Simplifying IT, Amplifying Knowledge

iPhone 4

This is a piece of hardware that has been lying on my desk for a long time. I tried many times to install games and software on it, but basically failed.

iPhone 4

I have successfully made a jailbreak. It was quite easy; I just clicked a link on a website that exploited a Safari browser vulnerability. However, everything failed after that. I installed Cydia, but there aren't many repositories for the iPhone 4, which is still running.

I have also tried many times to sideload anything via the cable using apploader, but even when the PC software recognised the phone and communicated correctly, every installation of any software package ended in an API error. I am out of ideas as to what I could do about this issue.

The most I have achieved is installing some games from the only repository that offers something, but the games look like elementary school projects. So they are not really games I would play.

But the phone itself is quite nice. The design is unusual, with a robust metal body that fits well in the hand. If it weren't an Apple i-something, but something with Android, it would be quite cool.

Continue reading →

Tractor diorama

My son has broken his toy tractor. An idea came to my mind. Let's introduce him to model making!

I prepared all the necessary accessories and explained to him what we were going to do. He really enjoyed it!

Broken tractor diorama

So I cut and glued all the base materials together. Then I mixed some rusty and black colours and gave him a brush to make a mess on the tractor. He was really good at it and created a nicely weathered surface.

Then, we planted everything around it. He sprinkled the dust and grass onto the glue, planted all the bushes and larger plants, weathered everything a bit more, and was really happy with the result. I am too. I hope he will join me in this hobby and we can build the model railway I have under construction together.

Continue reading →

Marble Track

I'm not brave enough to leave this in our block of flats for 24 hours, so I asked a friend to do it for me. It's quite nice, though. I was really looking forward to showing it to my son because I knew he would love it.

Marble Tracki

Unfortunately, the steel marbles I have ready are about one millimetre bigger in diameter. I will therefore have to try printing some marbles or searching shops for suitable ones ASAP. To be honest, I am also quite keen to see it working.

Continue reading →

Xperia T

I received the Xperia T in exchange for some old compact cameras. It's a more powerful and better-equipped version of the Xperia J that I got last year.

This phone was released one month before the Xperia J, but comes with much better harware.



Sony Xperia T

The 4.55-inch screen has a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The phone has 16 GB of ROM and 1.5 GB of RAM, and the Android operating system has been upgraded to the latest version, Android 4.3. It also has a decent 13MP main camera and, to my surprise, NFC.



The system runs smoothly. Some of the menus, pop-ups and bars are not standard Android, but have been updated to match the premium Sony design. The audio reproduction is very good. The speakers are quite good, but you can hear an even better sound when you connect high-quality phones to the jack connector. The built-in Walkman app supports the FLAC format, which is also a nice feature.

Unlike the J version, the telephone has more than enough space for apps and sounds, so I would possibly put some high-definition audio on the memory just to see what the sound quality is like later.

This ...

Continue reading →

DNS issues

I was looking for an article on this blog and wanted to see how well Google indexes me, so I tried to find it by searching for it on Google. I found out that, for some reason, Google indexes me with the www subdomain. However, I am not promoting my website as www.jan-skoda.cz, but just as jan-skoda.cz.

It doesn't really matter why Google does that, but I found out that I had some DNS records set up incorrectly, as all requests to all subdomains work as they should, but requests to the www subdomain end in error. I spent some time tinkering with the DNS settings and was finally able to fix the issue, so now the old-school URL lovers can enjoy the www subdomain.

Continue reading →

Galaxy S4 mini

I got a Galaxy S4 Mini today. From today's perspective, the phone is just average. There's nothing to catch your attention or anything unusual about it. So I don't have much to write about it.

However, back in its day, it was at the peak of mobile technology.

Galaxy S4 Mini

It is quite compact and fits nicely in the hand. It also comes with a Super AMOLED display. However, the display is not really great and is possibly the phone's weakest feature.

The other parameters are quite good, though, and the phone has 1.5 GB of RAM, which was more than enough at the time. Inside, it has a Snapdragon 400 chipset with a dual-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300 CPU and an Adreno 305 GPU. So there was nothing this phone couldn't do.

The camera shots aren't anything to look at, but then again, neither was anything else back in those times. It had an 8MB LED flash and was capable of running 1080p video at 30fps, which is quite impressive for such an old phone.

So, my piece needed some care and attention. It came with a back plate featuring hydrographics. However, after all these years, there were cracks in the ...

Continue reading →

Dev diary - Rival Run

After some time, i managed to make reincarnation of another game that was lost when Flash died. This time i remembered the Platform Racing 2 game. So, i created a Rival Run. The game keeps the concepts, and tries to build on them.

Currently i have finished the base game, the character editor, bonuses that are being given to winner in some races, and all the synchronisation.

Rival Run game

And honestly, it was hard work. The first working concept was done in day or two, but until then, i has rewritten the game four times. Because i have met the limits of the approach three times. The problem was the the physics, and the limits of calculating it on backend, frontend, or both. So it required rewrites again and again, but finally i have working game. I am going to enhance it, but now, everything seems to be working and not really glitchy. Now i would wait for the opinions and reports from players, and after fixing all issues i am going to add new functions. Until that, i would finish and release the Android wersion, and then keep updating both.

You can try the web version here already:

Continue reading →


Nexus 7

My colleague gave me a very nice piece of hardware. It's a Nexus 7, made by ASUS. It is the first Nexus tablet to be made by Google. It comes with Android 5.1.1 and 32 GB of ROM.

Nexus 7 Nexus 7

I got the non-3G version, which doesn't bother me, and it's in very good condition. It looks almost brand new. The only thing I am thinking about is the back. It has a rubberised back and is quite sticky, as it has nano-something for phones to rest in the car. I'm not sure if this is intentional or just the result of the material degrading over time. Currently, I think it is intentional, as the back is completely rubberised and nothing seems scratched or damaged. So it's possibly not a bug, just a feature.

The strange thing is that the Wi-Fi is buggy somehow. When I scan for networks, it can only detect about 20% of the networks that I can see on any other device in the same area. Even to those that are found, I am not really able to connect. This is quite problematic because the initial setup phase requires a WiFi connection, ...

Continue reading →

Nokia 3410

I have the Nokia 3410, the successor to the well-known 3310. The two phones are almost identical. There are only a few differences, such as a different layout for the navigation keys, and some kind of Java support, so you can theoretically install Java apps on the internal 180k memory. But, honestly, I cannot imagine that it is really possible.

The only practical update that users were able to recognise was the increased internal memory for contacts, which could hold 200 entries. However, SMS messages were still only stored on the SIM card.

Nokia 3410

The reason this is interesting to me is that the 3410 that I already have in my collection has a broken sound. Now I can swap it for this perfectly functioning piece!

Also, while everyone is talking about the legendary Snake game, I personally prefer Space Impact. I just spent almost an hour playing it!

Continue reading →

Nokia 3109c

It's a very nice mobile phone. That's one of the ones I wanted back then — it was so cool!

Nokia 3109c

It has a 128x160 screen, the same size as my first colour phone. I really like it. However, it only has 9MB of internal memory, with only around 3MB available to the user. Fortunately, however, it also comes with a MicroSD card slot, which was quite rare back in 2007 when it was released.

Fortunately, I had a 128MB microSD card on my desk, so I immediately downloaded lots of games onto it and put it in the phone (which was quite tricky because of the weird slot). I was looking forward to playing it! Unfortunately, after inserting the card into the phone, I was just presented with a list of unrecognised files. I realised that this Nokia is one of those that needs .jad files too. A So I started my virtual machine with Windows, opened JAD Maker and created .jad files for all the .jar files. I tried again, but it didn't work. Around 90% of the games worked. I now have around 50 working games, and I still have 110 MB free, so I can ...

Continue reading →

×