These are the apps I use every day, and games I play to and from work (or when ever I get a little time to spare). Some cost money, others are free, but I feel that if you enjoy the trial, buy the game! The prices on the Android Market are so cheap, that it’s well worth investing some money to get the most out of your Android device.

Here goes!

Applications

Tweetdeck

I have been using this app ever since i got my HTC Desire, and thinks this is by far the best Twitter client on the market right now. I know that some might disagree with me, but for me this gives me any and all updates both from twitter and facebook directly to my notification bar. It displays all updates in a nice way, and allows for custom columns for specific people or companies you would want to follow updates on. Posting updates has all the features you would need, like posting pictures, videos and updating location. It also integrates support for shortening of links directly when pasting an url or sharing it from another app.

FeedR News Reader

I have an account on http://reader.google.com that I have been using for quite a while, and is basically a collection of rss feeds from around the web that i follow and keep updated on.After looking for a decent feed reader for quite a while, I finally came upon this app. You simply log in with your google account, and the app pulls the feeds you follow directly into the app. You can specify update interval, and notification type. You can also use googles own mobilizer function to see pages that would otherwise would be heavy to load on your phone browser.

K-9 Mail

The cleanest, fastest and feature rich mail client yet (and the name + icon is a reference to Dr.Who, which is a huge plus of course). This mail client even has the ability to give you “push” mail to your inbox. Don’t ask me how they do it, but with this app you will get any mail that arrives to your inbox more or less instantly, instead of having to wait for the next update interval. (And yes I did borrow this screenshot from another site, as I did not want all my e-mails on display for everyone to see).

AppBrain App Market

This is a good one. I always cycle through a ton of apps and try everything I can find. The problem is, there is so much to sip through, I find it hard to find the really good gems on the Android Market. That’s why I simply use an app, to find other apps! With this app I can sort out what’s hot today, this week or all time and find good apps that other people enjoy using. It will also recommend apps based on what you have installed, so finding apps that are to your liking is really easy.

PowerAMP Music Player

(Unlock key)

The default music player for android is quite nice, but it lacks a good equalizer. With PowerAMP you can specify a whole range of specialized sound calibrations, that will increase the quality of your music tenfold. The bass & treble pre-setting is my personal favorite and makes the hardstyle and dubstep i listen to sound the way they really should, deep and thundering.

Games

BattleHeart

Here’s the most cutest RPG game I’ve ever seen. The concept is simple. You control small characters that each play their role in each encounter. You have a tank, a healer and DPS of various sorts, and you simply pull these characters around to attack enemies. As the encounters gets significantly harder, you gear up by either buying gear from a merchant, or by killing enemies and gaining loot from the end of each encounter. It’s great fun and a solid time-sink.

Pocket Legends (3D MMO)

I was looking for an online game to play on my way home from work, and found this 3D online MMORPG. The graphics are great, and the characters are cute. You can play a warrior, enchantress or archer, and you run around, do quests, raid dungeons and kill bosses with other players from around the world. All while you sit on your buss on your way home. Amazingly enough, this works flawlessly on 3G, and the graphics are very smooth. Further more, they keep adding content to this game. The latest I’ve seen is crafting of your own gear, and PVP, which is all pretty amazing. As with all free online games for cellphones, you are able to pay real money for extra in-game currency etc, but it’s is not necessary in order to enjoy the gameplay.

Millionaire City

This is one of those games that practically plays itself. It’s like sim city without the constant interaction. You start off with a couple of buildings and some currency, and from here you start hiring out buildings to various classes of society, which in turns takes x amount of real-time minutes, hours or days to give money in return. You can also decorate to increase amount of money earned, and extend your city to become a huge metropolis. It’s a simple game I start when I feel like it and collect rent, build some buildings and close again.

Trial Xtreme

Here’s a game with great 3d graphics, enjoyable gameplay and a simple concept. Get from one side of the track to another, and along the way you have to get over various obstacles. The tracks of course increase exponentially in difficulty, which is just the way it’s supposed to be. I highly recommend this game as a game just to play for some minutes just to get a few tracks done.

MX Moto

This game is very similar to Trial Xtreme, but more like the old Elasto Mania. You have a 2D map with a motorcyclist and a track with various difficulties. You use the gyro on your phone to control your cyclist, and gas and brake with left and right side of the screen. What I enjoy most about this game is the fluid graphics and neat CG animations.

Honorable mentions

Order & Chaos

I wanted to add this game as well, It was released not too long ago, and is the next generation in online gaming. It’s basically an exact replica of World of Warcraft, except it’s for your cellphone. It’s got amazing graphics, character customization, quests and interaction between players. The only requirements is a Gameloft live account. They will give you 3 months free subscription before you will have to pay $0,99 each month, which is the only real downside about this game. It does make sense that they have to charge for it, but sadly I don’t it will be something I will subscribe to just yet. It might be ok to play on a tablet, but on a phone it will not be sufficient.

QuickPic

I really feel the gallery 3D app that is included in Android these days is really bad, and was looking for something a bit more minimalistic. Turns out this application was perfect. It’s simple, fast as hell and scans through my SD card like a bat out of hell. It’s well worth changing to if you feel the default gallery app is too chunky and bloated.

drocap2
Screenshot app.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.gmail.nagamatu.drocap2

Fast Uninstaller For Root
Uninstalls anything!
http://market.android.com/details?id=me.notenking.root

Root Call Blocker
Disconnect any caller or phone sales person directly.
http://market.android.com/details?id=fahrbot.apps.rootcallblocker.beta

Autostarts
Turn off auto starting applications so they don’t run unless you want them to.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.elsdoerfer.android.autostarts

ClockSync
synchronise clock from a ntp server to make sure your phone time is correct.
http://market.android.com/details?id=ru.org.amip.ClockSync

LCD Density Changer
Change resolution on your phone to get even more workspace.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.beansoft.lcd_density_changer

Quick Boot
Simple app to reboot, reboot into recovery or bootloader.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.siriusapplications.quickboot

ROM Manager
Backup entire rom or flash new roms or kernels.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.koushikdutta.rommanager

Root Explorer
Root access file manager.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.speedsoftware.rootexplorer

SD Speed Increase
Speed up SD card read access.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.sdincrease.it

SetCPU
Scale cpu on demand to preserve battery.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.mhuang.overclocking

Tegrak Overclock Ultimate
Overclock cpu (requires overclockable kernel)
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.tegrak.overclock.ultimate

Titanium Backup PRO
Backup all user and system applications and settings, and restore after rom upgrade. Supports even dropbox storage.
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackupPro

Hope this guide shows how useful a root of your Android phone might be, and encourages you to do it also.

Tools used:
- Sick Beard
- Couch Potato
- Transmission
- Sorting script

These tools combined give you a system able to download, rename and sort any tv-series or movie, and will even update your mediacenter (XBMC, Plex etc) with the new content. Hell, it will even notify you via twitter when it’s done downloading!

So, first things first, configure your SAN (or your basic GNU/Linux computer with <insert distro name here> installed), and make sure you have sufficient of storage. Preferably in a raid 0 (or raid 5 if you want to secure your data). My current setup contains a mere 3x750gb disks, but it works for me at the moment. Replacing them with some 3TB disks would be far better, but currently it requires substantial funds to do so.

Once everything is up and running, install transmission. If you use a linux distro, simply download it from the provided link above, if you have a Synology NAS just like myself, use the following page to get the packages needed http://synoblog.superzebulon.org/category/tr/ . I have a complete configuration that I’m currently running here, but feel free to modify it to your wishes:

{
    "alt-speed-down": 0,
    "alt-speed-enabled": true,
    "alt-speed-time-begin": 480,
    "alt-speed-time-day": 62,
    "alt-speed-time-enabled": true,
    "alt-speed-time-end": 1020,
    "alt-speed-up": 1024,
    "bind-address-ipv4": "0.0.0.0",
    "bind-address-ipv6": "::",
    "cache-size-mb": 4,
    "dht-enabled": true,
    "download-dir": "/path/to/your/seeding",
    "encryption": 1,
    "idle-seeding-limit": 30,
    "idle-seeding-limit-enabled": false,
    "incomplete-dir": "/path/to/your/incomplete",
    "incomplete-dir-enabled": true,
    "lpd-enabled": false,
    "message-level": 2,
    "open-file-limit": 32,
    "peer-congestion-algorithm": "",
    "peer-limit-global": 240,
    "peer-limit-per-torrent": 60,
    "peer-port": 52442,
    "peer-port-random-high": 65535,
    "peer-port-random-low": 49152,
    "peer-port-random-on-start": true,
    "peer-socket-tos": "default",
    "pex-enabled": true,
    "pidfile": "/usr/local/transmission/var/transmission.pid",
    "port-forwarding-enabled": true,
    "preallocation": 1,
    "prefetch-enabled": 1,
    "ratio-limit": 2,
    "ratio-limit-enabled": true,
    "rename-partial-files": true,
    "rpc-authentication-required": true,
    "rpc-bind-address": "0.0.0.0",
    "rpc-enabled": true,
    "rpc-password": "encrypted password",
    "rpc-port": 9091,
    "rpc-url": "/transmission/",
    "rpc-username": "admin",
    "rpc-whitelist": "127.0.0.1",
    "rpc-whitelist-enabled": false,
    "speed-limit-down": 100,
    "speed-limit-down-enabled": false,
    "speed-limit-up": 100,
    "speed-limit-up-enabled": false,
    "start-added-torrents": true,
    "trash-original-torrent-files": false,
    "umask": 2,
    "upload-slots-per-torrent": 14,
    "utp-enabled": true,
    "watch-dir": "/path/to/your/watchdir",
    "watch-dir-enabled": true
}

This basic configuration gives you several nice features. Amongst others are:

- It works with several folders to make sure everything is sorted as well as possible. Namely, we want the content that are downloading in the incomplete folder, the seeding content in the seeding, and we want a folder where our two other systems (more specifically sick beard and couch potato), can dump their .torrent files for transmission to start them automatically.
- It seeds the content to 200%, which is good in any bit-torrent scenario.

Next, you will have to work out how to configure the script from this page http://1000umbrellas.com/2010/04/28/how-to-automatically-move-and-remove-transmission-daemon-downloads which will in turn move torrents from transmission and to a folder called completed, which in turn sickbeard and couchpotato will keep track of and move things to the correct folders.

With this in place, simply install sickbeard and couchpotato according to installation instructions (or use the packages provided in the following link http://synoblog.superzebulon.org/category/sb/). The installation itself is pretty self explanatory, but use the information on which folders you want your torrents downloaded, and where they are stored once done, and it should configure everything on its own.

After the final configurations are done, mount up your storage from your medacenter with either nfs or cifs, specify the type of content for each of your movie and tv-series folders, and your XBMC or other mediacenter should be able to find all the content perfectly fine, as it is sorted according to how they prefer it.

A few notes though. I have yet to see couchpotato in action, this is mostly due to it only downloading movies I want myself, and not simply basing it on year and imdb rating (which it can also do), so until one of the movies I want release, I will be paying close attention to it. If it turns out to work as intended, I will be very happy, if not, I’ll just have to refer you to my other guide about flexget, and refer you to their pages where you can specify movies you wish to get, but it is allot more rudimentary, and requires allot more tinkering.

Hope you enjoyed this little quick guide. I will no doubt be updating it as I go along, but for now, this is what I’m using. If you have any comments or questions, do not hesitate to post them in the comments section below.

Here’s what I currently have in my mediacenter setup:
- Asrock NetTop ION330
- Western Digital MyBook World Edition II

Configurations:
Western Digital MyBook World edition II:
This box has been configured in the usual way you would set up up according to the manual, however I disabled samba and ftp support, and enabled NFS for speed. Also, I disabled the built in remote management system, and Twonkymedia for speed. Basically, what you want to do is to disable as many services as possible, and leaving the disk as strictly a remote storage disk. I can highly recommend reading up on this site http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/ They have a lot of useful information regarding this box and how to hack it to do just about everything. I did earlier run this box as a seed-box, but unfortunately it doesn’t handle high speeds (100mbit) connections very well on torrents.

Asrock NetTop ION330:

This box has a lot of configurations, both for my media centre functions, and for my personal projects, but here’s the basics needed to have a fully functional, automatic downloading, sorting and renaming media box.

The system itself: XBMC LiveCD – For me, this is by far the best media center known to man. Works flawlessly on the box and runs GNU/Linux (Ubuntu). Download the ISO image from here, burn to a CD and boot up. Follow the installation instructions, and voila!

Now for the nitty gritty configurations and script working in the background and making everything happen.

First of all, you will have to set up FlexGet . I have written a complete guide on how to do this here.

Then, you will have to install an application to start these downloads with, like rTorrent. This is easiest done by running the following command:

user@XBMCLive:~$ sudo apt-get install rtorrent

Then there’s the configuration:
rtorrent.rc

max_peers = 131

max_uploads = 11

upload_rate = 2000

directory = /your/path/to/downloading

session=/your/path/to/sessions

schedule = watch_directory,5,5,load_start=/your/watchfolder/*.torrent
schedule = tied_directory,5,5,start_tied=/your/watchfolder/*.torrent
schedule = untied_directory,5,5,stop_untied=/your/watchfolder/*.torrent

schedule = low_diskspace,5,60,close_low_diskspace=100M

execute_log = /your/logfolder/rtorrent.log

port_range = 55556-55560

port_random = no

check_hash = no

use_udp_trackers = yes

encryption = allow_incoming,enable_retry,prefer_plaintext

dht = auto

dht_port = 6881

peer_exchange = yes

on_finished = seed,"execute=mv,-u,$d.get_base_path=,/your/path/to/seeding/"

schedule = ratio,60,60,"close_on_ratio=200"

on_close = move_fin,"execute=mv,-u,$d.get_base_path=,/your/path/to/completed//"

on_close = remove_fin,"execute=rm,$d.get_tied_to_file="

Here you need to change the following values to suit your needs:

• upload_rate – Max upload rate for all torrents combined.
• directory – path to where your downloads will be when the download is running.
• watch/tied/untied_directory – where you will be placing your .torrent files you want to start.
• execute_log – Path to the logfile for all executed actions.
• port_range – Ports you want the torrents to be connectable to. Remember to open these ports on your router/firewall!
• on_finished – Path to where you want files to be stored when they’re seeding.
• ratio – At what share ratio you want your torrent to be stopped. Default is 200%.
• on_close – The directory you want the files to be stored once finished downloading.

Once you have this up and running in a screen, the next is to configure two scripts that run as a cron job every day and rename + sort the downloads once they arrive in the completed folder.

Sorting
We want to sort our downloads into neat folders so our XBMC system understand what kind of shows we have. The most important part for this script to work is the directory structure. It must be set up like this:

/your/path/Show Name/Season X/

And here’s the script that is going to do the job of sorting:
mvfiles.sh

#!/bin/bash

# specify the base directory to move to
fs="/your/path/to/TV"

# specify the base directory to search
base="/your/path/to/completed/"
for file in `find "$base" | replace " " "~" | egrep 'mkv|avi'`; do

        file=`echo $file | replace "~" " "`

        show=`basename "$file" | grep -io "[^\/]*S[0-9]\{1,2\}" | grep -io ".*[\._ -]" | replace "." " " "_" " " "-" " " `
        while [ -n "`echo "$show" | grep \" \{2\}\"`" ]; do
                show=`echo "$show" | replace "  " " "`
        done

        show=`echo "\`expr "$show" : '[ ]*\(.*\)[ *]$'\`"`
        #echo "\"$show\""
        snum=`basename "$file" | grep -io "S[0-9]\{1,2\}" | grep -io "[1-9]\?[1-9]"`
        season="Season $snum"
        #echo $season

        show=`ls "$fs" | grep -io "$show"`
        #echo "DIR: \"$show\""

        dest=$fs
        if [ -d "$fs/$show/$season/" ]; then
                dest="$fs/$show/$season/"
        else
                if [ -d "$fs/$show/Season$snum" ]; then
                        dest="$fs/$show/Season$snum/"
                else
                        if [ -d "$fs/$show/" ]; then
                                dest=""
                        fi
                fi
        fi

        if [ "$dest" != "" ]; then
                #echo "mv -v \"$file\" \"$dest\""
                mv -v "$file" "$dest"
                wait `pidof mv`
        fi

done

# Delete all .nfo, .srt, .txt files
find "$base" -name *.nfo -exec rm {} \;
# find "$base" -name *.srt -exec rm {} \;
find "$base" -name *.txt -exec rm {} \;

# Delete all empty folders (recursively)
find "$base" -depth -mindepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;

exit 0;

As you can see, it works with simple regexp and Linux commands, and after a couple of weeks testing, it does the job very well. If it doesn’t recognize the name, it leaves the file alone.

Just to note, I did not write this script, unfortunately I do not know who did, but if you’re out there, thanks! I spent several months trying to find a way to do this, and this script saved me from having to study bash and write it from scratch.

Renaming
In order to rename the files to names more fitting the naming conventions of XBMC, I made a very simple bash script that uses a python script called tvnamer. This script checks with TheTVdb.com and renames the file according to what is specified there. Usually this will be “Show name [01x01] Episode name.ext” and makes it very easy for XBMC to recognize the show.
renameTV.sh

#!/bin/bash

/usr/local/bin/tvnamer -b -r /your/path/to/TV > /dev/null 2>&1

Be aware though, that this script goes through the entire TV folder and renames any episode there without interaction. If you don’t want this, you might want to figure out another way to set this up.

And last but not least, how to run these scripts automatically. I simply set up a cron job for each one like this, also, I did add a third line that updates the XBMC library automatically once everything is sorted and renamed, so we really have everything ready when we’re back home.

0 15 * * * sh /your/path/to/scripts/mvfiles.sh >> /var/log/mvfiles.log
0 16 * * * sh /your/path/to/scripts/renameTV.sh
0 17 * * * curl --get "http://localhost:8080/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=ExecBuiltIn&parameter=XBMC.updatelibrary(video) >> /var/log/xbmc-update.log
"

This runs the first script that moves files at 15:00, and the renaming script at 16:00. Which means when I get home from work at 18:00, everything will be sorted and ready for me. Now be aware, this works great for me, because I live in Scandinavia, which means most shows I’m watching come out in the middle of the night here, and gets downloaded during the early hours of the day. This means that by lunch, the files are already to sort.
This might however be different for you if you live in America.

Hope this guide was useful for you! And please leave feedback if you have any questions.

Updated: Added cron job for updating the XBMC library automatically once everything is sorted and renamed.

There were tons of stress when we first was informed about the fact that we had to move. Mostly because it came a bit like a surprise on us. We knew that we were going to have to move sooner or later, but what we didn’t know was that it time would fly so fast in Stockholm. When it was three weeks left, we started thinking of emergency solutions in case we didn’t find anything. I think we settled with storing everything at a storage facility and finding a hotel room that was cheap enough to live in for a month. Then, all of a sudden, after sending tons and tons of mails to various apartments, we got invited to come look at an apartment. And it actually turned out being a really nice one! And the best of all, the landlord for the apartment was a total geek and we ended up talking more about servers and work then the actual apartment. I think that’s made us get the place.

So, new apartment, and opposite side of town. This time we’ll be living in Rågsved,which is actually just about 20-ish minutes from my work, and about 30min from Alinas job. Really perfect placement, and the apartment itself is really nice. Not as big as what we had, but we never managed to fill up that apartment with things anyway. We have arranged for friends helping with the moving this weekend, and have a whole week to clean out the old one.

This time I will try to take some photos of the new place and post them here. For some reason I never got around to posting pictures of the old one.

And of course, the apartment has 100/100 fibre connection. Priorities, I know!

Jailbreak it. I know, it’s not very legal now is it? Or at least it’s a gray zone. However, it enables you to fully enjoy your phone the way it should be. No limitations, and all the benefits of jailbreak tweaks and applications. Be aware though, you will break your warranty by doing this, and it seems Apple have started finding new ways to block jailbreakers from enjoying their phones (ref: The 3.1.3 update).

Also, it seems they have started blocking users to the app store that are running jailbroken software (ref: Apple Bans iPhone hackers). Note: This might be users that are running pirated app store apps, not jailbroken apps, which is what I will present here.

Step 2:

Ok, so you’ve jailbroken your phone, now what? I’ll tell you what. Here’s a small list of tweaks and applications that is in no way available through the regular Apple ways.

- Android lock: (Free) Yeah, someone has made an effort and made an lock screen more similar to the one Android uses. This will make it harder for your buddies to tamper with your phone and surf on your pay-pr-kilobyte connection for for large non-iPhone supported sites.

- SBsettings: (Free) Tired of having to go into settings to enable and disable the wifi, Bluetooth or airplane mode all the time? With sbsettings you simply swipe across the topbar, and you have instant access to all settings you would ever need.

- qTweeter: (About 1$) If your an avid Twitter user, then you want your tweets out as fast as possible. This app is another swipe-to-access app, where you slide your finger down from the top bar. This produces a window for instant tweets (and Facebook updates).

- Backgrounder/Kirikae: (Free) This is a combo suggestion, as both apps really work well together. Backgrounder enables you to do exactly that, place running applications in the background. This way you can run your last.fm/spotify in the background, while surfing the web or reading your mail. Kirikae enables you to quickly do switches between your running apps by a simple tap on the specified button (in my case i double click the home button).

Backgrounder doesn’t really have something to take a screenshot of, but works by simply holding the home button. You then get a message saying the app has been backgrounded, and you can change to and from with Kirikae.

Step 3:

Have fun! With these additions to your iPhone, you might feel it’s worth keeping for a little while longer. And if not, enjoy your next gadget!

I have a few options:

- I could try buying up the .no/.com domain I want from another owner, but the downside would be that I might have to end up paying allot of money for it.

- I could get an obscure ccTLD (Country code Top-Level domain), but the problem then is, normal people don’t know about that many extensions. The main extensions are .com/.net/.org and for Norwegians it’s .no. Having an extension like .sh, .tc, .cx or .la as an extension would just confuse people.

- Another option is to simply sit and wait for a domain to “maybe” expire and steal it before it’s re-registered by the owner, but this involves allot of waiting, and domains these days usually don’t expire unless the owner does not pay for it.

I might just ending up with the second solution. It’s not the best, but I don’t want to pay allot of money, and I can’t be bothered waiting for the domain I want to be released. I am monitoring the domains, and will no doubt snatch it if it does release, but I can always forward mail to another domain when I get it.

If you have any suggestions to what domain I should try to go for, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note!

After some time using it, I must say it’s working very well! Every time I’ve woke up with it, I’ve been feeling more awake then when using my regular alarm. All tough this might be my subconscious tricking me, I don’t really care. It feels better to wake up, and I get graphs of my sleeping patterns, which are always great fun.

Below you will see a collection of graphs with the sleep statistics from 27 December until today. These represent how I have slept during this time,  and  according to the latest statistics on my phone, I sleep an average of 6 hours and 46 minutes every night.

I can highly recommend anyone with an iPhone having problems feeling tired and agitated when getting up in the morning,  to try this app. Just remember, you have to use it for at least 3 days for the app to properly register your sleeping patterns and wake you up at the best possible time. In the beginning it will wake you up precisely at the set hour, but after the initial registrations, it will start waking you up earlier.

With all this time, and not much to do then to sit and wait to get from A to B, I had to find something that helped time go by faster, so I decided it was time to start reading books again.
I remember when I was working at Ringnes E.C. Dahls Bryggeri A/S, I used to listen to audio books a lot, and I really miss that, so after searching around a bit I found an application for my iPhone that suited my needs called Stanza. Seeing as I have my hands free at the bus and train, I figured I could save storage space and time by reading eBooks instead of audio books, and for this Stanza is perfect.

So far I h ave managed to get through some books already, so here’s a short review of what I think about them:

Dan Brown – The Lost Symbol

No doubt a very intriguing book, and reading it made time just fly by in seconds, but during the entire book, one thing kept bothering me. Dan Brown is mocking every conspiracy theorist that disagrees with what he means is correct, through his character Robert Langdon. Why does he do that? Sure, he might disagree with them, but to openly mock people thinking that the Freemasons where something more then just a society of great men really bothers me. In example, there are people that believe Freemasons where satanic worshippers, and they are in their liberty to believe that. Not to be told that they are stupid to think like this by a character in a book.
The story itself was very good though, very typical Dan Brown-esque, with crime, action, mysteries and a touch of romance. Just the way we like it.

The graveyard book

I have been wanting to read this book ever since it came out, and Alina have the book, but I usually never get around to picking up a book when I get home, and I hate lugging books around with me when I’m out, so getting this book as an eBook right away was kind of predestined. The book is classified as a children’s book, but it should really be classified as “for all ages”, because this book is just as entertaining and fun for an adult as a child.

That’s the books I have been reading so far, and right now I’m currently reading this book:

World of Warcraft: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King

I have really not read much of this yet, but the first chapter seems promising. I have a feeling that I’m going to read through this book in no time, as I love the Warcraft lore.

Also on my list of books-to-read are these (in no particular order):

Stephen King – The stand
Neil Gaiman – Anansi boys
Max Brooks – World war Z
Mel Odom – Hellgate London
Terry Brooks – The Landover series
Robert Jordan – Wheel of time series
Grahame-Smith Seth – Pride and Prejudice and zombies
Yann Martel – Life of Pi
Terry Pratchett – The colour of magic
Brent Weeks – The way of shadows
Orson Scott Card – Enders game

There are more as well, but these should keep me busy for quite a lot of work days.

Installing homebrew channel

The first step will be to have access to the homebrew channel on your Wii. This can be accomplished by several ways. I used the Twilight hack described here http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Twilight_Hack however, this has been fixed in later updates of the Wii firmware. However the Indiana Pwns hack explained here http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Indiana_Pwns currently works with the latest 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 system menus.

You can also use the BannerBomb hack which is explained in this article http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Bannerbomb

I am however not going to explain in detail the software hacking of the Wii, as this was something I did when I first got the Wii, by going out and buying The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, so I could load the hacked save game and start installing home brew. This is all explained in the links I posted and should be enough to get you started.

Installing the latest IOS package cIOSCORP

In order for the system to be able to load the latest games without having to update the system itself, we need the latest IOS packages. These packages can be installed in numerous amounts of ways, but I found it easiest to use a package installer called cIOSCORP. This installed all the latest IOS packages, patched with whatever it needed to have patched, and as many as needed to run any game available on the market. More info and download of the package can be found here http://cioscorp.com/

Simply explained is that you download the package, place it under apps/ on your SD card and start the install through the homebrew channel. Some basics about how you do this here http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/how-to-use/homebrew-channel

Making a WBFS USB stick with wbfsmanager

In order to play games from an USB stick, the file system on the USB stick have to be altered to use the WBFS system the Wii uses to read the game DVD’s etc. This can be accomplished by using a simple application called WBFS Manager, and can be downloaded here http://wbfsmanager.codeplex.com/ Simply follow this guide http://adewii.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/howto-wbfs-manager-for-windows-basics/ and you will have the USB stick converted to WBFS in no time. This guide also explains how to transfer the ISO files onto your USB stick.

Scrubbing Wii game isos and adding to usb stick

It is also possible to do a “scrub” of the ISO images for games you backup. This makes them smaller, which is what we want when we are storing games on an USB stick. You can download the Wii scrubber here http://wiiscrubber.com/ Once the game you have scrubbed is done, transfer it to the WBFS USB stick as shown in the link above.

Installing an USB loader

I’m currently on a slight experimental stage with this, but right now I’m using an USB loader called WiiFlow which is working quite well. Download it here http://wiiflow.wiitdb.com/ Simply place the package inside the apps/ folder on your SD card to run it from the homebrew channel. If everything is working as it should, you will be asked to insert the USB stick and the games placed on the stick will show up!

I know there is another launcher available, enabling you to launch games directly from the channel menu explained here http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/backup-launchers/usb/loadstructor which I’m going to try out, but I just managed to boot up Super Mario Galaxy, and my girlfriend has now claimed the Wii for the evening ;)

Disclaimer:

I take no responsibility for the use of pirated games with this walk through. This guide is strictly for information use only (and as my personal reference). I also take no responsibility for any damage to your Wii caused by this guide, neither do I take responsibility for any harm made to other hardware.

Also, there are probably several errors in this guide. If you wish to correct my post, please leave a comment and I will do the necessary updates.