Take a walk in my mind...

Look at my new toy:

It's the Canon Rebel XT - a "prosumer" DSLR camera. I am freaking excited! I think I'm going to start a photoblog soon... but not now. Now I sleep.

Okay... so I got bored today and wanted to hack something or build something. I decided to build something... so based on plans I saw here, here, and here I decided to make one for the PSP. The PSP takes 5V in which is what the USB version puts out. It took about an hour to test and solder (I suck at soldering) and viola! It works! The only thing is that there doesn't seem to be enough current to keep the PSP at "charge" status while the device is on. When playing a game or watching a movie, the status light on the PSP cycles from green to orange repeatedly. But with the unit off, the status light stays orange meaning it's charging. The only thing is that the voltage regulator tends to get a bit hot, and while charging, there is an extremely high pitched buzz that's barely audible that eminates from the plug end of the charger that's not present with the OEM wall charger... if anyone can shed some light on it, let me know! In addition, since the LM7805 is rated at 1A, and the PSP draws 2A, the unit will not power the PSP without the battery in place. I might upgrade the device in the near future to put out 5V and 2A! Here's some pics!

One day later... and I'm still in love with the PSP. However, my hands HURT. Check out these pics:

This is how I would LIKE to be able to hold this device, however, this would mean the PSP would need to be about 75% longer. Of course, nobody wants the thing they play with to be 75% longer.

This is how I AM holding the PSP when playing games... my thumbs are oddly pushed too close to the rest of my fingers, especially for a game controller. This results in my hands and fingers just hurting after a few minutes of the same repetitive actions while holding my fingers in a stiff position... sounds like fingerba... nevermind.

I guess this would be the IDEAL way to hold the PSP. The only drawback of this position is that the PSP would need to be held relatively parallel to the ground. This means I would have to crane my neck in an odd position for extended period of time, kind of like eating pu... nevermind.

I haven't gotten any other games yet, but Ridge Racer is proving to be extremely fun, easy to learn, but challenging as the courses progress. It's a good thing. Also, I noticed that I don't have any "dead" pixels, but I have 3 pixels that are "always on". This is 100% unnoticeable during gameplay or video playback, and can only be seen when there is a black screen. I can live with it. Battery life has been good. It's lasted all day with some playing here or there, I probably played a total of 2.5 hours today and it still states 30% remaining power. I can live with that kind of battery life. It's not like I sit and play it every single minute of the day or anything. One very MINOR nitpick is that I wish they would've made the buttons backlit. At night, gameplay is fine, but trying to go through options or press some volume or navigation buttons is a bit hard... however, this will change once I get used to the PSP. By that time I will have memorized all the button positions (actually, I've already memorized them so this whole nitpick is really a non-issue).One more thing, the Hold/Power button is awkward. When sliding out of the "hold" position, it is VERY easy to accidentally push it too far, thereby putting the PSP in sleep mode. Also, with the consoles I think all gamers are now accustomed to pressure sensitive buttons. The PSP doesn't have that. So playing Ridge Racer I have the tendency to try and push the accelerate button harder to go faster, but it has no effect. Maybe that's why my hands hurt is that I try to push down on the buttons too hard. Oh well. I'll post more as I go along.

Okay I went out and got a Sony PSP portable gaming system today. 3 Best Buy's, 2 Circuit City's, 2 Gamestops, and 2 Targets later I finally got it. Apparently, even though Sony hasn't sold out of its initial 1 million launch units that included the movie "Spiderman 2" in its proprietary UMD (Universal Media Disc), somehow I got a value pack ($249.99) that did not include the movie. Maybe I got the 2nd shipment? Can anybody shed some light on this? Did the movie come pre-packaged with the movie inside of the Value Pack box, or did the retailer include the movie with the purchase of the PSP Value Pack? Anyway, here are the initial pics of the unpacking:

Okay first of all, as sleek and shiny as this thing is... well, because of how sleek and shiny this thing is, it attracts dust, lint, and fingerprints like a coco puff attracts a crack head. Right after taking it out of the protective packaging it was already covered with white lint/dust from said packaging. Okay, so it looks good so far. I popped in Ridge Racer and off I went! Let's get the obvious out of the way... the screen is GORGEOUS! If I could make love to this screen I would! The colors and resolution of the screen are AMAZING! Only drawback so far... I have 1 dead pixel! Wow so the game is loaded and I start to play... but wait, let me turn up the speakers. Wait what? What do you mean this is as loud as it goes? My old Sega Game Gear and the original Nintendo Game Boy was louder than this! Heck, even the 1 speaker on my HP iPaq 3955 is louder than the 2 tiny bottom facing speakers on the PSP. Fine whatever, I'll just pop in the white (jab at iPod?) headphones with wired remote. Okay the sound is good now. And 3.. 2.. 1.. I'm off and racing the first race. Amazing graphics! The game play and sounds are well above my expectations for a portable gaming device. But then again, the last portable gaming device I owned was the Sega Game Gear! Okay so I finish the first race and damn, my hands a slightly sore from the awkward positioning of the buttons! The controls, although standard Playstation fare, are placed too close to the edge of the PSP, meaning I can't really grasp the device in my hands as much as I hold it from my fingertips. With racing games, where I have to continually hold the throttle, the fingers really start to tire. But no matter, I'm still in the infatuation phase with my PSP so I'll overlook that for now. I loaded up some MP3's and photos onto the included 32mb Memory Stick Duo to test it out. Nothing special to note about the music playback feature, except for the fact that I wish Sony made a cool visualization for when you're playing back music. The Photo feature is pretty good, once again, nothing really to write home about, but it does take awhile for larger files (4 megapixel +) to sharpen and optimize. I still haven't tried the video playback yet, although I did play some stuff from the included UMD sampler disc and again it all looks great on the PSP's 16x9 screen. All in all, I like it so far, but I'll keep updating as I go.

Okay, so 3 days into my Sidekick ownership and I'm not as impressed as I thought I'd be. My friend Chris says he thinks it's great because he has been getting good cell phone coverage in places his Nextel phone didn't really have service. That's great and all, and as a regular cell phone, I'd give it a 8/10 so far, calls have been clear and the coverage has proved to be pretty good. Compared to my current Nextel phone service, it hasn't been that much better. The only noticeable difference I've seen in service area was up at the Malibu sea food restaurant I always go to. My Nextel almost never works there and the Sidekick 2 had full bars.

Anyway, that sounds like a pretty positive review of the Sidekick 2 right? Well, the phone features might be good, but the SK2 is being marketed as a PIM device, not just a cell phone. As a PIM device, service has been deplorable. The GPRS "internet" (requests for all webpages are routed through Danger's servers and formatted before being delivered to the device) is maddingly slow. I wanted to find out showtimes for a movie so I called up the Yahoo! Movies mobile page on the SK2 and waited... and waited... and waited some more. Before the search page even loaded I used my Nextel i730 to browse the MoviePhone section of Nextel's Mobile Web and found the showtimes for the movie I wanted. A few seconds after I had the information I needed, the SK2 alerted me that the Yahoo page had loaded. Not exactly efficient, is it? In addition, I have not been able to access my webmail site because apparently my device does not have cookies enabled. Now, I've read that the SK2 does in fact handle session cookies, but to my frustration I have not been able to find the setting to enable the cookies. Because of the cookie problem I haven't been able to blog on the go either because my blogging software requires the cookies!

The tMail account that comes with the SK2 is extremely slow. I tested a few emails and they showed up on my Desktop Interface within a few minutes, but took a few hours to show up in my SK2 mailbox.

These two things are pretty much the only problems I see with the device so far. I don't know whether these problems are related to the recent outages in service, but I don't know if I can tolerate this level of service.

The best features so far seem to be the AIM and AOL Mail programs. IM's are quick and the keyboard layout is pretty easy to type on. The AOL Mail program allows me to retrieve my email and has been spotless.

The actual PIM features aren't very powerful, but good enough for the average user. The calendar, to-do list, and notes are easy to use and have an easy to use interface. The weirdest thing is that this phone lacked an alarm clock, I purchased one from the "Download Fun" section for $4.99 but it is also a world clock.

Anyways, I'm blogging this at 2 am so forgive me if this hasn't been as clear and concise as the other reviews you can find out there.

Okay, to wrap it up here are the ratings of the Sidekick 2:

Cell Phone - 8/10
Mobile Internet - 3/10
tMail email - 4/10
Text Messaging - 9/10
Camera - 5/10
Calendar - 7/10
To-Do - 7/10
Notes - 8/10
AIM - 9/10
AOL Mail - 8/10

Average Score: 6.8

Pros:
Nice Colorful Screen
Good Keyboard
Easy to Navigate Interface

Cons:
Service Uptime!
Device is Locked! (no uploading your own ringtones, wallpapers, etc)
GUI looks childish

Well... nearly 10 hours after I got my Sidekick, it's still not up yet. It took about 3 hours to get through the initial activation but since then the device has been unable to connect to Danger's servers.

Here's a roundup of the news about Danger's outages:

http://www.betanews.com/article/Outage_Plagues_TMobile_Sidekick_Users/1110336482
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/41189.html
http://news.com.com/Danger+outage+turns+Sidekicks+into+just+phones/2100-1039_3-5603252.html?tag=st.rn
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000337034991/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/09/sidekick_outage/

If you have a SK2,call T-Mobile's customer service and they'll either give you a $5 credit or 50 free minutes.

I just started this new "Mobile Device" category for my future blogs about my phones, pda, or mp3 player! Anwyay, I got the new T-Mobile Sidekick II today. Here are the photos of the unpacking!

That's all for now... apparently something is wrong with the GPRS connection at T-Mobile today so my SK2 is having problems activating. Hopefully this will pass in a few hours and I'll post more pictures as they come. Meanwhile, all these pictures are available in a high-resolution non-watermarked format. Please contact me if you are interested in using them!