Review: North! Or Be Eaten. By Andrew Peterson

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The good people over at WaterBrook Press / Multnomah Books were gracious enough to send me over a copy of North! Or Be Eaten. by Andrew Peterson a few weeks ago.  This book is the second in a series Peterson has named “The WingFeather Saga.”  Since there was one book written before this one, I felt I should pick that book up in order to keep from jumping into middle of the plot.  So I picked up my own copy of the first book in the series (On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness) as well.
I can honestly say that after finishing both of these books, I am completely amazed by the imagination of Andrew Peterson.  This review may be a bit biased as I’ve been a fan of his music for years, but it’s amazing to see that he’s just as good at writing books as he is at writing songs.
I’m a big fan of not spoiling books (or movies) for others, so I won’t go into too many details of the plot.  Though I will tell you that both books center around three children as they are transformed from a simple farm existence into a life full of grand adventures.  A lot of people that read these books will initially think that this is Andrew Peterson’s stab at recreating C.S. Lewis’ Narnia chronicles, but Andrew Peterson takes a familiar plot and crafts it into his own unique adventure that will leave the reader extremely invested in the world he has created.
My wife and I have both read each of these books and find ourselves waiting not so patiently for the third to be written.  We are also eagerly awaiting the birth of our first child this November and cannot wait to introduce him to the wonderful world full of toothy cows, horned hounds, rockroaches, the horrible Fangs of Dang, and whatever else Peterson has waiting for us in the rest of the series.
So if you’re a fan of grand adventures in far away lands, be sure to pick up both of these books.  They may be a quick read, but Peterson will keep you on the edge of your seat (or sitting straight up in your bed) through the entire adventure.

YellowSn0w iPhone 3g Software Unlock (Beta) Review

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While most of the world was busy rocking in the New Year with the Jonas Brothers and Ryan Seacrest, I and a million other geeks around the world were frantically refreshing the iPhone Dev Team’s Blog in hopes that the long awaited software unlock for the iPhone 3g would be released.
When Apple released the 2.2 firmware for the iPhone, they also updated the baseband (modem firmware) from version 2.11.07 to version 2.28.00. Since YellowSn0w was originally built on the 2.11.07 baseband firmware, the Dev Team strongly recommended against updating to 2.2 (and in turn baseband 2.28.00) if you wanted to use their software unlock upon its release.
On New Year’s Eve, however, the Dev Team began posting cryptic messages that were translated to show that they had successfully hacked the 2.28.00 baseband as well and would be releasing YellowSn0w specifically for that baseband instead of 2.11.07.
From a compatibility standpoint, that sounded like great news! Now everyone could be on the most up to date baseband firmware and still use any GSM carrier they wanted, right? Not necessarily!
Before the software unlock was released, most users (including myself) had been using Proxy Sims to use the iPhone on networks other than AT&T (T-Mobile for me.) A Proxy Sim (for those not wanting to read up) is simply a small paper thin chip that sits between your sim card and the tray that tricks the phone into thinking you are using an authentic sim card belonging to the carrier to which the phone is locked.
The majority of these Proxy Sims (such as the Gevey 3g mentioned in the earlier link) were built to work on the 2.11.07 baseband firmware. So, if you updated to the new baseband firmware, your Proxy Sim would no longer work and you’d be stuck with a much more expensive version of the iPod Touch.

Review of iPhone 3g on T-Mobile

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After working on my wife for almost 2 years, she finally caved in October and agreed to let us leave Verizon Wireless to go to AT&T for our very own iPhones.

We left after work one day and traveled over to one of the Auburn AT&T stores.  We were greeted almost instantly by a sales associate who was more than happy to retrieve one 8 gig and one 16 gig iPhone for us.

I wish I had more positive things to say about the buying experience than that, but I don’t.  After the sales associate told us that we would have service at our house, but only 2 or 3 bars at most, he proceeded to begin porting our numbers over from Verizon.

An hour and a half later and after numerous phone calls to Verizon customer service, we were finally presented with our phones.  So how did we wind up on T-Mobile and not AT&T?