Month: January 2007

For all those fellow PlayStation Portable users who are stuck in the realm of firmware 2.81-3.03, without any possibility of running homebrew apps or getting the full functionality out of your PSP, good news has arrived: The “Noobz” Team have developed a 1.5.0 downgrader for all the above firmware versions. This should get you onto the custom 3.03 firmware in no time at all! They also released a homebrew enabler that can run on 3.03 without making any permanent change to your PSP.

Yay!

Of course, give it a bit of time for testing to take place before you jump right in – there is still a high possibility of bricking your device, which won’t be fun. Indeed, one problem is the requirement for an unpatched Grand Theft Auto:Liberty City Stories disk… I need to go hunting. Anyone?

Details of the latest PSP Homebrew here.

Tags: PSP, playstation, firmware, homebrew, hack, hacking

So most people with a pulse and a TV are well aware of the superb television program “Top Gear”. And by extension if you know Top Gear, you probably knew that Richard “The Hamster” Hammond was involved in major accident while attempting to break the British Land Speed Record.

Well, I’ll shut up there and leave it to Google Video. Here’s the footage, courtesy top Gear, of The Hamster’s crash.

Tags: RichardHammond, TheHamster, crash, accident, TopGear

It was good to get out of the whole East Rand/Pretoria rut and head back into Jozi (Rosebank, spceifically) for the 27dinner. I’m not going to explain the 27dinner concept – just search SA blog sites for it.

And yes, it was a huge success – there were easily sixty or seventy people bloggers in attendance. I met some really awesome and interesting and charming people and found a frighteningly long list of covert previous affiliations of which I was not aware – I’ve obviously been online far too much in the past 10 years…

So here are a few of the names (with some linkage love) of peeps I met and spent time chatting to. It’s largely incomplete but this is a good smattering of my “social butterfly-edness”…
Mike Stopforth – At last, we meet!
Victoire – Hey old varsity buddy!
Nic Haralambous
Vincent Maher – Nearly managed to steal a lighter from this legend!
Dave Duarte
Dominic White
Daniela Faris
Gregor Rohrig
Carly Ritz – We didn’t get to chat but thanks for giving me a bum raffle ticket!!!
Heather Ford
Rory Freeman – Source of hilarity and wealth of TV related information.
Megan Woods

There were plenty other short chats here and there – so much going on – ideas aplenty and in general a good crowd of high-energy, high-motivation people.

I took a couple of lousy 27dinner photos and then got bored with it as the beer (and Stormhoek) started to flow…

All in all, a great way to spend a saturday evening!

Oh, and if anyone is missing a red lighter – yes I (unintentionally) came to own it. I owe you one.

Tags: 27dinner, geekdinner, dinner, stormhoek, food, southafrica, blog, blogger

So I’ve confirmed my attendance at the inaugural(?) 27 dinner.

Mike has more chatter about 27 here.

I also decided to steal Vincent Maher‘s 27 logo and Web2.0ify it a touch with a few gimp tricks I learnt recently.

So here it is:

Tags: 27, 27dinner, media, blogging, geek, logo

Today MAKE Magazine pointed to a series of amazing Guitar Hero hacks!

A growing community is throwing their own choice of songs into the hit Playstation game.

Homebrew Guitar Hero Projects
Idiot Proof Guide to MAKING Custom Guitar Hero Songs
Idiot Proof Guide to playing custom made songs in GH2.
Custom Song Index

And here’s a Youtube vid of one of the results:
System of a Down – Hypnotize

If there’s ever an excuse to chip your PS2, this one’s it.
Rock on!

And if you don’t have a PS2 or the Guitar Hero game, there’s always Frets on Fire, the Open Source guitar hero clone for your PC. (runs on Windows, Linux and OSX)

Tags: GuitarHero, guitar, game, playstation, hack, mod