I bought myself a sleek, black PSP over Thanksgiving break! It’s my early Christmas present to myself since I’ll be spending winter break in China. This is another great gadget! 
The $250 bundle from Fry’s came with the PSP Value Pack, a starter kit, and the games GripShift and Frantix. The first thing everybody notices about the PSP is its wonderful design (like all Sony products). It’s glossy black, with a large screen flush with the entire front of the PSP. There’s the standard cross-square-triangle-circle PlayStation buttons and four-button D-pad, and there are two clear shoulder buttons! And the low-profile analog stick does not protrude from the body because it’s flat–it slides when you push it around. The speakers are hidden in two small holes, and the headphone and power connectors are tucked neatly away on the bottom. Overall, the PSP is pleasing to the eye and its artful design stands out.
The 4.3″ widescreen LCD is bright and crystal-clear. The games are in full 3D, which looks impressive on a handheld. Movies play sharp thanks to it’s 480×272 resolution. The games come on UMD discs, which are small cartridges with what looks like a miniature CD inside. Each holds 1.8 GB of data!
The only drawback I see with UMDs is that recordable versions aren’t available. That means that any content like movies, pictures, and music must go on the Memory Stick. I ended up ordering a $50 Lexar 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo just for this purpose.
Despite what I’ve heard about the battery life, it seems acceptable but I don’t have any super-graphically-intensive games yet. Still, I think 3-6 hours is still a reasonable battery life. After all, it has a super-bright, high-resolution screen, wireless capabilities, and spinning optical media! My starter kit included a car charger so I wouldn’t run out of power on a long road trip. Overall my experience with the PSP so far has been excellent.
Now, some games I’d like to get soon, most wanted first:
- Wipeout Pure - a futuristic racing game
- FIFA 2006 - soccer
- Ridge Racers - car racing game with great graphics
- SSX - extreme snowboarding
- Twisted Metal: Head On - a car/shooter game
I recently set up a desktop computer to be my development and gaming machine. A few months ago my dad had purchased a barebones 2.8GHz Pentium 4 computer for a project he was working on. Eventually it was abandoned, and so we had a spare case, CPU, and motherboard. I realized it would be perfect for a desktop, so I added a few components and now it’s sitting under my desk happily.
- Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz: $100 (Fry’s)
- Motherboard: Elitegroup 848P-A P4 motherboard with built-in 800Mhz front side bus, SATA support, hyperthreading support, USB2.0, AC’97 5.1ch audio, and gigabit LAN: $50 (Fry’s)
- Chassis: ATX with case fan, 2 front USB ports and front mic/speaker, and 300W (albeit a low quality) power supply: $9 (Fry’s)
- Power supply: replaced the one in the case with the Ultra X-Connect 500W PSU: $25 (Fry’s)
Continue reading ‘New desktop computer’
Here are some awesome CSS sites.
- The CSS Zen Garden showcases many different designs accomplished purely with CSS.
- Stu Nicholls’ CSS playground uses creative techniques to accomplish amazing things.
- css/edge demonstrates some bleeding-edge CSS effects.
Well, if you haven’t heard, Apple is going to use Intel x86 chips in its future computers. They’re going to release a developer build of Mac OS X which works on off-the-shelf Intel PCs. It’s definitely going to spread all over the Internet, but according to this article, Apple may be planning this.
The Shape of Days: Mac OS X on Intel: Try before you buy?
Given Apple’s experiences with software piracy, particularly the rampant software piracy that spread developer builds of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger all over the Internet this past spring, Apple’s management from the top down knows full well that this developer preview will be in the hands of every kid with a cable modem within days of its release. Most of them will be able to install it on their own computers and run it and the full suite of iLife ’05 applications at full speed, and run most existing Mac software in translation.
As a result, Apple will give thousands, possibly millions, of people a taste of Mac OS X running full speed on their own PCs.
Apple’s giving their potential future customers a free taste, that’s what they’re doing. It’s a try-before-you-buy deal.
Yes…I want a copy!
I got a shiny new cell phone yesterday! It’s a Samsung A670. Pics:
- NOT FOUND ** NOT FOUND ** NOT FOUND ** NOT FOUND *
My number is pretty interesting, although PhoneSpell doesn’t have any mnemonics for it.
Now see if you can guess the number. Here are some clues:
- It is in the form: (408) xyx-zxjk, where each unique letter represents a unique digit in the number.
- z minus one is prime. (mod 10)
- x is equal to y raised to the number of times x occurs in the phone number. (mod 10)
- z is one more than y. (mod 10)
- j is one more than x. (mod 10)
- k is one more than j. (mod 10)
- The cube root of x is even. (mod 10)
Got it? Leave a comment with the answer and send me a text message, too.