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So, I just dowloaded the latest release (today) of iPhone Dev Team's pwnage tool for mac. It was released a few hours ago. My iTunes acted up even before tryig to pwn the phone, so I had to reinstall it and do a full restore of the phone. Then I went throught the tool and my phone is unlocked 2.0 now (1st gen. iPhone). I am getting my stuff back via sync on iTunes and will reinstall apps as soon as that is done. You can get the tool via Pirate Bay torrents. I am seeding now help a bit. Get the one with the file called PwnageTool_2.0.zip, 19.7 MB. GL, and thanks iPhone dev team! Edit: Mail problems with iPhone 2.0 firmware (pwned): Mail was acting funny on the phone after the update and sync. It stayed blank and then crashed when I opened it. I could see a log of a crash report that seemed to be related to corrupted preference files. I restored from the custom software and before letting iTunes sync I created a mail account on the phone. Then I synced. I even synced mail accounts. It is working wll now. There was some info about this in the Apple support forums.

Last night I messed up my iPhone. Playing around with SSH I tried to change the root password via passwd, disregarding something I'd read and was in the back of my mind. Nothing really happened, but this morning Springoard just kep restarting itself and the phone was pretty much useless. I decided I would restore from a 1.1.4 image and jailbraik-unlock again if I had to.

First restore went fine (alt-click on restore, selected file, etc.). After it, the phone seemed to be unlocked but not activated. So weird. I tried to do a full restore by control-clicking and thought it all went well (since it didn't download anything). I didn't realize I already had the 1.2 (2.0) image in my iTunes folder and installed that without me realizing. Should have seen it coming since it didn't ask me to select a file.

I then tried to jailbrake-activate via iLiberty. It hung and I waited seeing code on the iPhone display. After a few hours (yeah, I was at work doing other stuff) I decided to force quit iLiberty... the phone still was just scrolling console text.

After several attempts at HomeButton+PowerButton I managed to put it in recovery mode and tried installing the 1.1.4 software again (not yet realizing I had the newest upgrade on). I got an Error 20. Weird error. Several times and restarts later I came home with an unactivated locked phone. But as usual, Google and good searching skills gave the answer... it took a while but worked. It involved downgrading iTunes to 7.5, pwning and neutering, but finally went well. I just finished syncing, now I need to install all the cool apps again.

Here's what helped:

• 2.0 to 1.1.4 Downgrade at Sleepers: http://sleepers.net/news/?page_id=216
• pwnage Tool instructions at hackint0sh: http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=36686

In case you hadn't unblocked your phone before and you come across the same stupidity as me, this might also help: How to erase any baseband: http://iphone-freak.com/en/page2/page2.html

In case you're wondering, 2.0 will soon be hacked. Check this out: http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

I've been reading about the nice images people have created with Wordle, and finally, after seeing some on Jay Cross' blog, I decided to head over and see what the fuzz was about. It's fun. Just type the URL of blog, RSS feed, a delicious user name or some text and it will create a nice cloud representing word frequency... or something. This is one of El Tiempo, at 12:35AM... could say something about what's news, huh? I did some others and here's one more to show... from my dad's blog, Reflexiones D. S. I.

Through a friends' blog about another friends' graduation (congratulations!) I got to J. K. Rowling's speech at Harvard Commencement. I'd read somewhere she was the speaker, but hadn't got to try and find it. I confess that in my own Commencement I didn't attend the "afternoon" speech some famous actor (forgive my memory) gave, the "afternoon exercises" I think they call that part of the ceremony.

Rowling gave a great speech that weaved her life story with ideas of failure, imagination and somehow compassion. I didn't quite get how she linked the latter two.

She started by remembering her own Commencement and life at age 21. Then came failure and it pushed her forward. She doesn't invite Harvard overachievers to fail, but invites them to think of themselves as a lot more than academic achievement or a CV. This definitively resonates with my doubts about going for a doctoral degree... I doubt it so much, I think I just admit I don't want it or really need it.

Then came imagination... somehow connected to compassion. I didn't know she had worked at Amnesty International. She talked about this stage of her life and invited the graduates, privileged citizens of "the world's last superpower" with an elite education to work for those who suffer war, torture and discrimination. No one (and Rowling herself said it) expects a commencement speech to change someone's life, and a few will probabaly just remember the mention of a "gay wizard" in 20 years, but the speech is wonderful example of her witty writing and the life lessons someone who has been in the "rock bottom".

You can watch it, read it or download it here: http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

I saw this video last year in the ICA in Boston. It's incredibly funny. That squirrel from "The Ice Age", Scrat is so much fun!

Thanks to the two friends in Boston for the invite about a year ago.

This blog comes and goes. To make it come a little, I'm gonna try and post shorter and less elaborately (yeah, right, it's been elaborate). So, today, updates on geeky-life:

I got myselft Leapard as a Christmass-birthday present and have been running it for about a month now. I like it. I don't feel preview is slower, as some have pointed out, and everything I use has worked well. No problems. I am glad Apple learned from Linux about multiple desktops.

I got an iPhone, thanks to bluei and the coming of my birthday. It's great. Activating was easy with the many online guides (www.hackthatphone.com, especially), but unlocking was a little bit of a problem. Bootloader 4.6 before the 1.1.3 update. I bought a StealthSim and it worked wonders. I haven't touched the baseband and it works perfectly. I also managed to configure voicemail, thanks to a comment in this forum. Easy: dial *5005*86*yourcompletecellphonenumber#. Now you can tap the Voicemail icon and actually call Voicemail (my carrier is Movistar, don't know if works with the others).

That's all for a geeky update...

I had some blood work and a CAT scan to show to Dr. Restrepo. The things he had ordered in our last appointment. As far as I (and some doctor friends) could tell, everything looked fine in both of them. But there was something that kept bugging me in the scan. The radiologist reported seeing some sort of calcification somewhere around the left tonsels. Everyone said it was totally unrelated to the Hogkins, but it still kept bugging me. Probably 'cause I'm not a doctor. Why the hell would that be there? Was there a chance it was some sort of tumor? The doctor friends had no answer to why and said they were quite sure it was no tumor. However, one of them suggested my oncologist would order a biopsy. I was sort of between calm, optimistic and... working on trying not to freak out: keeping busy with so many things in my head.

Me and my blue companion got there a little before four and had time to take it slowly, not like last time. We walked slowly out the parking garage, took our time to get to the elevators and I even stopped to go to the bathroom. The doctor was running late, as he usually is, so we played some Tetris on our computers while we waited. Finally, after losing about 20 games, the nurse called my name, we stood up, and walked to his office. He was as cheerful and smiley as he usually is.

We sat across from him at his desk and I started passing the tests one by one. Keeping the offending CAT scan last. He said the blood looked fine and I passed the radiologist's report saying I was worried there was something weird in the neck section. He read it carefully and took a while. It seemed like forever. We waited in silence for him to pronounce his judgment. His pen scribbled on my history, his eyes went over the short paragraph a few times and finally he said it was nothing to worry about. "It is very probably a consequence of the radiation therapy."

I retorted. "The left tonsel was outside the radiation field," and started rummaging in my folder, looking for the drawings they'd copied for me in Boston as part of my history. I found one, just a generic skull with a square and some measurements, and he said, "It's inside the field". I found a PET scan that showed the field somewhat better and he showed me how the area was inside the radiation field. I was still not satisfied... Still worried. "It was not there last year, in the April CT scan." Here, I have images from then.

I produced the slides from April 2006 and the ones from three weeks ago. He put them up on his light box and started looking carefully. Passing from one to the other. He thought the radiologist who interpreted last year's was less of an alarmist than this one. His words were close to that. He found the offending white spot on both slides and showed us. He was right: it was on both. He insisted it was nothing to worry about and the previous radiologist didn't mention it because it was insignificant, meaningless. He said he himself wouldn't have. I asked about a biopsy and he said he felt certain it wasn't necessary. I believed him. I chose to believe him. It is nothing to worry about. If it were, he would have ordered a biopsy.

Science works! We smiled. We thanked him. He left his office exchanging the usual Merry Christmasses and Happy New Years. Right outside his door we hugged. We laughed. I felt a huge burden had been taken off the back of my head. I know my blue companion did too. Now I have about 4 more months of calm, before I have to go back and get checked again.

So... all's well. Again. Smile if you wish, laugh as we did if you feel like it. Toast as we did. And feel free of that particular worry pulling down the back of your head... as I did.

Alias blue girl: thank you for caring, thank you for coming by, thank you for kicking my ass in Tetris, and thank you for really holding my hand.

The blue girl asked me to watch a documentary with her. She needed to watch it for the course she is designing. It didn't surprise me to be invited to watch a documentary: "I have a documentary..." is a common phrase in her discourse. However, last time it was "The World According to Sesame Street": it was optimistic and after watching it I was excited again by the ideas behind it. This time I expected something related to war or reconciliation, but I didn't expect what I got: Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard), by Alain Resnais.
It is a disturbing, incredibly sad documentary about concentration (death) camps in Nazi Germany, shot in 1955, relatively shorly after the end of the war and the discovery of those horrors by "the rest of the world".
I won't try to summarize or recreate with my poor writing ability what I saw or what I felt, but I will try to at least say something. I can't stay quiet. I shouldn't. I should say more. How can I stay quiet after hearing: "Je ne suis pas responsable, dit l'officiel", "Je ne suis pas responsable, dit le Kappo", ... "Alors, qui est responsable?"  ("I'm not responsible", said the officer. "I'm not responsible", said the Kappo. "So, who is responsible?" Asks us the narrator).
With tears in my eyes and barely able to speak, I just kept asking myself: how can we, humans, be capable of such cruelty, of such lack of consciousness for the suffering we cause? What brings people, people like me or you, to be so INhuman, so cruel. How can someone not shed tears after watching "Night and Fog"?
I know, this is so plainly shallow, so bluntly ignorant... but, that's what I am, and I don't feel like I can say any more. Anything else would simply be commonplace.

Vips sent me a link to this wonderful Muppet video. I guess it's from The Muppet Show. The muppets rule!

[youtube zkHM8xG6i8o]

Wow… and in the second viewing I realized they are actually *teaching* something to children! (Though the audience of The Muppet Show Tonight was probably not children): laughing shows you feel fine, happy; crying that you feel sad or glum.
The Muppets rule!

Why haven't I got a check-up in so long? Last time I seriously saw the doctor was over a year ago, and I know it should be done every six months. My insurance not being willing to pay for a PET CT is one reason, sure, but blood work and a CT Scan are reasonable options. The insurance business is not the real reason, though. I've never liked seeing doctors, getting checked. I don't mind needles, exams or being poked.... well not really. It's not comfortable, but it's not a big issue. I think the problem is more related to coping with fear. Ignorance is bliss. What if there were something wrong? Yeah, I know, the earlier they see it, the better. The better my chances. How it feels to talk about yourself in terms of chances of survival! I hadn't thought that way in about two years!

I'm feeling great, I've felt great quite a while after treatment ended... but there's always the what if... what if... In a way, it's like if seeing the doctor, seeing test results, hearing the diagnosis, makes things real. That's how it was in the beginning, before I saw the oncologist, when they were all just running every test they could think of to figure it out. Before the biopsy. Then it was real, when they had the chunk of lymph node and confirmed, even though we had been pretty sure before they did the surgery.

Is that some form of hope? Hope to cope with fear? Hope helps us (me) cope with fear? The weight of evidence, I guess, is what I fear(ed). Certainty comes with evidence. It's something emotional, not rational. Not seeing the doctor I mean. This time I have no reason to be afraid. I 'm great. I feel great. I can't feel any swelling in my lymph nodes... but what if... so many what ifs. I'm not brave. I'm not chicken-shit, but I'm not brave. Hope is a response to fear. Ignorance is a response to fear. Procrastination is a response to fear.

I promise I'll call tomorrow and make an appointment.