Jailbreaking my Apple TV and installing XBMC

There is a lot of spam out there on jail breaking Apple TV and much of it is written poorly and if you are not careful or clear about what you are doing, you can potentially jail break, then update Apple TV and lose your jail break in the same process.

I am posting my approach here and hopefully it will help provide an accurate and articulate approach and avoid any mishaps when you come to trying it yourself.

My Apple TV shown below is the second generation unit, referred to as Apple TV 2, and was running 4.1.1 of Apple TV OS.



Firstly, expel some myths:

• There is an easier way to do all of this than this link suggests
• You don't need to run a specific version of iTunes, I just ran the latest version available.
  

Jail Breaking
There seems to be two options for jail breaking

• Tethered - where you need to connect your Apple TV to your PC/Mac just to boot it EVERYTIME - I could not work out why anyone would want to do this.
• Untethered - where you do not need to connect your Apple TV to your PC/Mac just to boot it. This seems like the only useful option to me, and this is what I did.
  

I used GreenPois0n (http://greenpois0n.com/) and it was pretty straight forward, just follow the prompts.

Note: If you are running Windows 7 as I am, I found it failed to Jailbreak the first time. I took a punt and ran it As Administrator and it worked after that. I based this punt on experience in the past with Blackra1n on the iphone, where that was necessary to operate properly.

Unplug your Apple TV device from it's power supply and also from your computer if you have it plugged in.

Launch GreenPois0n and take notice of the warning for when you have completed the jail break.



Ensure your Apple TV is powered off and disconnected completely from your PC then click Prepare to Jailbreak (DFU) to commence jail breaking.



Follow closely the on screen prompts to put your device into DFU mode. When it is successfully in DFU mode, the white light on the front of the Apple TV will flash fast and the Waiting for DFU button will change to Jail Break which you should then click to commence the jail breaking activity. You may need to repeat this process until you get your timing right and the button becomes enabled.



When the jail break is complete, select Quit and then wait for 1 minute before unplugging your device from your computer.



Take the Apple TV device and connect it to your TV and turn it on. You will see a new Tab in your Apple Tv Screen while the Apple Logo will be replaced by the Skull .



Select the tab and go to GreenPois0n > Inject Software > Cydia Payload as shown above.

Your device will install Cydia and then reboot and you will get a new menu item called NitoTV. Select NitoTV and in the submenu select Install Software. Find XBMC-ATV2 and hit install this package.

It will automatically download and install XBMC. After install Apple TV 2 will automatically reboot. If you are prompted to Update your Apple TV, do not, select cancel instead.

After the reboot, you should install a second package called UpdatesBeGone to block the updating of the Apple device. This update can be found here: NitoTV > Install Software > updatesBeGone. This update will also stop your Apple TV device from rebooting.

Your Apply TV will reboot and you will then see a XBMC menu with a menu item XBMC which you can execute to run XBMC.



Run XBMC and then commence setting up your new media centre.



I then added some video sources (e.g. Adding Media Sources in XBMC) and it worked straight away. I used to FTP files back and forth on my old XBOX running XBMC, but I found that this new deployment process worked seamlessly and with less hassle in the long run.

Unpopulated days, weeks, months drop down in SQL Server enterprise manager maintenance wizard + Error 8114 using the Management Wizard

Other might find this useful. Was hard to find a fix for this.

Even searching support.microsoft.com yielded nothing after I solved it.

Issue 1: Also you will get an 8114 error when editing the package in the wizard.

Issue 2: unpopulated days, weeks, months drop down in SQL Server enterprise manager maintenance wizard.

Solution:
Related to a missing registry value for the backup directory. On a applicable instance, you would add a new string value to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer The new string value is BackupDirectory The data value for this is the path to your backup directory. The default would be :\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\BACKUP

7 and 10 win AFL Broadcast rights

[quote="BlueDW"]Best thing that has happened to footy for a long time, particularly if you live in the northern states. Alex the Great, why would you turn the bloody sound off when you will more than likely listening to pretty much the same voices, save for Eddie Scumbag, and probably Gary Lyon!!!![/quote]

In theory yes, but, we said that up here in QLD when 9 won the rights from 7.

This to me, makes it sound like there might be a catch, or loopholes, but at the very least, not straight forward:
"Specifics of coverage in NSW and Queensland black spots will not be known for months."

I mean, surely, outside of what they can put on Foxtel, or ESPN (if you read the article (ffs!, espn!!), there should be some 'known' benefits, or are they all proposed speculation in the contract, open to interpretation?

Read the Article

At least after 2006, I will no longer need to hear Eddie and his stooges commentating (used loosely) in Carlton v Collingwood, or even Collingwood v anyone, in fact Collingwood didn't even need to be playing for Eddie to bring it up.

The following picture is borrowed from the HeraldSun, for prosperity: Channel 7's Ian Johnson consoles Eddie McGuire at Sorrento

In summing up, its "Safely Remove Hardware", its "Optimize for performance", its "Write Caching", its "the vibe", its "Mabo"

If you use external USB hard drives, you might not know that Windows XP sp2 (and presumably other versions) enacts a policy on these 'hot' removable devices, which limits their performance by default.

If you open Computer Management, and navigate to Disk Manager, and right click on your removable hdd, select "Properties", then select the "Policies" tab, you will notice the device is "Optimized for quick removal", meaning you do not need to select the Safely Remove Hardware icon before disconnecting it; great for memory keys and ipods, but not great for mass storage devices. Change the setting to "Optimize for performance", and you will effectively enable write caching to the device.

bam!

29 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes, 33 second

Thats the current uptime on my home pc - not too shabby for a windows xp system, especially compared with the days of Windows NT 4 Workstation; I am forced to shut down my pc to install another 300 Gb hdd into my machine; I particularly didnt want to have to do this, which is why I thought to purchase an external 3.5" enclosure for it when I purchased the drive. The problem however, occured when I unwrapped the enclosure, the power cable and usb connection were not present. It was at that time, with glee, I recall the computer storeman taking it out, handing it to me to look at, before I handed it back to him, and looked around the store while he created the invoice. Seems he didnt put the accessories back in. If it weren't xmas day, I would have gone back for it. As my friends and family will tell you, I am impatient, so it is now time to shut down my pc and dig around int he cables, ho ho bloody ho.

Never forget, White Wriggler, you are the lowest of the low

With the Baron Karza mystery safely put to rest, the next 80's TV show I am on a mission to find relics is called RoboStory or Robot Story or Robo Story.

The line "Never forget, White Wriggler, you are the lowest of the low" has bugged me for years

From what I have been able to uncover:

It is a robot cartoon which aired on ABC australia before Wizard of Oz in the mornings, with the little girl and her dog, and was produced around about 1984ish by French animation studio Belokapi. 52 episodes were made. The main characters were Blueberry (the human girl), Fluffy (the dog), Old Robot (leader of the Robots), Robot Moron (super intelligent, despite his name) Robot Pasha (leader of the Robot army), White Riggler (bumbling leader of the Rigglers, or "Rotors" as they were referred to on-screen) and The Reverential Revered Reverence (omnipotent evil god-like being, always berating White Riggler, destroyed in the final episode).

The White Wriggler although incredibly stupid was also known on occasion to get things right. When he did that he was given a promotion, to Red Wriggler. At other stages of the show he became several other colours determining different rank. When he became Red Wriggler, another robot from among the Black Wriggler ranks was promoted to White Wriggler. He was a much more ruthless type and soon was easily dealt with by the good robots and the old white wriggler was taken pity on.

Robot Moron is one that is a little misunderstood I think. Although he had that name and always answered "I don't know" he was also highly intelligent. He would offer up great strings of philosphy and science only to have the other robots stare at him blankly before asking why he said it. That then was why he always said I don't know.

Robot hobo, aka Robot Magician was very much the Clark Kent/Superman style character. He would laze about in the junk yard getting drunk on oil, only to spring into action and save his only real friend in the shape of blueberry whenever she needed it.

Pictures:








Links about this show:

Some pics (shown above fopr prosperity)

Some pics from this and other shows

Crystal Reports 9 and Avery Mailing Label Tricks

I recently had to design some Mailing Label reports, and of course, needed to use a Label format which Crystal had no listing for, Avery 7159.

After searching the BusinessObjects web site I found only the one link here, explaining how to add items to the drop down list of Label Formats, but I wasn't expecting to have to edit a text file called Labels.txt! The article is old (relating to Crystal 7, and no mention of Windows XP), and even when I found the text file, added my label (after converting all my label measurements to pica's, it still would not show up in the listing. I then renamed the text file to something else, and Crystal 9 still continued to include the standard set of labels - thanks KB article for wasting my time.

I ended up typing in the dimensions of the label, spacing etc, and no doubt will need to do this every time I write a new report.

If you ever need to adjust the Label spacing, size, borders etc, after initially creating the report, here's how (I had a hard time working this out):

Change the dimensions of the mailing label through the Layout tab of the Section Expert.

Report > Section Expert > Details > Layout tab (The Layout tab is only available when the Details section is highlighted in the Section Expert.)

You need to do this because the Mailing Label Report Creation Wizard dialog box cannot be re-entered, which means it is not possible to modify the 'Mailing Label Type' of the report any other way.

You can also adjust the Page margins in the usual manner, File > Page Setup.