So I bought another toy the other day. A Sony PSP. Yes, now I own two portable gaming systems. Why? So now I can review games from BOTH systems. Yay! (Truthfully, it was an impulse buy…and I had a gift card to my local used game store).
Like I inferred, I bought the PSP used. I got out to my car, popped a game in (Dungeon Seige, Throne of Agony), and started playing. As soon as the opening cinematic ended and I entered the playable game, my half-giant barbarian runs to the bottom of the screen of his own free will and keeps on running even after he gets stopped by a tree stump. I started pushing buttons and toggling the analog stick…and he still kept running straight into the bottom of the screen. Suddenly, he stopped his suicidal marathon and started doing what I was telling him to do. “Weird”, I thought. I played a little further into the game, and again my character started randomly running to the top of the screen of his own volition. I mashed buttons, twirled the analog stick around, and after about 20 seconds the controls started working again. I figured I was just unlucky, and kept on playing. Unfortunately, this pattern of random sprints to the top and bottom of the screen continued for the next hour that I played.
Finally I decided to go back to the store and see if I was just crazy, or if something was wrong with the PSP. The salesdude was very cooperative and after a minute of playing the game and watching Ed the Half-Giant merrily running off into the environment he apologized for my trouble and went and got me another PSP. This one was in better shape, and came complete with a Superman Returns adhesive skin. A handful of paper towels and some Goo-Gone cleaned the likeness of Brandon Routh off my PSP, and I was good to go.
First Impressions
After getting used to the blinding light that is the Nintendo DS screen, I had to bend over and squint to see the PSP’s screen in some of the darker environments of my game when I was playing in the daytime. That was really the only annoying part about the system. Well, that and the fact that you have to dish out more money to buy a memory card if you actually want to save your games. I didn’t realize that fact and inadvertently lost about three hours of playtime the day I bought it. I got a 2 gig memory card for thirty bucks used (new they go for around fifty dollars).
A neat feature that I don’t think I’ll hardly ever use is the built in WiFi and internet browser. Again, you need a memory card to use the internet (you can save images, music, and video to your card for later viewing), and it acts pretty much like a cellphone browser when it comes to viewing websites. After I bought my memory card I went over to a local restaurant and borrowed some wireless internet. I quickly realized that the previous owner of my card had been male, between 13 and 16, and emo. His internet history consisted of porn sites and “emo hair styles for guys”, while his musical tastes included Yellowcard and two other bands I hadn’t heard of. I won’t even get into the videos he had on there. Anyway, none of that’s relevant, it’s just further proof that we’re degenerating as a society.
The PSP game library is what attracted me in the first place. When I heard that a prequel to Final Fantasy VII (FF VII Crisis Core) was coming out for PSP, I got excited. When I found out I could play GTA, MGS, Burnout, and other more console-centric titles on this thing, I got even more excited. I’ll save my Nintendo DS/PSP comparison for another post, but the distinction between the two systems is never more evident then when you look at the game selections. MarioKart and Pokemon on the DS, Madden, Splinter Cell, and Burnout on the PSP.
While I’m still not sure it was the smartest purchase within the bounds of my budget (tsk tsk, I know), I’m having a ton of fun playing it and I’m looking forward to trying out some more games.
If you have problems with Installer.app suddenly crashing when you’re trying to install new software, fear not! Here’s the quick and easy way around that. This solution should apply to any firmware version, however I’ve only tried it on 1.1.3.
It has to do with not having enough free space, so first you’ll need to uninstall a few applications, then download BossTool (under the Utilities category).
Next, open BossTool and click “Free Disk Space”.
Now hit the “Relocate Applications” button, you’ll see a pop up asking you to confirm, do so and let it do it’s thing.
After it’s completed head back over to Installer.app and try installing several new applications, it should work just fine now.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but apparently that doesn’t apply to Google, although it is slightly reassuring to know that their server clusters don’t actually incorporate human hearts. I digress. Over the course of a few days I’ve all but disappeared from the hollowed pages of Google Search, major bummer, I used to be the number two result (also numbers 3, 4, 7, 12, and 42) when searching for ‘Aaron Nelsen‘ but now I’m stuck at the bottom of the first page of results, plus Hijinks Inc. doesn’t show up until page two.
In other news, banks cut interest rates because of the cuts the Fed made, and the market continues to be as unpredictable as an inebriated schizophrenic. Both of which are major thorns in my side.
Along the same lines, I’ve made more money in the past six months by changing a portion of my cash holdings from the US dollar to the Euro than I have from the stock market. That’s depressing.
Oh and I’m in the process of upgrading my iPod touch to the 1.1.3 firmware and attempting to jailbreak it, if I’m successful I’ll post instructions on how to rock that scene.
As if I didn’t neglect this blog enough already, I probably won’t be posting much/at all for the next week or two. My Grandpa just passed away yesterday morning, so I’ll be spending time with my family and ignoring the existence of the internet for awhile.Your thoughts and prayers would be greatly appreciated.
Today markets fell worldwide, will the NYSE follow suit tomorrow? My guess is yes, and it won’t be pretty. So look for the market to falter tomorrow, leaving us with a closing number well below 12,000.
Here is a breakdown of the losses seen worldwide today.
Bombay’s Sensex -7.4%
Frankfurt’s DAX -7.2%
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng -5.5%
London’s FTSE -5.5%
Shanghai Composite -5.1%
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 -3.9%
I for one will be looking to pick up a few stocks at a healthy discount if the market does suffer.
We just set a new record for the number of subscribers to our RSS feed! All the wonder and excitement you could ask for is waiting in the form of a numeral after the jump!
Here’s a random story about an equally random event in my life…
Last night I went to a local restaurant with my fellow blogger Fred, after placing my order I dug into my wallet and produced a ten dollar bill, I then handed it to the cashier who cast a rather suspicious glance at the bill and then at me. Saying nothing, but still giving me odd looks, she handed me my change of $4.78 and informed me my number was 78 and it would be called shortly.
As I proceeded to fill up my cup with pop, I glanced back at the cashier who was frantically scribbling on my ten dollar bill with one of those markers where the ink is supposed to change color if the bill is counterfeit (does that work on older bills?). Seemingly unsatisfied with the results she hastened over to her coworker and asked in a hushed tone “Does this look real?” while I couldn’t manage to make out his response, it must have been in favor of the bill being real, since they didn’t call the cops or anything.
As near as I can figure ignorance is the primary reason for them thinking it was fake, but I suppose it was a fairly honest mistake seeing as the ten dollar bill in question was a surprisingly crisp and new looking Series 1990 bill. And even though it was the first of its kind to feature modern anti-counterfeiting measures like microscopic printing around Hamilton’s portrait and a plastic security strip on the left side of the bill, the 1990 series looks nothing like the last two revisions of the bill (1999 and 2006), and again it was ridiculously new looking for a bill that was somewhere between 10-18 years old, so I guess I can’t fault them too much.
In case you’d like to see the last three revisions of the bill in question, there’s a picture after the jump.
Here are some instructions for installing NES games on your iPod touch or iPhone. These will best benefit you if you already have a jailbroken iPod or iPhone and a wireless network.
