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 my new Canon 50mm f1.8 mkII lens arrived. Was lucky I woke up at 9 odd otherwise I would have definitely missed it and had to go through the whole hassle and bassle of waiting for it to be redelivered, not playing loud music so I can hear the door, and just not being able to go out just for the damn package.
Anyway, here it is
The motor is pretty loud as most reviewers stated, but the speed and sharpness of the lens is amazing. You can instantly notice the shutter speeds being extremely fast when you’re using arpeture mode and all.
Here’s the first photo I took with it
There is a possibility that I’ll be going to a wedding in Halifax with inn and alice (jallas from the messageboard) to do photography and all. Have to see if its feasible and that travel isn’t too extortionate, otherwise it sounds like an a ok and all. Would be quite fun to do some paid photography once in a while (even though alice is the only one who’s getting paid, but you know what I mean.. I think)
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.
Thats right, Wii for free. One of my challenges was to get a wii for a free. How would one do that? By using existing vouchers and selling games that I no longer play. Now I did spend money on these games I’ve sold. But all of them followed a strict criteria before being sold. The main one being the fact that I’ve completed the game, juiced everything you could do with it and that it’s simply left to collect dust. Might as well use it to buy a wii.
Selling games was pretty easy, GAME were selling certain games for £20 so I managed to make about £90 with 5 games. I did a few extra game sellage and I got my £164 worth of vouchers. The remaining was done through CEX.
My second problem was the availability of wii’s. They are STILL rare to purchase. As soon as they are in stock, they are sold out. This meant I had to find a clever way of buying these beauties. I viewed a few online sites to check the availability and stories on how people got their wii’s. I eventually found out that GAME do stock wii’s one a week and that they are purchased in a first come first serve basis. So the trick is to phone up every day until they have stock. It took me several days to finally get some stock. As soon as that day arrived, I was at GAME at 9.30 something ready to buy the damn thing. At first they said they DO have stock but its still waiting to be delivered, they told me to write my name on a list and that they’ll phone me up when its ready on that day.
I managed to find a Cafe Nerro and just sat there playing Trauma Center. Eventually I got a phone call saying my Wii was ready. I rushed into GAME and BAM, was a proud owner of a wii.
It was the most exciting thing ever, and the best thing was that I didnt pay any money for it haha. I felt very spoilt then hehe.
Above are some wii photos. Its far too exciting getting it set up and all, but eventually I calmed down and go down to some playing, Mii making and Wii sporting.
Some things I needed still were; another wiimote, some more games, an SD card, nunchuck and a component cable.
Wii Sports is amazing, although they’re only tech demos that came free with the wii, it was still nonetheless an awesome game. The innovation behind the wiimote was amazing. Its definitely a fresh and exciting idea of controlling stuff. Wii sports was highly addictive, I think I went nuts at it the whole day. You eventually get more subdued to the fact that you dont need to swing the wiimote excessively (unless you are determined to be in wiihaveaproblem.com)
Overall I was very impressed and happy with my purchase, it was even more satisfying getting the thing for free .
Quite an amazing piece of hardware/software. Today my M3 simply arrived at my door, it was probably the highlight of my week. I was able to play ds backup games to my heart content. I instantly tried all the games I owned (Castlevania, Mario Kart DS, Animal Crossing, New Super Mario Bros) and they all worked perfectly. It was simply amazing. I was captivated by the homebrew stuff too, in particular DS Organise, though i hardly use it, its quite a nifty tool and all.
I immediately started skinning my ds to a nicer looking skin (iphone looking one) and tried a few videos. Everything worked, the music was nice and video on it was disturbingly cool haha.
Today my DS Lite Browser arrived (as well as a compact flash card reader for my laptop). It came with both the DS card as well as a GBA cart for you to store some additional data into (such as cookies and favorites etc).
The browser is pretty decent, it uses Opera software and connects via Nintendo’s usual connection methods for when you want to get some wifi action. The interface itself is pretty good. It definitely takes some time getting used to. You can either use the handwriting mode or the keyboard mode to type stuff, I think I prefer the keyboard mode for now since its difficult for the software to recognise my B’s, it always confuses it as O’s or something else.
Loading is a bit tedious, but I guess it’s better then using your mobile phone or whatever when you’re out and about.
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?”
. So yeah, another crazy day of phone flashing and all.
Just funny how I felt the need to reflash it because something was bothering me haha. So yeah, everything is fine and dandy 
.