Fly

Darn it, insomnia is coming back to me for some reason. I don't even feel stressed or anything. Why it is occurring? For the past 2 days I've been waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. Not just once, but MANY times. By my estimate, about 4-5 times. It totally disrupts my sleep cycle and as a result I'm lethargic in the day.

Anyway, last night I had an awesome dream. It is probably the one most common dream among everyone in the world.

I dreamt that I could fly.

A more common occurrence in my dreams is that I can glide - When i jump off a great height, by lifting my legs I can somehow delay my freefall and continue gliding at that height. I can even kick off that height as if I'm pushing off some invisible springboard, and go to a greater height.

My dream last night, however, was of me flying. I don't remember the preceding events but it started with me being in the ocean.

I can't remember who I was with, but there were 1-2 other people with me. So we were just wading in the ocean when a big wave came in and swept me further out. I taunted the sea, saying 'Come on! You can bring me further than that!' (I've no idea why I wanted to be brought further out)  and it responded with 2 more subsequent waves which brought me waaaay out into the open of the ocean.

Then with a push upwards, I flew above the water and burst into the air. Soon I was rising high above the canopy of trees, soaring past the greenery, as if I was carrying a cameraman with me and we were shooting a scene for Survivor.

Then I don't know what happened, but it was like I let someone else take over the flying and I just hung on, and that person was a terrible flyer. He glided throughout the canopy and almost crashed against some branches once or twice.

We were heading to this island next to Singapore - a very distinct island which I've no idea what it was. But I knew we were headed there. So this other flyer was flying us towards that, and we were approaching my house area when he kept losing altitude until we eventually touched the ground.

I got frustrated, and I said 'Come on, I'll fly us there'. And with a burst - I rocketed high into the air and I could see my entire neighbourhood, as well as the island we were supposed to go. I flew towards it till we were vertically above, and I did some crazy stunt where I accelerated towards the ground at a speed so fast that within the next second we were at ground level and I braked instantly and landed smoothly. Super exciting!


Then we were at some Key Installation, something like the Airport or something that I was guarding during my stint in army. I can't remember what it was. But I saw this dude who did patrol with me, his name is Chris. I said hi to him and he asked me to go patrol with him. I said no of course, because I wasn't here to do duty. I was just... I've no idea what I was there for actually. But not to do patrol.

I noticed his uniform was a bit faded so I asked him if he was doing reservist, which he said yes. And so he left to do his patrol. Then i leaned over to the wall socket and pulled out my iPhone charger and checked my iPhone battery (?? I've no idea why it was there.. yes we are supposed to be on some other island. But that's how dreams are, totally random)

And I woke up shortly after that. Feeling exhilarated from the flying experience, but highly irritated that I had woken once again for no apparent reason in the middle of the night.

Dear

Dear ,

These past 2 months that we've been together have been nothing short of phenomenal. The fun we've had, the amount of time I've had my hands all over you. I really like getting you all charged up and then just play with you all day. I can almost hear you giggle as I run my finger over your face.



Yes , my dear iPhone, it's been a fun time. Being kept close by your invisible handcuffs, being able to access Twitter, Facebook, Words with Friends, WhatsApp, the WWW, just to name the most common ones I use, at all times. All the games that I have on you that I barely play but you always have them ready when I need them.

Even recently, when I jailbroke you, you did not complain, but only smiled with a skull instead of showing me your favourite apple as you used to. Ah, the vast possibilities that I've unlocked with that jailbreak - it turns you into a cool gadget into an AMAZING MONSTER.


However, recently I've been getting tired of a problem. A problem of your BATTERY. Why do you deplete so rapidly? Why does your energy trickle out even when I'm not doing anything? Why do you not last more than a day?
Please stop dropping faster than  a free falling man from a building.

Please stop falling like the leaves in the autumn. Please stop being the world's worst battery.

Love,
Me.

Why you should jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch

So, you have heard all about it. Your friends tell you to do it, but you have doubts. 

I'm here to convince you why you SHOULD jailbreak your device. In this post, I will tell you two general things:

a) Why you shouldn't be AFRAID to jailbreak
b) Why you should jailbreak <-- I'll focus more on this, talking about the functionality benefits that people don't mention enough.
and lastly I'll provide some sources which will teach you HOW to jailbreak and some important notes.


a) Why you shouldn't be AFRAID to jailbreak
The first thing many people think about is that it is illegal. However, it is NOT illegal. The only thing 'bad' is that your warranty becomes void with Apple. This is NOT a problem though, because assuming you are unlucky enough to have your phone actually break down and spoil somehow and you need to send it for repairs within your warranty period, you can simply 'unjailbreak' it via a simple iTunes restore:

"Plug in the iPhone and sync it to make sure you have a current backup. Then choose to restore (the firmware) it to factory settings from in iTunes. Then you can right click it and restore the backup (of thecontents) from the backup. The term restore is used for both actions, but they are two separate actions.
A backup of a jailbreaked phone can be restored onto a non-jailbreak firmware. That's not an issue (I did it when I upgraded to 2.1). All jailbreak apps and features will be gone, but all App Store apps, contacts, settings, etc, will be preserved."

(via http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=574128)

After which, you can just send it in to Apple and they won't know anything.

(Disclaimer - distribution of copyrighted material is still illegal, according to Singapore law. In other words, downloading  a cracked app (i.e. originally available on App Store) is as illegal as downloading a song from the Internet.)

The next thing people are worried about is that it will slow down their devices. This is also not true - I have been using my jailbroken device without any noticeable lag from the jailbreak. HOWEVER, that is because I don't use this thing called Winterboard, which I believe is the cause of lag.

In fact, many users do admit that jailbreaking does lag their device, which I noticed in the form of a 1s delay everytime i close/open apps, but I realized it was Winterboard causing this problem, so I just removed it.

Winterboard lets you customize your themes and icons like this. Notice how the default apps (e.g. Mail, Camera etc...) look different?

Winterboard is just for customizing themes and such, so if you don't mind the classy look of Apple, you can just not install it. (note - Winterboard has a ton of other uses too which I haven't really researched so if you don't mind abit of lag for some added customization, go ahead and use Winterboard :) )

There are TONNES of other useful stuff .

Ok enough of the grim stuff, on to why you SHOULD jailbreak your iPhone.

b) Why you SHOULD jailbreak your iPhone

1) FREE apps!!

This is the most obvious no-brainer reason - There are a ton of fun and cool apps on the App Store, but many of them are paid apps, and not all of us can afford or want to pay for those apps. With jailbreak, all these apps are FREE. 

WhatsApp @ USD 0.99 on the App Store and @ $0.00 when you Jailbreak!
For free SMSing, MMSing, and group conversations!

PES for free!

Final Fantasy 3 at USD 15 on the App store.. yes, they're mad. Totally ripping you off. FOR FREE WHEN YOU JAILBREAK.

Cut The Rope, one of the most fun games you can play, for FREE ONLY when you jailbreak!

And of course the all-time popular Angry Birds (now Rio!) for FREE!

Of course, this is just a very very small slice of all the available apps that you can get when you jailbreak. There are also many EXCLUSIVE apps that you can only have when you jailbreak!

2) Functionality
(blurry parts of screenshots are what I've edited out, not part of the jailbreak)

Non-JB users always overlook this point when they are considering whether to jailbreak their devices. After all, the allure of free apps is already quite big and unbelievable and the only reason why you should jailbreak right? WRONG.

What jailbreak does is bring you a whole new array of FUNCTIONALITY improvements that I don't know why Apple doesn't implement. Perhaps Apple will include a few in their iPhone 5. Who knows. I will start by listing these added functions:

Utilizing the Lock Screen

How would you describe the lock screen? Classy? Sleek? How about, USELESS? The screen shows close to nothing besides the time and date. When you have notifications, it'll only show if it's a missed call or a SMS - it does not show for other apps.
Other phones have RSS feeds, calendars, notifications on their lock screen. Why not the iPhone?

With jailbreak, this is what it can look like:

Accessing Settings

Let's say you are at home and want to use WiFi. How do you turn it on? Home button -> Settings -> Wifi

How about when your battery is running low and you want to turn off your 3G? Home button -> Settings -> Network -> 3G 

Ugh so many steps.

How about if your screen is too dim? Do you even know where the brightness function is? 

With jailbreak, everything is made easy:

Just swipe the top of the screen and...

VOILA!! This awesome function is called SBSettings, a jailbreak-exclusive app. Highly accessible settings, just swipe the top of the screen! You can also configure your bluetooth, data, etc, I removed those because I don't use those often. You can even configure how it looks by downloading additional themes!

Easy SMSing

Let's say you are playing your favourite game, Smurf Village. (Or whatever ridiculous lame game you play) Then you receive an SMS and it pops up on your screen. You want to reply it now. What happens? It tabs out of your game, opens your Messaging, and when you have completed the reply, you have to go back to your Home screen, and open the app again.

LONG WINDED YES?

With Quickreply (or biteSMS)...

.

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This pops up instead.
And you can just hit 'Reply'...

Type your reply, hit 'Send'..

AND IT RETURNS TO YOUR APP IMMEDIATELY. You don't even leave the app!!
SO much more logical and awesome right!?

And even from your lock screen, if you receive an SMS, it looks like this:

You just have to double tap the text bubble to type a reply, and after you've sent, it just goes back to the lock screen!

Activator

This is in my opinion, one of the best reasons why you should jailbreak your iPhone. Before I explain what this does, I should share a concern I previously had - My Home button on my iPhone was always very slightly buggy, and I couldn't double-press it sometimes and sometimes it doesn't seem to respond on the first click.
Also, being just about the only button you use, it's bound to succumb to wear and tear!
So I was quite worried that over time, my Home button would become unusable and I would have to replace/fix it so I don't really like to press it too often.

With Activator, this concern is totally gone.

Activator is one of the basic jailbreak-only apps that you will most definitely get.

Basically what it does is create shortcuts via touch-screen gestures or button sequences. To make this clearer, I'll just give the example of my own current settings.

- When I'm using an app, I tap the Status Bar (the top of the screen with your battery, time, Singtel/Starhub/M1 sign) and swipe down and it goes back to the Home screen.

- Anywhere on my iPhone, I double tap the Status Bar and it brings up the multitasking function (which you otherwise have to double-press your Home button)

- When I'm at my Home screen, I can lock my phone by swiping down from the Status Bar.

-At the Lock Screen, double tapping my clock brings up my iPod controls

-Pressing Volume Up followed immediately by Volume Down opens my Messaging app from wherever I am.

No more over-pressing of the Home button!

You can basically open any app you want via a wide array of gestures such as Shake Device, Slide from Bottom, Slide from Bottom Left, Swipe Down from status bar, Swipe Left on status bar, combination of Volume button presses, etcetc..
You can also make these gestures perform other things like Lock your phone, simulate a press of the 'Home Button' (don't have to press it anymore!), Take Screenshot, etcetc.

The list is endless. It's up to YOU how you want to customize your phone to make it EVEN MORE convenient and handy to use!
This is such a simple function that Apple can implement and they'll be stupid not to add it to the iPhone5.




And while this is the end of this section, it is not the end of the functionality options available via Jailbreak. There are many other apps that I haven't discovered either, so go read up! You won't regret it!
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How To Jailbreak + Important information
There are 2 basic forms of a jailbreak - A tethered or an untethered jailbreak. A tethered jailbreak means that everytime you reboot your device, you will have to connect your iPhone to your computer. An untethered jailbreak means you can just.. use it as a normal iPhone even when rebooting. To put it simply, you should always get an untethered jailbreak if it's available.

I used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSUr3S2Jm5c this link to do my (untethered) jailbreak (iOS 4.2.1), it's not a difficult process so just follow the instructions on the screen carefully.
However, at the time of this post, a tethered version of 4.3 is already out, and I would presume soon an untethered jailbreak for 4.3 will be out. So... you can just search youtube for another instructional video on how to do it for the newer version, though it'll probably be very similar.

And just to end off with some helpful notes:
* Backup your iPhone with iTunes before you jailbreak your device. Just connect it via iTunes and click Backup.
* You're going to need to Add Sources before you can get many of the useful customization apps from Cydia. Search Youtube for recommendations for top sources to add and HOW to add these sources.


Have any questions? Feel free to leave a comment or ask on the tagboard and I'll answer it asap :D