Well after reading many confimations of the downgrader working, I have performed the downgrader process, quite simple really. I now have access to the world of homebrew on the PSP.
I have now downloaded the PSP devkit and tool, and had a go at coding some samples, using the examples and source code people have already put out. Will post more at some point, however it is not going to be soon since I’m going to be preparing for the Storage Expo.
Wow, so the rumours of a 2.0 downgrader to 1.5 have been spot on. Though it seems to be a contentious issue. I don’t
particularly care who get the credit for pulling this off, but I do want to get into the homebrew scene on the PSP.
Have been hacking on a version of Tetris in Python using PyGame, which I could quite easily port to C on the PSP.
I’ll see how it goes. Will probably wait a few days before using the downgrader, play it safe as usual.
Well we have put up the new company website. http://www.thinkingsafe.com
Much more refined than the previous version, and the graphics and images have been done properly this time round. Hopefully this will improve our company image, next thing is to actually get the site ranked properly.
This post might actually help 
Sort of got home a little later than I hoped however I still managed to spend a fair amount of time tinkering with my new toy.
The size and weight are fine, though a smaller unit would have been handy since it would have fitted in a jacket pocket, the PSP really needs to be put into a bag whilst travelling which is fine by me. The ergonomicas of the unit are fine, though I can see playing for long sessions is going to get uncomfortable quite quickly.
First problem is that the firmware version on the unit is 1.51, I was hoping for 1.5 though I had been expecting it to be 2.0. So I decided to upgrade the unit to 2.0 so I could play with the browser and movie playback features.
I had already ripped my Sin City DVD as a test MP4 a few days ago, and I have to say that the movie playback is amazing. The music playback is good as well, the shell on the PSP is nice and easy to use.
The browser is quite good, SSL support seems okay only tried the company intranet area and a few other things I could think of whilst being up at 2am.
I bought Burnout Legends which plays amazingly well on the PSP. In fact my brother even worked on this games in the early stages, it was meant to be one of the release titles however they slipped by a couple of weeks. The other game I am looking forward to is GTA Liberty Cities, which is set between GTA 3 and Vice City, so far from the screenshots and talk on the net, it looks like it is going to become the benchmark for the PSP.
I really want to be able to play emulators and homebrew code on the PSP, however until 2.0 firmware is cracked or a downgrader is released I’m kind of stuck. I have been surfing the various PSP community sites prior to ordering my
PSP hoping that the supposed downgraders and hacks being discussed are real, and will eventually result in a solution to the problem. Though Sony will probably have 2.5 ready in the next month or two.
My PSP arrived just before I left for work this morning so I can’t wait to get home to have a tinker.
Watched A History Of Violence last night which was a bit of an odd film, since it was not quite what I had imagined after seeing the trailer. The filmography and acting is top notch, David Cronenberg directs, so this was always going to be good, though this is not typical film for him.
The lead is played by Viggo Mortensen who play a diner owner who is forced to defend himself and his employees when a couple of passers by try to rob them. This results in him being hailed a local hero, and things turn sour. Ed Harris play the bad element, along with William Hurt.
The concept is simple, but works really well. The film is not terribly long, but I think it acts as a plus point since they could of come up with more pointless scenes, but Cronenberg obviously decided against it.
I haved decided to go for a PSP however no one has any left.
So I can’t be asked waiting for 6 weeks like Sony is telling retailers so I’m going to order one from Lik-Sang. Have started looking at the homebrew scene on the PSP for a while now, since Edge did a great feature a few months back. Have been looking at guides and tutorials to get an idea of what is achievable at the moment. So far the main things seems to be indie games and emulators. Emulators are great because it means you can carry your favrourite SNES games around with you all the time.
It a tough one should I get a PSP or a Nano this month?
My iPod is starting to play up however it has not quite got to the annoying broken stage. So I might wait until december for it to totally freak out.
The other reason for hanging tight is that they might have larger capacity models by then anyway. Plus with the crazy number of units Apple is going to ship, flash memory prices will fall as well.
So this means I could get a PSP now, there are PSP community sites indicating a tool for downgrading the firmware on US and European models will be available in days. So I will probably hang out a couple of days.
Earlier this evening I paid the Apple Store a visit to check out the Nano.
Wow, just after seeing these babies I wanted one and immediately joined the queue.
Just my luck that they had run out of Black 4GB models. Oh well.
Apple today unveilled the iPod Nano, a new flash based music player.
It is replacing the iPod mini from the range. Of course as the name implies it is very small, as thin as the Shuffle but a little wider. It comes in a 2GB or 4Gb configuration, plus it has a colour display as well, and is also available in black or white finish.
I want one of these, this is most definately the iPod I have been waiting for.
Just watched the The 40 Year Old Virgin this evening, it is a hilarious film. A definite guy film, having said that I still rate Wedding Crashers above this, but it is still a must see film.
The support cast are just amazing, watch out for the 2 pakistani co-workers.
Wasted a whole day at the weekend dicking around with getting my Netgear Wi-Fi card to work. I have finally found some relevant post saying that the Atheros chipset support in Ubuntu is broken, so it looks like a custom kernel and driver compile fest, can’t be asked right now so I think I will leave that till next week.
Why is getting Wi-Fi in Linux so damn awkward still. I know there are preferred and better supported chipsets but still.
I figured since I’m going to be dual booting with Linux, I would use this opportunity to play with a few other Linux distros.
First stop was Mandriva. Now I have always been a Mandrake fan however I have not touched Mandrake for a couple of years since I have been living in Redhat ville or Debian land.
Mandriva worked flawlessly except for the Wi-Fi. The new desktop look and default feature set was very impressive, al of the Thinkpad utilites also came installed and needed little config to get working properly.
However I released very quickly that URPMI sucks big style, updating packages and finding packages on the web was annoying.
I had assumed that my Netgear Wi-Fi card would be supported out of the box, but I was wrong.
I had the FC4 DVD image lying around as well so I thought about that for a second then remember how bad that sucked when I tried it on one of my Linux play boxes. So I decided to go back to Ubuntu which is what I’m using on my desktop box. Again no problems, just had to get the Thinkpad utilities installed which took seconds.
At this point I still don’t have Wi-Fi working, however I decided I would have a play with e17 and have pulled the sources from CVS and built them. Still playing, I should actually be writing code, but this is the inherant problem with Linux. Waste too much time dicking about with install and config.
Went and saw Red Eye starring my new favourite actress Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy who does a great job of playing a freak, yet again.
Wes Craven is behind this thriller, horror fans expecting some gore will be dissapointed since there is no gore in this film. However it is a good film, worth watching maybe not a cinema night, but one for a night in.
