Colin Harrington

Actually doing the Jailbreak is easy:

1. Download and run the jailbreak app called Absinthe
2. Read the install instructions
3. Follow the installation instructions
4. Be patient.

When you are done you’ll have the Cydia App installed.

“This is where the fun begins” – Anakin Skywalker

My shortlist of apps:

• Activator (Control over gestures)
• SBSettings + Toggles & Themes
• Custom BootLoaders: animate + animate fix (Boot Logos)
• FakeCarrier (or removal for space!)
• Firebreak (Enabling the hidden Panorama Camera feature)
• Five Icon { Dock, Folder, Switcher }
• Five Column Springboard.
• Sound/Ringtone themes.
• Winterboard Themes
• Veency (VNC)
• MXTube
• My{Wi,3G} (Paid$$)
• SSH (only if you know what you are doing)
• Mobible Terminal

SSH:

• Install OpenSSH in Cydia
• Change your default password.
• use public-key/private keys
• Mount and browse your device over SSH

Mobile Terminal:

The one in the Cydia store is *old* and won’t work on iOS4 or iOS5.  I’m not sure why, but it seems like the contributor abandoned this package.

You can install it by other means.
http://code.google.com/p/mobileterminal/wiki/Installation

• Adding another repository and installing via Cydia
• Manually installing it (files + Permissions on the device)
• Open the deb with iFile (Paid$$ but with a free trial)
• Cydia auto-installed deb using Cydia’s auto-install feature
• dropping the .deb in the /var/root/Media/Cydia/AutoInstall folder (create it if its not there, case-sensitive)
• http://www.thedailybuggle.com/autoinstall-deb-file-package-cydia-terminal-command-line/

Animated BootLogos:

Back in the early days you could use an app called LogoMe to update a custom boot logo. Then came animate which let you animate your boot logo (Like the Windows 98+ startup logo screens) You’ll need the animate fix to get them to work now.

I ended up making my own Boot Animation of my AppleTux logo with the help of a couple blogposts

The process is simple: basically create a series of PNGs {0.png, 1.png, 2.png, ... n.png} and place them in a named folder inside of /Library/BootLogos/

/Library/BootLogos/AppleTux/ looks like this:

And can be downloaded here:

I recently installed Ubuntu 9.04(Jaunty Jackalope) on a 17" Macbook pro and as a part of that process, I had to install a bootloader called rEFIt.  You could think of EFI is just a next-gen BIOS.

Even though the bootloader looks decent, I don’t like the look of silver/grey color, so I decided to customize it.  The process to customize rEFIt was relatively straight forward and the result is beautiful.

This is what I came up with:

This is what it looks like with a Windows Partition:

I love the simplicity of it!!

Here is a closeup of the icons / OS Choices:

I don’t really know where the icons came from, but they look tasty  On Linux there is a decent package for working with mac icons (.icns) or sudo apt-get install icnsutils  which will get you some useful tools (png2icns and icns2png)

I did have to make a few modifications to the Tux icon [os_linux.icns] to give him a ‘glow’ so that he doesn’t fade into the black on black:

This windows Icon [os_win.icns] is the stock version I think (send me a link to the author if you know):

I did add a slight ‘glow’ to the apple icon [os_mac.icns] (send me a link to the author if you know):

I tried a number of custom ‘selected’ themes but gradients didn’t look right, so I went with the simple plan.  The selection bitmap can be found here:

the process is simple once rEFIt is installed:  modify the refit.conf with the icons in place, and you are done!

Here is what I came up with for my refit.conf (comments removed):

timeout 5
banner hostname.bmp
selection_big   selection-big-ring.bmp
hideui tools shell funcs hdbadges label
legacyfirst

The original comments in the refit.conf file are helpful!  Its straight forward if you can read

• timeout = the number of seconds before it automatically chooses for you
• banner = the bitmap of the upper part of the screen (top left pixel = background color)
• selection_big = the grey ‘ring’ that indicated the selection
• hideui = Hide elements of rEFIt so we can get a clean interface
• legacyfirst = Legacy OS first (Linux)

Use at your own risk!!

If I had the time, it would be fun to build/enhance rEFIt to have an all-black fill instead of the grey/silver.

I’ve had a good experience with Ubuntu 9.04 on a 17" Macbook Pro, and I’ll Blog about it – and see what I can do to help update the documentation – look for an upcoming post.

I spent a little bit of time customizing rEFIt, which is an EFI Bootloader that  can be used on intel macs.  So far I like it.  Its not 100% feature complete (imho), but its open source  

I found myself looking for a good logo for Ubuntu that it shows after you make your OS Choice in rEFIt.  There was plenty of good artwork on deviantart.com, but I decided to make my own

So this is what I came up with based on one of the official logos:

Click to enlarge (668×668)

ps, I also have a post coming on customizing rEFIt (it looks juicy)

On my Desktop, I’ve used a tool called RK Launcher, its a handy Mac Dock wanna-be, and its slick!  I got fed up with looking at bad icons, so I decided to replace some of them.

There are many free icon packs that you can download, I particularly like ones that have large PNGs.

I ended up making a Windows Media Encoder Icon that looks pretty snazzy.  I adapted it from a large Windows Media Player icon.

I’m working on putting together a little logo for myself.

Here is what I have so far. or

Previously I’ve done a little logo work for my parents farm Called "Pegasus Circle Farm"