Bloody vandals

Someone just wrote on my wall and someone else poked me. What's more the first I knew anything about it was when I got an email.

Yep I'm learning a new language that you probably all recognise as face book. Don't laugh but, when you don't know how it works it's all a bit bizarre.

When I got back from the caravan I thought I'd check out Poet and Zoe's blogs to see what had been happening. Nothing it would appear. I am beginning to suspect from Zoe's last post that someone has indeed seen her with a ciggy and shot her. Only herself to blame really because that what she said they should do. As for Poet! I became concerned that she and K had become locked out of their house. I thought they had maybe gone to the deck, forgot their keys and were now fighting off bears.

In Poets post she had mentioned face book. There was a link to it on her site. I clicked the link but it took me to a log in page. Now I've been confronted by this sort of skulduggery before. My wife once wanted to check someones BEBO page so we had to create a log in and then delete it afterwards. So this was to be my cunning plan. Create a log in, see what was there, and then leave.

Now normally if I'm doing something like that I have the foresight to use my gmail address that I created when I created this blog. It's a legitimate address but allows me to remain anonymous. If I hadn't mentioned it T isn't my first name and Quittin isn't my surname (I'm truly sorry if I've burst any ones bubble with that information). Anyway without thinking I entered my actual email address and clicked the 'create account' button or whatever it was called. This took me to step 2. Step 2 still puzzles me a wee bit so if someone can tell me definitively how it works I would be interested.


Step 2 was to add friends. What surprised me was that there were three photographs of three people I knew already there to get me started. One was my aunt, another was a mate from the pub where I used to stay and still catch up with every so often and the final one was a bloke that I went to college with to do a course in 2005/06. Whilst all three have now received a 'friend request' (only my aunt hasn't accepted. What is it they say about blood being thicker?)but I have to say that they were an odd collection to turn up by default. How did it know that they knew me? I think these three may have allowed face book to access their email contacts and I've been lurking there from some dark and distant past.

The next bits were also about adding friends. It offered the option to raid my email contacts (no thanks) and then also showed me pics of folk I might want to add based on the three amigos that we started with. Great idea this; If I like someone and they like someone then the someone they like will like me, I think. I'm not sure that my aunt would be all that interested in my mate from the pub or that he would take to my mate from college. Maybe I'm wrong and this is how great friendships now start. It could also start a lot of random stalking me thinks.


Anyhow being a miserable git I declined all future friend requests until I found out what happened with the first three. So I was now live on Face book (did I ever mention the danger of leaving me bored at a PC?). I had assumed that, since I'd used a link on Poets site that I would be taken to Poets page but I wasn't. Instead I had a rather bald looking profile page called after me.

Now I should have just left it that way but, what about the friend requests that I had sent out? They would need some details to identify me. What I should do therefor is check out their pages to see what sort of stuff you should put. This I did. Why does everyone else seem to have a great photo for these things and I never do? Even as kid anything that needed a pic just got a randomly cut out pic from a holiday snap. My driving license has one that I photo shopped the background out of. Anyway I found a pic of me looking a bit dishevelled and dodgy on a bench by the sea. If you knew me and half shut your eyes you'd recognise me. If you didn't know me then you would probably pick me in a police line up anyway. I do look a bit criminal.

OK so now I had a profile that Interpol and the FBI can look up when they want to create criminal personality types. Now I could track down Poet. Might even send a friend request (get me with the lingo already). Nope. Couldn't be found. Searching Canada on foot might have been quicker. Hmm that makes me think of someone else I could look up.... Yep that's what happens. You just keep thinking hmm that's someone else I could look up. I stopped myself from sending bizarre friend requests (based on the fact that I might have had a drunken conversation with you once in a pub but your friend didn't like me)and only sent one friend request to a pal I had lost touch with. I spent about an hour in all and then gave up.

Sometime later when opening outlook.... Between the spam for the Orleans Casino Vegas (why can't they just f**k off) and the job sites that completely ignored the job specs I gave them and send me totally inappropriate jobs I found the following;


'Brian has accepted your friend request' and then another saying that 'Brian wrote on my wall'!!!!! At this point I was only aware of certain walls belonging to me and I really didn't want anyone writing on them. What the hell? Gavin had also accepted me as a friend but had the decency to leave my walls alone. Well I thought he was decent until I got to my home page and discovered that he had 'poked' me. (Couldn't they have come up with a different term? Nudged? Nodded? Poked just sounds wrong). I had the option to 'Poke back'. I selected this option assuming that it would open up a message box for me to write something witty. Nope it just said that I had poked Gavin. I feel a bit guilty now. Should I have said something? I've no idea? How do I even know if he's online or if he poked me hours ago

To make matters worse I then wrote on Brian's wall. I tried to be witty but then thought.. He'll see the funny side but will everyone else who ever views his profile? I haven't found a recall button yet.

I also discovered that you can 'like' things in face book (FB to it's friends). Around 2 million people apparently like Cheryl Cole but I settled for liking a site called Big on Glasgow. What happens is that it and another site that I've mentioned on here, Redmond Pie, appear blog like as news whenever I open Face book. I must sound like someone from the stone age here but it's all a bit confusing. If I wanted to see those blogs I'd just go to them via favorites. Why do they appear in my news.

I'm filing this post with tags for both blogging and PC in the hopes that anyone who uses those links at the side of this blog feels my pain and leaves me some tips to help me out.

Later

T

Back to reality

Well, that's me back in the real world once again. Today is the last official day of holiday and then it's back to work on Monday.



After joking about the Scottish Weather, apart from a gray Sunday/Monday at the start, the weather was pretty good and, despite my wife's efforts to get me to wear suncream strong enough to protect vampires in daylight, I even have a hint of a tan. It's funny because we've been going up and down to the same region every year for the last seven years and yet we still discovered a forest trail that took us to a bit of deserted beach that we hadn't been to before. (The flies and insects in Forrest particularly loved my suncream and I ended up like that character out of Peanuts, Linus I think, that had a permanent cloud of bugs around their head). Also although we didn't get out fishing quite a few folk did so we had mackerel for tea on several occasions (note to self: look up mackerel recipes online because we're needing to get inventive if we're having it every second or third day). For some reasons the locals in the local town have now decided that we aren't caravaners anymore but are actually locals ourselves. It's very flattering but hopefully it doesn't get too obtrusive as we quite like our privacy. So all in all the holiday did exactly what holidays should do...we relaxed a lot. We stayed for nine days and then had a few days back at home at a slow pace to catch up so all good.

When I got back I checked the blog. The traffic slowed a bit without updates but still gained some visitors from some far flung places. Outside of the UK the USA now sends more visitors than Canada (need to get your friends involved Poet, Hi to Wisconsin, California, Ohio and Florida) with Australia (The Gold Coast has been loyal for a long time but is now joined by Sydney and Adelaide) out in front of the republic of Ireland (think Zoe has lost interest but Peter might still be keeping the side up).
There's also been some welcome but unexpected additions such as Iran, Romania, Singapore and Malaysia to mention just a few. Since I started monitoring in April there have been over 100O hits from 23 separate countries with the average hit spending 4 minutes on the site and viewing 3 pages per visit. OK so some sites get more hits than that per hour but I'm pretty impressed, not to mention grateful, that so many folk have taken an interest in my decisions to; give up smoking, attack a car company and switch to an IPhone.

So, without further ado, what about smoking, the car and the iPhone?

Well I still don't smoke so that's good. I'm not saying when but I did have a drag within the last eight weeks and it damn nearly blew the top of my head off so I think we're officially safe on that front. I don't remember it being anything like that back when I started smoking because, this time, I couldn't even contemplate a second drag. Didn't want to say at the time because I felt guilty but there you go.

I've heard nothing from the car garage. I'm quite surprised because I thought that going via the directors would have got me some response, even if it was just to tell me to shut up. Watch this space though because I will be following it up. I am a member of a forum for my particular brand of car (there is only one major forum for this car). When I got back from holiday I had a 'Friend request' from the forum from someone else in Scotland (my area too). It's only polite to accept such requests, so I did, and then sent him an email detailing exactly what I thought of the dealership. I explained, in reasoned terms, why I wont use the dealer for servicing and even suggested a garage that could do this for him with an average saving of £100 per time. Haven't heard back yet but here's hoping he takes my advice. Through the forum he may befriend other owners and before you know it there shoddy attitude and disgusting policies will be the stuff of Internet legend. I will of course keep you updated on this site but would rather not use this blog to do the actual campaigning.

Bad Apple just a barrel of Laughs

Before I left I also mentioned that Apple were going to address the reception problems of their new iPhone 4. Well they did. They offered every iPhone 4 customer a free Bumper (sort of rubber band that frames the phone) or case (not sure what quality). That's fine I suppose. I would have purchased a case at the same time as the phone anyway because it's a big screen that scratches easily. Despite not ordering a recall they did say that people could take the phone back if they were dissatisfied. In addition to this they issued a software update; IOS 4.01.

Software updates are a pain in the arse for those of us who choose to jailbreak the phone because you have to re-jailbreak and re-install your apps every time it happens. Did this using Redsn0w. Maybe because it wasn't a major upgrade this was easier than last time. It would seem that a major reason for the upgrade was to address the reception issue with the iPhone 4. Apparently it mis-reported reception making it appear that users were getting a better reception than they actually were. To my knowledge this only affected the iPhone 4. After the upgrade however my iPhone 3g shows poorer reception than it previously had. I have to say that this has little or no impact on my ability to make calls it just makes it look like the phone is getting poor reception. If you forget the fact that it works perfectly and gets 3g reception and everything and just go by the bars displayed after the upgrade...It would seem that I'd do better switching back to my HTC touch because it showed more bars. Well done Apple. On the plus side the advertisers have had a field day.
At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly. That’s why the DROID X comes with a dual antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make crystal clear calls without a bulky phone jacket. For us it’s just one of those things that comes as a given when you’ve been making mobile phones for over 30 years.

Note the reception bars in samsungs 'Hello'

I'll update again before Sunday but that's enough for now

Quick Update

OK so I'm off on holiday in a couple of hours for the best part of two weeks. You can tell that it's proper holiday time hear in Scotland by the marbled grey sky, smattering of rain and the 45 degree angle of the trees trying to fight the wind. For most people it would be time to rush in doors but, for this hardy Scot at least, it's time to head for a caravan at the seaside. Time to give up bricks and mortar for tin and....well more tin really. Hopefully by the time I return I'll have loads to update you on.

I've just finished writing a letter addressed to 'The Directors PA' of the company that I bought my car from. I've finished the letter by pointing out that, whilst the service manager may be feeling pleased about having saved his company half the price of a new wheel, their company will lose more than this in the first year with just the loss of my humble business. I'll wait to see what the response is before I launch an attack via the official forum sites that I'm a member of. All I want is a wheel but it'll cost them more than the price of a brand new car by the time I'm finished with them if they don't sort things out. I wont be content until I feel that they regret selling me the car every bit as much as I regret buying it.

Apple are also supposed to be holding a press conference today to explain what they intend to do about the new IPhone 4. They aren't expected to do a recall but they will have to do something. Ask Microsoft. They still suffer from the catastrophe that was Vista. Even now that windows seven apparently sorts the issues out most of us have decided that it's just safer and more sensible to stick with good old XP. Mr Jobs could learn from the vista example. The first frustration most of us had wit VISTA was that the security settings prevented us from doing what we wanted to do in the way we wanted to do it. Sound familiar Mr Jobs?

iOS 4 is a really good jump in the right direction. It has Windows 3.1 like folders to keep your icons in. It does almost all the things that those who had jail broken their phones were already doing. MY 3G can multi task, record video and display screen backgrounds even though it is clearly stated that it can't. What's more I believe it performs better in terms of signal etc than the ill fated iPhone 4. Yep I'm looking forward to commenting on how today's activities play out.

Hard to believe that we'll be nearly into august when I get back. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was sitting in my office in January worrying about whether it would be Champix or not smoking that would drive me out of mind. Turns out I was already there.

Hope you guys hang around till I get back.

Speak soon

T

Car, Music, Money

To the UK, US, Ireland, Australia and Saudi I want to say thanks for sticking with me and taking time to read the site. This month has seen visits from 15 countries in all but some don't seem to hang about much. You guys rock. Would love to know who you are so leave a comment sometime.

On Friday I go on holiday for two weeks and it's unlikely, although not impossible, that I'll update so I thought I'd better put something down tonight.

To tie up some loose ends before I go:

The car seems to be running fine. I amn't pursuing the wheel with the finance company but am going to put a strong complaint in to the dealership. I'm thinking something along the lines of:

I love your vehicles but have had such poor service from your service dept that I wont be purchasing anything from you again. The loss of this one customer probably wont damage your business too much but will cost you considerably more than replacing the wheel would have. If I only discourage one other person from using your dealership then I'll have done enough damage to pay for more than three years servicing. Given that people are impressed with my car and take an interest in what it's like to own I think I have a fair opportunity of discouraging at least one potential customer.

Who knows...maybe I might still get the garage to fit that wheel at get to watch the service manager squirm. Even if they do sort things out to my satisfaction they have completely lost me as a customer.

Talking of customers...One somehow managed to phone through to the training department today and got me. Now since a big part of our job is teaching people how to deliver customer service you would think we'd be at the top of our game. Don't want to give too much away but it took three of us to decide what was best to do. In fairness the end result was way better than it would have been with the call centre guys. My boss walked in toward the end and was extremely worried though. The last time he heard me being that polite was at interview. I think he thought I was talking to the police or the press. Nice one.

The music thing with the iPhone... Well I'm loving the app and it is introducing me to lots of potential music that I like but, it's a bit of an effort to keep it up daily. I think it will be one of those things where I'll try it every time I'm bored. I've blogged about it so can keep track of the date started and can then look back in a years time and see how many tracks it spawned. At the minute I've gone from one track to fourteen so it's not bad going. Try this site for downloading the individual tunes. I'd stick with torrent sites for albums but this is good for tunes: www.4shared.com

On the subject of music...Bob Geldoff (The Boomtown Rats) swore at me 25 years ago today. Well me and several million others when he was telling us to 'give us your fucking money' live on TV on Band Aid. Yep I work with people who weren't born then and lots more who were too young to remember. There's a music festival every week from about March to September nowadays but nothing comes close to live aid. I was 17 in a shared flat and a whole crowd of us gathered to watch and drink and smoke etc. Back then we were changing the world..Now 'We are the world , we are the people...' . God I hated that but Live aid was good. Give it another generation and I'm sure something will best it the way it bested woodstock.

Money..Still aint got none. I actually got one of those pre-approved credit card things through the other day. Just sign and return and you'll get a credit card. Given that I'm skint I could be tempted. Thing is they actually weren't even trying to hide the fact that they wanted 39% interest. The UK is usually quite good at catching that sort of scam and stopping it dead (we do do free enterprise but normally in a more civilised way). When does the interest charged become criminal? It seems that world leaders are scared to criticise banks just now because they are so insecure but someone needs to protect the vulnerable. 39% interest should be criminal.

Also on the money front...My wife lost her purse at the weekend. Had to stop all the cards etc and were planning to get new driving licenses and stuff when....Someone phones and says they found it. She got it back cash and all. As far as I can tell no one has stolen her identity (still looks like the same girl to me). So the world can't be all bad. Maybe it's even better than we think but we just concentrate on the bad.

Anyhow that's me for the moment. If you're really dedicated and can't wait till I get back from hols then go back and read some old posts (there's more than 80 now). If not I'll speak to you when I get back.

Did I mention that I still don't smoke?

Next time...

T

Singing a different tune

Ever get the feeling that you sometimes get caught in a rut? I know I do. When it comes time for the monthly shop do you find yourself ordering pretty much the same as last month? You can have whatever you want but you, like me, probably have a relatively set menu that you stick by and only occasionally supplement. Or maybe the change in seasons is the reason that you are eating a little differently this month.

Routines rise out of comfort situations. They are not bad in themselves because they are established using the tried and the tested. Yet you often watch a cookery show and crave the alternatives that they show. Or, Like me, you have sat in a restaurant at some point waiting for your regular meal to arrive only to see something looking far better going to another table.

A couple of years ago a friend asked me to retrieve the contents of a memory stick as they were having problems with it. The stick had their music collection of 30 or 40 songs on it. I created the copy they were looking for but I also took a copy myself. The songs on their drive weren't new. I recognised them all. The reason I took a copy was that I liked all the songs but not enough to have gone out and purchased or downloaded them. Yet having them together made an excellent collection of songs that I listen to to this day.

I remember loving the film 'Good Morning Vietnam' because of the soundtrack yet I didn't have one of the artists let alone the songs in my collection.

Where am I going with this? Well we're all pretty insular about what we actually purchase and yet no-where near as insular about what we actually like. I like a vast range of music, both older and contemporary, and yet I stick to the same artists constantly when I make a purchase. Don't get me wrong I like what I like but sometimes it can become a bit boring. This is where a program called Shazam comes in and a little experiment that I'm going to try.

Now I discovered Shazam via the iPhone. This however is not an I phone blog. A version of Shazam can also be found here: http://www.shazam.com/music/web/pages/explorer.html

For iPhone users Shazam was that cool little program where, you held your phone up to the music and it told you: what song was playing, who it was by and when it came out. The rest of us mere mortals were impressed but fell short of selling the family car to have this functionality on our Nokias. However like a lot of software it has been developing away quietly into something more than just a good gimmick. I got it for my phone. I played a random song from my PC to test it, turned on the phone, selected 'Tag now' and waited. Sure enough it had identified a song by a band called Alabama 3 called 'Ain't going to Goa'. Never heard of them? They sang the theme tune to the Sopranos if that helps.


So this might be good but it falls short of impressive. I knew who sang the song and so did it. A gimmick and nothing more? Possibly not. As well as identifying the song and band it also did something else. It 'Tagged' the song and recommended five other songs that I might like. One of these tags was REM and a song called Stand which I know and really like yet haven't ever purchased. Another was for a song I'd never heard from Baldly drawn boy called 'The time of times'. For each of these tags there was a link to a 10 second clip of the recommended song. After listening to the badly drawn boy song, and liking it, I downloaded both it and Stand by REM. I wasn't overly keen on the other recommendations however (it gave 5 in all). But I did like the idea. Could this little program expose me to music and bands that I have no idea of? I played Stand and 'tagged it'. Bingo. Now I've downloaded Jason Marz and Spin doctors (both songs I could sing along to on the radio but couldn't have named the artist).

So here's the deal. I'm going to follow this wherever it leads. I know the song that started it. From that song I now have two more. I can tag those and I'll get yet more. Within a year i could have discovered a whole new taste in music.

There's a blogger thing online about taking pictures. I can't remember the name but the idea was to try and take 365 pics in a year. For most of us it would provide some sort of voyeuristic insight into their life's whilst for the photographer it would be the ultimate diary. For me this Shazam thing could work in a similar way with music.


If you like this idea access Shazam from the link above. If you want Shazam as an app for your iPhone or other mobile phone then download the paid version as the free version limits you. Remember that downloading music without paying for it is 'a crime'. There's a whole world of music that you already know of but don't have access to. In addition there's bound to be stuff you've never heard before.

I remember once my dad finding me reading a book. He asked what I was reading and I replied. With true feeling he said 'I wish I hadn't ever read that book so I could discover it right now'. He was genuinely envious of the fact that I was discovering at that moment the excitement of a story that he had already been told.

Think of your favorite song. 'shazam' it and then follow the tags. Download the songs that you like. 'Shazam' those songs and download the recommendations that you like. Before you know what has happened you'll have a whole new music collection.

Happy hunting

T

This isn't new (mostly) so why the big surprise?

I'm not that old you know.

Just twenty years ago I was 21. At 21 I was doing OK but most of the folk around me weren't and they didn't really know why. They had just carried on doing what they had always done and relying on unions etc to look after them and, suddenly, they found themselves out of work with few, if any transferable skills. The unions had let them down and the government weren't prepared to step in to protect them. For some that left school 30 or even 50 years earlier it was devastating. Their savings, their pensions, to some extent their lives were all gone and they were powerless to do anything about it. When you saw them queue for money (us Brits like a queue) they looked a bit in shock about it all.

Others of course adapted. There was a living to made out of doing nothing. It was a full time job. Claiming rent for addresses you had never lived at, proving to a doctor that you were psychologically unfit to work, claiming clothing allowances for fictitious interviews and making sure that you didn't get caught as you snuck out the back door into a van to work on the roads without the benefit spies catching you. Much of the new infrastructure in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s came from a 'grey' workforce that couldn't be found on any electoral register but, strangely, could always be found in the welfare queue. (Sorry about the doom and gloom build up but I've been watching a TV program about the looming recession).


People were actually shocked by the fact that, for the first time, the government didn't support them when they went on strike and that businesses would actually cease trading in the UK if that's what it took to get their way. Once upon a time a business would not consider alienating a UK market but that had changed. Timex could make watches cheaper elsewhere and the British workforce wouldn't tow the line. It was cheaper to buy coal in bulk from Australia and ship it across the world to the UK than pay the UK work force to mine it on site. The answer from the government? 'Get on your bike'. Yep go and find work elsewhere because there was no help coming your way.

Horrible times for a boy just out of school. Of course I survived because I didn't know any better. I was young, prepared to work hard for little money and totally driven. I couldn't understand why people were so surprised that businesses closed when unions crippled them with unreasonable demands. I was part of a new 'do or die' generation. So many people got on the bandwagon quickly. Even the ones that disapproved were saving to buy up housing stock from the councils and taking up shares in telephones and trains whilst criticising the government for selling off these very industries. If you could just forget the recession for a moment there were riches to be gained. Quickly.

Twenty years down the line and it looks set to happen again in a big way. This time it was the banks that crumbled rather than nationalised industry. It wasn't the unions holding them to ransom but their own highest achievers and their bonus systems. The banks had made horrendous financial investments and now realised that there was no return. A significant percentage of the population live in properties that they will never own as they have interest only mortgages and no wherewithal to pay when they come to an end. Credit cards had offered credit limits that far exceeded bank loans but were now smarting as more people than ever before went bankrupt and paid back nothing. The one thing that had been stable throughout history was now in danger of collapse. Money itself.


International governments acted quickly to shore up the banks but did nothing to protect the very people who were paying for this bailout, us, from what would happen. Challenged by government to repay their bailout loans the banks turned on the very people who bailed them out. Their customers. To use actual figures as an example. The Bank of Scotland (I joined before I left school) increased their mortgage rate to 7% when the actual interest rate was 0.5%. It's risen again since. They increased overdraft charges (despite a whole separate scandal over unjust charges) from roughly £11 per year to £1 per day. Credit card interest rates rose from 19% just three years ago to 29%. I applied to turn one credit card into a loan and was offered a rate of 27%. I have another loan with that same bank taken two years ago at 9%.

Yep. I'm in every bit as much in shock as the folk of my age were back in the eighties when the unions failed them. Back then the only people who could really help you if the worst happened was your bank. If you dig deep into my finances, between mortgage, loans and credit cards I'm sure that I pay more money in interest than I do in anything else. It's disgusting.

Will the government protect me or take steps to ease this burden? Nope. The government are increasing taxes. Fuel duty which will impact every consumable is due to rise and a thing we have in the UK called VAT will increase the price of every product by 1.5%. Lets not kid ourselves. The mortgage rate is low at the moment but it must go up soon.

For some (cash rich or credit free) there's money to be made and good luck to them. For the rest of us the crunch is returning big time. For what it's worth I don't believe any government sets out to be unpopular or leave folk behind. If they make harsh policies it's because harsh times demand it. Back then though..When the unions failed the work force.. there was an expectation that the government might sort things out. They didn't. As I watch the banks rob me blind. I wonder why the government doesn't do something about it. They won't.

Someone asked me what I do with the money I no longer spend on smoking? I pay my bank interest.

I promise something more uplifting later this week.

T

Jailbreak iOS4 for spirit

Apologies to my normal viewers but I wanted to add this post here specifically for people who, like me, jailbroke their iphone using spirit and now are waiting to update to the new iOS 4.

If what I write below means nothing to you or you are not gungho about this stuff then don't think about trying this. What's the worst that could happen? For a wee while tonight I had lost all of my contacts. You could break your phone and no-one will fix it because you were trying to do something that the waranty doesn't allow. More likely you'll have to restore your phone and loose youre old jailbreak. Or...

it could work. Just don't blame me if it doesn't.

I have an iPhone 3G. It has 8GB memory. Prior to this it was running OS 3.13 with iTunes 9.2 and it was jailbroken (but not unlocked) using spirit. It had never been jailbreaked prior to spirit. It looked like the screenshot and I was happy.

I wanted to upgrade to iOS 4 but was waiting for a 'spirit type/userland' jailbreak. Well on http://www.redmondpie.com/ I read that Sn0wbreeze 1.6.2 had been released (July 1st) and that it would support phones jailbroken using spirit. I tried it. I followed step-by-step what was said and was soooooooooo close to jailbreaking, but it didn't work. For a while the phone didn't work at all.

>

I downloaded the official IPSW file because the one linked on the site didn't work. Sn0wbreeze cooked a new IPSW file but my phone wouldn't load it. (again if your phone means a lot to you and this means nothing don't get sucked in)

At this point I began to feel rather silly as I'd promised myself I wouldn't loose all my free apps to upgrade to something that wasn't much different than what I had.

My phone wouldn't switch on but, if I disconnected and re-connected to iTunes I did get a prompt saying I had to restore. If I tried to restore using 'shift' and the IPSW on my desktop it wouldn't work. In desperation I just did restore without using 'shift'. The iPhone was back to factory but automatically asked if I wanted to run my backup. I did this. It looked like it was adding everything (dodgy and all) but it wasn't really. It had an error at the end and, if you opened it, it told you that the dodgy apps hadn't been added. iOS 4 However was now added and working. All my legal software was good. My phone was perfect but not jailbroken.

In desperation I went back to http://www.redmondpie.com/ and downloaded redsn0w 9.5 b5-5. I extracted it. I ran the exe file. When it asked me to browse for an IPSW I browsed to the official apple one on my PC. C:\documents and settings\your user folder name\application data\apple computer\i tunes\iPhone software updates. Then I just followed the instructions and it worked.

I suspect it might have worked if I'd just upgraded to os4 and then run Redsn0w but I've no way of testing that theory.

It's also worth noting that my 3g does things like multi tasking that wouldn't work on the official download.

If you're struggling with this and there's something you think I can help with then use 'Comments' to give me a shout but I should be quick to add that I ain't got very much clue about this stuff myself. I only got the phone a couple of months ago.

Hope this helps..

T