BlackSocks

A Better Hackintosh: Fixing the Black Spots in Leopard

blacksocks — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:38:24 +0000

It’s been several days now since I updated my hackintosh from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 and I have found some minor problems.

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How To Fix a Broken Mail App in iPhone

blacksocks — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:57:58 +0000

So I just upgraded to iPhone 1.1.4 using ZiPhone 2.5 and everything seems to be working as expected until I tried Mail. It just opens and closes! One solution that was confirmed to be working is to restore back to 1.1.4 through iTunes, let ZiPhone do its magic again, and in iTunes, instead of selecting to backup from your previous iPhone select New. That should only take 10 mins but it means re-syncing data and re-installing apps again. Luckily, I found an easy fix.

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iPhone 1.1.4 Upgrade with ZiPhone 2.5

blacksocks — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:12:17 +0000

Wow, I just upgraded my iPhone to 1.1.3 ten days ago and Apple has already released 1.1.4. If you followed my previous post, you know that I used Zibri’s fantastic iPhone software upgrade called ZiPhone. The good news is that Zibri, in just a few days, has come up with an upgrade himself to his ZiPhone to Jailbreak, Activate and Unlock 1.1.4. No doubt, as I have used ZiPhone to upgrade to 1.1.3 before, the new ZiPhone 2.5 will definitely work again for me. If it is your first time to use it, the odds that it will work also for your iPhone regardless of version, out-of-the-box or previously jailbroken and unlocked, is extremely high. Caution is only advised to those who used some other jailbreaking methods like iUnlock (need to virginize first), and some reports of WiFi not working.

So what is new with 1.1.4?

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Upgrading to iPhone version 1.1.3 using Ziphone

blacksocks — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:35:30 +0000

Jailbreak : frees your iPhone so you can install and use 3rd Party applications.
Activate : enables you to use your iPhone sans phone and SMS.
Unlock : allows you to use any telecom carrier that you already have.

I bought an Apple iPhone from a friend as a birthday gift for myself last October 2007. Since the iPhone has not been launched in he Philippines even today, it won’t work with Smart, Globe or Sun unless tweaked, patch and modified. In the US, iPhone is locked to AT&T. Fortunately, hacking the iPhone has become a hobby and an obsession for some people, from opening the phone and tweaking the internals to software only solutions. At the time I bought mine, the only iPhone version that has been hacked is 1.0.2. Unfortunately, version 1.1.1 has just been released in the US at the time and that’s what my friend bought for me. I had to keep my shiny new iPhone in the box (although I look at it everyday) for one week before a 1.1.1 hack was discovered by the bad, er I mean, the good guys from the iPhone Dev Team. The good news however was that the iPhone Dev Team was able to discover a hack where you can downgrade a 1.1.1 to 1.0.2 and then do the Jailbreak, Activate and Unlock from there. So that’s what I did!

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Updating to Leopard 10.5.2 on a Hackintosh

blacksocks — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:29:58 +0000

So Apple released it’s first major update to Leopard 10.5.1 with 10.5.2. As I have mentioned in my previous post, I have my Hackintosh running on iATKOS v1.0r2 Leopard 10.5.1. Likewise, I mentioned that with EFI support, all you have to do is use Apple’s “Software Update” to keep your PC up-to-date just like legit Mac users, instead of waiting for new patches made available by kind and usually anonymous hackers on the Web. Well, that didn’t work for the 10.5.2 update. I guess Apple knows about this hacking going around that is getting easier and popular by the day. So stop that update until you read how to go about it below.

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Turn Your PC into a Mac…

blacksocks — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:40:50 +0000

I mean, Hackintosh!

Hackintosh – A Personal Computer that is running a patched Intel Mac OS X operating system; also called OSx86; or an ugly PC trying to look and behave like a Mac.

So I have a Hackintosh…one that I created almost a year ago. It runs an OSx86 version created by a guy who uses the name “Uphuck” in hacker forums. It is a hack of the Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.9. Is this legal? If it is, then we wouldn’t be calling it a “hackintosh”. According to Apple Inc’s licensing, you can only legally run OS X on a “Single Apple-labeled computer” (in short, a Mac). So it is best to buy a real Mac if you want to use OS X for your everyday tasks. The problem is, there are a lot of people stuck with ugly beige boxes running MS Windows either by choice or by force. It becomes an issue by choice when they can’t afford a Mac, or if their employers give them no other choice, then it is by force. Ever since Apple ported their OS to the Intel platform, hacker communities have been all abuzz in making it run on PCs. If only Apple Inc. will allow OS X to run on ugly computer boxes…

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The Piano

blacksocks — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:55:28 +0000

Our beautiful house in Cubao, where I grew up, was finally sold. It will be turned into a paper factory. As long as I do not return to #47 16th Avenue, the same house shall remain as is in my memory. That is how I want it to be.

My father who is now enjoying his retirement (he teaches college part time) in the hustle and bustle free Palawan islands gave me the old piano my late mother loved so much. They make beautiful music together. She takes care of it like a soldier takes care of his rifle. I remember how upset she was over my piano teacher when she made scratches on the keyboard cover as a result of tapping her pen on it while trying hard to grind the lesson piece into my hard head. Normally, one would take my dad’s offer enthusiastically, but unlike the other valuable furnitures that were gone in 60 seconds, there were no takers for the piano. So my dad had to give it to me.

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Mind Over Matter of Fact

blacksocks — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 06:49:46 +0000

It’s already January 2007 and I haven’t touched my Wacom since my last post back in October. Am I losing my new found passion faster than I learned painting in Photoshop? Hopefully not. The main reason is too much office work or what I would like to convince myself. Maybe, if I just plug-in my graphics tablet to my laptop, open Photoshop, hold my pen and start doodling something… I may even start my obra maestra! Ah, the power of the brain to dream of something big but the weakness of the body to take the first small step. It’s what drinking and partying all night can do to you. At least I enjoyed the company of old friends from high school.

Anyway, rather than painting something that would take sometime, I will just post something that should inspire everyone including myself. I wished somebody gave this speech when I was still in school. Bill Gates has been my hero since I got my Windows 3.0 in 1990 and he wasn’t even the world’s richest man then.

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it
opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

If you agree, pass it on.
If you can read this – Thank a teacher!
If you are reading it in English -Thank a US soldier!!

An Eye For You

blacksocks — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 16:44:35 +0000

Congratulations to all the winners of the Wacom contest. Although I didn’t get a new Wacom tablet, I feel like a winner myself as I have learned a lot just from joining my first graphic competition.

Today I spent my afternoon painting a human eye. This is my first step towards learning how to draw and paint the human form in general and the human face in particular. This time no more masked figures. The Wacom excersice was a great step to learning basic digital painting using Adobe Photoshop. I learned a lot about blending using a standard brush and the different blend modes, using color schemes, the importance of using multiple layers, saving my work a lot and most of all having the patience to finish my work even though everything looks bad at the beginning.

I thought painting an eye will be “duck soup” compared to my Fiesta Fever piece. Again, patience is a virtue in painting whether traditional or digital. But as long as you love what you’re doing and being passionate about it, then in the end it is indeed duck soup (learned that expression from my boss)!

Thanks to Enalya, one of my favorite CG artists for the great tutorial.

Airbrushing

blacksocks — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 10:21:48 +0000

Despite finally completing my Fiesta Fever artwork after working on it for a month, I feel that I still have plenty to learn. Now, without any competition to push myself beyond my comfort zone, I began to start taking it easy once again. I was contented on reading and looking at the artworks of other artists online hoping their skills will just rub on me. Of course that’s not the way how things work. Well, the good thing that happened after the storm was that I only got back my internet connection two days after I got back my electricity. No web means no browsing on CG and design sites. It was an opportunity to open Photoshop once again and listen to my Gnomon training videos.

This time I followed the tutorial of Scott Robertson on doing industrial designs particularly on rendering concept bikes. After using a standard hard round brush in Fiesta Fever, now I began using solely the airbrush. Using Scott’s example bike sketch, I began tracing it with the pen tool and rendered it using an airbrush. Although not as detailed as Scott’s example, I completed my work in 2 days, the same time I got my internet connection back.

Hope you like it!