eric135

Jailbreaking Screensaver Hack for Kindle 3.1: Using your own pictures in Kindle Screensaver...

One of the most highly sought-after features that isn't yet offered on the Kindle is for the user to select their own images for the screensaver. As it is now, when the Kindle goes into screensaver mode, it has a pre-set selection of images (many of which I find beautiful but some apparently find them ghastly). Everyone was hoping the latest version of Kindle (3.1) would include this modification, but the latest update released this week was a bit of a disappointment in this regard.

There have been hacks available, which you can download. Here is one of them that I found on How-To-Geek: Jailbreak Your Kindle for Dead Simple Screensaver Customization. The process basically has eight steps:

1. Download the Zipped file containing the Jailbreaking codes (necessary to make the Screensaver hacks work).
2. Copy the correct file (Wifi, 3G and country) to the root drive of the Kindle 3.
3. Restart the Kindle. The Kindle will be "jailbroken" after the restart.
4. Download the Zipped file containing the Screensaver hacks.
5. Copy the correct file (WiFi, 3G and country) to the root drive of the Kindle 3.
6. Restart the Kindle. New folders will be created to receive the new image files.
7. Copy desired photographs into the Screensavers folder (a subfolder under the linkss folder).
8. Restart the Kindle. The Kindle will display your new images when it goes into screensaver mode.

The page is a very understandable guide for installing the necessary files; unfortunately, the latest Kindle update prevented these hacks to be executed.

So I was rooting around on the internets and found this page: Yifan Lu's codes for jailbreaking the Kindle, updated for version 3.1. The link to the zip files containing the codes are in bottom left corner. So instead of using the Jailbreaking codes outlined in How-To-Geek, use Yifan's jailbreaking code. Then you can use How-To-Geek's screensaver hacks.

So, an updated nine-step process:

1. Go to the How-To-Geek site to familiarize yourself with the whole process.
2. Instead of using How-T0-Geek's Jailbreaking code, go to Yifan Lu's and use those. Download and unzip the zipped file containing the Jailbreaking codes (necessary to make the Screensaver hacks work).
3. Copy the correct file (Wifi, 3G and country) to the root drive of the Kindle 3.
4. Restart the Kindle. The Kindle will be "jailbroken" after the restart.
5. Go to How-To-Geek's site and download/unzip the Zipped file containing the Screensaver hacks.
6. Copy the correct file (Wifi, 3G and country) to the root drive of the Kindle 3.
7. Restart the Kindle. New folders will be created to receive the new image files.
8. Copy desired photographs into the "Screensavers" folder (a subfolder under the "linkss" folder).
9. Restart the Kindle. The Kindle will display your new images when it goes into screensaver mode.

Some very important points to keep in mind:

• According to some sources, jailbreaking your Kindle in any way voids the warranty. Others have stated that Amazon will not void the warranty for jailbreaking, but will not support any problems you have with your Kindle if there are jailbreaking hacks installed. Apparently, they can tell.
• As with any jailbreaking activity, this process could potentially brick your Kindle. I haven't run into any situations where this specific jailbreak and hack has bricked a Kindle, but like any other computer device, they can get snarky. BE SURE THIS IS SOMETHING YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE DOING. Generally, if your mattresses still have the tags on them because you are scared the mattress-tag police will get you if you rip them off, jailbreaking is not for you.
• The jailbreaking codes and the screensaver hack codes are unique, depending on which version of the Kindle you own, as well as your country.
• You must download the Uninstall.bin files that specifically matches the jailbreaking code and the screensaver code that you use. First, copy the uninstall code for the screensaver hack, then restart the Kindle, then copy the uninstall code for the jailbreaking code, then restart the Kindle (basically the whole process in reverse). The last part of the How-To-Geek page contains more info. At any rate, you have to keep these in a safe place (I put them in my Dropbox.com folder).
• The images you use need to be re-sized to 600x800 in order to fit on the Kindle's screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NASCAR 1: Planned Parenthood 0, What if nurses got paid per patient instead of by the hour, Culling our Platys...

• I read on the internets that the House voted out Planned Parenthood, and is continuing to fund NASCAR. What's that all about? I've never been much for either -- parenthood or NASCAR -- but how have our priorities gotten so effed up? I personally don't consider NASCAR a "sport" per se, although yes it does take some skill -- right up until you run up against a RIGHT turn -- but, hell, the only way I'd get into it is if they required the drivers to txt while they drove, or if the audience got to throw obstacles randomly into the road.
• I wonder how much health care would get fixed if nurses got paid via capitation (per patient) rather than by the hour, or if physicians got paid by the hour instead of by capitation. I mean, let's just say a nurse is paid $30 bucks an hour for a 12 hour shift for taking care of five patients. That comes out to $72 bucks per patient. I wonder, as much as we nurses do belly-ache about patient safety and all that, how many of us would take another patient (or more) to get another $72 (or more) a shift. More interestingly, I wonder how many of us would choose to get $72 per shift less in order to be assigned one patient less? I'm totally not saying we should do this, but I wonder how the discussion would change, if it would change at all?
•  We just had to thin our population of platys in our 10-gallon fish tank. We started out with several species of fish, but over the past couple of years, everyone died out except for these Platys. They just kept breeding, and at this point there must have been 70 fish (most of them juvenile) in the tank (along with one bad-tempered Beta that probably hates kids). We looked it up on the internets, and it seems one of the more humane ways to euthanize tropical fish is to drop them into ice water (actually the most humane methods were clove oil or a fish anesthetic called MS-222 or alcohol -- we had none of these). But it still felt strange catching 10-15 baby fish and dropping them in a bucket of ice water. A bit traumatizing, considering how much heartache we go through when our goldfish die.
• I have been playing iTunes, and for whatever hellish reason, I keep playing the theme song from The Sound of Music over and over...

Taxes, Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick, Origins by Randolph Lalonde, Borders Books Bankruptcy

One of my New Year's resolutions was that I would blog more frequently...

Well, there goes that...

Some general things (in lieu of a more coherently cogitated post):

• This is the second year in a row that we've done our taxes way ahead of time. What usually happens is we wait until the night of April 15th, fretting over Turbotax or Taxcut software with sweatty palms, and then we just mail our returns late (the IRS has never given us any hell over it, regardless if we owe additional tax or are owed a refund). But then we thought that, if we could get our act together, we could use the refund from the State of Arizona to pay for the tax bill from the IRS (the two usually match within a couple hundred dollars). This year we sent our Arizona return in and got our refund after about a week, and we just mailed off the IRS return. Sweet, for us...
• I continue to be amazed at how much reading I've been doing, thanks to the Kindle I got for Christmas. Looking back at the books I've downloaded since Christmas day, I've read 18 books, the vast majority of which were totally free. About half of them are books about trading stocks and leadership, the other half are fiction. Of the fiction titles, about half of those are science fiction, the rest are mystery/thrillers. I'm currently reading an interesting diversion from my usual fare:
    Greatest Knight, by Elizabeth Chadwick. I know it looks a bit like a Harlequin Romance but it's actually a well written historical novel. I can't remember the last time I read one, and it was getting pretty good reviews. The author reportedly spent years researching the historical record, participating in re-enactments.
  I just finished Origins, by Randolph Lalond. Another free ebook, it is the first of a six-book series. I had never heard of the author but it was actually pretty good.
   And just to prove I really do read non-fiction, another book I'm currently working on is Firms of Endearment, by Sheth Sisodia and Wolfe. I know a few of my co-workers read my blog... let's just say I agree that the place could use a bit of endearment... ahem...
• All these weeks of reading my Kindle has made me feel a bit guilty over the recent announcements that Borders is going through Bankruptcy. It turns out that our local Borders will be one of the stores closed, and it was a favorite hangout for me to read books in big comfy chairs. I hate that the convenience of the Kindle has meant that all of my book business is going to Amazon. Their decision to have Kindle apps on just about every kind of device, and allowing syncing among all of them, has made the Kindle experience an excellent one, and then when you get it free, it makes everyone else look bad.