fine, my phone was flashed then (I also suffered a nasty fall that day but lets not talk about it haha)… the second time was when Nokia announced that you can flash your own phone. Being someone who enjoys having their stuff up to date I jumped on the software upgrades etc and downloaded the nokia software, it was nice and official so it was alot more chilled and relaxed to do it etc.

Anyway, the thing I didnt know was the fact that it recognised my product code and that it required an operator specific firmware. So BAM! I’m stuck with the operator specific crap… AGAIN! I wasn’t having none of that, I didnt really want to spend more money to get it debranded again so I opted in looking at ways of doing it myself. Now there are, but they are DODGY and usually carry a risk in bricking your phone. But I did it anyway, and guess what? Bricked phone. Had to go back to that professional place and get it reflashed in order to get my phone working again.

So yeah… after that traumatic experience, here comes part 2. My supervisor / lecturer talked about his new swanky N95 phone and talked about how Orange were sly enough to disable voip calling. He was then googling for solutions to get past this and in the end he was contacted by someone who gave him the solution.. which was.. ladies and gentleman, flashing your phone. The whole phone debranding thing sent shivers down my spine. Though for my lecturers case he managed to get it done successfully, using the same dodgy software that I once used. So what does that leave me? I’m stuck here googling for new firmware updates and whether or not there are new safer methods out to do the job, and strangely..there was! Which was out in 2007 (where have I been). The method is alot safer and requires changing the phone id to a generic code. Reading more into it I found out that you can also turn N70 phones into an N70 music edition phone (firmware wise). So yeah, it got me all excited and this is where the crowd all shakes their heads, tut and go “geeks will always be geeks” haha.

So yeah.. I’m waiting for my phone battery to charge. I have my phone all setup and ready to go. Once again I’m going to panic over it but it does seem like a reasonably easy task this time, not to mention the fact that I’ve tried the official route before and it seemed to have worked :). So yeah, another crazy day of phone flashing and all.

So yeah, if you cant reach me on the phone after this.. chances are I’ll be heading back to that damn place to get my phone professionally reflashed because I bricked it again haha. Also, if you play me on Tetris DS around this time and notice that I’m beating you mercilessly, that means I bricked it again, if you find me very agitated or antisocial, that means I bricked it again. Haha. But yeah, if I feel happy after this ordeal, that means I’ve successfully flashed my mobile phone and managed to add in a TINY bit of functionality to my phone which I’ll probably won’t use anyway haha. So yeah, this is where you go “geeks will be geeks” again with their constant need for updating stuff even though it adds no real benefit.

Update: Haha, well, just managed to get my phone RE RE Flashed. It worked the first time and I had the new music edition thingy but I felt it was kinda rubbish so I reflashed it to a standard generic one. So yeah, it worked Just funny how I felt the need to reflash it because something was bothering me haha. So yeah, everything is fine and dandy

Today I managed to order myself a lovely new 500gb hard drive. Was tempted to just stick with the 320gb but for £10 extra, I might as well go for the 500gb (it was on sale at Overclockers). Once that arrives I’m pretty much going to use that as my “My Documents” drive to store all kinds of stuff including videos, photos and music. Should be arriving on monday so it’s going to be fun installing it haha.

I also ordered a creative x-fi (i think thats the name) soundcard. No idea why, probably because it felt stupid ordering £70 worth of things and then having to pay £8 in post and packaging. I usually shop my hardware in batches so yeah.

Today I managed to trade in a few games at CEX for Warioware Smooth moves, a nunchuck and a gamecube controller (official). Not much to be honest, but warioware was defintiely fun to play. The minigames are like warioware touched in a way that it makes use of the technology available (for ds it was mic and touch screen whilst wii was the wiimote).

The games were short but fun to play. I particularly like the silly introductions of different “baton forms”. Stuff like the Mohawk or the Elephant. Cracks me up hehe.

I also ordered Zelda Twilight Princess. Should be delivered tommorow.

Folks, be warned, if you play wii for the first time. YOU WILL KILL YOUR LIMBS.

Though saying that, I hardly worked out and did any upper body exercises, so I kinda had it coming. My whole body was sore from playing wii haha. The strange thing was that it all came lingering in action on the day after I bought the wii rather the next day. I really shouldnt swing my arms that madly when I play bowling or whatever haha.

I managed to get myself wiiplay with an extra wiimote. I played wii play with my mum a bit and she got slightly addicted to it and all.