Bittabola's Sandbox

Summer

Bittabola — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:08:29 +0000

It’s getting hot over here

King of Pop

Bittabola — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:59:07 +0000

Requiescat in pace, King of Pop (1958–2009)

Spring

Bittabola — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:46:28 +0000

This year’s spring has been very rainy: it rained at least couple of days in a week. That’s why the grass is still green and strawberries are sour (otherwise the grass would be yellow and strawberries would be sweet — all because of the sunshine). They say that our climate is in progress of transforming into sub-tropical (from continental). So, maybe it will become usual for us to see palm trees growing in near future.

Mac

Bittabola — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:44:01 +0000

I have finally bought a Mac!

I was planning to buy it when I used iMac for couple of minutes back in 2006, because it looked nice both outside and inside — the interface of Mac OS seemed very beautiful to me.

The two problems preventing me to buy a Mac were absence of Macs in Uzbekistan and their price.

So, I saved some money, earned some experience in using eBay and decided to buy a Mac mini.

It is a factory refurbished Mac mini with a new Apple aluminum keyboard.

It looks awesome, it is very small and makes no noise.

Sure, it is not so powerful — Core Duo plus 1 Gb of RAM but can become a good jump-start into the Apple world in couple with my iPhone (which I also love, btw)

Yahoo! Domains, part 2

Bittabola — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:08:19 +0000

I received an e-mail from Yahoo! Domains today saying my domains will soon expire and I will be charged $35 renewal fee for each of my domains.

What?

I transferred all my domains to DreamHost when Yahoo! announced that they will be charging $35 for 1 year renewal months ago! And Yahoo! still tries to charge me. Crazy people.

I had to manually cancel all Yahoo! domain services to avoid paying them.

P.S. There’s a banner advertising domain services:

See that teeny-tiny “for your first term” thing? ;-)

3G

Bittabola — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:12:56 +0000

Faster than my home ADSL connection.

PS. A soft unlock has been released for iPhone 3G by the Dev Team

Wind of change

Bittabola — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:46:27 +0000

I changed my place, and more importantly, industry of work. My job is no longer connected with internet or web development. It does not mean I have lost interest, I have just decided to make my life a bit different.

And it’s more money, yeah!

iPhone 3G and a SIM proxy

Bittabola — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:52:46 +0000

I now have a iPhone 3G and because it is imported from USA and therefore locked, I can’t use it in Uzbekistan. But there is a workaround to this problem – using a SIM proxy. It is a hardware chip which is inserted between the phone and the SIM card. The proxy constantly tells the phone that the SIM card is from AT&T even if it is not. This way the iPhone works but has some drawbacks – it sometimes loses signal and GPRS/EDGE/3G connection is unreliable.

Recently a hacker group called Dev-Team announced that there is a software unlock coming to iPhone 3G – you simply install a modified firmware to the iPhone and it works with all operators around the globe. Without any chips and drawbacks. The hack will be released on New Year’s Eve.

Donation

Bittabola — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:45:23 +0000

I have made my first on-line donation in my life — to Wikipedia. It’s amount is insignificant, but I hope it will help somehow.

PS. Congratulations to Obama! He deserved it.

MSC Opera as seen from the fort of Oslo

Bittabola — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:49:58 +0000

MSC Opera as seen from the fort of Oslo, originally uploaded by Bittabola.