Flat3D

Downgraded

Today I managed to downgrade my iPhone 3G to iOS 3.1.3.  I found out the issue that I thought was preventing me previously was only applicable to 3GS and above.  My only real problem was lack of backup as all of the active backups I had were after the iOS 4 upgrade.  But all of my data is either on my computer or cloudward, so I went ahead, did the downgrade according to lifehacker and told iTunes to treat it as a new phone rather than restore from backup.

Now I am on 3.1.3 (unbroken) and running only slightly slow rather than painfully slow!  Soon I plan to re-jailbreak though.  There doesn’t seem much point in not doing it, if v3 of the OS isn’t going to be updated any futher!

That’s all for now I’m afraid!

Tokyo and iOS 4.0

Today has got to be the furthest I have travelled and returned home within one day…  I got up at 6am to get the train to the airport, flew to to Tokyo and got the train into town, then in the evening was back at the airport flying back and getting home to Sapporo just now at 11pm!  ”What did you forget?” you might ask…   But forgetfulness wasn’t the reason for the trip.  The whole event was a highly organised and coordinated trip to go to the British Embassy (they only have an embassy in Tokyo and consulate in Osaka) to apply to get a CNI (Certificate of No Impediment) which will let Emily and I apply to get married here in Japan.  According to the website I had to attend an “Interview” at the embassy, which I had to apply for (an application so I could apply to get the document I need to apply to get married…), but the whole ordeal took a matter of minutes, with the short walk down the hallway to the next room to pay the fees I was in and out of the embassy in around 30 minutes!  All that travelling for 30 minutes!!

But hopefully it will be worth it!  I took stamps for them so they could send me the certificate in the post rather than going back again to get it, and I got a form that I need to fill in and post back to pay for the actual certificate as I won’t be there to pay for it on the day of issue.  Strangely they wouldn’t let me pay for it while I was there and had the cash, but rather I have to send it.  We had a brief discussion about how I could just go outside and fill in the forms and post them in  that very day which would only take a day or two off the actual time the embassy was responsible for my money…  So I will maybe wait a little while before sending the form in, until that point I was quite impressed by the efficiency of the embassy, but not being able to pay in advance was a sharp jerk back to the reality that the small patch of land I was on was technically British (is it?) and I wasn’t not eager to please and super efficient Japan for that half an hour!  Hopefully it will process and work and I won’t have to rush back to Tokyo with a few days to spare before we actually get married…

Anyway!  A few days ago I upgraded my (already ageing) iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 and it was lovely for a little while.  But today’s trip to Tokyo tested it to the limit.  I was listening to music and catching up with podcasts (and Bill’s latest messages from First!) while finding my way with maps and GPS, looking up train times online, writing texts and an email or two, tweeting the odd tweet and even watching a YouTube video or two at some points of non-activity.  This was normally not an issue, it could do all of these things fine, and probably still can as long as two don’t happen at once!  But after a short time using it, it started to be unbearable.  It was very slow responding to key presses, particularly on Japanese input, it ground to a halt more than a few times apps were crashing left right and centre and even once it needed an all out reboot!

So long story (slightly) short: I want to go back!!
But it isn’t easy.  From looking around it seems that I will basically have to go through the “jailbreak” process to install the older version 3.1.3 of the operating system…  So my question is, should I just jailbreak it?  My reasons for not doing it before were that it just seemed like too much hassle, and the little risk involved was probably not worth any of the benefits…
But if I am going to have to do it anyway to get back to functionality maybe I should just do it?  Has anyone out there jailbroken their iPhone 3G and have any experience?  Good experiences?  Bad experiences?  What are the risks and what are the main benefits?  Would Softbank go nuts on me?  If I went to the apple store (urgh) would they restore me back to 3.1.3 or tell me I should be glad to have 4.0?

Conference, Norn Irish and rememberance

This past month has been pretty busy with language school, wedding preparations and so on all taking up time. We also had the OMF All Japan Conference in Jozankei, Hokkaido, last week. I was part of the tech team for the conference and it took a bit of preparation and work while we were there, but everything seemed to go well, except for Tre’s laptop! It was great fun roping Oliver and JP into helping out too! (Thanks guys!) So you’ll forgive me for not updating in a little while!

Japan Field Conference is a time that all of the OMF missionaries in Japan come together and spend four or five days listening to teaching (Patrick Fung, OMF’s General Director), have fun (in the pool and onsen!) and fellowship (over delicious food)!

The field conference actually only happens every 3 years, the years in between have regional conferences instead and we are divided into Hokkaido and East Japan regions.
But this field conference had something special. A team of short ter missionaries came out from Norn Iron to run a kids programme for all the missionary kids! 
The team was mostly made up of people from Helen Lyttle’s church, Bloomfield Presbyterian, but also had 3 other guys, Mark, Roger and Jonny.  Jonny of course being known by aliases such as Silly McSilly, Marvin the Minstrel and now also Buzz McLightyear!

Now that conference is over I have the priviledge of hosting Roger and Jonny in my flat for a few nights before they head back to Tokyo and on home to NI.  Today I took Jonny to Oasa to see the church and meet some of the people.  Then we went to the local university’s festival to sample some local delights and see the Yosakoi Dancers performing.
Tomorrow we will be taking the team to a nearby lake and volcanic area, I am looking forward as I haven’t been to that area before either!

The service today at church is the last part of my post title.  Here in Japan remembering those who have passed away is a major part of culture, and also of Japanese Buddhism.  As in the west such dedicated official rememberance is not part of our culture (we prefer more personal rememberance of Granny and Grandad), and because Christianity doesn’t revere ancestors as Japanese Buddhism and Shinto do, it seems as though we Christians don’t care about our ancestors to many Japanese.  Which is a reflection of culture rather than faith.
So to enable Japanese Christians to faithfully remember their parents and grandparents without compromising their Christian faith, churches often buy an area in a graveyard for interning ashes of members.  Then once a year they have a special service to remember those who have been called to heaven before them.  This service is a very serious affair and is very moving.  Pastor Horita gave a short description of each member who had passed away since the church began (it is a bit over 30 years old) during his message and after the normal service there is a short one at the grave site.

This tradition fills many gaps that a plain western Christianity would leave in many people’s expectations and hopes.  A Japanese Christian’s non-Christian family might expect to have religious ceremonies of rememberance at the temple and this could result in the deceased Christian being worshipped as a god or spirit.  It also shows non-Christian family members that Christians do care about those who have been before.  And finally it is just a touching way to remember grandparents and parents who have passed away and honour their memory!  But it is a bit unusual to be in the service without knowing what is going on!

Sapporo…

Last Wednesday I was privileged enough to be invite to climb to the 38th floor of JR Tower by my friend JP (The dancing one, not the snowboarding one!) JR Tower is one of the tallest buildings in the city, if not the tallest…

From the top floor you can see pretty much all the city, from the mountains in the west to the fields to the east… So what better place to have a go at making some panorama pictures?! I was quite lazy though and didn’t maintain position well enough to take good pictures for stitching really, but here are four rough panoramas of Sapporo from the top of the JR Tower! The pictures are pretty large, so once you’ve clicked through to the album, you can click to zoom in for a closer look…

Sapporo panorama from JR Tower

If you live in the city see if you can spot your area (For the Higashi-ku folk, you can see the Tsudo-mu community dome in the north picture…

Then on Saturday I went with Emily to Shinrinkouen in Nopporo, Ebetsu, or Nopporo Forest Park and climbed to the measly 8th floor of the Hokkaido Centenary Memorial Tower to find out of use elevators. But the view from the 8th floor was still quite nice, particularly as there isn’t anything to get in the way… And of course the tower looking like the tower of Barad-dûr of Mordor in Lord of the Rings was a bonus!
So I took a more simple series of pictures and made another panorama! The glass was pretty dirty (lots of insects on it, ladybirds and stinkbugs) but here is the result!

From Shinrinkoen

New domain again!!

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was writing about getting Flat3d.org as my nice domain. And while I really do like flat3d.org and like having it as my blog title, it isn’t really all that descriptive of me. At one point I lived in Flat 3D, Stranmillis Court, so it did have some actual meaning instead of just being geeky, but no longer. So I have got a new domain name that is more to do with me.

A bunch of missionaries have domain names that signify their calling to Japan, something of their background and their calling (German), or use their names so that people can find them easily.

But I didn’t really want something as generic as to be just about Japan, or even Jesus in Japan, it might also become dated and not be consistently usable if we leave Japan or God takes us in a different route… and risking offending people from other cultures, my Northern Irish sensibilities found something like “johninjapan.com” or “ormesinjapan.com” a bit cheesy, but I have noticed we are particularly sensitive to cheese in NI!
I thought for a moment about seeing if I can just get orme.com or something like that. But it wasn’t available! Apparently there are other Ormes in this world! Part of the reason for thinking about change is it would be nice to set up Google Apps for the domain and have Emily and I be able to use it once we are married, sharing calendars, contacts and such like as well… We will see if that comes to pass!

Anyways, all this to say that, in the end I settled on “orumu.org”. Initially as a playful attempt to play with my name, as Orumu is my name in Japanese (オルム), but as I let it lie it grew on me. It is my name, but as Emily and I marry it will become her name too, and she is Japanese. It sort of includes all of that and the fact that we are in Japan serving God all in the one domain, all the while sneakily avoiding the obviously-his-own-name-domain potential for cheese and self-importance, even though telling all this eliminates any benefit that might have had! So I will be able to have email addresses like john@orumu.org, emily@orumu.org and so on under the Google Apps system, giving us all the benefits of apps without such abstract addresses. When I will start to roll over to that I don’t know yet, the old gmail address will hold forth for the time being!

So orumu.org it is! I have decided that, at least for the time being I will keep the time honoured Flat3D as the name of my blog, henceforth found at flat3d.orumu.org (ie here!), and until flat3d.org expires in February, it will also point through to flat3d.orumu.org and all it’s parts so links and so on will remain valid for a while at least!

I hope you haven’t fallen asleep reading. It’s a common problem on these kind of rambling blogs about nothing. This kind of waffle is exactly why blogs are a bad idea. But I am doing it anyway!