Atkins Meyer

*Update April 22nd, 2008 11:21am CST - I added a small fix to correct the estimated time remaining before you have enough of each resources to build a new field. Please re-install the script to receive the update.

I’ll admit it, I’m a total Travian addict. It’s just so fun and I’ve built so many little towns and lived through so many epic battles that I just can’t let it go. Fortunately, the server which I play on is nearing its end and the game will be reset within a month or so.

Anyhow, I’m a power gamer and I like using the best tools around. I’ve been using a script called Travian Beyond for about 8 months now and I really enjoy it. It is a script which overlays additional information, links and game play options on top of the normal Travian page. This is done using Firefox and a Firefox add-on called Greasemonkey.

Unfortunately, earlier this week the Travian developers decided to try limit Travian Beyond’s ability to add functionality to Travian. Long story short, I’ve fixed the majority of the problems that their update introduced and you can install the new version of Travian Beyond at the bottom of this blog post.

Thanks to Victor Garcia (aka Croc) for writing the original Travian Beyond and to Szabka on userscripts.org for making some further modifications. Finally, check out the Travian Beyond 3 - all language thread over at userscripts.org for further updates.

Install Travian 3 Beyond

When I moved to Chicago in the summer of 2007, I thought that living near a beach would be a summer time bonus. It turns out that Lake Michigan freezes over in the chilly month of February. Living on the banks of Lake Michigan is kind of like living on the ocean. The body of water is so large that you can not see across it even on the clearest of days. If the weather is just right, you can see the smoke stacks of Gary, Indiana and Michigan City. Since the lake is so massive and sea like, I wasn’t expecting much ice to form on it during the winter months. The ice formed in amazing patterns and melted and refroze in a rapid manner. Ice near the beach would reach 20-30 feet in to the lake and 5-10 feet above the beach, then in a matter of 24 hours, it would be gone and the lake would instead be frozen out towards the horizon.

I started taking pictures in January and tried to take them as often as possible. I took the photos using my iPhone camera, which is great because it’s quick and not so great when there is a lot of reflected light. When the sun was hitting the ice on the lake, the reflection caused photos to appear almost as if they were taken at night. While interesting, these photos are not ideal for the photo documentary. Anyhow, on to the goods.

Here are some of the highlights. The complete set is available in high resolution on my flickr account.

** My method is now old news. Jailbreaking, activating and unlocking a 1.1.3 iPhone and iPod Touch can now be done quickly and easily using ZiPhone. Happy Hacking!

Since Nate True released the iPhone jailbreak for firmware 1.1.3 this week on his blog there have been a lot of people having a lot of problems getting everything working. There are a handful of tutorial available now but I had to piece together steps from many different sources before finally getting a fully functional 1.1.3 jailbroken.

I have an OTB (out of the box) 1.0.0 phone and yes, I paid the apple nerd tax. I have a contract with AT&T. This tutorial is only for people using an iPhone OTB version before 1.1.2 and are legitimately activated through AT&T. That being said, this method will produce a fully functional and jailbroken (not unlocked) 1.1.3 install. Some of the problems that people have with poor 1.1.3 upgrades are broken ring tones, broken location finder, missing edge icon, broken iTunes preview, broken youTube, input characters vanishing and settings not being saved. Most of these problems seem to come from the 1.1.3 soft upgrade using the 1.1.3 iPhone software and older, 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 iPhone firmware. The method below will result in a jailbroken 1.1.3 iPhone using 1.1.3 software and 1.1.3 firmware.

First of all you going to need to download the following things:
iBrickr Classic - That’s right, do NOT use Nate’s new 1.1.3 iBrickr
iPhone firmware 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 - Available from iphone.unlock.no
Touchfree 1.1.2 Jailbreak - Available from Conceited Software
iTunes 7.5 -This is important so uninstall a newer version if you need to.
a virgin 1.1.3 lockdownd file

Long story short this is what you need to do:
1. upgrade your iPhone to the real 1.1.3, which updates the software and firmware.
2. downgrade to 1.1.1 which downgrades the software to 1.1.1 but leaves 1.1.3 firmware
3. jailbreak 1.1.1 using the jailbreakme.com activation method
4. update the installer, community sources and install the BSD subsystem and OkToPrep
5. use iTunes to update to 1.1.2
6. use the 1.1.2 jailbreak
7. install the 1.1.3 Jailbreak DevTeam package
8. reactivate the phone through iTunes using a virgin lockdownd file

To start I reccomend that you backup you data so you can restore your 3rd party app settings later. Use winscp with opensshd on the iPhone to save the contents of your user folder to someplace safe.

Now, this will blow your mind. Use iTunes to update to the real, legit, non-jailbroken 1.1.3 firmware. This will update the software and more importantly the firmware on your iPhone. Once that is complete your ready for hack-tastic fun. Now you need to downgrade to the 1.1.1 firmware using recovery mode.

To enter recovery mode, connect the phone to the computer and press and hold the Power button (on top) and the Home button (on bottom front) simultaneously. After about 15 seconds phone will appear to turn off, release the Power button but keep holding the Home button. After about 15 seconds the computer and iTunes will detect the phone in recovery mode, and you can perform a restore. IMPORTANT: If you just click the restore button, it will restore it with the latest firmware. It’s much safer to manually select firmware instead. If you want to manually select a different firmware you can hold down SHIFT key (Windows) or Option/ALT-key (Mac) when clicking the Restore button, and it will let you choose firmware file. Choose the 1.1.1 firmware you downloaded earlier.

iTunes will now install the 1.1.1 software and error out after trying to install the 1.1.1 firmware giving you a 1050 error. This is fine. You now need to fire up the old iBrickr and it will find your phone in restore mode. Tell iBrickr to boot the phone and hope for a red screen. If you get a green screen try using iBrickr’s option to downgrade to 1.0.2, which will display a white screen and then restore the 1.1.1 firmware. Once the phone has booted you will have invalid sim errors and an unactivated phone.

You now need to do the old school 1.1.1 jailbreak using jailbreakme.com. An excellent tutorial can be found at iphone.unlock.no. Once you’ve jailbroken 1.1.1 you need to fire it up, update the installer and community sources, install the BSD subsystem (to be used later) and the OkToPrep package. Once this is all installed you clear to update (not restore) to firmware 1.1.2. This can easily be done by shift-clicking the update button in iTunes. 1.1.2 will do the same thing that 1.1.1 did. It will update the software but leave the 1.1.3 firmware in place and error out with a 1050 error. This is fine. You need to use iBrickr again to boot the phone. Like the first time you want a red screen followed by a reboot and sim errors. Now it is time to run the 1.1.2 jailbreak. After it completes, you will have an jailbroken and activated 1.1.2 phone with sim errors.

Now install the 1.1.3 Jailbreak DevTeam package and be sure to follow all the instructions. Turn on wireless, dock the phone, disable autolock and make sure you have installer updated and the BSD subsystem installed. This will run for about 20-30 mins and reboot the phone when it is done. The phone will boot up a jailbroken 1.1.3 firmware without sim errors but you will not be connecting to the at&t network.

The final step is to install openssh and use winscp to connect to your phone so we can replace the hacked lockdownd file with our virgin one. Put it in /usr/libexec, use term-vt100 or ssh to do “chmod 0555 /usr/libexec/lockdownd” then reboot your phone. Connect it to iTunes and it will activate it for you.

You should now have the fully functional jailbroken 1.1.3 software and firmware on your phone. I’ve tested it pretty extensivly and all the 1.1.3 features work perfectly. I no longer have trouble with ring tones, itunes previews, map location fuctionality and other oddities that I had using Nate True’s 1.1.3 iBrickr alone.

Lets hope someone comes out with an easier and cleaner way to jailbreak 1.1.3 but until then this method should work a large number of people. Good luck!

After a little over a week I was able to repair my computer, restore my data and get everything back up in working condition. I should have more time to work on naivarT and other nerdly projects.

Well, it is a say day for me. My main computer died. I haven’t quite figured out exactly what’s wrong yet but it appears to be the motherboard or the power supply. I’ll get things fixed up and get back on the blog train.

Update: 1-16-2008

Time to buy a new motherboard. I ordered one and hopefully it arrives before the weekend.

I’ve been very happy using the Google Desktop software lately and have done a little bit of widget programming. Google Desktop adds, among other things, a Vista style sidebar to your desktop which can be filled with a ton of great gadgets. The selection of gadgets that are available in Google Desktop seem to be far and away better than what I’ve seen created for the Vista sidebar and it has officially won me over.

That being said, I had not found a weather gadget that I liked. There are many weather gadgets that show the current temperature and all the standard weather information; however, I really wanted something that gave me quick access to my favorite weather maps. So, I modified the U.S. Weather Map gadget, which is by Vishnu.S, and came up with my own style.

This one is for the weather enthusiast and includes U.S. weather, radar, satellite, water vapor, precipitation, current temperatures and forecasts on a national and local (Chicago) level. The national maps should work great for all the U.S. users out there and the local maps can be changed pretty easily by anyone with a little XML knowledge. If you have any interest in the gadget, please click below and check out the page I’ve made for it.

Take me there!

Hello everyone,

Thanks to wordpress and webhosting here at skinnyCorp, I’m able to publish my own personal website and blog.