Your will is weak...

Sooooo... I caved to the dark side. After being asked the later half of last week if people could see my PSP (as everyone at work just assumed I'd get one), the people that DID get PSP's started coming by one by one showing theirs off to me.

So I picked one up yesterday while I was out and about with Danny and her sister. I had the guys open up the box and let me power it up before buying it so I could check for stuck pixels. Nary a one.

I still can't believe has crystal frelling clear the screen is on this thing. Sure, there's a glare issue... But unlike the original GBA, I can angle my screen so that it's getting glare from a pretty intense light source and I can STILL see the image.

The sound coming out of the PSP itself is very nice... with headphones it's even better.

I'm going to look into picking up a 512mb memory duo stick so I can start testing out dumping some video to it to play around with compression %'s to check out quality, etc. I guess the 1 gigs aren't quite out yet as I've read about them, but can't find anyone selling them yet.

For games I picked up Lumines (which is pretty trippy... I wouldn't rate it as cool as the PA guys did.. but it's still neat), Wipeout Pure (which is SOOOO oldschool wipeout it kicks ass) and Untold Legends (finally, portable Diablo).

Since Untold Legends is done by SOE (but not an EQ branded product) the fact that they are still using certain "EQ" sounds is pretty sad. I'm having bad flashbacks every single time I walk over a pile of coins and hear the EQ "you just picked up some coins" sound.

I also picked up two of the third party kits. The first one has a "clamshell" top that screws into the top side of the PSP so that I've now got a cover for the front side of the PSP. The second kit was a carrying kit for the PSP. Fits the PSP, cables, and a dozen or more UMD disks and memory sticks. Both also came with UMD "sleeves" which are pretty nice as the UMD carts themselves have the "read window"
wide open on the disk... so it's fairly easy to touch that by accident, etc.

I also set up my secured WLAN up on my PSP last night, too. Added my PSP's mac addy to my filter and set up the WEP key and SSID on the PSP. Works like a charm. They allow you to update the PSP via wireless if you have an internet connection (or via UMD or memory stick otherwise). I didn't get any games that support infrastructure mode WLAN, only adhoc so I'd need other PSPs to be in spitting distance to play mutliplayer. With infrastructure I can use the net to play multiplayer with. I'm sure someone's already working on tunneling software for the adhoc only games.

Plus I like how the WLAN feature of the PSP is controlled via a switch on the side of the PSP itself so that if that's off, no software on the PSP can randomly go out the WLAN at all.

Overall I'd say it's well worth the money.

Anyone want to buy a barely used DS?

.ungawa

Read more!

D&D for Dummies

No really.

I'm not kidding.

.ungawa

Read more!

Shelby and Ford together again!

Glad to see someone at Ford finally realized "hey, you know the best mustangs we ever had were from the late 60's and early 70's?"

So the fact that Ford's SVT unit and Carrol Shelby worked on a car and it ended up being the most powerful one that Ford's ever done... that's not a shocker.

MMMMmmmmm.... GT500 goodness... '05 style.

.ungawa

Read more!

Superman Returns begins filming

Latino Review has some pics of the Kal-el spaceship crash landed on the Kent's farm.

This spacecraft is HUGE. You can get a sense of scale based on the vehicles shown in some of the pictures. It's quite interesting that they've gone for something that large, as generally it's been small enough that the Kents were able to hide it on the farm somewhere for Clark to go through later in life.

Kinda hard to hide this one.

.ungawa

Read more!

Bipedal Dino Robots

Leave it up to the cool, yet wacky, Japanese to get working bipedal robots that are patterned after dinosaurs.

Amazing... They look like they could be extras out of the next Godzilla flick.

Of course, hopefully they never replace the man in the suit, though. =)

But it's great to see bipedal robots actually "in production" since getting something to walk around on two legs is much harder then using, say, four.

Maybe Spielberg can make the next Jurassic Park (what are we up to now... 4? 5?) be about these robot dinos gaining the ability to think for themselves and try and take over the world!

.ungawa

Read more!