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This is the first of a series of posts I am planing to write on why I love my jailbroken iPhone so much more than a vanilla , out-of-the-box device.

1. Music Controls

Music Controls is probably my favorite app in the Cydia app store.  If you don’t know what Cydia is, don’t worry I’ll have a post on it later, but basically it’s the app store for jailbroken phones.

My first real disappointment with my phone was the inability to run anything but the core apps in the background.  So while I could listen to anything from my ipod while surfing the web or sending a text message, if I wanted to listen to Pandora, I had to stay in the Pandora app and was unable to do anything else.  If I got a text, or an email, I had to quit it.  So as soon as the 3GS was jailbroken I hopped on the train and my first stop was Backgrounder.  This app allows you to run any app in the background, while it worked for what it was meant to do, it also caused problems for me in other functions of my phone.  Mostly not being able to turn it on occasionally requiring me to reboot the device.  I’m pretty sure that this problem has been fixed by now, and Backgrounder is a great app, but the only thing I really needed to run in the background were music apps.  While searching for a fix to the freezing problems I came across Music Controls and have been so happy with it I never went back. (continue reading…)

Seedbox Orange : 10gB storage, 3 active torrents, “200Mb” connection, torrentflux interface.  $10 USD/month

After my previous seedbox experience, paying the extra $6 seemed worthwhile just to actually receive what I payed for.  I had read about the downfalls of torrentflux, but as far as seedbox pricing goes, $10 seems to be the rock bottom, so I’ll take what I can get.  However, what I wasn’t willing to pay for was several hours of downtime, occuring 2+ times in the month I did business with them.  In addition to the downtime, there was the server crashes that always messed up my settings and active torrents.  The only plus was the quick response of the online live support.  I once logged into my account to find all 8 of my torrents to be actively seeding.  The support agent confirmed that the server had crashed earlier, and recommended I remove the torrents from the client, but leave the data, and restart each of the torrents.  After several other incidents, which must have been server crashes, I would log in to find only a portion of my torrents remaining in the client.

Speed : I can’t complain about the speed.  It was on par with my cable connection at home.  The FTP connection, however, was limited the 200kbps, which made retrieving any of my downloads a long process.

For $4.00 USD a month, the price can’t be beat.  As far as seedboxes go, unlimited active torrents on a 1000mbit connection, this is an incredible deal.  Even with only 1gB of storage, that was hardly a deal-breaker for me, as most of my torrents are well under 100mB, that mean at least 10 active torrents for me.  $4/month seemed too good to be true, and it was.

The website looks decent, but upon closer inspection it contradicts itself.  On the ordering page, biohost claims to have a setup time of six hours or less, but in other places they say it can take up to 48 hours.  Reasonable, especially if I were to order on a weekend. I’d give them until monday to set up my account.

Well, 6 hours past, 48 gone… 5 days later, nothing.  I filed a dispute with paypal, which gives the seller 10 days to refute the claim.  15 day’s later paypal refunds my $4.  Time to move on.  Next try : seedbox.me

Recent addition to my music library, fun., catchy and fun.  I couldn’t help thinking I was listening to The Format, finally my curiosity took over, and their wikipedia page confirmed that the singer is indeed Nate Ruess from The Format.  Here’s some youtube for ya.

Creepy thing is, I swear there’s female vocals in some of the songs, and all 3 members of the band are male?

The Ginseng up had a delicious peachy flavor with a tangy aftertaste. A little carbonation, but nothing too overpowering. The Jamaican Kola Champaign, on the other hand, had a strong carbonation kick. There were similar flavors between the two, but the Kola had much more carbonation. Overall good drinks, but I prefer the Ginseng Up. But I don’t like carbonation too much anyway so that is just me.

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Turkish kool-aid?

So I bought this stuff over the summer at this ethnic grocery store in Minneapolis.  And for some reason I kept making it with 1/2 a scoop in a bottle of water, and it tasted horrible.  Well I found out it was actually supposed to be 2.5 scoops I think I just got preoccupied with trying to figure out how to measure half a scoop that when I finnaly made a funnel out of paper and got ready to scoop I forgot the 2 whole scoops.  I recently decided to give it a try again, but I looked at the directions and made it right this time.  Much better, actually tastes good like kool-aid, but this stuff comes in better flavors.  Now I need to go back and get the pineapple one.

Kudos to you if you can figure out why this post is tagged with “Sweden”

I was a little wary to try this after reading that it was created as a substitute for beer. However, the first drink tasted mostly like cola and had an aftertaste of apples. Some of my friends described it as being like the 3 course gum from Willy Wonka. First it tastes like beer, then cola, then apples. Two thumbs up.

Well what I had was barely authentic, it was a concentrate that could me mixed with wine/vodka, or in my case, water.  It was still delicious.  Close your mind and imagine everything christmas, then try to taste it.  Thats what glogg tastes like, christmas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glogg

This was an interesting drink.  I was expecting some sort of pear juice, but this is not like any american cider.  The difference?  In america our cider is just unfiltered apple juice.  Everywhere else in the world it is an alcoholic fermented beverage.  The non-alcoholic version from IKEA was delicious.  It was crisp and tart yet had the sweetness of pears.  There’s not really a good way to explain how good this stuff is, so all I have to say is if you are presented with the opportunity to try some real cider, do not pass it up.

I’ll try and add a photo later.