Sony PS3 Slim available early September

UPDATE: The Sony press conference at the 2009 Gamescom in Germany just confirmed both the PS3 Slim and the price cuts.  The new pricing of $299 for current models and the soon to be available slim goes into effect tomorrow.

There have been rumors floating around like crazy for the past few months about a new and slimmer Sony PS3 video game console.  And Sony has been denying it just like the rumors of price cuts.  Even when pictures were leaked of the packaging from a new PS3 Slim, they denied it.  Now, online retailers are putting up the pre-order pages for the new Sony PS3 Slim available on August 24th globally September 11th (per the Sony press conference going on right now).  Will Sony continue to deny this?  Yeah, I doubt it.

There’s some big industry conference going on and Sony is supposed to be presenting today.  I assume that the newly released $100 price cut and the new Slim unit are on their agenda but FYE and K-Mart have beaten them to the punch.  Seems to happen a lot these days.

Here’s the description for the PS3 Slim pre-order from K-Mart:

PS3, SLIM High-Definition Blu-ray player for the best movie experience. Free PLAYSTATION Network membership. 120GB HDD for downloading games, music, videos, and photos. Includes DUAL SHOCK 3 controller. HDMI output for 1080p resolution.

Notice something strange about that?  The newest console has a 120GB hard drive where the current high end model has a 160GB drive.  OK so my XBox 360 has a 120GB drive so no big deal right?  Well that depends.  Unlike the XBox 360, the PS3 often requires games to be “installed” to the console’s hard drive to play the game.  I’ve heard that this is neither a tiny install or a short amount of time to do this either.

Also consider that games and media are increasingly paid for online and downloaded directly to the system.  I imagine you could easily fill up a drive that size if you wanted to do so.  I understand that the PS3 hard drives are easily user upgradeable but I have no information or experience with that so I can’t say.  Who knows if the new Slim will be as easily taken apart as the old beast of a PS3 was either.

What I’m really wanting to hear about from that aforementioned conference is that there is another rumor that Sony may be reintroducing PS2 backwards compatibility to the new Slim models.  One of Sony’s big hype points when the PS3 was first coming out was their inclusion of the Emotion Engine that allowed perfect backwards compatibility of Playstation and PS2 games on the PS3.  They released one model with that function – the coveted 60GB model.  Sony then switched to software emulation on a few 80GB models which worked for many games but not all.  Then they dropped the compatibility completely.

I am always on the lookout for a used PS3 60GB console for this very reason.  I have a ton of PS2 games that I would still like to play but I only have so much space and the TV can only accept so many connections.  Combining those functions is ideal – almost necessary – for me.  So if the Slim ends up containing the Emotion Engine or even functional software emulation, I may be sold.  Especially with the new $100 discount.

Subtle but still strange

I know not everyone believes in the supernatural or ghosts or things of that nature.  I do.  I’ve grown up with it all my life in one way or another.  If you are a potential employer reading this it should have no bearing on me.  Believing that there are unexplainable forces in the world is no different than another person saying that they believe in Jesus or another saying that they believe in Darwin (just go with me here).

Obviously whatever is in this new house of ours is fascinated with electronics.  We’ve lost and had returned a flash drive, a portable USB backup drive and a Nikon flash.  Bit of a trend going on there.

So today either continues that trend or Kira is a flippin’ savant at less than six months of age.

I haven’t touched my computer since we got back from a wet session of garage sales in the rain.  The only one who has was Kira banging on my keyboard while I held her in my lap.  I just came back to my computer about an hour later and this is what I find on my screen:

At first I thought “Oh I know Calc was the active program while Kira was playing with the keyboard.  She must have hit a bunch of numbers.”  Then I started thinking, she can’t really reach the top of the keyboard to hit numbers.  Then I took a closer look and thought – “Is that what I think it is?”

Sure enough, I did a Google search and that my friends is the numerical value of Pi to what looks like 32 decimal places.  Uh… OK.  So of course I went to the other room and asked Muse if she’d been on my computer at all and of course the answer was ‘No’.

So I thought, well…  maybe somehow Kira just accidentally typed in a fraction that some how calculated to Pi.  It doesn’t seem like that is possible though.  According to that Wikipedia article, the trick with Pi is that it can’t be expressed as a fraction.  I didn’t know that.

So did Kira type it out?  No I don’t think so.  She was on my lap and couldn’t reach the number row.  Besides she was busy barfing on my mouse.  Did the cats tap dance it on the keyboard?  They’ve been given credit for some pretty unbelieveable computer feats, but no, I don’t think this is possible.

So if I didn’t do it and Muse didn’t do it… then who did?  And why Pi?  I guess because whoever or whatever did it knew I would figure it out.  I dunno.

Sure there will be people out there reading this who will just scoff and not believe a word of what I’ve typed and frankly I don’t blame them.  I’d find it pretty hard to believe if it hadn’t happened to me.  So take it for what you will.

So much going on

There’s so much going on these days and so little time it seems.  I had a bad run in with the liquid shits last night and this morning so I’m taking a sick day today.  So today’s been a bit of a breather which is nice.  I got to sleep in (mostly).

We found a house and the contract negotiations are complete as of last night.  We will be closing on October 24th (when some money comes available for us) and moving in directly afterwards.  Probably just in time for the baby to be ready to do it’s impression of an Alien chestburster.  Or something like that.  That ordeal is coming to an end and then of course the constant ordeal of home ownership starts.  But that’s OK.  We know how that works already.  We’re old pros.

I still need to post pictures of my car.  Wow, I’m such a slacker.  Muse got her old car back from my Step-Mom who bought it from us when we left for Hong Kong.  Of course we had to pay for it but it makes Muse happy and that’s a good thing these days.  At least she’s no longer a menace to society driving the gigantic white truck around.  Not because she’s a bad driver but because she feels like she can run over everything if she wants too.

On Sunday we finally got mobile phones.  Finally.  I got a 8GB Apple iPhone and Muse got a red LG Shine slider.  Oh it is so nice to be tethered once more.  I’m not sure what it is but I don’t even feel comfortable being disconnected like that.  Of course now I have to figure out how to make my iPhone sync with the Bluetooth functions of my car.  Yay for technology!

What I really wish I could figure out though is how to get music onto my iPhone through iTunes.  I thought that crap was supposed to be simple?!

Well, that’s all I got.  Keep hoping that my ass is done vomiting.  I know that’s what I’m hoping.

Tech Tips… kinda

Here’s another edition of Tech Tips! Although in this case, it’s not so much tips as warnings.  About a few things… read between the lines.  Or not.

Tip #1: Never let cybr have free time with a razor knife and spare junk laying about.

This, you would think, would just be common sense.  However time and time again I find myself with a box cutter or retractable razor knife and idle time while software is installing.  It seems somethings never change.

Tip #2: If cybr has a knife, don’t let him sort through CDs.  At least not unsupervised.

Again, this should just be common sense, but I have an office and it was an unusually quiet morning.  I was sorting through all the old CDs and DVDs laying about the office and throwing out all the discs that have never and will never be used.  Of course, I don’t want people fishing them out of the trash and using them illegally.  Because I’m against illegal software and stuff.  Yeah.  So I was using the retractable knife to cut grooves into each disc I was trashing.  But then I started to get bored with that and started making curvey lines instead of straight and then making the discs look like an eyeball or the CBS logo.

Then at random I picked the next CD:

Nothing strange there, just another uneeded CD.  So I started cutting it to make it unusable.
Here’s what I ended up with:

Tip #3: If you let the scenario in Tip #2 go on for two long, cybr starts getting even more creative.

So cutting the bottom of the discs is effective but quite a strain on the blade and edge.  So I wondered what would happen if I sliced the top/label side instead.  Wow! That was even more effective!  Even the slightest slice made the label and reflective surface pull away from the plastic disc making the disc completely unrecoverable.  Then… I noticed that the label could come off.

The slicing kind of got out of hand on the third disc I damaged in this method:

Here’s what a CD looks like without the label and the reflective surface underneath of the label:

As you can see the reflective material you see when looking at the bottom of a CD is actually part of the label.  But you can still see where the data written to the CD starts and stops on the clear plastic.  The data is actually written in the plastic and is completely see through!  Pretty cool, huh?

The reflective layer of the label only exists to give the laser in the CD drive to bounce it’s light beam off of to be able to read the data in the plastic.  With out the mirror layer, the beam of light would just pass through the data and never be able to be understood by the computer.  So with that in mind…

Tech Tip #4: CDs and DVDs will play with scratches in the bottom surface, but if the top label is damaged, the disc is probably not recoverable.

Hey, that was a real Tech Tip!  I wasn’t really wasting your time after all!

Tech Tips: Clues for the Clueless

Are you a computer user?  If so, today’s post is aimed squarely at that bullseye on your forehead.  Tech people already know the list below by heart, but the common user seems to be oblivious to the following 10 tips on how to get better tech support.  This list was put together by me based on my own experiences in tech support of corporate clients.  If you re-use this, please link back to this site.

Here’s my Top Ten list of things to consider when you need tech support:

1. If you want our help, please get up from the chair and let us get access to the PC.  This is an immediate clue as to the intelligence level of a given user if they ask for help but don’t think to get up and let us work.  If you really want to piss us off when we ask to see your PC, just swivel the keyboard around and stay seated that way we have to balance on one foot to keep from touching the unholiness that is your presence which is dumb enough to think that this actually helps.  We don’t want to catch whatever you have.
2. Hovering over our shoulders while we work is not only irritating but often times distracting.  Unless we specifically need your input or are trying to show you how to do something… give us space.  We don’t need you to constantly take the mouse out of our hands to show us things that are completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.  Also, unless we are really close friends, we don’t need to hear all about your family and where you went on vacation while we are trying to fix your PC.  Hearing about your fantasy vacation to an elite resort on a private island could cause something unexpected.  Like your hard drive being mysteriously formatted.  I’m just saying….
3. Sitting in a chair across the desk from where we are working and continually whining about your deadline or lost data or missed appointment will not speed things up.  Crying will also not help.  It kinda freaks us out.  Just because you need your PC to be working right now does not alter the fact that it’s not working.
4. Please don’t call us for help with a problem and give us no information to go on.  This is especially annoying when you tell us that your PC is down when in fact, you just have Internet Explorer set to Work Offline and nothing more.  Better yet, call me in the middle of the night and tell me that the network is down because you can’t get your e-mail from home.  There are about 8,326,287,491 possible causes of this problem and only one of those is the network being completely down.  OMG.
5. If you are getting error messages on your PC, please please please take a screen-shot of that message or at least write it down.  Don’t be that user that just automatically clicks OK on every pop-up no matter what it was and then wonder why nothing is working.  Those error messages are sometimes clues as to the problems you are having.  They are important.  At least read them.
6. If you’re going to drop your PC off on our desks, leave something that will give us a clue as to what we are looking at.  I’ve found unlabeled notebook PCs sitting on my desk or chair before with no note, no name, no contact number, no indication of a problem… nothing.  Then at the end of the day So-and-So will call asking if their PC is fixed.  The answer is always going to be NO.  At least leave a Post-It note with your name or number so we know who to call to find out why we have an orphan in our office.  Even a snapshot of you with your dog would be more desirable than nothing if you can’t be bothered to write even your own name.
7. If you know that you will be getting a new PC setup at your desk take a minute or two to clean up around the hardware that will be replaced.  If you aren’t sure what will be replaced, then just clean it all up.  That includes removing all the Post-It notes, toys, pictures, shwag, stickers, make-up, food, mobile phone adapters, USB aquariums, etc. that are obviously going to be in the way of us helping you change your equipment.  Or if that’s too much trouble, then don’t complain when you find all your precious “stuff” swept off to the edge of your desk in a ball of clutter that would make the King of the Cosmos weep with pride.
8. If your PC is having a problem and we ask you if you installed anything on the PC – don’t lie.  We are not that stupid.  You’re only making yourself look bad when you lie about things like that.  More than likely we, or someone on our team, built that PC you are now using.  So when we look at the problem computer and see that Yahoo Instant Messenger, Ask Toolbar, 1001 Smileys, Free Animal ScreenSaver, Bejeweled, Nokia Mobile Connect, etc. are installed on your PC we not only know that you lied but you have given us proof.  Everything installed on a PC can potentially change how the whole system works.  We don’t just ask this for fun.  If you lie it’s not going to change the reality of what you did.  Just be honest.  We may think you are ignorant for not knowing better but at least you can look us in the eye with some sense of dignity.
9. If you don’t like an answer you’ve received to your PC questions, then by all means ask for explanations or clarifications.  Not all tech people are as open and friendly as I am.  Many techs have the social skills of a badger suffering from crack withdrawals.  Sometimes you may need more info.  But whatever you do, DO NOT get angry with us if we have worked on your problems and given you an honest answer that you just don’t like.  The best way to ensure that you will never receive quality tech support again is to yell and scream at the servicing technician because there is no way for them to recover your files off a crashed hard drive or a failed USB thumb drive.  Threatening our jobs because you don’t think we’ve done our jobs right, even though we’ve told you that what you are asking for is impossible, will also not get you very far.  Even if you succeeded in getting that particular tech fired, you will quickly run out of IT people when they all give you the same answer.  Attend some anger management classes but do not take out your problems on the tech.
10. You don’t need us to do or see every single thing that happens on your PC.  If you got a message in Internet Explorer that said it will be showing you both secure and unsecure items, yeah OK, no problem.  That’s normal.  If your screen flickered once and never again… probably a fluke or you kicked the power cord under your desk.  And if you get an error or warning message on your PC that comes complete with an explanation of the problem you are having and instructions on how to fix that problem then by all means please try it out.  Not only does it save time and gives you a certain sense of pride that you were able to fix your own computer problem but it also keeps you from wasting our time.  Many programs do offer fixes for the problems that can arise.  Most developers also make these message “dummy-proof” so even the most computer illiterate person can understand and follow the instructions.  We are not here to hold your hand every time the computer beeps.  It’s not scary.  It will be OK.

There you go.  That ended up being a lot longer than I had thought it would be.  I think the next Tech Tips will cover the opposite angle and focus on the techs themselves.  Users are always to blame but we have to share some of the burden sometimes.  Sometimes.

The mobile web

I just attended a luncheon regarding the rising opportunities in the online mobile phone markets and it was pretty interesting.  I found out the the average youth user in China sends an average of 100 text messages a day.  That’s just sending!  Considering I’d never sent a text message in my life prior to coming to Hong Kong, that just seems inconceivable to me.

However, the focus of the presentation was about the youth market and how it’s affecting and shaping the mobile web.  Basically the premise is that the kids today are deciding and driving the technology and services available on mobile devices and us old folks will just get whatever they decide on.  Lucky us.  The 2 second attention span generation has come to power.

Supposedly, 50 Cent and young Japanese girls have something in common.  They are doing something called Lifecasting.  They basically wear their phones around their necks and let it record constantly throughout their day and it auto transmits these images or video to an online accessible site.  Personally, I’m not sure how I would feel about this but I guess it would keep Fiddy from doing illegal activities since he’d be broadcasting whatever he’s doing to the world.  The japanese girls will probably get flooded with dirty old men though.  But maybe that’s what they’re going for.

It sounds like more and more content on mobile devices will be branded as well.  Just like you can’t have a college bowl game without some companies name and logo plastered all over it.  Just like you can’t play certain video games without seeing billboards in the games advertising everything from soft drinks to cars.  Now your mobile content will also be branded.  Considering the size of the screens, I hope that you can still see what you were looking for with all those logos.

Of course since this meeting I’ve been thinking about the possibilities of making this site and A Little Scary more mobile friendly.  I found this Wordpress Mobile Plugin that looks like it makes your site mobile phone compatible and thought I might give it a try.  If anyone out there has any opinions on the matter, please leave them in the comments.

Happy Birthday Buddha

It’s Monday and I’m sitting at home still un-showered and working on comics.  Today is a public holiday here in Hong Kong.  It’s Buddha’s birthday!  Who am I to argue?  Sadly though, public holidays are a double-edged sword.  Sure you get the day off, but unless you feel like pushing through crowds of people everywhere you go, you pretty much just sit at home all day. Like I’m doing.

We say Iron Man on Saturday afternoon and it was awesome.  I’m a bit of a fanboy when it comes to comic book to movie adaptations and I know many of them aren’t that great.  Iron Man definitely lived up to the hype in my opinion though.

After the movie, Muse and I split up and went with our friends to different places.  Me and my friend went to Sham Shui Po to go to the computer and game malls to look for a Sony PSP for me.  I thought about getting a second hand system but decided it was too much risk for too little discount.  So I went for a new one.  Unfortunately all the cool colors of the new ’slim’ PSP are all twice the price (or more) of the standard black, white or pastel colors.  So I found a shop that still sold the ‘fat’ versions.  They had a few of the limited Japanese releases so I went for one of those.  Just to make Colin jealous if nothing else.

Oh yeah, that is a metallic blue Sony PSP.  Only released in Japan but everything ends up in Hong Kong eventually.  Sometimes I love shopping here in Hong Kong.

Inside a mouse’s balls

Yesterday, I got a bit distracted from my work.  I had a standard Dell USB optical mouse that I liberated from a users desk because it was so nasty and sticky that I refused to use it.  I gave them a new one.  But of course that left me with the nasty sticky mouse which also had smooth spots worn into the two mouse buttons.

I also had an even older Dell USB ball mouse that worked just fine but no one wants old style mice with balls.  It had a nice clean black top half and was the exact same size and shape as the optical version.  At least on the outside. So I thought I’d clean off the funk from the bottom of the optical mouse and put the nice black top from the ball mouse on that.  In theory it’s very simple.  In reality it’s really freaking hard.

Even though the outsides of the two mice were physically shaped the same, the insides were different.  There were plastic support posts and wiring in different locations in each mouse.  I used a straight blade to shave down plastic edges and cut off supports.  I had to rearrange some wiring and eventually use a little brute force to get the new hybrid mouse to close up.  I was only partially successful the first try as the right mouse button wouldn’t press.  The second try after a bunch more cutting was a complete success.  It’s a pretty sharp looking mouse now with it’s flat black top and it’s smoky opaque bottom.

Then of course, I have to completely disassemble the remaining parts.  Which of course starts with removing the old mouse ball.  It made me realize that optical mice were probably the best thing to ever happen because mouse balls were stolen constantly.  I have no idea why or what people did with all those stolen balls but every store you went in with a PC on display, you’d try and move the mouse and immediately find that the ball was gone.  Even attempts at gluing the ball in rarely had the desired effect.  Optical mice changed all that of course and those damn ball thieves were thwarted once and for all.  You know who you are.

A new thought occured to me once I got the mouse ball.  Why is it so heavy?  I never thought about before when mouse balls were the only choice, but now that I hadn’t handled a mouse ball for so long, I was intrigued by it’s weight.  I bounced it against my wood-like desk and it popped like a metal sound.  So I decided to see for myself.  I grabbed the straight blade and started slicing it around it’s circumference.  I thought it might be metal inside but once that razor sharp blade starting grinding against something that set my teeth on edge I knew it was.

So there’s a metal ball bearing hidden inside there.  That also explains why old mice feel so much more substantial than new optical mice and also why some high end gaming manufacturers have started putting weights in their new mice.  It makes a big difference.

Perhaps you’ve never wondered about this and certainly don’t care now that the age of eunuch mice has taken over, but now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.  Considering that quote is from G.I. Joe, I can only assume that the other half the battle is the guns, explosives, killing, wounding, etc.  They never really said.

OK Invent this

So here are a few ideas I’ve had for inventions that I can’t figure out.  I figure that since someone is always beating me to the punch, I might as well share the things that don’t exist that I can’t figure out myself.  If you do figure one or more of these out and become rich, could you at least acknowledge me for the ideas?  That’d be nice.

• Air Conditioned Pillow
  I know that I’m not the only one in the world that likes their bed pillow the most for those first ten seconds after laying on it while it’s still nice and cool.  Then it warms up to your body temperature and depending on where you live may start sticking to you.  I would pay good money for a pillow that stayed cool all night long.
• Digital Currency Converter
  I typed a lot on this entry and got pretty detailed.  Then I decided that maybe this one was possible after all.  So I’m not posting it just yet.  I just need help from someone who really knows electronics….
• Pollution Eater
  After living in a pretty polluted city like Hong Kong for a while you start wondering two things: ‘How can this be cleaned up?’ and ‘If I fall in the harbor will my flesh melt?’  So I started thinking about all the new advances in nanotechnology and biotechnology and I’m wondering when we will be able to make a little nano/bio critter that can not only clean up pollutants but breed to make more of itself but also have a short life-cycle.
  The trick would be to introduxe said organism/machine into a polluted body of water.  It would basically ‘eat’ pollution and use that food to create two duplicates of itself and then die.  The ‘offspring’ would then go off and do the same thing and continue the cycle and exponentially increasing their numbers in an outward radius leaving pollution free water in their wake.  That’s also the reason they need a very short life-span so that once an area is clean, the nanos stop eating and thus stop breeding and die.  Sure there would be the equivalent of an extra thin layer of silt at the bottom of the body of water as a result, but at least it would be clean water again.
  This is doable, but I am in the wrong field for this sort of thing.  An airborne version for air pollution should also be possible but the logistics and locomotion are much more difficult.

OK actually that’s all I can remember at the moment.  Of course there are other things like self-powering electro-magnetic propulsion and anti-gravity and invisibility but I was trying to be somewhat realistic.

If you were going to try and invent something, what would it be?

Apple iStick?

Interested in a small iPod Touch the size of a tube of lipstick?

There’s a design for one right now with a cube shape where all four sides are touch screens. Take a look at more pictures here from the article over at Yanko Design. I’m not sure about those funky, assumably Bluetooth, earpieces… but that’s not important. Apple has never been known to package decent earphones with their mp3 players.

I have no idea if this is in the pipeline for Apple or not, but it is an interesting concept. Given the familiar Mac / iPhone interface and the unusual size and shape,I’m sure that if Apple were to build it, the masses would buy it. No matter what.