Guide

1. Upgrade to firmware 4.0.1.

2. Sync with iTunes.

3. Open Safari and go to either jailbreakme.com or jailbreakme.modmyi.com (I had to use the latter because the former was having server problems.)

4. Slide the…um…slider.

5. Wait.

6. There is no 6th step.

As you can see, jailbreaking a 4.0.1 iPhone is ridiculously easy – so easy, in fact, that there is essentially no reason not to jailbreak the iPhone. I remember jailbreaking my iPod touch once using the command line (about 15 commands) and now even a complete noob can do this.

Happy jailbreaking.

P.S. I have restarted my Tumblr.

P.P.S. I have also redesigned my personal home page.

Meeting

I met Chaya, Tushal, Rikesh, Avish and Yusha at the Victoria Station and we took the (overcrowded) free shuttle to the Expo at Swami Vivekananda Convention Centre.

There, we met Selven, Jason and 1132nd (nom de plume).

Left to right: Jason, Tushal, Me, Rikesh, 1132nd.

The Expo

We used our free tickets to enter the exposition (we weren’t going to pay for that) and we got some empty sac bazaars (shopping bags) as gifts.. There was virtually nothing of interest inside the expo; so, if you aren’t going there with friends, it ain’t worth it. Beds, toilets and kitchen appliances were on sale. In the kitchen section (why the hell does a tech fair have a kitchen section? I wonder.), there were mandarines.

Effing mandarines at orange expo. What is this world coming to? :P

At the “Wi-Fi cafe”, I tried to use the internet but it was slower than James May‘s driving. I used my Emtel 3G connection instead. I tried out a HTC Magic with Google’s Android OS and realised that I’m much better off with my iPhone 3GS. ;)

The Orange Postman

Best. Costume. Ever.

The Macs

We loaded this page on most of the Macs at the fair.

The Notice Board

Since Orange Mauritius is a fail and the expo was another fail in itself, I decided to write “#orangemauritiusfail” (the hashtag we use on Twitter when we complain about Orange) on the notice board.

Yep.

After the Expo

No one had found something worth buying and we went to the cafeteria. There, I had the opportunity to film Orange’s latest ad (featuring Tushal):

We went out of the centre and it was raining heavily; Rikesh finally found a use for the bags they had given us.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

We took the bus to Shoprite to get some KFC. I forgot to take a picture there mainly because I was busy doing some more important things – like eating. Then, we parted ways and returned to our homes.

I really enjoyed myself, but I’m afraid that doesn’t make the expo less horrible. ;)

Rikesh’s post about the Expo here.

Tushal’s post here.

What about you people, did you go there?

Last Tuesday, I got my new iPhone 3GS, and, to make a long story short, it’s awesome (Seriously, I could go on for hours about this. :P). It’s a gift from my parents because of my results (I got aggregate 8 at the Cambridge O-Level exams) and I got it factory-unlocked from Hong Kong.

Since using an iPhone only to make calls and send messages is like using a Ferrari only to drive to the supermarket, I decided to activate 3G internet connectivity.

From the Emtel Website

I went to Emtel to activate it. The following is a transcript of what happened:

[After waiting in line for about 15 minutes, I was called by the customer service representative]

Me: Hi
Emtel employee: Hi, how may I help you?
Me: I need to activate 3G for my SIM card.
Emtel  employee: Oh, what phone are you using?
Me: An iPhone 3GS
Employee: *Types something into computer*
Hmmm, sir, I’m sorry but the iPhone 3GS doesn’t support 3G.
Me: Yeah, right? And why would they call in the “3GS” if it didn’t support 3G?
Employee: I don’t know how to activate it for your phone.
Me: You know, there’s a big difference between you not knowing how to activate it and my mobile not supporting it.
Employee: *dumb face* But the iPhone doesn’t have a WAP browser!
Me: WAP?! WAP is 2002 technology, for God’s sake. As far as I know, we are in 2010 and a modern phone doesn’t even need that.
Employee: You want me to activate Video Call and MMS?
Me: Hmmm…yeah.
*hands iPhone to employee*
Employee: *rotates iPhone in all directions*
Sir, where’s the front camera?
Me: There’s NO front camera.
Employee: Let me activate MMS then.
*types into computer*
Sorry, MMS is not supported on this phone.
Me: It does support MMS. Maybe you don’t know how to activate *that* too…
Employee: Yes, I don’t know.
Me: Are the settings for Internet connectivity the same as my previous phone (A Nokia 6300)?
Employee: I don’t know…maybe…
Me: *Takes iPhone from employee*
*Types settings into phone*
*Opens google.com…it loads*
*Shows iPhone to Employee*
Employee: Hey, it works!!!
Me: Normally, I should be the one telling you this.
*sarcastic tone* Well, I have to go now, thanks for your invaluable help; I would never have been able to do this without you.
Employee: No problem Sir.

[I walked away, unable to decide whether I should laugh or cry]

In retrospect, I realised that I had done nothing but waste 30 minutes of my life going to Emtel. However, my previous experience with their customer support was excellent, so this one could be an isolated case. I’m also fairly satisfied with their service.

Here are the web settings for the iPhone/iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS; ridiculously simple:

(In Settings>General>Network>Cellular Data Network)

How about you readers, have you ever a had bad experience from Emtel or any other company’s customer support?

In October and November, I had my Form 5 exams; which are considered to be important by quite a lot of people. They were a hectic couple of months and I preferred to do more productive things (like downloading Illegal stuff and designing things that will stay in my ‘Art’ folder, never to be opened again.).

In December, with my exams now in the rear-view mirror, I went on a trip with my parents to the Middle East.

I went to Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Dubai. Find the pictures on Facebook if you’re in my friend list.

Without further ado, let’s come to the subject of my last blog post of 2009. I had absolutely no idea what to blog about and I decided to go with the flow for once. Here are my favorite things from 2K9:

Best Software

I’m not a big fan of Micro$oft but this time I’ll be objective and give credit where it’s due. My favorite software of 2009 is Microsoft Windows 7. The install was amazingly fast (9 minutes) and the system runs like a breeze (this is simply astonishing, it’s Windows after all. Microsoft finally managed to release a product that’s not behind the times. If Microsoft continues at this pace, it might actually surpass Apple in terms of awesomeness by 3009.

Best Gadget

This year, my favorite fruit-named company released the 3rd generation of the best phone ever: The iPhone 3GS.

I hope Apple will release that tablet we’ve all been waiting for in 2010 and also that Steve Jobs realizes how fanatical I am about him and gives me one for free. Amen.

Best Movie

My favorite film of 2009 is Public Enemies.  All the actors fit their role perfectly in that film and Johnny Depp is just awesome. That was a hard choice because I watched so many films this year, particularly on the plane. Honorable mentions: District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Transformers 2.

Best Song

Linkin Park’s New Divide. Seriously, this one didn’t even have serious competitors. Transformers 2 wasn’t well-regarded by the critics, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the film. One of the reasons is definitely the awesome all-rock soundtrack. :)

Honorable mentions: Owl City’s Fireflies, Bon Jovi’s We Weren’t Born to Follow, Muse’s Uprising and Green Day’s 21 Guns.

Best Album

I found Green Day’s “21st Century Breakdown“ very good. Honorable mentions:  Dead bu Sunrise – Out of Ashes, Owl City – Ocean Eyes, Bon Jovi – The Circle, Bruce Springsteen – Working on a Dream.

Best Blog

Tremendous News! is my favorite blog of 2009. I’ve watched it grow from an amateur rant-blog to an awesome blog which is retweeted by the Twitter Elite. Good luck, Dee Tremendous, may you never leave your parents’ basement so we can continue to read your tremendous posts. ;)

With this one finished, here are some other things I’ve decided to include in this post.

Stats

I’m astounded that 14,543 persons have visited my blog this year. Not bad for a blog with 1 new post per month. ;)

The post with most views -and most comments- is unsurprisingly my article on the awful Mauritius logo. It has even been mentioned in Le Mauricien newspaper.

New Year’s Resolution

My new years resolution for 2010 is 1440×900, here’s the proof:

That’s all for today. I wont say Happy New Year because you should be happy every single day of the year. ;)

According to Wikipedia:

Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet (BHI).

In my case, it’s not only a ‘web hosting service’ because it introduced me to several things without the knowledge of which I wouldn’t be what I am today. Basically, it introduced me to the Internet. Yes, the Internet, the World Wide Web, the Information Superhighway (:P), however-you-want-to-call-it…

However, I won’t take the fact that it’s closing as a shot through the heart or anything like that; it’s completely useless in the Web 2.0 period and should have been improved or closed a long time ago. There are several services which are a million times better that it. For example Weebly or Moonfruit.

[Please not that I'm talking about the Mauritian situation in this article, the rest of the world might have been very different. I wasn't really into technology at that time and can't make conclusions about that. Please not that the internet has come to Mauritius relatively later than most countries, the 90's situation of the rest of the world is like the early 00's here.]

It started in 2005, when 64k dial-up was considered ‘damn cool’, people looked at you quizzically when you talked about something called ‘Google’, I actually used Yahoo! Mail for something other that receiving spam and everybody’s home page was Yahoo! (a.k.a. the Times Square of the Internet).

Bottom line: Yahoo! was in some ways what Google is today.

Back then, I was Saajid Vawda, a 12-year-old to whom ‘Social Networks’, ‘blogs’ and other geeky internet terms were unknown, not ‘sjdvda’, 16-year-old geek blogger addicted to the internet.  I didn’t even have a Hotmail address and hadn’t joined hi5.

I wanted to create a web page, and as I was some kind of Yahoo! fanboy, I chose GeoCities even though there were some better free web page publishing services (notably freewebs, now known as webs). It offered 15 mb web space, a little bandwidth, a free page builder and some other goodies. Not much for today’s standards, but at that time, when people here still used floppy disks, it wasn’t bad.

The following are among the many things I got from this once-great web service:

The origin of sjdvda

Most people use a nickname instead of their real name on the internet; here’s mine’s story:

I wanted to sign up for Yahoo! to create a web page and the aliases ‘saajid’, ‘vawda’, ‘svawda’ ‘saajidv’ and ‘saajidvawda’ were not available. I could have added a number after my name, but I hate numbers. I could also have used my full name ‘muhammadsaajidvawda’ but that was just ridiculous. Seriously, what kind of URL is ‘geocities.com/muhammadsaajidvawda‘? lol.

I was in a real fix and couldn’t think about something else, so I checked out the suggestions and among them was ‘sjdvda’. I chose it because it was short and really unique, albeit rather hard to remember.

That’s the origin of sjdvda. :)

HTML

Although GeoCities used a WYSIWYG editor called PageBuilder™, you could edit the HTML source of the page, and that’s how I knew about HTML. Before that, I dismissed it as one of those ‘complicated computer languages’ but after reading some tutorials, I found it rather easy to understand. I didn’t really start to write HTML until 2007, but GeoCities introduced me to this fantastic language who’s almost  as cool as English and way cooler than French. :P

Blogging and RSS Feeds

When I built my page, there was an option to add a Yahoo! 360 blog, so I added it. I didn’t even know what a blog was, some Googling Yahooing was needed and after reading some blog posts about blogging (:D), I grasped the concept. I sent an email to some relatives asking them to visit my site and tell me what they thought about it. Imagine the smile on my face when I received some positive and encouraging comments in the ‘guestbook’. Unfortunately, no one was visiting the blog and I gave up after 3 posts. :D I also learned about RSS Feeds in the process.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I can’ insert some screenshots of the website because I deleted all the pages last year when I created my first blog.

I say “Goodbye GeoCities, I’ll remember you like people remember their first car or their first love. I’ll remember you, but I don’t need you anymore. I won’t miss you…” ;-) (I’m good at dramatic conclusions. :P)

So, what are the services that have influenced you people?

P.S. I wrote this article some months ago and was waiting for today to publish it. Right now, this would’ve been pretty much impossible as I’m in the middle of exams. :(

Although I appreciate the effort my beloved government (that’s a tongue-in-cheek statement, of course)  is doing, I can’t help but feel that this expensive campaign is going to fail. Call me pessimistic, but I do have some valid points; here are 5 reasons why it sucks (in no particular order):

1. It’s too complicated

When I first saw it, I was like: “What the heck is this, an advertisement for the carnival of Rio de Janeiro? What does it symbolize? OK, the M is some kind of Mountain…oh wait…it’s Pieter Both!! I’m *so* smart.”

Seriously, this logo doesn’t mean a thing for people who have never been to Mauritius. The Yellow T is what? A mermaid trying to embrace people? Someone dancing the Séga? We may never know. The only thing vaguely symbolising Mauritius is the blue line under “ius” which seems to be the sea. Moreover, people who have never heard of the island will be wondering what “Mauvitius” is because the letters are so badly syled. :P

2. Pieter Both

What’s better?

This:

…or this:

Do you see my point? For those who don’t know, the first picture is the Pieter Both mountain, the second is the Mauritian sea. Would you know that they are barely 20 kilometres from each other?

First of all, who was Pieter Both?

This guy:

No, that’s not William Shakespeare’s brother. Pieter Both was the first Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. He was given 4 ships to come to Mauritius and drowned before even setting foot on the Island in the year 1614. The Dutchmen, who were the owners  of the Island at that time, were probably feeling bored and decided to name a mountain (the one above) after the guy. More on Wikipedia.

Basing your tourism campaign on a mountain named after a rich Dutch dude nobody knows a lot about who died before even visiting the island 4 centuries ago ? How clever.

Come on, Mauritius has always been the Island of the 3 S’s: Sea, Sun and Sand. Why couldn’t they base the campaign on that? If someone wants to visit Mauritius, he’ll probably do it because of the Sea and the amazing beaches. Not because of a mountain nobody really cares about.

3. Not obeying the basic principles of logo design.

As David Airey, a prominent logo designer, says in a very good article:

Five elements that can be seen in every iconic logo:

1. It’s describable
2. It’s memorable
3. It’s effective without colour
4. It’s scalable i.e. works when just an inch in size
5. It’s appropriate

The logo obeys none of these rules, it’s:

1. Not describable.
2. Definitely not memorable.
3. Even the little symbolism in it is lost when it’s used without colour:



4. Not scalable:



5. Not appropriate, as I said in the previous point.

…which brings us to the next point:

4. Unable to challenge competitors even with the high price.

It’s a big, bad world and everybody wants to make money. People are willing to dedicate their time and money to advertise their products, however, I don’t think the people at the Tourism Authority are among those. From the same article I mentioned above, David Airey says: “Lastly, the design must be appropriate for the business it identifies. This is accomplished through in-depth research into the industry involved, and helps to differentiate from closely associated competitors.”

Look at some of the potential competitors’ logos:

From an advertising viewpoint, we stand no chance against these great campaigns. Absolutely no chance.

How much did we pay for that crap? Rs. 31 Millions.

5. Using two different languages.

As the slogan is: Mauritius – c’est un plasir.

Notice something wrong? In my opinion, using two languages is wrong. It should be “Mauritius – It’s a pleasure” or “Ile Maurice – C’est un plaisir”. The people who are in charge are either too stupid to realise the world isn’t trilingual or don’t really give a damn about the campaign. The best choice would be “Mauritius – It’s a pleasure” since the main language of the planet is English. Another interesting option would be to use two different logos for English-speaking and French-speaking countries.

Conclusion

I honestly think that the Government could have done much better. I know Mauritius is not a nation of Picassos and Michelangelos, but there are many excellent graphic designers here. They should have used national talent instead of hiring an English company to do the work. All in all, I — as a geek— would describe the logo and branding as an Epic Fail (i.e. It’s just awful).

Here’s how I would have designed the logo:

I think it’s not that good because I’m not (yet?) a professional designer and I designed it in half an hour. I don’t know if you people will like it or not.

So, what do you people think about the new advertising campaign? Love it or hate it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. :)

Yesterday, I finally finished reading Dan Brown’s much-awaited new book, “The Lost Symbol“.

For the third time.

Yes, I read a 509-page-book thrice in less than a week. ;-)

As some of you might know, I’m a real book aficionado and Dan Brown is one of my favourite authors. I have all his books in my personal collection and I’ve read all of them more than 5 times.

I picked it up last Wednesday (I’m thankful I pre-ordered it as almost no copies were left on the bookshelves) and I naturally tweeted about it. I started reading it as soon as I got home and only stopped for food and prayers. =]

I finished it at 2 A.M.(~5 hours of reading) and the only thing I could say was “Wow”. It really is an amazing book and a worthy sequel to the international bestseller “The Da Vinci Code”.

I’m not going to spoil the fun for anyone by revealing the plot but I’m mentioning some interesting aspects of the book:

• It’s a fascinating story which will leave every reader enlightened about many subjects. In my humble opinion, the only way not to learn something from the book is to be an expert on Freemasonry. :P However, I think that people should realise that, although it contains many facts, it’s still a work of fiction. As in all Dan Brown’s books, the line between fact and fiction is very thin and the trick to really understanding the book’s message  is being able to discern between them.

• It has many references to internet culture: A blog, Wikipedia, Google…even Twitter!! :D

• It has many acts of intense violence that may leave people shocked…such as the crushing of an iPhone!! :P

• I loved the subtle and sincere reference to Digital Fortress, one of Dan Brown’s books. It’s clearly intended for the fans who will probably be the only people to see it.

• The plot is simply mystifying. Pure genius.

Overall, I think it’s an impressive book which lives up to the hype and is well worth the wait. It’s equal, if not better, than even The Da Vinci Code, and that‘s a book that’s extremely difficult to live up to. I’ll definitely read it again. ;)

You have no chance to survive make your time. Ha Ha Ha…

The Mauritian government has recently announced(WARNING: French language! :P) that all schools will be closed starting from today (21 August) to the 30th of August. The reason is because of the H1N1 flu virus, commonly called Swine Flu, Mexican Flu or Stig Flu. ;-)

As a student and as a practicing Muslim, I’m happy that there won’t be school during the following week. I’ll have some time to relax (and possibly revise) before the Form 5 exams in some months and the sacred month of Ramadan (in which us Muslims observe the fast) probably starts on Saturday.

Too much, too late?

As a human being with a (mostly) functional brain, I’m not so happy. I can’t help but feel the Mauritian government has either taken this decision too late or simply shouldn’t have taken it.

I could write a whole article about why I think it’s a bad decision, but I won’t. It’s a highly controversial subject and there has already been much discussion about it on other Mauritian blogs. I generally agree with Bruno on this topic.

Yes, precautions must definitely be taken but the Mauritian people are just being pessimistic and paranoid about this. Ok,  it’s an epidemic and people are dying. Much more people also die from several other diseases everyday, right? That’s my point. No need to be paranoid.

P.s. For those who didn’t understand the picture or the caption, there’s always Wikipedia.

Your views on topic the are welcome. However, please take into consideration that my mind is already made about the subject.

It has a very ‘Google Chrome’-y look that I love. I also love the full Windows aero glass transparency.

You have to take into consideration that these are only mockups, the finished product could be exactly like this, but  could also be a far-cry from this. Personally, I’d love to see FF 4.0 to be like the mockups.

Tabs

There are two possibilities: Tabs-on-top or Tabs-on-bottom:

Tabs-on-bottom

Tabs-on-top

Which looks better? Of course the one with tabs on top.

I prefer the tabs on top because they save a considerable amount of screen real estate. My point is that we are in 2009, when the attention is on the content, not the browser. We are not in 2002 when everybody added a gazillion toolbars to Internet Explorer 6 and pretended to use them. :P

Actually, I am currently using Firefox with tabs on top thanks to the Chromifox Extreme theme.

From the Mozilla Wiki:

Positives

• Save Vertical Space
• Efficiency/Remove Visual Complexity – Right now the tabs have to be connected to something. So we are adding an extra visual element for them to connect to.
• Shorter Mouse Distance to Page Controls

Negatives

• Breaks Consistency/Familiarity – Moving things confuses existing users.
• Title is MIA – With the space removed from the titlebar you only get the truncated version in the tab.
• Longer Mouse Distance to Tabs – Takes longer to mouse to a tab.
• Lost Space – Sandwiched in between the application icon and the window widgets you lose some space.

This about sums it up, what more can I add? :)

Address Bar Tweaks

I’m not sure I would like a combined Stop/Go/Refresh button. Stop and Refresh combined is good but I’ve grown used to the Go button being separate. However, the “Progress ‘Line’” is totally awesome. Similar (well, kind of similar) functionality can be obtained by installing the Fission add on.

That’s it for today. So, what do you people think about it?

Seriously.

I’ve decided to make some changes to my blog to reflect my decision to put some kind of effort in this thing.

1. The Theme

I’ve read that the best way to change a blog is to change its theme, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that because my theme (THiCK) is totally awesome. I chose to change the colors instead. My theme already has 4 or 5 different colors but I don’t like most of them, so, I opened Fireworks and made some changes, applied some filters to the default images until I found them to my taste. I changed them from grey to black because, well, blue is my favorite color. :)

Next, I fired up Notepad++ and made some changes to the CSS so that some headings are now blue. Instead of choosing a more traditional blue, I selected something(#4370B4) close to the “Facebook blue”.

The Result:

Before:

Old Theme

Now:

"New" Theme

It’s neither a subtle change nor a complete redesign, but I like it. It may not look as ‘professional’ as before, but my blog never was, is not and never will be professional. Tell me what you think of it.

2. The Commenting System

Previously, I had been using the IntenseDebate commenting system but I’ve switched to Disqus now. The main reason for the switch is that Disqus has introduced several features over some months but IntenseDebate has not improved considerably.

While I agree that IntenseDebate has better WordPress integration (obviously because it’s owned by Automattic, the company which is also behind WordPress), Disqus is better as a package. It offers Social Media Reactions, Twitter, OpenID, Facebook connect and looks better with the WPTouch iPod/iPhone theme.

3. The Widgets

I’ve moved some widgets and removed some. The MyBlogLog widget now only appears on the front page, it has been replaced by the Google Friend Connect widget.

4. Blogroll

Updated it.

5. Footer

Warning: DO NOT READ IT!!(and don’t say I didn’t warn you after you finish reading it) :P

That’s it for today. That’s the first time I’ve written two blog posts in one day. I hope I can write a lot of posts during my 2-week holiday. :)