2008 August « Yummy Wakame

Aug16

Free iPhone DIY Tech Fixes and Advice

I had a bit of a scare tonight with a jammed iPhone that would not boot and being miles away from an Apple store I was out of options. After doing the whopping big update to v 2.01 late tonight the wifi router with remote hard drive went down, along with it my connected iTunes library causing iTunes to crash, right at the golden moment while the phone was updating and rebooting. Oh noooo! Even after I struggled with cables in tight spaces and resurrected the network by plugging directly into the router to get iTunes up again, the phone wasn’t even unrecognisable. The best my laptop could offer was that my shiny phone was an “unrecogniseable USB hub that may be malfunctioning”. iTunes had even folded up its usual iPhone parking space as if its own child had never played in its yard. A reboot of the laptop yielded no change. Plugging the iPhone into the power outlet didnt help either. The frozen Apple logo wouldn’t go away. I wondered if the battery could last long enough to drive down to an Apple store in the RV some time this week. It seemed unlikely. I was tired, defeated and sadder than I was the second day of school.

Then a simple search into Google, namely “iphone frozen unrecognizable won’t restart” yielded a wonderful surprise:
Restart a Frozen iPod or iPhone and
My iPod / iPhone won’t mount or update. Bingo!
(Note there are sadly some adult ads on the side that may offend some)

Lots of super simple advice to follow. And after my iphone rebooted a few times and was plugged in and out a few times it finally remembered who it was and what to do next.

Finally I can go to sleep without worrying about having lost a quarter of my brain. Good night all!

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Aug15

What's Travian All About?

My favourite little time-stealer, Travian is a browser-based strategy game cleverly programmed in PHP so that you don’t need to download anything to play. Started in Germany, Travian is quite easily the most played browser game right now and has grown to over 3 million players worldwide.

Events occur and resources accumulate in real time. The player starts with a small, mostly empty village and some renewable resources with the intention of building an empire. As the leader of a village, either Roman, Teuton or Gaul, your village will have its own unique types of buildings, resources, armies, strengths and weaknesses. The Gauls are largely defensive, the Teutons more aggressive and the Romans have a balance of the two styes.

Many players attack villages to gain resources (lumber, clay, iron and food) and increase their armies and empire, and most players eventually join an alliance as a defensive strategy or to destroy villages en mass.

Here’s a snapshot of my peaceful Gaul village from a while back:

I really hope some of you join from my referral links as I will get gold bounty after your village has grown to a population of 75, thus allowing me to do extra fun things! Let me know if you do. I’m user yummywakame, Gaul and in the SE quadrant on US3.