Been a bit lack lately with posting to this blog; I’ve got a couple of posts in mind that I’ll write up once I have a spare moment and some motivation, the topics will hopefully include:
Stay tuned!
First post in ages! I use SickBeard to alert me of upcoming shows that I watch being aired and also to let me know if I’ve got any missing from my collection. However, because I don’t use it to get any of the shows I need to refresh every a show each time I add a new episode; because of this I wrote a script that automatically updates each show, it’s written in php and uses the SickBeard API, it is best run in the shell using a cron, here’s the script for anybody that wants it, make sure you have cUrl installed!
<?php
//SickBeard Refresh Script by Marty Strong
//Martystrong.co.uk
//Sickbeard URL Including Port e.g. 'http://localhost:8081"
$url = "http://example.com:8081";
//Sickbeard API Key
$api = "123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw";
//Sickbeard API URL
$apiURL = $url."/api/".$api."/";
function get_content($url)
{
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
ob_start();
curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
$string = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $string;
}
function runRescan($apiURL)
{
//Sickbeard API GetShows Call
$showsCMD = "?cmd=shows";
//Download Sickbeard API Output
$string = get_content($apiURL.$showsCMD);
//Decode JSON from API
$json_a = json_decode($string,true);
//Get show keys
$keys = array_keys($json_a[data]);
//Get amount of show keys
$size = count($keys);
//For every show trigger a refresh
for ($i = 0; $i <= $size -1; $i++)
{
//Sickbeard API RefreshShow Call
$refreshCMD = "?cmd=show.refresh&tvdbid=$keys[$i]";
echo get_content($apiURL.$refreshCMD);
}
}
runRescan($apiURL);
?>
I run the script every three hours using the following in my crontab file:
0 */3 * * * php /home/marty/sickbeardrefresh.php
I’m looking for recommended reading on iPhone Xcode development; I’ve decided to undertake an iPhone development project for my final year at university, ideally I’m looking for a book on Cocoa iPhone development in Objective-C. Are you an iPhone developer? Do you swear by a certain book? If the answer is yes then please get in touch through E-Mail or Twitter, it would be much appreciated.
Xcode
On the weekend I decided to upgrade to 4.3.2 and Re-Jailbreak in the process; I decided to jailbreak with Pwnage tool because it seemed to be the easiest to use. The other upside is that you can restore to 4.3.2 with the custom jailbroken ipsw without restoring first, this makes it a little easier to get everything working a little quicker.
One feature I liked the look of in pwnage tool was the ability to install Cydia apps as part of the jailbreak, much to my disappointment all but the Telesphoreo repositories crashed pwnage tool when you try and download available packages 
This meant that all the jailbreak apps I use (SBSettings, Fake Carrier, MyWi etc…) have to be installed manually.
With that aside I started the jailbreak, I downloaded the 3GS 4.3.2 firmware from the iClarified tutorial and went along with the process, I encountered some hitches, one of them being the crashing when trying to download cydia package lists, the other being the first time I got the phone into DFU mode it wouldn’t restore properly in iTunes, however after removing the usb cable and restarting iTunes all went ok.
1 Tip I would VERY highly recommend is do a manual iPhone backup in iTunes before you jailbreak, it makes the process a whole lot easier and even carries across some (and I stress SOME) of your previous jailbreak settings accross (things like if you’ve set a Fake Carrier etc…)
Pwnage Tool 4.3.2
Here are some iClarified tutorial links:
To compliment the beautiful appearance of my shiny new MacBook Pro I bought a Speck SeeThru Satin Hard Shell Case; the main reason I bought this case was previous experience, I bought a pink SeeThru hard shell case for my sister’s White polycarbonate MacBook back in august and was impressed both on how good it looks but also how well it fits around the design of the laptop and how well it keeps everything protected. The case itself is made from some description of hard plastic; one thing you must do when fitting the case is clean it thoroughly with a cleaning cloth to get all the dust, fluff and any other dirt off that you see either on the case or the laptop, once fitted the dirt really shows.
The fitting of the case is really snug, so much so that it can be rather difficult to remove it, here’s a video from Speck showing you how to fit and remove the case from your laptop:
Here’s some pictures of my purple case fitted to my MacBook Pro:
Speck SeeThru Purple Hard Shell Case
Speck SeeThru Hard Shell Case
Yesterday I went to the Apple store in West Quay Southampton; walked in and got myself a brand new MacBook Pro 13″. The sales rep was really friendly, helpful and knowledgable, after giving her the go ahead she ordered one through the concierge system and within 5 minutes the box was in front of me! Payment was really easy, she scanned the barcode with her special Apple Store iPod touch and I type in my name and email address. After that was all done she scanned the chip and pin machine, I paid and the laptop was mine! Along with the laptop you get free personal setup, in reality it was about a half an hour chat about technology with the sales adviser and a little bit of a demo of cool little features of Snow Leopard, AWESOME! After I left the Apple store I was so eager to play with my new toy I tethered my iPhone’s 3G internet via WiFi using MyWi and surfed the internet, I was quite amazed at how well everything worked, top marks to Apple.
As for the laptop itself, I can’t say anything other than super awesome, everything about it is just pretty and fast. Once I got home I went mad installing all the cool apps that I had seen around online or had on my pc, stuff like Skype, VLC, Cyberduck, Teamviewer, LogMeIn etc….. Also, after a little tweaking on the command line I got my MacBook backing up Time Machine to my Ubuntu Server’s Samba share, details available here: Link, one thing that I would note though is that the time machine backup name will be the Volume name on the disk image you create, also that you don’t need to remove the spaces in the name of your disk images but you do need to put the mac address e.g. Marty Strong’s MacBook Pro_aabbccddeeff.tmp.sparsebundle
All in all I’m glad I saved up for ages to buy this beauty, look at her:
MacBook Pro 13"
This earthquake hit off the north east coast of Japan at approximately 14:46 local time on the 11 March 2011. It has caused widespread devastation including a 10m Tsunami hitting the eastern seaboard of the main Japanese island of Honshu.
Footage of earthquake happening:
The earthquake itself caused much devastation including fire and floods; the Tsunami then caused far greater tragedy when it started to sweep away entire buildings, the death toll is thought to be in the thousands.
Footage of the Tsunami:
If you know somebody that is currently in Japan you can use google’s person finder application to leave a message for them or see if they’ve managed to leave a message for you:
This morning another development occurred; an explosion occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, it is thought at this stage that the radiation leak is minimal, however there is up to a 60km exclusion zone around the plant while technicians determine the extent of the leak.
My deepest sympathy goes out to the Japanese people
Japan 
Last night I went to see Russell Howard’s Right Here Right Now Tour; I went to one of the London date’s at the truly awesome o2 Arena in North Greenwich, with over 15,000 people in attendance it was a loud atmosphere.
The tickets were courtesy of my wonderful girlfriend Amber 
she always gets me the best presents for birthdays and christmases and the christmas just gone was no exception! The show started at around 8pm and lasted for approximately 2 1/2 hours; every minute was as funny as the other with several parts making my laugh so much my face ached!
Russell is one of my favourite comedians because his comedy is about personal experiences and most of those being very embarrassing; to my great delight 95% of the material was original and not just taken from Mock the Week or Good News, if you like seeing Russell on the TV then his live show is exponentially better.
Russell’s DVD of the tour is available for pre-order and will be available on November 14th, click here
Russell Howard @ The o2 Arena London
Russell Howard @ The o2 Arena London
Russell Howard @ The o2 Arena London
Today my Xilence Red Wing 80mm case fan turned up, yay! I picked this fan because it was reasonably well price on eBay, had good review for being quiet and also because it looks super awesome in red!
Xilence Red Wing 80mm
The reason I needed to buy a fan was to reduce the noise in my server (Samba, VPN, Proxy, Web, FTP etc…) the main culprit was fan noise, in particular the horrible whine from the old crappy fan.
Noise before fan replacement:
Noise after fan replacement:
My thoughts are both good and bad, the good thoughts are that the Xilence Red Wing is by far better than the old fan, the bad thoughts are that I now need to replace the 80mm fan in the power supply as that is whirring and making some noise!
The strange part I found was that when the Red Wing is plugged in the 3 pin header for the fan on the mother board is spins at a really low speed not creating much airflow, I’m hoping this is just due to the motherboard controlling the fan and realising it’s not very hot inside the case. For now I’ve left it on the 4 pin molex connector just to get the full 12v required to run the fan at full speed, hardly makes any noise difference once the case is closed.
This evening I decided to upgrade my iPhone from 4.1.3 to 4.2.1 and re-jailbreak it. The process went fairly smoothly; the only real hiccup that I encountered was that the Apple loading bar would appear when I searched for anything in cydia, however after a restart the problem disappeared.
Below I’ve included a screenshot of greenpois0n and the readme file attached which gives instructions on how to use the jailbreak software.
You can get greenpois0n from here
greenpois0n
*** greenpois0n 1.0 RC5 ***
> Description of the software:
greenpois0n will Jailbreak your iDevice.
> Supported iDevices:
– iPod Touch 2G (all bootroms) - iPod Touch 3G - iPod Touch 4G - iPad 1G - iPhone 3Gs (all bootroms) - iPhone 4 - iPhone 4 Verizon (_not_tested_) - ___AppleTV 2___ (support will be added in RC6)
> Requirements (check this !)
– a supported device (see above) - the device should run iOS 4.2.1. Please check on the device in the Settings -> General -> About page. If your device is running an older version, please upgrade iOS first using iTunes. *** If you want to SIM Unlock, preserve your baseband using TinyUmbrella *** - at least Windows XP - a working internet connection
> Notes (checks this also !)
– if your device is jailbroken with iPhone Dev Team’s Monte, please restore to fresh 4.2.1. first - if Cydia doesn’t show up after Loader, you may need to reboot the device - this version of greenpois0n doesn’t include a patched activation system. You’ll need to activate your device using iTunes - WE DO NOT SUPPORT PIRACY !
> Instructions
1. plug the device to your computer using the USB cable 2. quit iTunes if it shows up 3. start greenpois0n.app 4. follow instructions 5. the device will boot a 1st time with verbose text on screen. This operation will install the jailbreak on the device. 6. the device will reboot normally 7. start the Loader application (green icon on the SpringBoard), and follow instructions to install Cydia
> In case of troubles
1. check if somebody had the same issue : http://jailbreakqa.com/ 2. join us on IRC : irc.chronic-dev.org #greenpois0n
> Source code
greenpois0n public source repositories will be updated soon
> Credits (alphabetical order)
Chronic-Dev Team (follow us on twitter): - AriX : @AriX - chronic : @chronic - DHowett : @DHowett - jan0 : @0naj - Jaywalker : @Jaywalker9988 - OPK : @iOPK - pod2g : @pod2g - posixninja : @p0sixninja - semaphore : @notcom - westbaer : @westbaer
Greetings: chpwn, comex, geohot
> Donations:
Donations are always greatly appreciated and will permit to buy new devices to make tests for future jailbreaks. ( http://www.greenpois0n.com )