Using Camera Connection Kit with Jailbroken New iPad

I didn't even aware that I have iPad Camera Connection Kit until a few weeks after I jailbroke my New iPad.  I started to remember that the Cydia app iFile is capable to read data from SD card or thumbdrive using iPad Camera Connection Kit.  So I spent sometime to test it out.

After trying some SD cards and thumb drives, I found that while it worked once in a while, connecting thumb drive to iPad through Camera Kit is mostly hit-or-miss.  For instance, my 16Gb Kinston DT108 thumbdrive, despite the small form factor, was never able to be recognized by the iPad.  My Transcend FlashJst 16Gb was, on the other, being recognized for a few times, but also failed a few time.  For my SD cards, however, as long as they are formated using FAT32, they will be recognized without a problem.

Thus, now I once again have some incentive to offload things from my iPad to my 32Gb SD Card.

Failed Experiment

I tried yanking out the microSIM on my iPad, put it in a microSIM adapter, and put the whole thing on my HTC Desire phone.  The card ware recognized but no data service was provided.  So no, I can't use my unlimited data plan on my HTC phone.

Super Nintendo, WiiMote and iPad

One of the nice thing about jailbreaking iPad is that you can install homebrew software.  Among all the homebrew, my favorite is always video game console emulator.  Since I jaillbroke my New iPad, I tried out 2 Super Nintendo emulator.  They worked ok .... to a point.

I first tired SNES4iPhone.  I tried  it once before back when I was using iPad 1, and was amazed by the WiiMote support.  So I tried the latest version on my New iPad, and found that the app does not optimized for iPad, got frame rendering problem.  Sure it still works on with my Wiimote, but I don't think this is the app I want to stay with.

Then I tried SNES9x EX, and the performance was just good.  It does optimized for iPad, supports WiiMote and it's free.  There's only one problem, and it probably has nothing to do with SNES9x EX.  That is the BTStack.  In order to make WiiMote working with SNES9x, I need to install BTStack, but the current version caused some problem with my New iPad.  Specifically, it will make my microSIM unrecognizable, causing the system to give me "No SIM installed" message.  And eventually I have to reboot the system, or sometimes I have to yank out and replug in the microSIM again.  But I guess I can tolerant it for now in order to enjoy this amazing emulator.  And I will experiment with "Disconnecting BlueTooth" in SNES9x after I done with using the WiiMote, and see if it will lower the appearance of "No SIM installed".

So far I love SNES9x EX.  It turned my iPad into a portable SNES with an amazing screen, and it's just awesome.

Oh that's why it takes forever

I was trying to reset my jailbroken iPad 1 using the reset data feature on Settting menu, and it took forever.  It turns out that I CANNOT do it that way for jailbroken iPad.  No problem.  I just manually clean everything up.  It's all good.

Jailbreaking iPad 1

In order to prepare my iPad 1 for mom to use, I spent some time today to jailbreak it, set up Traditional Chinese and use accessibility features to make it more senior citizen friendly.  I continue have problem using Absinthe Win 2.2 on my MacMini, so I ran it on my Lenovo S12.  It failed the first time, and then it worked on the second time.  My next step will be setting up a iTune account for my mom's iPad.

GeoTagging and privacy

I rarely take photo form my iPad and then post on Internet.  Recently I started to have that need, and the moment I did it, my instinct told me that I need to do something to get rid of geotagging on the photos, since by default all photos taken by iOS devices are geotagged. 

Fear not, there's way to get rid of these GeoTag information. I downloaded a free software called QuickFix (for Windows OS), and within seconds after drag and drop, I removed all the geotagging from my photos. 

Of course you might also want to stop geotagging all together.  To do that, you go to the "Setting" of your iOS (iOS5) devices, under [General][Restrictions][Location] and you turn OFF Location feature for any apps you don't want geotagging happening (like "Camera").  That's all.