Merry Christmas

Yep, as I start this blog it is 3am on 26/12/2010. Merry Christmas. Good bye 2010 you wont be missed but you should be.

In 2010 I stopped smoking. I have slipped up from time to time but have been pretty consistently smoke free since February. My last slip up was a cigar back in November and I'm pleased to say that, whilst I enjoyed it at the time, I have had no sudden urges to take up smoking again. It does feel good and it does make a difference to smell, taste and so much more. Where I really notice it is in my ability to get started in the morning. I can leave the house within 15 minutes of getting up in the morning.

2010 also saw my drinking cut to the level that I now drink per week less than what I used to drink per night. This was not an intentional cutback but a cutback as a result of money (or lack of it). I don't count it as the triumph it is because I'm not at the stage where I maintain this reduced level of alcohol through choice. When there is beer or wine available I cannot rest till it's drunk. Hence I sit at 3am in the morning blogging because I have a case of beer available.

The reason I'm glad to see out 2010 is because I have had to adapt my lifestyle so many times. So many things have stolen every penny I have that it scares me. I know people less well off and am fascinated by how they manage to cope because I am struggling. It's that struggle that I intend to blog about in 2011.

I'm frankly shocked at the cutbacks that I have been able to make. Whats more I am finding further new ways to cut back. I'm not going to get evangelical on you but I am getting obsessed with maintaining my lifestyle on less than half my original budget. I doubt very much that I'll get through 2011 without sacrifices but I'm hoping that I can pit my wit and guile against everything life throws and offer advice on how it's done. If this is something that interests you, then bookmark this blog.

Savings update
My latest savings are small but worth mentioning none the less. One of the big expenses in life is having a car. Tyres, breaks and servicing will always be there as will insurance and tax. So when you can make any saving against your car it's got to be good news. Already I saved £79 on tyres against the next cheapest option which in itself was saving me about £40 per tyre against the average price.

Car Share
During the heavy snow and ice my wife and I have been sharing the journey to work in one car rather than going our separate ways. This has meant that I have had to learn to be a bit nicer in the mornings whilst she has had to learn to SHUT UP (I mean constrain her 'Oh what a beautiful morning' type exuberance')till she gets to work. Life's all about give and take after all.

Car sharing has made sense in the bad weather as my car is much safer in the snow. We do however work relatively close to each other most of the time. Given that we are trying to save some money I think that the car sharing may have to become a slightly more permanent solution, although it cant be completely permanent as my base location does change from time to time. The saving on fuel from car sharing should work out to about £10 per week. That's £40 per month or £480 per year. Now we're talking. You're also looking at less costs for breaks etc on the wife's car so I'm going to round the car share saving to £500 although I may tinker with that figure throughout the year.

Total saving on car share: £500
Time taken: N/A
Delay versus using two cars: around 5 minutes per day.


Light bulb moment
So I drive up to the wife's work to pick her up. When she gets in she says that 'there is some bad news'. She's at the wind up (having fun with me for those who aren't familiar with Glaswegian). The bad news she referred to is that, as I drove up the drive to her work, she noticed that one headlight was duller than the other. Hardly the end of the world then. Or is it?

My car is as American as cars get. It celebrates Independence day and thanksgiving and doesn't take a day off for the queens birthday. Now an American car in Europe has certain advantages but also certain disadvantages. For those who have never been to the UK please now do a google search for roundabout (all one word). It's a European (but us Brits love it more than any other country) approach to junctions. I believe that there may be incidences of roundabouts in every country in the world however, there are incidences of roundabouts on almost every street in Britain. At times they have been known to widen a junction just to fit the roundabout in (wouldn't the wider junction have been the solution in the first place?)

Anyway the reason I mention roundabouts is that they demonstrate both the advantages and disadvantages of an American car on British roads. I'm sure that the driving standards agency here in the UK will give you the theory behind roundabouts but I'll give you the practical and they can argue later. A large car driven confidently onto a roundabout has right of way over all other cars at all times. (America 1, Europe 0). Large American cars have the turning circle of Ocean going liners. Roundabouts are circular (America 1, Europe 1).

Yep American cars grew up with the American road network. This meant that European and American cars began to develop very slightly differently. This is why having an American in Europe can be a disadvantage. You basically have to plan for any breakdown in advance because, the part you need is made in America and needs to be ordered. Or does it?

Turns out that the Japanese have saved my bacon by fitting my non standard tyres to one of their production cars. They still aren't exactly common but at least I can now get tyres on this continent without having to buy the premium brand.

The engine actually comes from a Volkswagen but has been re-configured for a 4x4. Why? Well here in Europe we can't afford the 4 litre gas guzzlers they make in America so insist on diesel engines. The only resulting issue is that these specially adapted diesel engines are almost unique. The engine manufacturer didn't create them for the car they now live in nor does the car manufacturer know anything of their performance or faults. The result? Expensive repairs.

At least lights must be simple. I don't want to sit on this one. It's an inexpensive repair, an important repair and, I hope, an easy repair. I drive to a very good parts shop that very night. Because I know nothing of cars I carry the book around in the 'glove compartment' (I believe this is just the dashboard stowage compartment outside the UK. I like glove compartment better. Wonder if it has room for my leather helmet, goggles, silk scarf plus a good flask of tea?) I request a headlamp and hand over the book to be certain that I get the right one. An H13. None in stock but it can be got on order. It's Friday night and the order will be here by Monday. That seems OK. To be honest, for my car, it seems simple. I was expecting that it would have to come from a mythical land and that obtaining it would involve a surcharge for wrestling it from the teeth of a dragon. Not so. Or so it seemed.

On the Saturday I decide that, rather than wait till Monday, I would just try another shop for the part. This is where I started to get suspicious. This other shop didn't have any either. The bulb was listed but couldn't be sourced locally except...........AT THE DEALER. I HATE THE DEALER. Guess I'll wait till Monday then. At least I don't have to deal with THE DEALER.

I phoned ahead on Monday. Guess what? Turns out that, unless I pay for it to be couriered separately, it will take over a week to source an H13. I'm not driving illegally for a week in this weather. There is a chain of auto shops in the UK that seem to sell everything. I try their website. Why haven't I tried them before? I don't trust them very much. So when I try their website and get recommended something completely different from what I want I'm not too surprised. Yep they wouldn't let me search for something as simple as the bulb that I wanted. Nope they wanted my registration plate and then made their own recommendation. An H4. Thank god I had read my book and didn't just go in to the largest car store in the UK relying on them to know what they were talking about.

I needed a bulb. I searched further online. The H13 does exist but it would seem that almost no-one stocks it and, if they do, they want about £15 for it. At that price I could use THE DEALER. I HATE THE DEALER. I phoned. The poor girl on the phone probably wondered why I sounded so tense as I asked for the service department through gritted teeth. My jaw was so tight I must have sounded Australian. The service department (my nemesis) passed me to the parts department. I explained that I wanted an H13 bulb. The guy asked, why? I gave him the make model and year. No problem. It's an H4 you're after. You can pick one up anywhere. But the book says H13???? Nope, H4.

Now here's where my own OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) kicks in. I haven't ever and will never trust a word that that garage says. I hate to name names but I do have a Barry doll that I stick voodoo pins in to. (Problem is Barry has a 'my car' doll that he sticks very expensive pins in to every time he sees it). Anyway this is the second time that H4 has been mentioned with my car. Could it be true? Could my car actually take one of the least expensive and most widely available car bulbs in Europe?

Wikipedia turned out to have the answer. Apparently bulb tech developed differently on the different continents. Since the 80s however there has been some kind of agreement about standardising these technologies. Essentially an H4 bulb is an H13 in America. So I bought an H4 but not from the dealer.

How many IT Trainers does it take to fit a light bulb?
So garages want between £5-£10 for changing a light bulb. How difficult can it be? Well, if the book is to be believed, it's one of those things that will be easy once you've had a go. Not simple by any means but, provided you can grow a second set of opposable elbows and have an eye on an adjustable stalk, you should be OK.

Why would the European light fitting be any different? Why would the book neglect to at least mention that European vehicles are different?

Yep it turns out that once again my European car is an issue. It turns out that, once you figure it out, it's not such a big issue but, the book has no instructions for a European light bulb. Fortunately I had some warning as I use a forum and some other poor sod had had my problem first.

I don't like opening the bonnet(Hood) of my car. Releasing that catch is like opening the door on Narnia. Nothing under there means anything to me. Everything looks expensive (£200 per item I imagine). Nothing under there looks even remotely mechanical despite the fact that it is, by definition, an engine and therefor a mechanical thing. I'm a logical sort of a guy. The theory behind the combustion engine makes sense. Gas, spark, energy to turn a wheel, wheels that turn wheels, belts etc. Then there's a battery that's powered by the engine. I get that. Open my bonnet however and you'll get four buckets of fluid (screen wash, breaks etc) and a big black box with some wires and pipes attached. It is no more mechanical than a digital clock.

Anyway, I at least know where the headlights are. They appear to be sealed from behind with a rubber housing which makes sense. The housing comes off relatively easily and the cable to the light is stiff but easy to detach. The bulb itself however was held in by a clip that could not be defeated. I'm glad I parked up somewhere quiet and tried this in daylight because in twilight or darkness it would have been impossible. All in it took about twenty minutes to do job that would take a mechanic less than five however the thing is I did it. I didn't waste £15.99 having an H13 bulb delivered from down south. I didn't waste £5.99 having someone fit the bulb.

Nope I spent £4.99 on a bulb, twenty minutes fitting it and endless hours gazing lovingly at it's fresh glow and thinking....I did that. Oh and the bulb I took out was an H4

Total saving on headlamp and fitting £17 approx
Time spent sourcing deal: About 4 hours thanks to confusion over the bulb required
Delay as opposed to getting a shop to fit: Saved days as the shop wanted to order the part mentioned in the book.

Update
I've had a letter from my new electricity and gas supplier confirming when they will take over my billing. This should mean that quidco will soon be paying £80 in to my account (February I believe). My new supplier will also reward me with £100 off my first bill which should be due in March. Keep your eyes on this page to see if everything pans out. Because the transfer completes in January I shouldn't have to pay a direct debit to my previous supplier so that might be a nice little £100 saving during the skintest month of the year. Anyway this may be the last blog of the year so, if it is, Have a great New Year and I'll see you all in 2011.
T

Kitchen sink drama

Tuesday, 17.10 pm, -8 degrees.

We have water problems. The heating cut out. The waste pipe had backed up because it had frozen. This happened last year as well so my wife knew what to do. We disconnected the main waste pipe and left the boiler dripping in to a bucket. The instant the waste pipe was sorted the heating started working again. Mental note: look for ways to stop it freezing up.

Wednesday, 7.10am, -14 degrees.

The taps in the kitchen stop working. The pipes run up the inside of an outside wall and would appear to be frozen. Also there is no hot water anywhere in the house. It's first thing in the morning so we'll sort it out later, after work.

Wednesday 22.10pm, Still -14 and it hasn't got above -4 all day.

Still no water in the kitchen. Still no hot water. Time to look in the garage (under the kitchen) and see what the pipes look like. Trouble. It's 10pm at night and I'm looking at a pipe joint with a beautiful baguette diamond of frozen water between the end of a cold water pipe and the joint. Above this further up the pipe a weld has split but has not been forced appart the way the joint has. Not good. This is mains water. When this thaws there will be a major problem. But it isn't likely to thaw anytime soon.

War summit.

We've both made our work every day through the last two weeks of snow and freezing tempratures. We know that we just can't be phoning a plumber. Under normal circumstances you are talking about a £50 call out charge, £50 per hour (with a minimum of 1 hour) plus materials. In the middle of winter in an emergency you can double those figures.

Decision:

We are both calling in for an emergency half day (possibly full day). The good news is that it's unlikely to suddenly stop being freezing so, although we have burst pipes, we should be able to sort things out quickly and more importantly dryly.

Thursday, 06.50 am, 4 degrees.

The good news is there is no ice to scrape off the car windows. F**K. The undertone in my wifes voice as it says 'I think you better come downstairs' leaves me in no doubt that downstairs will not be good when I get there. I'm trying to wake up but hear this funny hiss behind everything. It gets louder as I go down stairs but everything looks normal. I head to the basement.. You've seen it in a hundred horror movies. Why would you go down there? Why not turn the light on? You know that's where the murderer is waiting to pounce...

Imagine water, under as much pressure as you can possibly exert, blasting against a temporary ceiling and pooling all over the floor. Electric sockets etc are soaking. It's relentless. I think that, given that I'm not even awake yet, I can be forgiven for running about with one thumb in my mouth and the other up my ass for five minutes. I was basically looking for something to turn off. There were taps under the sink that I turned off. They made no difference so I assume that they literally cut the supply to the sink taps above. Is that necessary? There was no water in the kitchen despite it being imediately above the pipe that was jetting water everywhere. When I went below there was nothing to isolate. I followed the pipe back because the kitchen and garage are an extension built on to the house. The water must have been plumbed through the main house at one point. I just cant find it.

I return to the scene. I point out to my wife that the water is escaping up the way rather than down the way. I fear she may look for a tool sharp enough to kill me as she doesn't see what my point is. It would almost be worth shutting up and saving my life here but I'm on to something. The fact that it's very early and my wife is cold wet and angry should not be a reason to hold back with stupid ideas. Should it?

Let's consider the evidence: The kitchen is bone dry despite being only centimeters above the main leak. The garage pipes are the main problem but must be fed from somewhere else as the house was built long before the garage extension. I ask if we have any pipe that we could put over the gusher. Where did that come from? There's about a meter of white plastic tubing hiding in the cellar. OK. That goes over the gusher and then we can point it outside, away from the electrics and ceiling. This is a major turning point. OK so maybe it is expecting too much for me to think that my wife would congratulate this solitary moment of genius.

Nobody says it's good but suddenly we've bought some time. With this extention to the pipe in place the immediate disaster is averted. Water can now be directed away from the house and out into the drive. Don't underestimate the thinking/breathing time this buys. With this pipe jammed between two rungs of a ladder it can actually be left pumping water out into the drive. Believe it or not we can now consider a cup of coffee. This is the fix that costs plumbers thousands. It's harder to charge stupid amounts of money when the burst doesn't look like it's going to bring the house down at any second. What we have now is thinking time.

Now I really wish it had been me. I got to within centimeters of it and can only blame tiredness and panic for letting me miss it but it was my wife who found the stop cock that isolated the water. it was in the farthest darkest corner of the basement. As soon as it was turned fully the water stopped and the world became a better place. The gusher became a trickle and then finally stopped. Phew.

Provided it's accessible repairing stuff like this is no where near as difficult as you think. This is where the wife and I make a great team. I can think up the solution and do the grunt work whilst the wife (sounds male chavanist to call her the wife but I like to keep this site annoymous so can't use names) has the technical skill to cut the pipes and carry out the repairs. A good plumber would have a blow torch and solder and copper joints to carry out the repair however, fortunately for us amatueurs, plastic and rubber now rule the day. You can buy push-fit connections to replace almost any joint. What's more they do exactly what you need them to do. You push them tight and they form a perfect seal.

The moral of the story?? The turning point in our whole saga wasn't the repair. It was finding the stop cock and isolating the water. It was buying ourselves the time to stand back and look at the disater calmly as opposed to panicking. For the next twelve months this blog will be mainly about saving money. Repairing our own plumbing in the middle of winter saved us about £200. You can have all the plumbing skill in the world however it's absolutely useless unless you know where to turn the water off.

What I would like is for every reader of this blog to go now and turn on a cold tap. It could be to a bath or a sink. Turn it on full. Now make the water completely stop running without touching the tap. provided you managed to carry out that simple exercise successfully you are now equipped to deal with plumbing.

I'm still wondering however, how the hell did it get from -14 to 4 degrees over night. Is someone up there picking on us or what?

Total Saving on Plumbing £200 (estimate)

Time taken to fix 3-4 hours
Delay Compared to phoning a plumber: Probably faster.

Strike1 to the Thrift. Save money while you earn

OK I'll figure out a proper way to track what I'm up to ready for the start of the year but I feel the need to start recording anything that I try in my mission to save money that works straight away so you can either: copy it if it works everywhere, or make you aware so you can look for something similar in your own country.

As I said I'll figure out a way to present all my findings over the coming weeks but I want to get some details down fresh while they are in my mind. I don't do new year resolutions so this will just start immediately and run whenever I find a new and clever way of saving money.

First does everyone understand the term thrift? To be thrifty is to save money. Scottish People are often accused of being overly thrifty. They say that copper wire was invented as a result of two Scotsmen fighting over a penny. We're actually not that bad but I think most people are being a bit more careful with their money at the moment so maybe the Scottish Reputation for stinginess will return. Personally I think the Scots got their reputation because they are not stupid with their money. Unfortunately I'm of Irish descent (no offence to our Irish readers but Ireland's money worries have been somewhat in focus over the past few weeks).

OK, let's see if we can save some pounds or make some or something.

Tyres

First up lets get the cash rolling in with some tyres. Now this probably is quite specific to the UK but the principal is probably world wide. Do a google search using just your tyre code and narrow the results if possible to just your country. Haven't the time for all that searching? Let me give you some perspective on this one. My car has an unusual size and width combination that it shares with very few other cars. The numbers sound innocent enough on their own but even decent, honest tyre dealers suck their breath when they hear them in that combination. The big national 'fit them quickly' tyre shops don't even have these bad boys in stock. Yep I have to give a days notice if I'm going to have a flat and I can't have one at weekends. One tyre from the dealer (excluding fitting) is £165. (At the time of typing that's 193 Euros or 263 US dollars)

Now for once the dealer price is not ridiculous. A National tyre company who won't be beaten on price quoted £159. A local tyre fitter who I trust gave a similar quote but then phoned around and came back with £113 (including fitting valves and wheel balancing). Ebay had a couple of sellers doing second hand Pirellis with approx 5mm tread for about £30 but who buys those? Even more curiously who fits them? Can you fit tyres at home? I know I cant. There was a web-site that I discovered a while ago and bookmarked that offered a budget tyre by a company called Nankang for £58.70 however this didn't include delivery (£5.99) or fitting. Not sure how a tyre fitter would react to that as I assume they make something out of ordering the tyre as well as fitting it. I'm not even sure what the cost is to fit a tyre. In case your wondering, the fact that the tyre is cheap doesn't really worry me. It's not a remould and it's certified European Safe so it's good by me. It may not last as long as the pirelli but, at a third of the price I'll cope. Anyway these tyres were out of stock at my time of need so I had to search more. For future reference the stockist was called camskill. http://www.camskill.co.uk

In desperation (near bald tyres in the snow isn't good even on a 4x4) I searched more and found another company with a budget model. These tyres are called Nexen and cost £73.70 but this includes delivery and fitting plus valves changed and wheel balancing. I'm a sucker for the valve change and wheel balancing. I checked out web reviews for Nexen tyres and they seem to get between 3 and 4 out of 5 on the review sites so they aren't all bad (The continental premiums I have don't do any better). The site (for those in the UK) is CTyres http://www.ctyres.co.uk.

One pitfall to watch for: My only concern with these guys is that they work through a network of independent garages. As I wanted the tyres quickly I phoned two of these independents directly to see if they wanted to 'cut out the middle man' so to speak and take the work directly from me. Neither was even remotely interested. As one said 'that's just ridiculously cheap for those tyres. Order through the site and I'll happily fit them but I couldn't do those for under £100'. So I did order them through the site and the order was confirmed on Friday for fitting on Wednesday. They were to be fitted by the guy I've just quoted tomorrow except.... They called to say they were out of stock and they couldn't give a date when they would be back. They could offer a dearer option however. Poor show I say. Unfortunately for that company they broke this nugget of bad news to my wife instead of me. She suggested that, as an act of good faith, they source whatever they can but price match the quote given. After some stumbling they agreed. Good show I say. So provided they get fitted tomorrow as stated then we have our first genuine saving. Taking the next cheapest quote of £113 per tyre, we purchased two tyres for £147.

Total Saving on 2 x tyres £79

Time taken to source deal (1hour approx)
Calls to confirm (2)
Days delay compared to next cheapest option (3)

Cash back sites

These are a new Internet phenomena and something to approach with caution. These are sites that promote the goods and services of various companies to you but offer an additional incentive to you if you use a link from the Cash back site to sign up to the promoted product or service. If you want sound advice on how these sites work and the various pitfalls of using them in the UK then I strongly recommend going here first http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cashback-websites

Money saving Expert is a consumer site in the UK but it's advice probably holds true around the world. They test various ways of saving money and report comprehensively on how they work and what to watch out for.

Anyway I have a couple of colleagues who swear by one of these sites. So I thought I would try one out using a product that I have some knowledge of.

Gas and Electricity

In the UK Gas and Electricity supplies are deregulated meaning that companies are free to compete on price. There are however only five major suppliers and, despite them all competing on price, there are regular claims of price-fixing between them. As someone with a bit of knowledge in this area I take any savings quotes with a pinch of salt. What I do believe in however are straight forward bribes (loyalty bonuses) and discounts. I went to the cash back site http://www.quidco.com to check out what was on offer.

According to Money Saving Expert they are only the second best site to use but I went for them anyway as I was aware how they worked. I believe they also operate in the US.

Quidco were offering £80 if you used them to switch to one of the UK electricity and gas suppliers. I used another site that I trust to check this supplier out http://uswitch.com. (Remember Quidco aren't doing a price comparison to say that this company will be cheaper. There's no point getting cash back if it costs you more than what you already pay). According to Uswitch I would indeed save around £220 per year by switching (remember Uswitch quote a total saving so that includes any incentives. read on). This would be in addition to the money Quidco would give me. I've already said that I don't put a lot of faith in these discounts and I don't believe you should either. There were however two extra incentives that made this a deal worth looking at. The package on offer tracked at 2% below standard prices. On my annual bills this amounts to £31 per year. In addition there was a sign up bonus of £100 for a limited period. The potential total saving is:

80+
220+
=£300

I'm not going to count any of these savings as being real until I have actually made them. It's also worth noting that the package I've signed up to is not fixed so will get dearer if prices rise and also ties me to that company for a year. Watch this space to see if the discounts work out to be true.

What I do know to be true is that, by changing supplier, I will release around £200 of credit that I have with my present supplier. That is the only part of the above deal that I am reasonably certain of although I wont know the exact amount till January as it takes six weeks to switch and I'll use power during that period. If all goes to plan I'll have approximately £280 in my bank in February with £100 off my first bill in March so, whatever way you cut it, I'm better off.

One pitfall to watch out for: Most suppliers bill quarterly. Add up your last four bills and you'll have a yearly amount. In my case I use £1550 per year (£700 electricity and £850 gas). The new supplier was quoting a monthly direct debit combined of only £50 per month (£600 per year). THAT IS NOT A SAVING. THAT IS WRONG. If i was to pay that I would quickly go into debt. If you get a quote like this you must phone up and make them sort it out. It's not that I want to give away any more than I need however my maximum saving should be about £220 and this includes the £100 incentive. My direct debit should therefor be no less than £110 per month. Don't get suckered in this way because once your in debt it becomes very hard to leave one of these companies. Also understand that that £110 per month will be too little in winter and too much in summer meaning I will never seem to be paying the right amount. It wont balance out till I've paid that amount for twelve months so don't increase or decrease your payment amount until the first year is up.

Time taken to source deal: N/A (Just log in to Quidco)
Time taken to investigate potential saving: 30 mins on Uswitch
Time taken to gather information and switch: 1.30 hours working out present bills

It's a lot to take in but on my first thrifty post I have:

An actual saving of £79 for tyres against the next cheapest quote
A potential saving of £120 from the new utility supplier over one year (£10 per month)
A potential incentive of £80 for using Quidco to change utility supplier
A potential cash incentive from the new utility supplier of £100
A potential refund of £200 from my present supplier

If everything works out I will have saved £199 and earned £380 for a few hours online.

I'll figure out a better way of presenting this information shortly folks.

This could be ...Extreme saving with Tquittin. What do you think?

8 hours is not enough

Hi folks from snowy Scotland

Computer
It was a sad day last Sunday when I finally had to admit that, in its present condition my faithful old desktop has had to retire. The fact is that the glitches that it's reporting such as missing registry files and blue stop screens are just symptoms of a hardware problem that I just can't get past.

I spent about two and a half hours on Sunday trying to fix it and then had to admit defeat. As any good geek will testify, a computer is a conglomeration of many parts so all is not lost. The graphics card and sound card will probably make it on to a new 'basic spec' machine when I can afford one. The good news is that the hard drive is intact and runs using an external USB caddy so I shouldn't be too down. What I miss most is the graphics though and its not just me being fussy.

We probably watch more TV online over the net than what we get through the box. I have a 32" flat screen that has served as my pc monitor and display for online on demand television for about three or four years. The thing is I managed to purchase the only flat screen ever made that didn't have a VGA input for the PC. With my trusty desktop the graphics card had a HDMI output which was fine but the laptop only has SVID which is OKish for TV but dreadfully blurry for text like my blog. I did have to treat myself to a USB keyboard however as the laptop one just doesn't cut the mustard for any kind of typing. So for the moment the laptop will have to step up as the main PC because there are no funds for a new desktop, just now or, any time soon.

Credit Crunch
That brings me to the tale behind the title of my blog. 2010 has just been too tough and I'll not weep to see its passing. Although I don't want to wish my life away. I shouldn't complain as I have been able to pay my bills (most of them at least) and I have a decent job but it's the complete lack of even a spare penny as a contingency that's getting me down. I took my car to the dealer for new wheels. Yep I'm still screwing the dealer for every penny after my failed MOT earlier this year. Anyway they couldn't do two of the wheels because I need new tyres. That meant shopping around for tyres and yet more money. Then there will be next years caravan fees before you know it. I already can't afford Christmas so god knows what will happen if something unexpected crops up. So I am going to commit now to earning more in 2011. I don't do new years resolutions, it's not that, but I'm not spending another year of all work and no play. So here's the plan...

Between now and January I'm going to research ways of earning more and spending less. The blog has lacked focus since I gave up smoking but, from January I'm going to start monitoring what ways I come up with to earn Money. I'll also try to measure what I can manage to save by either using less or by learning to do things myself. Yep, this blog is going to be about thrift. I'm going to share whatever advice I come up with on beating the recession and living life. Any tips you guys have will also be included.

Iphone
This weekend saw new iPhone software released on the world iOS4.2. So why hasn't there been a blog about how to jailbreak? Well I haven't even upgraded yet. I'm waiting. I'm actually considering upgrading but then not jailbreaking. To any jailbreaker that must sound strange. Well the truth is that I want to see if I can improve the performance of the phone. I have already gone back to my HTC for satnav because the iphone is so poor. But it seems to be poor at everything so I'm wondering if it might perform better without the customisation. Watch this space for results.

Smoking

This weekend my wife was away with relatives. As I wasn't there I decided to have a wee weekend to myself. I bought a 24 pack of beer and settled in for some serious guy time. I even looked out some old vinyl 45rpm singles. Anyone out there remember the Stranglers, the Clash, The damned? What about some 80s stuff like the cure or the fall. I've even got older stuff inherited gradually from relatives so have some great stuff from the stones and Rod Stewart. What does this have to do with smoking? Well there's been a cigar kicking about my office since long before I quit. I've mentioned it more than once in the blog. I always enjoyed a cigar back when I smoked but this one survived intact. Until now. Yep, late on Friday night I nipped down to the cellar and smoked it outside the back door. Now anyone who follows the blog will know that there have been the occasional cigs.(The last one was back in July) To be honest the cigs haven't done anything for me and they are just one of those things where you try one once in a while to see if your missing something and then realise that you aren't. The cigar however was different. I loved it. So much so that I can't have another one because I would quickly become a smoker again. Maybe on Christmas day or boxing day I might have another but otherwise it's a no no. I've been quit since February and I aint going through that again.

Car

Finally. It's snowing heavily here. Yep winter isn't just around the corner, it's here. This could last till February. I've just spent two hours clearing the path. This means that the wife and I will have to share the car. To all those who scoffed at my 4x4, who's laughing now? Can't wait till after Wednesday when the new tyres get fitted but to be honest I'd rather be in my car with bald tyres in this weather than most of the other cars I see sliding around the road. Last year mine had a hiccup on black ice but apart from that it's the only way to handle this weather.

Hope everyone is well. Enjoy the snow. Give me ideas to make or save money or to do things myself without paying. I'll update again next week.

Cheers

T

Help my PC has turned blue and isn't moving. It might be....

Just in case the world thinks that I've given up the blogging I thought I'd drop a very quick post to let you know what's happening.

For the past two weeks I've had a bit of a rush job on a work so have been working on parts of it at home. These things can get pretty all consuming hence the lack of activity on the blog. The good news is that it's finished and looking good. The bad news is that my PC is yet again in pieces around the office floor. I just cannot figure out what's making it so sick. I even tried my hidden ace of using a different hard drive just to get it started but it just wasn't playing.

It went blue on Friday and I spent most of Saturday pulling it apart and trying to cajole it into activity but to no avail. I would have went further today but I sacrificed the virtual world to go out amongst the real world and see some relatives. I can be really guilty of shutting myself off from the world once the caravan season ends. What that means is that, if you don't own a caravan, some relatives haven't seen me since the last time the trees were this bare and the nights this dark. It's a shame because every time I visit I think, I really enjoyed that, I should make the effort more often. I hardly even saw my brother in law (he's not really but I think of him as being) and he's one of the very few folk who might have some idea how to fix my pc. Here in Scotland there has even been pockets of snow and the temprature has been down close to zero. It could be a long cold winter if this keeps up.

Anyway I'm on the laptop and its late so I'm off to bed. I will update the world as soon as I either get the pc back up and running or give up the ghost and admit defeat. The money pit is empty so there's no option for a replacement PC so I'll be burning the midnight oil to get this one fixed. Plus after seven years or so of service I doubt a new one could ever live up to it (or down to its unreliability).

There's also rumours about iOS 4.2 around the corner and a new version of iTunes so there might be a wee iblog due soon too. Although itunes and all the software for updating my phone is on the broken PC so that may be a problem.

So I'll be blogging again very shortly. Wish me luck in the meantime
T.

The clock struck one....Then struck one once again... It was twice 1am in the morning.

November!!!!! Here in the UK the clocks went back one hour on Saturday night. It's a strange ritual but, what happens is that, on the last weekend of October we put our clocks back one hour and keep them that way until April.

Why? Believe it or not it's to do with health and safety. For a few more weeks at least it will mean that the mornings are brighter (and therefor the roads are safer) for kids going to school. It's supposed to allow us the maximum amount of daylight during our waking hours. Problem is that many of us work in doors and so, by mid to late November, will leave the house in darkness, work indoors during the 6-8 hours of daylight that we get and then return home in darkness.

I sometimes wonder how we got to the top of the food chain. We waste all of our quality time working hard to earn money for things that we price beyond our own reach. Lower down the food chain the less inteligent animals hibernate, or store food, or at very least only hunt when they are hungry (and scavenge then). Us clever animals have made it so we must hunt at least eight hours of every day from age 16 to age 65.


My Jack Russell, and the cat that preceded her have both watched bemused as my wife and I get up at early oclock year after year on bitterly cold mornings to head for work whilst they turn around and snuggle deaper into their blanket (with a bowl of snacks at their side). Sometimes, despite being practically incapable of containing their excitement at our homecoming they still show no desperate urge to leave the warm house for a stroll through the snow. Strange little dumb animals....

Sorry for the lateness of my post this week. I try to post around the weekend unless something important crops up however this weekend it was our thirteenth anniversary. For folks our age (40ish)thirteen is quite an achievement. So we took a long weekend which is why the post is late.


It's good the way our anniversary falls. It means that we can celebrate our love for each other as we head in to winter in October and, provided we don't kill each other during the long dark winter months, we can declare our love once again at valentines day and look forward to spring. As I wrote on last years anniversary card: 'as long as we have each other, we'll never run out of problems'.

October was a funny month for the blog. Visits dropped from around 500 per month (based I think on folk looking to break their iphones) during August/September to 389. Personally 389 is about 386 more visitors than I would expect. (Myself, my mum and my wife shouldn't really count in the stats). What is interesting about last month though is that the blog is now truly global. Vistors came from 48 countries/regions. The US provided almost as many vistors as the UK with Canada and Australia not far behind. Someone from Hong Kong visited five times whilst someone in Saudi spent almost 15 minutes in one visit. Some African states now show on my map however I have yet to ingratiate myself with the good people of either China or Greenland. Come on guys you don't need to smoke or break iPhones to join in. Tell us what interests you and we'll try to include it.

I'm sure I've got more to add to this post so I'm publishing it so I can go to bed but it may get longer tomorrow night.

Untill then...

T

Money for Christmas

Seasons Greetings

First things first: We need to have that Christmas conversation. You know the one. You have it every year and you know you do. It replaces the weather conversation. Got it figured yet? I am of course talking about the conversation we all have every year at this time of year when we haven't even had Halloween (trick or treat or whatever you call it) but the shops are full of Christmas and the TV starts getting in to the perfume ads. It's been gathering pace since the last weeks of September and it will only get worse. Between now and the first week in December our favorite topic of conversation will be... 'I can't believe that Christmas is starting so early this year'. 'Can't they just let us get October out?' Then in December we can start our next favourite topic which goes 'doesn't really feel like Christmas this year does it?'.

Back to Black

I seriously need to find some way to make some money. The wife and I both have hard working decent paying jobs and I swear we've not had two pennies to rub together all year. Every time I look at the money something else comes up to steal it from me. It's the car tax, it's insurance, the caravan, the dishwasher (that ain't even fixed yet), it's endless that's what it is. I've been reading Poets blog about her attempts to work from home and, whilst she's finding it a bit up and down, I'm wondering if I could get a second income from it. I'm even considering getting a couple of back shifts in a shop or something just to have that feeling of having spending money again instead of just paying bills. People say 'at least you still have your health' but actually it's mentally and physically draining constantly trying to figure out what can and can't be paid or trying to learn to do things yourself because you can't get a tradesman to do it. Actually sometimes that bit can be quite rewarding when it works but, it' got to work.

Yep I've got to figure out a way to make some money. Realistically I wouldn't be able to maintain a second job for any length of time unless it was something I could do at home. What I need to do is find a way to market my existing skills and use what I have. I can knock out professional presentations in minutes, on more than one occasion my user guides have been chosen in preference to the official version from the software vendor. I can put together courses on telephone skills, sales, debt collection, complaints, train the trainer, all that kind of stuff and more. God almighty a bunch of Canadians even managed to teach me to train reliability engineering to engineers. There are some problems however:

First everybody thinks that they can do great presentations. (Trust me they can't. It's like the start of xfactor when you get the ones whose friends think they are a great singer.)

Second companies need to deal with a registered business. They can't just pay cash to some guy touting for business.

Third I'm at work during the day and these things need scoped out. There need to be meetings etc.

Forth I don't even have any idea how you go about tendering for that sort of thing or even how much to charge.

So that's what my brain is working at just now. How can I turn my skills in to cash. Please put any suggestions you may have on the back of a cheque made payable to.... Only joking but any ideas gratefully received.

Meta Tags

Last week I talked about a new geeky bloggy thing that I had learned called HTML code and I mentioned using meta tags to ensure that google et al would find my site and list it highly on any searches. Well I've been monitoring the site as always with google analytics and I'm pleased to say that meta tags have made absolutely no difference what so ever to the uptake of my site. Visitor numbers have neither increased nor decreased. The most popular way to find my little corner of the web seems to be to google quitzits or any sentence that includes smoking and spots.

QuitZits

Since they bring people to the site I think it's only polite to update you all on them. When I first read about them there seemed to be some agreement that they were a short term (about three months) side effect of giving up. Utter Bull I'm afraid. I gave up in February and I still get them (as bad as ever) now.

How can you tell that they are quitzits? They may look like any other zit but they are actually a bread apart. They can come on from nowhere pretty quick and you'll feel them like a solid lump under the surface of your skin. The problem is that they sit deeper than a normal pluke so can get quite red and angry but be way too thick skinned to burst. Try not to burst them anyway. Not sure about this one but stick with me. If you do squeeze them they don't empty and go away like a normal spot. They stay there looking just as angry but with the added joy of a scab on top. Burst or not they go down by themselves. The problem is that within seven to fourteen days they come back. They come back in exactly the same spot but the second visit is usually the last. They do have a habit of leaving a red area of skin for a while afterwards but at least they are gone.

So there you have the quitzit. Painful, unsightly and abnormal. But bearable and nowhere near as bad as smoking. Since I smoked for thirty years it's hardly surprising that my skin has some withdrawal symptoms. Smoking drys and eventually ages the skin so maybe I shouldn't be complaining about looking like an adolescent.

Until next week...

T

Geek Week

OK so first things first. Sorry for not letting everybody know how it went last week. So here's a quick recap. Shit happened big time to my desktop PC. Last weeks blog came from an incredibly Pissed off TQ working on the laptop. I was facing potentially hours of work and, what's worse, I had no idea why. My PC had just shut down and was refusing to recover.

The good news. I settled in for a marathon session. This required lack of cleanliness and old comfortable clothes. It helps when you're working with PCs if you can grow stubble as you work (sorry ladies but it's true). My first start had enough oomph to get into windows once I'd cancelled disk checking. First task therefore was to basically steal as much as I could copy before the blue screen could catch me. With every file my mood lifted. I may lose the PC but I was recovering the files.

Next, after several failed re-starts, was to try and defrag a drive that looked like it only ever surfed the net for Viagra. I honestly can't ever remember a defrag taking longer. When it finished the drive still looked rough so I started again. The PC seemed to be getting more stable plus I could take risks because I had the important files backed up. Yep it took two days and I have no idea why it happened but I'm back on the desktop and it's working.

It was just time consuming but, file by file, cluster by cluster, I recovered to the point where I had a stable PC. I'm still a bit disturbed because I can't find an event that caused this one. How do I know it won't just happen again? I'll just need to keep my fingers crossed because there's stuff higher up the list than a new PC. The dishwasher is broke for instance which is much more of a crisis because the temporary replacement is me.

10 Cheers for Binary

Ten past ten on Sunday should really be a big date for geeks and binary enthusiasts the world over. It will be 10:10 10/10/10. Actually my first phrase can't be right. There's no such word as should in the world of binary. It either is or it isn't.

I'm a Photo shop Pro
One way or another it's been a really geeky week. There was the PC to fix. At work I was trying to help someone use some HTML tags to add interest to an online presentation that they were putting together. Now I don't really understand much about HTML myself and the little I do know has been kind of self taught from editing my blog so I printed some stuff off from the net. It was from this that I heard about meta tags. Meta tags apparently help google to list your blog. Who knew? So I've added a couple of rows to the Head section of my blog. I'll check google analytics periodically and see if it makes any difference before I bore everybody with a how to.

I also had a couple of things to do in photo shop. Now I've had a version of this kicking about on my PC for ages but I actually find it to be one of the more difficult image editing software's to learn so I've kind of avoided it even though I know that it's supposed to be the best. The thing is I had a couple of things I wanted to do that the easier image editing stuff wouldn't do so I gritted my teeth and went in to photo shop.

I always make my wife's birthday card you see. It's not that I'm too tight to buy a card, honest, it's just that you want to do something personal. It started about 13 years ago when we got married (and coincidentally got our first PC)and I've made a card for every birthday, anniversary and Christmas since. My wife reads this blog so I'm not going to give away the details of the card however: I had found an image that would have been perfect except for two things. It was completely the wrong colour and it had stuff in the background that I wanted to remove. This is the sort of thing that photo shop was invented for and I have to say, after much googling and perhaps the odd swear word, it worked perfectly. Go photo shop. Actually I'm kicking myself because I did one image perfectly in photoshop and then (time was against me) I did another very quickly in PowerPoint and the difference shows.

Phone Home

So when I was working with photo shop I had an idea for the phone. Whilst searching for images for the wife's card I came across a picture of an old fashioned British red phone box. Wouldn't it be cool to use that as the icon for my phone? But then I'd need to redo the other icons on the dock at the bottom. A post box for SMS, a map for Tomtom but what about settings? Maybe the IPSW icon that apple use. I lifted and tidied the images using my new found photo shop skills and I think the results are pretty good (if a little bizarre looking). I have an idea to take this further but I haven't completely made up my mind yet. What do you think?

It's Raining It's Sn0wing the Whole thing is B0ring

My iPhone has now been upgraded to iOS 4.1. I finally managed it on Friday when Redsn0w released a windows version. It worked flawlessly and there were no scary moments except when cydia came up with a white icon. I clicked it and it did stuff and before you could say 'screw this I'm going back to HTC' it was fixed. I do have a slight concern that when I click the remove background program in SBSettings it crashes the phone but otherwise it all works.

Thank god it did work because the whole Jail breaking scene has gone off its head this week. I love the fact that these geeks help us to mess with our iPhones but they truly are a bunch of geeky divas. Greenpois0n was to be the jailbreak to end all jailbreaks. An exploit called Shatter was discovered before iOS4 had even been released and it was to be the first to break all models of phone for life. The problem is that they didn't release it. They kept telling everybody how good it would be and showing videos of how it broke various devices but they never released it. Up until this week that is.

This week they announced that it would be released at ten past ten on Sunday. 10:10 10/10/10. The bad news however was that it wouldn't jailbreak the bulk of our iPhones. Only the iPhone four and the iPad. Bummer. Given that Friday saw the release of Redsn0w for windows and that Sn0wbreeze should work on the 3gS I think most of us are actually already able to jailbreak our phones anyway but it was none the less disappointing given that we've been waiting for more than a month.

Geohotz Rains on Chronic Devs Parade
Now came the bit that no-one expected. Ahead of the greenpois0n disappointing release came news from someone who claimed that they had bowed out of the whole jail breaking scene. George Hotz released a jailbreak one day ahead of greenpois0n that worked on most types of idevice. Limerain instantly became the jailbreak of choice and no-one even wanted greenpois0n any more. So much so that greenpois0n hasn't released. They say they are keeping it to jailbreak 4.2 when it comes out next month. I for one won't hold my breath.

So there you go. What a week to be a geek.

More next week

T

What Would You Like Windows To Do Today? F*cking Work!!

Where have I been? There were a couple of blogs for the iPhone crowd and then nothing. The whole jailbreak scene is very interesting if your in to that sort of thing but where did the blog go?

Anyone who followed my stopping smoking attempts from the early days will remember that I got a bit upset about a couple of computer hiccups. I spent a fair bit of February working away on my laptop whilst I used a variety of software to first fix my desktop PC and second try and recover at least some of a dodgy hard drive that had just crumbled. In the process my desk became a clutter of cables between the laptop and the desk top and the hard drive and it wasn't long before I ended up spilling a whole can of beer into the keyboard and killing it too. I was gutted.

Like many of these mini tragedies that we face it did have a kind of perverse upside. There was the triumph of getting the desktop working at all. The pot luck that was recovering the defective hard drive whilst knowing that it was possibly a waste of time, certainly an inconvenience and also potentially lethal to my now semi repaired PC. In terms of success though it was pretty good. Almost everything got recovered and the PC worked once more. What's more it was made all the better that my home built, home spec PC at over five years old was still able to hold its own against most of what's on the market now. In PC terms that's pretty amazing. I'll grant you that when I designed it it would have held it's own against high end gaming PCs where as now it was more like a run of the mill high store model but I was still pretty proud of it. Many of you guys already have me down as a geek and I wouldn't argue except that, I'm 41, didn't do PCs at school (even calculators were a bit of a no no) and have pretty much self taught or used the internet as the font of all knowledge. Fixing things and getting them working properly is still therefor quite an achievement to me.

Where is this going? Well...... One of the main uses for my PC is watching TV. I love being able to watch what I want at a time that suits me and, here in the UK, you can pretty much get all TV via the internet. It fascinates me that this works in most countries however you can only access most of the content if you are doing so using an IP address within that country. Some of you people from the US and Australia would probably love some of the stuff that we get and I'd love to get HBO etc but they have that restricted at the moment (you can get round it but then you need to know what your looking for and what shows are what etc. I can wait).

Anyway we're sitting watching a show on Tuesday night when..the picture freezes. The sound continues but the picture has frozen. Control, Alt, Delete? Pain in the arse but I've noticed more than once recently that control, alt, delete has a habit of bringing up the task list but being just as frozen as the system you're trying to close. Screw it. Hold in the power button and force the stupid thing to restart. Press restart, disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......

Finally after about fifteen attempts at the above windows logs in...'error finding a file in the registry but have restored from a copy', 'Error with Java script', active desktop needs to close, AVG process could not start. one of your....Blue Screen Of Death. Disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......

Few trys later without even getting as far as windows then 'Scandisc needs to check drive C for errors, press any key..' Scandisc is deleting lots of your good stuff and it ain't telling you what it is or why it's deleting it or giving you an option to stop. Blue screen....shutdown. At least scandisc stopped. Disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......

Few more failed log in attempts but wait...I'm getting in to safe mode. It looks awful. There are still quite a few errors but it's stable enough that I can get restore point to run. Finally there's a chance. Or maybe not. Thousand errors and then blue screen. Disc spinning noises, flashing light on the front, noise as Drives are tested, Lock keys on keyboard light up, silence.......

Yip. The laptop rides again. Hence the blog got put off a bit. Sorry to those who like a weekly dose of Glasgow life but don't have iPhones. I will be trying to resume normal service as soon as possible. For those that do have iPhones: No Jailbreak yet but until my PC is back up I can't get my itunes so I couldn't test a jailbreak anyway.

The plan for recovery borders on crazy and shows a true lack of thought. I still have that dodgy hard drive from the breakdown in January and it's clear. I had a half idea of trying to do some deep rooted recovery to see if there were any last remnants of the drive that could be recovered so had purposefully never written any data to it. I plan to put a clean(ish) install of windows on the dodgy drive and use it to boot the PC. If that works I should then be able to copy all my good files from my normal PC hard drive. Then I should be able to format my normal PC hard drive, re-install stuff and see if it will start running again.

Sounds like a possible plan although it's easy to see failure points at almost every step of the way. Even if it does work, recovering properly and getting stuff back up to date will take a while. You never really get it back the way it was. By the time I go to work on Monday my eyes will be those of zombie and my skin will have the pallor of a man who has lived on coffee for 48 hours and has not left the house. Wish me luck

TQ

Sn0w storm comming, Frosty reception for Sn0wbreeze 2.02

Well last Wednesday night I must have been one of the first to download the brand new Sn0wbreeze jailbreak. It was due for 2am but I had it on my PC the moment it came out about 1.10

But I didn't have it on my phone. My phone has worked very well since my screw up last week and as a result I've not been quite so desperate to screw it up again. Also I was away for the weekend so I didn't want to risk my phone not working. As a result I did not install the new jailbreak.

By the time I got home today the jailbreak has gone through another two incarnations. That means it wasn't right at the start. I've now downloaded the latest and am just trying it. I have my doubts but, I'm off tomorrow so if the worst happens I have a day to fix it.

I have an iPhone 3g. I'm attempting to break it with sn0wbreeze version 2.02. I've 'cooked' the ipsw and am now running a restore. I've already had one error and am now getting that sinking feeling again. This doesn't look hopeful. I followed the instructions at Redmond pie but I'm getting a 1604 error. I'm using Tiny umbrella to kick my device out of recovery as it seems to be locked at the moment.

Fortunately I don't appear to have done any damage but I've not upgraded either. I'm a bit surprised. I genuinely thought this would work. I'll try again but it looks like we may have to wait for greenpois0n after all.

Try 2. This time I made sure the phone was in recovery mode before selecting restore. This is achieved by holding the home and on/off buttons simultaneously till the screen goes blank (ignore the 'switch off message) then letting go of the on/off whilst continuing to hold the home button until iTunes says that it recognises a phone i recovery mode. I then held down shift and clicked the 'restore' button in itunes and browsed to desktop and the new ipsw. I'm watching itunes just now but it ain't doing much.

Oops. This time it really doesn't look good. iTunes has just kicked the phone out and it wont switch on or anything. I unplugged then plugged back in and it said it recognised a phone in recovery mode so I browsed to the ipsw again. Fingers crossed... Nope. I've had error 1601 and now error 21 after running something called iReb. The good news is that when I come out of recovery mode using Tiny Umbrella my phone is undamaged. Just not upgraded. This is not the end of the world. To date: I can't use PWNAGE because I don't have a mac. The old version of Redsn0w (my preferred option) doesn't work and the new version is Mac only at the moment. Sn0wbreeze looks like working (it creates a new ipsw file) but wont restore to 4.1 so I'm still jailbroken on 4.02 with the 4.1 bootrom. The phone works better than ever but doesn't seem keen to upgrade to 4.1. Looks like I'm still waiting for greenpois0n.

Watch this space...
T

That Syncing feeling. Downgrade from 4.1 iPhone 3G

If you read the previous post you'll realise that I have had a disastrous bash at jailbreaking iOS4.1 for my 3G using Redsn0w. What follows are my attempts to recover.

Plan C (put the sim into my HTC) might be my best option but I want to try something first. Plan D was to downgrade to 3.2 but I don't know how to do that so here's plan E

Plan E I should be able to restore my phone to iOS 4.02 which is where I was before I started this. Read all of this before you start. Follow the instructions here Downgrade from4.1. To confirm, to go into DFU mode hold the power and home buttons for ten seconds, ignore the 'slide to power off prompt' then let go of the power button whilst continuing to hold the home button till iTunes alerts you that it has detected a phone in recovery mode. Say 'OK' to that prompt and then follow the instructions from the link. If like me you have a 3g then you should be able to skip steps 3 and 7.

The step by step doesn't really prepare you for what happens when running tiny umbrella. Ignore a couple of false starts where your phone tells you to slide to use emergency only. TOUCH NOTHING. It will eventually say 'iPhone is activated'. iTunes will prompt you to run your last restore. Do this. It's the longest sync in history but I'm hoping it works. It does after all have around 50 apps, 500 songs and 70 pics to recover plus all contacts emails etc so be patient.

You now have an iPhone on iOS 4.02. You are going to need to run Redsn0w like in step five of the previous post. Hope it works better this time. Again browse to iOS4 final version even though you're restored to 4.02 and follow the instructions to let it do its thing.

I now need to add installous via cydia to restore my jailbroken apps (like tomtom). OH OH!!!! Clicked on Cydia. It said it was reorganizing and would shut down when finished. It did this but then , when the phone started up cydia was gone and my phone, notes and SMS icons were blank.

Running redsn0w again. Holy shit it looks even worse now. Loads of white icons. Cydia is there but it is also white. I'm going to try running it. Wish me luck.


Now we're getting somewhere. Cydia asked me to upgrade. I chose update all. It restarted and I now have icons.

I'm adding cydia.hackulo.us and apt.macosmovil.com repos via cydia. (Manage Sources)

I'm adding openSSH to packages (manage packages).This allows you to add things directly to your phone. I've saved my theme from before so adding it directly to the folder structure will save me hours once I have added winterboard from Cydia.

I'm adding SBSettings, SBSettings Toggle, My3G, Navigate from maps, Remove background, iblank and auto3g. There are others but remember that we do expect a 4.1 jailbreak soon so there's no point going nuts.

Then I had to go into the phone settings to change my folder icons and to remove the background shadow from the buttons.


OK so it has taken all day to go from start to finish and, thing is, the finish looks exactly like the start. You may think it was a complete waste of time. My wife does. I don't. I wouldn't recommend it though.

It's very early to tell but I think the phone may be a bit more responsive. It is possible that I've updated the phones base band and that that has made some sort of difference.

For the moment, I am now on base band 05.14.02. That's the base band for 4.1. What that means is that I can't presently unlock the phone but for me that's not an issue.

iTunes 10 freezes for about 30 seconds every time I go to sync. This may be some sort of conflict with having the 4.1 base band and the 4.02 operating system but it gets past it if you wait it out so no issue there. Syncing my phone now shows six steps rather than five as previous and I still sometimes get told that sync can't load provider data.

Guess I'll just wait for the official jailbreak now.

Update
Wouldn't you know it. Within 24 hours of my debacle someone finds a jailbreak solution although not the official one. Go to SpiritJB.ORG where you'll find that someone has made a jailbroken ipsw file for 4.1 for the 3g. So does that mean I'm now jailbroken on 4.1? No. Couldn't face the hassle so soon after Saturday plus, my phone is working really well at the moment. I can only assume it's got something to do with having the new baseband from 4.1 with the functionality of 4.02 and the redsnow jailbreak but the phone is working better than it ever has.

I'll wait a while and see what the official jailbreaks bring. Sn0wbreeze 2.0 from ih8sn0w is rumoured to come out this Wednesday and will break everything except the iphone 4. Greenpois0n is still the most talked about yet illusive of all the jailbreaks using pod2g's SHAtter exploit. Pod2g has left the chronic dev-team today but says the jailbreak will go ahead. Interestingly it was pod2g that I quoted last week as saying the jailbreak would come out on Saturday. It was also pod2g that found the jailbreak prior to the release of iOS4.1. I suspect he or she may have left after getting impatient with the delays of their colleagues who are testing the break and creating the software. To be fair though I wouldn't launch something half arsed. For all people are impatient that's nothing compared to how they'd be if a jailbreak broke their phones. That would play directly in to apples hands.

So that's you up to date.

Update 2

21/09/2010 Looks like a new version of Redsn0w has been released. Not only can it break 4.1 for the iphone 3g and ipod touch 2g but it's rumoured that it can do the beta version of 4.2. If you read my previous post you'll get decent instructions on using it though I'd check at Redmond Pie just to make sure because you now have to pint it at iOS4.1 instead of 4. The new Redsn0w is only available for Mac at the moment but I'd imagine it will be avilable for windows within the week. Sn0wbreeze is rumoured to hit tomorrow and I suspect greenpois0n will pull out all the stops to do the same before it becomes pointless. It's like a soap opera this. You could get hooked. My wee 3g is still going like lightening since Saturdays debacle. I'd almost (but not quite) recomend the pain I went through for the performance improvement.

Just incase any gurus on the iPhone ever see this page. Quick question. If I updated, jailbroke and then added all my custom apps and winterboard theme, could I then somehow save that as an ispw file? It's just that with my 3G working well right now I'm a bit shy of jailbreaking however, I know that each new release also brings new features. If I could create a custom ispw file unique to my phone then I could jailbreak with confidence knowing that I could always restore if things went wrong. Hmmmmm

More news as it comes.

T

Jailbroken 3g on IOS 4.1? To break or not to break?

What follows details exactly how I tried and failed to jailbreak and upgrade to iOS 4.1 on my 3g using Redsn0w. As you will see I had half an idea that it wouldn't work but felt that I had to try. Unlike other sites I also detail exactly how to undo everything and get back to where you started. Why didn't I just say 'Don't do it?'. I didn't listen when others said this to me so why should I expect you to?

Read everything BEFORE doing anything. Don't blame me if this doesn't work for you. I'm desperate so I'm having a go. If any of the stuff below means nothing to you or if your iPhone means everything to you stop reading now.

Ok here goes. Let's break my phone.....

You might say 'Why break a perfectly good phone?'. I would then say 'it's not a perfectly good phone'. The marraige of iPhone 3g and jailbreaking has been legendary and allowed this aging piece of kit to almost rival it's big brothers the 3GS and 4. When iOS4 came out though small cracks began to appear. A jailbroken 3g got all the bows and bells of iOS4 (Multitasking etc) but, jailbroken or not, started to have massive performance issues. If a phone call came through whilst safari was open the whole thing crashed and needed re-booted. Face Book only managed to open about 1/3 of the time and even SMS wasn't exactly solid. Location services could freeze everything up. It seems to me that the phone just didn't manage it's memory well enough. It would sacrifice everything into one task and then just close down.

These problems came to a head on a journey down south and I found myself in the position of depending on the phone and knowing that it was going to let me down. My old HTC wasn't as fancy as the iphone but it was 100% reliable. I love gadgets but, unlike a lot of geeks, I like my gadgets to solve a problem. If they don't do that then they are useless.

Apple became aware of the issue with reliability on the iPhone 3g. Had it just been jailbreakers they would have ignored it but the fact was that ordinary users were complaining that their phones were completely useless. As a result iOS 4.1 was introduced. There were a couple of new things with 4.1 (see previous posts) but the biggy for me was that it would resolve performance issues for the 3G. My only issue was that my phone is heavily customised and uses many jailbroken apps. I guess I want it all. A jailbroken iPhone that works my way as well as the performance that Apple designed it to produce. So I want to update to 4.1 and jailbreak it. 4.1 has been out for over a week now and, despite claiming to have jailbroken it prior to release, no official working jailbreak has been forthcoming.

Since the current version of Redsn0w reportedly has issues (breaks phone app, Cydia doesn’t work) jailbreaking iPhone 3G on iOS 4.1 (final version) I am going to first try something call the Pwnage tool. This will be plan A. My only issues with trying to break the phone this way are, I've never tried it before and I think it maybe only works for Mac. Whatever, I'll give it a try and then, if it doesn't work, I'll try Redsn0w (Plan B) as I felt that the instructions for installing were wrong on some of the other sites that I read and that may be why they've had issues. Finally plan C involves putting the sim in my HTC and waiting for the SHAtter exploit to come out on greenpois0n. I have to do something. If iOS 4.1 doesn't deliver the performance improvement required then I give up on the iPhone. If it does deliver the improvement then I may not upgrade to 4.2 in November or beyond as I would be quite happy with what I presently have provided it works properly. I have even considered reverting to 3.2 as it seemed to be optomised for the 3g. Maybe that's plan D. The instructions for upgrading using Pwnage were found here: jailbreak-iphone-3g-ios-4.1-pwnagetool-guide. I have used Redmond Pie several times in the past and they have proved very reliable.

Plan A Download iOS 4.1 PwnageTool Bundle for iPhone 3G
Ok so plan A is a complete non starter for those of us working on windows. There is a way to emulate a mac on windows but life is too short.

Plan B This is the plan that I thought might work from the start but I put off trying till I waited for confirmation. When the confirmation came it came with all sorts of user issues related to the the phone app not working, the wifi not working and Cydia not working. So you could end up with an iPhone that basically doesn't work at any level. I'm hoping that if the worst happens then at least the phone can just be restored to iOS 4.1 with no jailbreak but I can't swear to this being possible. Now I've already mentioned on here that I've seen instructions on doing this that I don't like. I've wondered if this may be why people have had problems.

First: I'm downloading something called Tinyumbrella. Tiny Umbrella. This saves something called shsh blobs. I'm sure you could google this and get an explanation of what they are. I however have no idea. What I do know is that if you completely screw up then, provided you have run this software and allowed it to save some files, you can downgrade back to an older working version of iOS. Trust me. Do this.

Second: Here in the UK several mobile phone providers supply iPhones so we're not as hung up on unlocking (changing carrier). This is not the story in most countries however. If you want to jailbreak 4.1 and unlock the phone once it's done then follow these instructions BEFORE you do anything: Upgrade to iOS4.1 without upgrading baseband


Third: I'm opening Cydia on my phone, checking that it has updated and shows the stored shsh blobs on there as well. You also need to have a final version of iOS 4 saved on your PC(THIS IS NOT A TYPO. I DID SAY iOS4 and not 4.1 which is probably what you expected). You can get a copy here:iOS 4 Download

Forth: Take a deep breath and be brave....Connect your phone and allow it to sync (I'm a bit worried about this because I've been getting the following error since I upgraded to iTunes 10). Stay connected to iTunes and upgrade to iOS4.1. I'm just checking one last time that greenpois0n hasn't suddenly become available.

Cross everything that this works because this is a sort of point of no return. At least my 3G should respond better but it could be the end of my jailbreak days. Keep reading....Fifth: The instructions that I am going to follow are the ones published here:jailbreak-iphone-4.1-ios-iphone-3g-ipod-touch-guide.
I am going to follow this guide from STEP 3 as it was written before iOS4.1 was officially released. Keep everything crossed still. When this is over you'll know for certain wheteher it worked or whether I just made my phone useless.

Exciting......

If you screw up the bit about holding the power button for three seconds, then the power and home for about twenty and then the home button for about thirty don't panic just start again. You haven't done any harm. (At least not yet)

DO NOT TOUCH YOU'R PHONE WHILE IT'S DOING ITS THING. You'll know when it's ready. It will reboot to the apple logo. The boot time will be longer than usual. DO NOT TOUCH.

Might as well set your expectations at this point. When you'r phone restarts it may: lack a phone icon, fail to get wifi (make sure that you don't just need to pair with your modem again)and cydia may be a blank icon.

Here goes. Switching on.

The worst appears to have happened. No phone icon. No wifi and cydia is blanK. I do seem to have SMS although I haven't tried sending anything and I have 3g. I'm not panicing yet (well ok I am a bit but trying to remain level headed).

I have icons. Even for the jaibroken apps although, at the moment they don't work. I clicked the cydia blank icon and it told me that I needed to join a wifi network. I entered my wifi code and put my router into pairing mode. The wifi icon appeared but cydia just closed. I tried to open it again. It closed. I tried again and it opened but with a new apple logo. It told me that I had essential upgrades which I accepted. Seemed to freeze but I'm not going to touch it till I'm sure. I can't screenprint what's happening as I need a jailbreak app to do that I'm afraid. It's taken ages so I'm re-booting the phone. I'm clicking on 'Complete Upgrade' again. Again I'm having to crash it out.

I'm going to try syncing with iTunes to see if that makes a blind bit of difference. I notice that whilst iTunes is syncing my phone screen is blank. This is unusual you would normally have a screen to say it was syncing. This does not seem good. It's taking an abnormally long time although it does seem to be trying to install some jailbreak apps (tomtom etc). At the end of the sync I got all sorts of errors but my jailbroken apps now seem to work.

Although I'm showing a wifi connection I just tried safari and it aint opening any web pages. Looks like this seriously doesn't work. I did dial my phone and it did recognise an incoming call. Call me old fashioned but I'd also like to make calls. Sorry folks but at least I tried.


Looks like I'm going to have to find a way to restore. Look at my next post to see what happens....

Don't try this at home....

T