We ended up making tabouleh with the carrot greens. It turned out great. The carrot greens almost have a nutty or parsley taste. We combined the chopped carrot greens, cilantro, chopped garlic, olive oil, fresh lemon, salt, pepper, and tricolor Israeli couscous (we didn’t have bulgur).

I’m glad we didn’t throw them away!

My History with My 3GS

When I jailbroke my 3GS, it was simple. I went to jailbreakme.com (now defunct), and clicked Jailbreak. A minute later Cydia popped up and that was it. It turns out Absinthe was easy, as well. I restored my 3GS’ data to the 4S, then plugged it into my Macbook, opened Absinthe, and jailbroke it. Voila. Everything went smoothly. I also jailbroke my father’s 4S with the updated Absinthe that came out a few weeks later.

That left my 3GS lonely and abandoned. It had been with me for so long. I gave it to Cameron to use, even though it awkwardly had texts exchanges from my failed relationships still on it. On Valentine’s Day, I worked on making it a usable phone for him. He has T-Mobile.

There were a few problems with my 3GS. The first one was that it had a ridiculous amount of crap on it downloaded off Installous and buggy tweaks from Sinful iPhone. It crashed a lot and was unstable. Also, it had all my stuff on it that Cameron didn’t need. In addition, it was running iOS 4.0.

The Jailbreak Process

First I used redsn0w to create a custom IPSW so I could upgrade the iOS to 5.0.1 while preserving the 5.13.04 baseband. Finally, I could jailbreak the phone by running redsn0w again then use ultrasn0w to unlock the iPhone. At one point I forgot to put the phone in Pwned DFU mode and it kept giving me an iTunes error 1604, so I used iRebs and that fixed it. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was freaked out I’d mess something up (like upgrade the baseband). Luckily, my 3GS was a good candidate for me because it had the old 5.13.04 baseband and also was made during the first few weeks of production.

Finally, we popped the T-Mobile SIM card into the iPhone and after a few minutes, it started getting a signal and worked perfectly! Cameron and I played with the settings and turned off the cellular data network. He doesn’t really need to use 3G data and he didn’t want to upgrade his plan to add data to it. We reset the data usage counter and with cellular data turned off, it is like an iPod Touch when it’s outside a WiFi network, except that it can make calls. Also, with the upgraded iOS, he can use iMessage.

It took a lot of time and reading to figure it all out. I’ve decided retrospectively that the best tutorial for upgrading, jailbreaking, and unlocking the 3GS on baseband 5.13.04 is The Coolest Guy in on the Planet’s. It’s pretty straightforward.

Lessons Learned

I also bought my parents an iPad 2 and jailbroke it for them using Absinthe. No issues there, either, except that now I really want an iPad 2.

I learned my lesson and have been fairly fastidious with my 4S. I only installed a few tweaks, like the five icon dock and SBS Settings. I only have a few other jailbreak apps and only a few Installous apps. I’m trying to be good to the phone.

When I last looked at Cameron’s phone, on the other hand, it had six folders full of games…

Interestingly, the artist was formerly an artist for Saddam Hussein during most of his life (painting images on murals, buildings, etc. all over Iraq – essentially covering the country with his visage). After the invasion, most of the artists were out of work. This particular artist was put to work painting historical scenes on the new government buildings, including a fantastic mural in the Sinjar Post Office. He was adept at painting or copying photographs in our. Scott had him paint several paintings (from photographs) of his unit’s movement from Kuwait to Northern Iraq.

This helmet is an amazing examples of modern day trench art. What I like best about them is the fact that the show collaboration between native local populations and a foreign military, which I think isn’t frequently exhibited in trench art. I also like the idea of how new materials and new forms of collaboration allow a broader range of trench art to be created.

Scott discussed why he thinks that modern conflict doesn’t lend itself to trench art as easily as earlier conflicts. He says:

The nature of modern conflict doesn’t lend itself to trench art as easily as earlier conflicts. Most trench art pieces are made of artillery shells. While artillery has been used in both Iraq and Afghanistan it is not at the same magnitude of earlier wars. Additionally, most soldiers today are taught to not retain spent brass or ammo and that it must be turned in. Being found with spent ammunition stateside can result in punishment. Some of that mentality carries on overseas. Finally there are shipping concerns.

These matchbook covers have proven hard to display, although they are lovely. For example, Mozart’s features a naval pin-up girl and the phrase “Naughty Nautical.” The Wiggle Inn states “Dine & Dance” and that “All Legal Drinks Served.”

However, they’ve proven hard to display…until now. I picked up a small $1 frame at Dollar Tree and I really like how colorful and fun they are framed.

I cut the tops of each tab so I could connect them together and then wrapped the strand around and around until the wreath was covered. My accomplice said it needed more color so I hung tiny Christmas balls on it. It’s pretty crazy.

The books that ended up fitting in the frames were mostly juvenile literature, but I did manage to frame my favorite book cover ever: “ESP” by Susy Smith.