With the popularity of my first PSP Themes post (thanks Google) I have decided to go at it again picking 5 more themes I have recently found for the PSP. Again, these themes have been made to a high standard and do look really good on your PSP if you do happen to get tired of the simplicity of the default XMB theme.

The first theme in my collection is on from the newly released triple A title, God of War. This is a great theme and a must have for any GoW fans. The iApple theme is similar to the iPhone themes with the rounded square buttons. The only difference is the icons, which are cunstomised to better represent the menu. With any release of a new operating system, a PSP theme of it is bount to come, in this case, one from the new version of OS X, Leopard. The theme consists of the Leopard style folders with little icons as well as drive icons and the nifty Leopard default wallpaper. On the theme of operating system themes, I have found a better Windows XP theme. This theme, although similar to the other XP theme, is much cleaner than the first one as well as having a few extra icons and icon changes.

Now, for the new theme that I use, the Ubuntu theme. There can never be enough computer operating system themes but out of the many, there are few brilliant ones. This theme is extremely slick with wonderful icons. The orange background is also very warm and inviting and looks great along side the Ubuntu XMB theme. Out of all the themes in my new collection, this is a my must have theme!

• God of War
• iApple
• Leopard
• Windows XP (2)
• Ubuntu

Note: Themes posted here are not mine. I take no credit for them. All rights belong to their original owners.

The moment I found out that Microsoft let Windows Vista Service Pack 1 out the door, I constantly searched for updates via Windows Update waiting for it to arrive. After waiting and trying for about an hour, I came to the conclusion that I probably have one of the problematic drivers.

I searched the Google to find a list of the problematic drivers and it wasn’t as easy to find as I was hoping but i did manage to get a list. My Conexant HD Audio drivers were preventing me from updating via Windows Update. I decided to wait a bit to see if I get a driver update that will allow me to get the SP1 update. I decided to download the 400mb standalone installer just for the sake of it. Its only 400mb and that will take less than 15 minutes to download. I just left it on my desktop and waited for something to happen so I could proceed with updating my operating system.

After listening to this weeks Windows Weekly yesterday, as they discussed the updating process and the problematic drivers, Paul Thurrot did mention that just because you don’t have updated drivers doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to have problems. He has had emails from people that have installed it with the standalone installer and have had no issues or small issues that a driver reinstall didn’t fix. After hearing that, I decided to update last night. Either its going to go without problems, or I could try to fix it, or I could uninstall the service pack till my drivers updated. Updating shouldn’t me a nightmare.

I shut down all my apps and launched the installer. Then I went and played Locoroco on the PlayStation Portable while waiting for the update to install. It restarted and all itself and it didn’t need any user input during the update. One and a half hours later, I was finally treated with a login page. The update went smoothly with no problems. My system has been stable (so far.) I haven’t really noticed any major differences, only some copying stuff, the fact that it says Service Pack 1, and some aspects of the System Rating have gone up by a point. All in all, I’m pretty fine with the update. I could have waited and let it do it in the background and saved a few minutes but what the hey!

Two days ago when I was trying to burn a CD in Ashampoo Burning Studio, it said “No compatible CD recorder found.” I went into Computer and saw that my DVD Drive was not listed there with my other drives. Then when I thought about it for a second, I remembered thinking a week ago that it looks odd and something looks missing. Well just then it hit me what was missing, my DVD Drive.

I looked to see if it was in Device Manager and it wasn’t listed there so I went and had a quick look around the internet. After seeing a few possible things I can try, and getting some advice, I decided to do a little troubleshooting to see what was going on. Was it my operating system not detecting the drive, was it the BIOS, or did the drive crap out. I went into the BIOS to see if it was disabled but it wasn’t, then I tried to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD. No luck there either. It seems to be a hardware problem.

Now it was time to figure out if it could have been a loose connection somewhere, my computer failing, or the drive dead. After a bit of thinking, I decided to take the drive out, check it and put it back. I did that, no change. I then later on thought that maybe I can put my sisters drive in my computer and that will tell me if its the drive, or something deeper. After swapping the drives and powering up my system, my computer detected the drive and started adding drivers for it. My computer was fine.

So the problem lies in the DVD Drive, its broken. I suppose its better there something being wrong with the drive than something having a deeper problem. It was a relief figuring out what the issue was. Now I have to figure out whether to replace my drive or not. If I do, it is going to be an internal one, which will lay me back about $150 New Zealand for a slimline DVD Writer. For how much I do use the thing, I don’t think replacing it, or even buying an external drive is worth it.

I only use the drive for ripping CDs and burning files for friends to DVDs. And even that is rare. The only time other than that is when installing software, but that usually only happens if its a new Operating System install. I don’t think its worth my paying to get something that will be hardly used and just for those purposes. I am probably better off keeping my money and putting it towards a new system, or just getting something else. If I do even need to reinstall Windows, or any other OS, I could always borrow my sisters drive for a few hours.

This morning I was vacuuming the carpet in the house. It is a fair bit of work and a little tiring but its not too bad with an iPod full of music. I get payed $10 to do it also which can go into my funds for whatever I am going to buy. Anyway, when I get upstairs, I have to change power sockets so the vacuum cleaner can reach all the room upstairs. If you haven’t already, go have a look at the picture to the left.

This is the most annoying and frustrating power socket ever! Why can’t they put proper directions of how to use it on the damn thing. Everytime I go to use it, I always get caught out. Its not a simple flick of a switch, you have to push the funky test and reset buttons. I always push the reset button, then the test button, and then go to turn the vacuum on. It doesn’t work! Then I have to go all the way back to the other side of the house to push the reset button and then go back to have the vacuum working.

Maybe I am stupid, but it does say “Test Before Use,” so I naturally think that means push the test button before you want to use it, so I do that and get no power. Also the two things beside the buttons, one of which lights up, what they hell are they for? “Black Off” and “Red On” what does that mean? And for arguments sake, the light is orange! This power socket is STUPID!

Three Saturdays ago, my family went out for a meal for my sisters birthday. We went to a restaurant that is a fair drive from home. On the menu, there were a dozen or so different meals they do, but there was only two things on there that I would ever consider ordering.

I decided to go with the Ham Steak meal. It consisted of a big Ham Steak, some chips, and a siding of salad. The meal was really nice, the Ham Steak was a reasonable size and the chips, well they tasted like chips, I can’t really complain. I did pass my salad on to my father because I don’t eat rabbit food, I’m not a vegetarian. I enjoyed the meal.

Last Saturday, we all returned to the restaurant for another meal. Unfortunately for us, the deep fryer had broken so there were no chips and if we ordered fish, it would be pan fried. When I heard we were going back to this place again, I wanted to pick the other thing I would eat, which was the Fish and Chips. Didn’t look like that was happening.

All of us ended up ordering the Ham Steaks because it was so nice last time. After waiting five or so minutes, the waiter came to our table and said they don’t have enough Ham for six meals, they only had enough for two. Well that blows, four of us have to order something else. I ended up going with the meal I initially wanted, which was the Fish and Chips. Everyone else sorted out their meals too.

After waiting a pretty long time, much much longer than last time, the meals finally came. Because there were no chips, they had gourmet potatoes instead. They tasted pretty alright, although I would have much rather had chips with my fish. Now the fish was pan fried and battered with crumbs. It had no taste at all! I ended up not eating it all because I didn’t want a tasteless piece of crap. I again passed my salad on to my father. I did not enjoy the meal at all.

Afterwards, I felt that I would have preferred to have a meal at McDonalds or Burger King. A burger, pottle of fries and a coke would have been better, and more than half the price, of the meal at the restaurant. I would have rather went to a crappy fast food place than a restaurant. Now that is really saying something about how I felt about the outing.

It goes to show you that when going out to eat, you can’t always expect the same good service and good food twice. Hopefully you can get it most of the time but in this instant, one experience was a lot worse than the other. To be honest, I never want to go back to that place for a meal again. Its not their fault that the deep fryer was broken but its funny how something so small can ruin it for me, forever.

When I heard the first rumors about the possibility of a God of War title coming to the PlayStation Portable, I was pretty excited and would love to see it come over to Sony’s little game machine. As well as being excited, I was a bit worried, thinking that a random company would either make a port or do a really bad job doing a prequel or something of it, spoiling the God of War franchise. When it was announced that Ready At Dawn was doing the game, all my worries were gone because I knew they would do another brilliant game, just like they did with Daxter.

There wasn’t a well defined storyline of the game, you help the Gods by going where the path leads. You start off doing one thing and then you go off on another arc that is unrelated from the first one and then there is another arc that is unrelated from the first and second arcs. The only similarities are you, the main character, and that each story has something to do with the Gods of Olympus. Basically, there is no main storyline.

As in the other games in the series, you are equipped with the blades. At the start, you are limited with what attacks you can do but as you level up the blades and acquire new weapons and skills, there is quite a bit you can do. The attacks do get quite repetitive but using different combination on different enemies, makes it a bit more enjoyable. You tend to use the strongest attacks most which makes them get old quite quickly. There is some magic but I only tended to use it when fighting a boss, when I really needed it.

There are a few unique enemies, all that look really good. They could have put a few more enemies in the game to give you more things to attack and new styles of killing your opponents.  There are also many unique environments that look amazing. They have really done a lot to make this game look stunning. The very few cut-scenes were very interesting to watch and gave you a sense of where the game is going. The mini-games which consist of pushing certain buttons at the right time give the game some unique killing sequences which turn away from the regular button bashing hack and slashing of enemies.

I do have to say, the end of the game was the best part. The last two bosses were so much fun to battle and did take time and strategy. I do have to say, the game difficulty does decrease towards the end as you get the Gauntlet of  Zeus which does a slower but more powerful move that can take out an enemy in a couple of attacks instead of the usual dozen or so with the blades. The end of the game is enough reason to play this game.

One problem I had is if I went into battle with low health, and got killed, I resume at the last checkpoint with the same low health. This made boss battles ten times harder because I would have to attack him but make sure I didn’t get attacked myself. One stage in particular is when you have to push a cart through fog and you get attacked by unreachable archers. It ws really hard to do without getting hit, unless you took ages to get past this part. Then after the archer have taken some of your health, you are put into a battle with a big difficult creature. Its very hard to do with little health and took many many attempts.

Another small problem with the game is the inconsistent save points. You might find 2 save point within 5 minutes of each other and at other times, they are miles apart. I never have liked it how many games only let you save at certain points in the game, generally before going out to battle or after a big boss or before going into new area. I like to be able to save the game so I can quit out of it. The problem is less of a problem because before going into battle with enemies, there was always a checkpoint so if you died you can easily return to just before the battle. Also with the PSP, you can power the system off in a sleep mode and return to where you were when you turn it back on. This is not really a big issue in the game but it could have been nice to ditch the save point and let us save anywhere. I can see they have done it to be consistent with the console games.

If you loved the other God of War titles, you are going to love this one too. It is considerably short, I was able to go through the game in about 6 hours on normal difficulty. In saying that, it does have a lot of replay value allowing you to go through the game again with a higher difficulty. As well as lacking in length, it also lacks in the amount of puzzles. If you enjoyed the puzzles in the console games, you might be a little disappointed that there aren’t many in this title.

Ready at Dawn did an amazing job at this game, just like they did with Daxter. This is definitely the PSP game of 2008, possibly of all time. This is a must have title for the PSP and I can easily see it becoming the best selling PSP title and possibly even surpassing the huge success of Daxter. If you have a PSP and want a great game for it, God of War will not let you down.

After hearing an Audible advertisement on This Week In Tech over and over again, as well as hearing all the good things they have to say about them, I finally decided to give it a try. What the heck, I had nothing to lose anyway. So I went to the Audible TWiT link and signed up and got a free credit for a book. Signing up is a pretty simple process and requires a credit card but they don’t charge you for the 14 day free trial, and you can cancel before that period is up and not get billed. I had a prepaid card that I used so there was no chance of them taking more money that was on the card, which happened to be about 2 bucks anyway.

I knew which book I wanted to get. Paul Thorrott talked about it during the Windows Weekly Audible ad and when I realized they had Darkly Dreaming Dexter, I thought it was about time to sign up and try out the service. The first season of the television series Dexter is based on this book so I thought it would be interesting to see the similarities and differences these two stories had.

After everything was set up, it was time for me to find the book. To my surprise, it wasn’t there. I knew it was there because I heard them talking about it on the podcast as well as hearing a sample they played on the show. I decided to log out and browser the library without it knowing any of my details. To my surprise, it was there, along with the 2 other books in the series.

I copied the link, logged back in and pasted the link in. They are not allowed to sell this title in my geographical location. That sucks. I signed up to get that book and now I have a credit that I want to spend on a title that I want, and it happened to be that one. I went into my details and edited my address to one in the US and then I was fine to get the book. It was added to my cart and then purchased with the free credit I had.

Now you have to download special Audible software to download, but it also happens to put it in your music library, in Windows Media Player or iTunes. That is good because I want my audiobook in iTunes so I can hear it on my iPod. After downloading the software and setting it up, which was a simple process, I started downloading the audiobook.

The download was about 200MB so it shouldn’t take too long to download. Boy was I wrong. The download was slow as! I had to leave my laptop on overnight just to download it. If I was able to downloading it myself using my own download manager, I could have had that in less than quarter of an hour, not seven or so hours. The software is horrible and a waste of time. I would rather download it myself and import it into my media player myself. I don’t get why they force the crappy software onto me, there is no reason for it.

After all that nonsense I finally had the audiobook on my computer, although it did import to the wrong iTunes library (story about why I have 2 iTunes libraries one for another day.) Anyway, I easily sorted that out and I could finally listen to my audiobook on my iPod. One of the weird things is that the chapters on the iPod are random, they are not the same as the chapters on the audiobook. This generally shouldn’t be a problem for someone listening to the book from start to finish, even if you you do get out of the book, you can always resume from the place your last stopped.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the book, and the quality of it. I would definitely consider purchasing the other book from audible even if I am not to happy about suing the software they force you to install. After all the griff graff, for anyone else you is considering giving Audible a try, I would tell them to definitely do it. Although if you live outside the US, make sure you set your country to the US and also everyone should use the TWiT promo site so you can get your free book.