Eric Fickes » iphone

How I removed iOS4 from my iPhone 3G

Eric Fickes — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:11:57 +0000

In case you need help removing iOS4 from your iPhone 3G, here are the steps that I followed to downgrade my iPhone 3G to OS 3.1.3. Before we get going, I’m not taking credit for these instructions since this is a cleaned up version of this MacRumors forum post. Shout out to my buddy Tony Rodgers for sending me the original link.

Required Downloads

Before you get to the steps, be sure to download these two files first.

iPhone1,2_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw ( this is the OS 3.1.3 restore file )
blackra1n ( pick the installer that matches your OS )

Restore iPhone 3G to OS 3.1.3

Connect your iPhone, open iTunes, then click your iPhone to go to the Summary screen.
While holding down Alt ( OSX ) or Shift ( windows ), click the Restore button. If you held the correct key when clicking restore, you should get a File Open prompt.
Select iPhone1,2_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw that you downloaded earlier and let iTunes do it’s work.
After iTunes tries to verify the update, it should throw an error. This error is normal, so disregard even though iTunes has left your iPhone 3G in restore mode. Close iTunes.
With your iPhone still connected, open blackra1n and click “Make it rain”.
Manually power cycle your iPhone 3G if it doesn’t restart automatically for you.

That’s all there is to it. I know these steps work because it’s exactly what I did on my iPhone. The last part of the uninstall is pretty hairy since I wasn’t able to close iTunes without unplugging my phone. Also, when I ran blackra1n, my phone never rebooted on it’s own. The screen went black and I just unplugged the iPhone and forced a restart. When my iPhone booted up, I was back on 3.1.3.

I hope this helps somebody out because iOS4 on an iPhone 3G is horrible.

It’s official, The Flash Platform rocks!

Eric Fickes — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:00:26 +0000

In case you missed the June RMAUG meeting, my band The Compilers played our first hybrid concert and presentation show. Who are The Compilers? As far as I know, we’re Denver CO’s only Tech Funk Fusion trio that use internet technology along with analog instruments. By day we’re internet programmers, and by night we’re rockers. Right now majority of our software revolves around the Flash Platform, so it was only natural that we play at RMAUG.

Below is a recap of our setlist, and notes about the technology we presented on. When you see mentions of a Flash movie, these are not run as standalone SWF files. They are actually played by our Flex based Compilers Live Player. This application runs on our guitarist Jun Heider’s laptop, and the entire app is controlled over MIDI, via a Behringer FCB1010 Foot Controller, MMJ, and MERAPI.

Intro Song

For the first song of our set we decided to use a funny and informative Flash movie to give the audience a hint at what they’re about to see. For the June RMAUG show, this movie was updated to include spoken thank you slides for the companies that make our technology, and special shout outs to all the people who help us put on a great show.

Watch Flash Intro Movie

I want an iPhone

For our iPhone song we have another entertaining Flash movie that gets played during my iPhone solo part. Both this song, and the Flash movie where updated a bit for RMAUG. Unfortunately Soundbooth crashed on us when saving the recording of our live set, so I can’t play a clip for the remixed iPhone song, but you can watch the updated iPhone Flash movie.

Watch Flash iPhone Movie

All your base, are belong to us

This song is pretty straight forward when it comes to technology. We have a backing Flash movie that plays scenes from the ZeroWing video game, as well as the ‘All Your Base’ iPhone app for ZeroWing audio samples. I’m not including anything for this song besides, if you’ve seen us play before, this song now has a reggae feel to it. Prior to this show, ‘All Your Base’ was a hard driving all your punk are belong to us.

Sleep Tick

This is one of our original rock tunes which has been given a minor touch of technology. There is a middle part that I now break out into an iPhone solo, and we also have an AIR 2 powered audio visualizer. This particular app is one of the most exciting for me because I’ve been waiting for the day when we can use getMicrophone to pull raw data. Instead of explaining this one, you can watch it instead.

Tweet Jam v2

I’m happy to report our crown jewel of internet technology and audience interaction mashup “Tweet Jam”, has reached version 2. Both the song and the application have been rewritten especially for the RMAUG show. TweetJam is an instrumental jam song where the audience tweets at @thecompilers during our show, then our Roboreader application imports the @mentions and reads them back to the crowd via robot voice. Since our application reads the live Twitter feed, you don’t have to be at our shows to participate! A final point of interest for this application is that I run this on my laptop and control it using a wired XBOX 360 controller. There’s not much more to explain, but there is a video showing it in action.

James vs. Rick

Our final song of the night uses two applications. One is a game for the audience, and the other is a simple audio app. The game is an AIR application that connects to the ‘phone game company’ MegaPhone service and displays a specially assigned 888 telephone number, and a range of numbers to press in order to vote for James Brown ( 0 – 4 ) or Rick James ( 5 – 9 ). When a player calls in and presses a number from a specific range, our AIR app will play an appropriate audio sample while we’re playing. Our AIR app keeps track and displays the running vote count, then at the end of the song we fade and play a funny video from the winner.

The second application ‘Funky Funky’ is a simple AIR2 application that uses NativeProcess to say “Funky Funky”. While this doesn’t sound like anything noteworthy, it’s a perfect application for this particular jam because OSX’s SAY command has a voice called “Bells” that speaks in a melody that matches the song we’re playing. Of course this doesn’t make much sense not knowing what the song sounds like, so here’s the actual application for you download and try out. Note, this is an AIR2 app that uses NativeProcess, so this is an OSX only application.

Download “Funky Funky” for OSX

For your entertainment, here are two funny videos from James Brown and Rick James.

The Flash Platform Rocks!

So there you go, proof that the Flash Platform rocks! I haven’t thought of any rocking ending other than, go check out AIR2. The Flash Platform is no longer restricted to the browser. Let all the HTML heads keep the browser, I want to rock on stage with Flash.

Photos

We didn’t get a recording of the show, but we do have a photo album of the June RMAUG on Facebook.

The Compilers Next Show

If you missed The Compilers at RMAUG, we are playing at Ignite Denver 7 on July 27th. If you can’t make that show, be sure to at least tweet @thecompilers on July 27th to get yourself heard.

Be sure to check out The Compilers World for information from the future of the internet rock trenches.

Create an iPhone version of your RSS feed easy

Eric Fickes — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:04:37 +0000

Here’s a sweet utility site, Intersquash.com. It’s a super fast way to create an iPhone friendly view of your RSS feed.

Here’s the iPhone version of ericfickes.com on Intersquash.

Pretty sweet service.

Cell Phone Reunion

Eric Fickes — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:30 +0000

I want to thank College Humor for making the most hilariously accurate iPhone video ever. I can’t stop watching this, it’s just too funny. Here’s the original link in case there’s any embed issues – http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1899978

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Two Animoto slideshows

Eric Fickes — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:46:19 +0000

Testing the embed feature of Animoto. These two shows where made on my iPhone. If you’re unfamiliar with Animoto I scribbled a quick review over at my iPhone blog. If you have an iPhone and take lots of pictures, I suggest getting Animoto from the app store.

Denver Zoo blurry xmas lights

Wiretree December 2008

The phones have SQL, so does AIR

Eric Fickes — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:45:15 +0000

It’s pretty damn cool that the smartphones of today can run SQL databases.

Google’s Android has SQLite, which you can read about here.

Apple’s iPhone also has SQLite.

The SQLite library lets you embed a lightweight SQL database into your application without running a separate remote database server process. From your application, you can create local database files and manage the tables and records in those files. The library is designed for general purpose use but is still optimized to provide fast access to database records. The header file for accessing the SQLite library is located in /usr/include/sqlite3.h, where is the path to the target SDK in your Xcode installation directory. For more information about using SQLite, go to http://www.sqlite.org.

Microsoft even has a mobile version of their SQL Server. Of course they can’t seem to stick with a name for it. SQL Server Mobile, SQL Everywhere, SQL Server Compact Edition, and currently SQL Server Compact 3.5

I’m just getting over the excitement about Adobe’s AIR having SQLite, and now my phone can run it too. This makes for some interesting development choices. In my opinion, being able to have a database on your device is one of the final steps of making a device a true platform. Now it’s time to get dirty with some Sqlite coding.

By the way, I’d put this on my list of reasons why you should learn SQL.

You knew the iPhone was coming

Eric Fickes — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:48:26 +0000

Yeah, I got one. I can see what all the fuss is about. The insanity is starting to sink in and remap my brain. I will do my best not to spam twitter with talk of my new “phone”.

In the meantime…