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So, I made an array of NSString objects that I wanted to lay out, around that circle.

NSArray* sections = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"text1", @"text2", @"text3", @"text4", nil];

- (UIImage*) createMenuRingWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
{
    // First fix the frame to make sure it uses the right scaling (iPhone 4 / iPad compatibility).
	frame = CGRectMake(frame.origin.x, frame.origin.y, frame.size.width * scale, frame.size.height * scale);

    // Same for the text radius
	float scaledTextRadius = textRadius * scale;
	float scaledRingWidth = ringWidth;

    // Define the centerpoint of the circle.
	CGPoint centerPoint = CGPointMake(frame.size.width / 2, frame.size.height / 2);

    // self.menuItemsFont is of the type UIFont, which I use to get the font for displaying the text on the circle.
	char* fontName = (char*)[self.menuItemsFont.fontName cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

    // 2 UIColor's, which I need for the color of the circle and for the text
	ringColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:1 green:1 blue:1 alpha:0.7];
	textColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0 green:0 blue:0 alpha:1];

	CGFloat* ringColorComponents = (float*)CGColorGetComponents(ringColor.CGColor);
	CGFloat* textColorComponents = (float*)CGColorGetComponents(textColor.CGColor);

	CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL, frame.size.width, frame.size.height, 8, 4 * frame.size.width, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst);

	CGContextSetTextMatrix(context, CGAffineTransformIdentity);

	CGContextSelectFont(context, fontName, 18 * scale, kCGEncodingMacRoman);
	CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor(context, ringColorComponents[0], ringColorComponents[1], ringColorComponents[2], ringAlpha);
	CGContextSetLineWidth(context, scaledRingWidth);

	CGContextStrokeEllipseInRect(context, CGRectMake(scaledRingWidth, scaledRingWidth, frame.size.width - (scaledRingWidth * 2), frame.size.height - (scaledRingWidth * 2)));
	CGContextSetRGBFillColor(context, textColorComponents[0], textColorComponents[1], textColorComponents[2], textAlpha);

	CGContextSaveGState(context);
	CGContextTranslateCTM(context, centerPoint.x, centerPoint.y);

    // define the angles of the texts to divide them evenly on the circle.
	float angleStep = 2 * M_PI / [sections count];

    // I set the starting-angle on 90 degrees, to make sure the first text was ON TOP of the circle.
	float angle = degreesToRadians(90);

    // Some custom text-radius fixing (and scaling for iPhone 4 & iPad). To make sure my text centered nicely.
	scaledTextRadius = scaledTextRadius - 12 * scale;

    // Loop through texts and draw them at the appropriate angle.
	for (NSString* text in sections)
	{
        // call a method that actually draws the text at an angle
		[self drawStringAtContext:context string:text atAngle:angle withRadius:scaledTextRadius];
		angle -= angleStep;
	}

	CGContextRestoreGState(context);

	CGImageRef contextImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context);

    // Release the stuff to avoid memory leaks.
	CGContextRelease(context);
	CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

    return [UIImage imageWithCGImage:contextImage];

}

// This method draws the text at an angle, while the location is based on the radius + angle.
- (void) drawStringAtContext:(CGContextRef) context string:(NSString*) text atAngle:(float) angle withRadius:(float) radius
{
	// Scale the fontsize to match UIScreen scaling
	UIFont* scaledMenuItemsFont = [menuItemsFont fontWithSize:18 * scale];

	// Get the size of the string when it would be drawn with the selected font
	CGSize textSize = [text sizeWithFont:scaledMenuItemsFont];

	float perimeter = 2 * M_PI * radius;

	// determine the angle of the text.
	float textAngle = (textSize.width) / perimeter * 2 * M_PI;
	angle += textAngle / 2;

	// We loop through each letter in the string, so we can set the angle for each letter right
	for (int index = 0; index < [text length]; index++)
	{
	    // Get the correct letter by the index
		NSRange range = {index, 1};
		NSString* letter = [text substringWithRange:range];
		char* c = (char*)[letter cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
		CGSize charSize = [letter sizeWithFont:scaledMenuItemsFont];

	    // Determin the X and Y position of the letter based on the angle and the radius
		float x = radius * cos(angle);
		float y = radius * sin(angle);

		float letterAngle = (charSize.width / perimeter * -2 * M_PI);

	    // Save the state of the context, because rotations are based on the original origin
		CGContextSaveGState(context);
		CGContextTranslateCTM(context, x, y);
	    // Rotate the canvas so we can just draw our text horizontally
		CGContextRotateCTM(context, (angle - 0.5 * M_PI));
		CGContextShowTextAtPoint(context, 0, 0, c, strlen(c));
	    // Restore the context again.
		CGContextRestoreGState(context);

		angle += letterAngle;
	}
}

I came to this solution after I asked a question on StackOverflow, which was helpfully demonstrated by Dribbel on how to do it. Credits for that to him.

So after a coupe of google searches, I came up with the following solution, follow these steps and you will be sending emails with attachments before you can say “emails with attachments” 250 times.

Step 1
First add the MessageUI framework in your application.

Step 2
The class you want to use the functionality in, should get the following 2 imports:

#import
#import 

Step 3
Make sure your class listens to the MFMailComposeViewControllerDelegate.

Step 4
Next up, is to add code to add an attachment to the mail composer and open it up.

MFMailComposeViewController* composer = [[MFMailComposeViewController alloc] init];
composer.mailComposeDelegate = self;

[composer setSubject:@"The subject of the email"];
NSData *imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation([UIImage imageNamed:@"test.png"], 1);
[composer addAttachmentData:imageData mimeType:@"image/png" fileName:@"test.png"];
NSString *emailBody = @"Check out this amazing PNG!";
[composer setMessageBody:emailBody isHTML:YES];
[self presentModalViewController:composer animated:YES];
[composer release];

Step 5
Add this method, to make sure you get back full control over your view-controller:

- (void) mailComposeController:(MFMailComposeViewController *)controller didFinishWithResult:(MFMailComposeResult)result error:(NSError *)error
{
	[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

In this last method you can also perform error checking, which is not included in this example. Hope this helps anyone, and if not… too bad

For example, sometimes you receive a string like this: Terminator_2$003A_Judgment_Day. I wanted to convert the weird encoding they use, so I wrote a piece of code for that. It might be that this could be encoded some other way and then I would like to hear from you, but here is my code:

+ (NSString*) replaceHexInString:(NSString*) value
{
	NSRange range = [value rangeOfString:@"$00"];

	while (range.location != NSNotFound)
	{
		if (range.location + 5 <= [value length])
		{
			NSString* hexValue = [value substringFromIndex:range.location];
			hexValue = [hexValue substringToIndex:5];
			NSString* newHexValue = [hexValue stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"$" withString:@"0x"];

			unsigned int dec;
			NSScanner *scan = [NSScanner scannerWithString:newHexValue];

			if ([scan scanHexInt:&dec])
			{
				NSString* convertedValue = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c", dec];
				value = [value stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:hexValue withString:convertedValue];
			}
		}

		range = [value rangeOfString:@"$00"];
	}
	return value;
}

I know this probably does not get the UTF-16 characters, but in my case I (hope to) know they won’t use them.

Well, that’s about it. Not sure if anyone can use this, but I do .

So I looked in queueing the downloads and tried (ofcourse) writing my own QueueHandler class. After I written and spend a couple of hours bughunting/testing my QueueuHandler, I came to the awesome idea to see what the iPhone SDK supplies for this kind of jobs (you DO read my sarcasm, dont you?).

I am using ASIHTTPRequest for my web-requests in WallPaper. I will just show you how I queue my downloads and when the download finishes, I put the image in a predefined and created UIImageView.

I first declare a couple of variables in my .h file.

NSMutableArray* downloadQueue;
NSOperationQueue* queue;

I added some UIImageView’s to a view and I put them and the download URL in a NSMutableDictionary, like this:

NSMutableDictionary* threadArguments = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];

[threadArguments setObject:myUrl forKey:@"url"];
[threadArguments setObject:myImageView forKey:@"iv"];

[self addToDownloadQueue:threadArguments];

The addToDownloadQueue method does something like this after that (threadArguments is the parameter the method is receiving).

// Add the object to the NSMutableArray I got stored.
[downloadQueue addObject:threadArguments];
if (!queue)
{
	queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];
	[queue setMaxConcurrentOperationCount:1];
}

NSString* threadUrl = [threadArguments valueForKey:@"url"];
NSURL* downloadUrl = [NSURL URLWithString:threadUrl];
ASIHTTPRequest* request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:downloadUrl];
[request setDelegate:self];
[request setDidFinishSelector:@selector(downloadDone:)];
[request setDidFailSelector:@selector(downloadFailed:)];

I put the MaxConcurrentOperationCount on 1 to make sure the application sends the requests for thumbnails one by one (going easy on your bandwidth and on my server).

Now we need to implement the FinishSelector and the FailSelector methods to catch the downloads that are finished and put the downloaded image in the pre-created UIImageView.

- (void)downloadFailed:(ASIHTTPRequest *)request
{
	NSLog(@"Downloading failed?");
}

- (void)downloadDone:(ASIHTTPRequest *)request
{
	NSString* downloadUrl = [request.url absoluteString];

	NSMutableDictionary* foundObj = nil;

	for (NSMutableDictionary* dict in downloadQueue)
	{
		NSString* queueUrl = [dict valueForKey:@"url"];

		if ([downloadUrl isEqualToString:queueUrl])
		{
			UIImageView* iv = (UIImageView*)[dict valueForKey:@"iv"];
			NSData* imageData = request.rawResponseData;

			if (iv != nil)
				iv.image = [UIImage imageWithData:imageData];

			foundObj = dict;
		}
	}

	if (foundObj != nil)
		[downloadQueue removeObject:foundObj];
}

*Ok, somehow my code syntax highlighting screws up the indenting.*

Well, I hope you can use something of my weird code.

All the stories I read online, about people who jailbroke their phones, used sim-locked phones so I was quite scared that maybe jailbreaking my officially unlocked phone, would somehow fuxxor it up.

I downloaded WinPwn for my Windows machine and downloaded the latest 2.0 firmware for the 3G phone, from the Apple site. After that I made my own IPSW and iPwned my iTunes (I chose not to ‘Activate’ my iPhone while pwning it).

The first attempt, flashing the firmware ended up in a scary -1 error. My phone was hanging in the process of booting. I put my phone back in DFU mode (which actually is very easy to do) and tried restoring again with my custom firmware.

Voila… after a 10 minute wait, there it was! My unlocked iPhone 3G was jailbroken and Cydia was installed for me to supply me with some new toys to play with!

So, if you ever wonder: will jailbreaking my unlocked iPhone fuck my phone… no.

Since last friday there have been stories that de iPhone dev-team will be releasing their PwnageTool soon, so that we, iPhone 2G users, can finally upgrade to firmware 2.0 without risking our phones to get locked again. I am eagerly awaiting the release of that tool, because I can’t wait to try out the AppStore and finally some Exchange support.

There also have been some interesting stories on the dev-team’s blog, where they describe different parts of the hack and are already showing off their nice little tool. As it seems, they added a jailbreak for the iPhone 3G also, although it’s a shame that they postponed the release of their tool for that.

The blog of the iPhone dev-team.George Hotz’ blog

On the links mentioned above, you can follow a long discussion about the dev-team, George Hotz and more iPhone ‘scene’ people. There has been some serious shit throwing in that scene the last week.

I have been looking around the AppStore for a while, just to see what is being offered and it all looks very promising. There probably is not even a reason to jailbreak anymore.

I haven’t installed the 2.0 firmware on my broken iphone yet, because mine is was sim-unlocked when I bought it. I think after I install the firmware update, my phone will be unusable until they actually hack the firmware.

The iPhone 2.0 firmware, install at your own risk!The people from iFixit are already opening up the new iPhone 3G.

After a small accident, the glass completly broke. The touch screen still works…a bit.

It’s a sad loss, but there is no better reason to buy the 3G one, when it comes out .

Installer.app also gives you the option to install tools as Summerboard and Customize, which pimp the appearance of your iPhone. But since I moved from firmware version 1.1.1 to 1.1.3 I missed an option which I loved. It’s called the 5-icon-dock. Apple changed some structure in the Springboard application which made it impossible for the normal hacks to work (don’t ask me what….no really..don’t).

A couple of days ago I came across an application called Caterpillar (now known as Kate), which promised me the 5-icon-dock and more neat stuff. So I added the source of that application to my Installer.app and downloaded/installed it.

First I have to say is, it’s a pretty expensive application… for an iPhone application, but it really has some nice features which I haven’t seen yet in other free tools.

Calendar or Appointments in your lock screen
When your iPhone is locked, it shows more than just the ‘slide to unlock’ text now. It shows the appointments you have today or it shows you a normal calendar with dots on days where you have appointments.

5-icon-dock
The screenshot says it all….

Background around text
I love this option, because normally I had to choose to ‘dim’ my wallpaper so that the icon-labels were kept readable, but this makes everything so much nicer .

Font substitution
It replaces your system font, which (I think is the best there could be used, but still people might like it).

Uninstall from Springboard
Now, when you enter the ‘move your icons’ mode on Springboard, crosses appear on applications too (normally only shown on bookmarks). Clicking such a cross will uninstall the application, not just remove it’s icon from the dock.

Well these were only a couple of it’s features. You can check out the full changelog of the application here.