Today Team M33 released their 3.71 Custom Firmware for PSP. The major thing that this adds is support for 3.71. It had been a while since the last release and the day before they released a statement saying that the firmware was ready but they were delaying it for various reasons. The release also came with another surprise, M33 is Dark_Alex, the king of Homebrew and Custom Firmware.

I hadn’t updated since 3.10 OE-A and I though now would be a good time to update. There were various reasons why I had held off for this long, one being that I was happy with the firmware I was on and everything we working perfectly and there was no compelling reason to update when there was the possibility of breaking all the stuff I was using. There was also a small chance of bricking my PSP but I like to feel I have the hang of it, for I have downgraded and upgraded 3 other PSPs other than my own.

Then when Dark_Alex announced his retirement of the scene, I was a bit worried about who would take over and release custom firmware. Was someone going to take over or was I doomed to 3.40 OE and the eventual death of custom firmware and go back to the official, most likely 4.XX. A new group rushed in and took the spot, Team M33. They said they reversed-engineered the OE firmware to create their own M33 firmware. When they released it, there were mixed opinions about this group. Some disliked them and wanted Dark_Alex back, other accepted them and decided to worship this new group that has entered the scene.

I was unsure. I didn’t want to go out and update the M33. I waited for the outcomes of other people. I also had a worse fear of everything breaking if I update to this M33 firmware. I quietly hoped to myself, that one day he would return, the king, Dark_Alex. I stopped participating in PSP homebrew but I did keep one eye on it. As time passed, Sony released more official homebrew updates, Team M33 were closely behind them releasing their custom firmware and a thin layer of dust covered the plastic enclosure of my PlayStation Portable.

Eventually I decided that it was time to wipe down my PSP, give in and update my PSP, for better or worse. 3.70 arrived from Sony so I waited for M33 to release their custom firmware of it. This was my entry back in, to bring life back into my PSP, hopefully. I waited and waited until today, it was released! The news was also that Dark_Alex is M33, which gave me comfort and made it definite I was taking the plunge, again. I eagerly downloaded all the files needed for me to make the big jump, from 3.10 OE to 3.71 M33. I did it. The process was a lot smoother than previous updates, it even used the official Sony updater instead of the black and white text screen. It was nice.

After the update was complete, I went to snoop around. My PSP crashed as I entered the setting menu, but this is nothing new. I then had a play with all of the new features. Themes is the biggest update from what I had, other than that, it was little updates that were either bug fixes or something I couldn’t/didn’t use. I had a play with the themes I downloaded and it looks nice and different but I went back to the original default look. Themes are just a fad and the one Sony has released are a little ugly. I can’t wait for people to make their own theme, those are going to be leet!

I also tested playing some ISO’s that I had on my memory stick. These ran amazingly, with no problems. I didn’t even have to modify the clock speed in the recovery menu and even online worked for Ratchet and Clank, it didn’t in my previous custom firmware. Also my favourite homebrew application, PSPTube, still worked in the firmware. I was extremely happy with the update and would recommend everyone update to 3.71 M33 now! Custom Firmware is AMAZING!

Yesterday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Many websites partook in this event by either changing the site for the day or creating content. Here are some of the pirate shenanigans I saw yesterday.

Pirate torrent sites, such as The Pirate Bay and Digital Hive changed their logo for the day. The Pirate bay changed their logo to a pirate with text saying “Talk Like A Pirate Day” on it. Digital Hive changed theirs to a pirate and changed the name to Pirate Hive for the day.

Flickr put a pirate flag on their logo for the day. They also had an easter egg in the site, you could change the language to “Arr,” aka, pirate talk. This changed a lot of the text on the site to pirate terms, for example, the golden bars that normally say “new” on them said “gold” instead. They also change some of the words, such as “map” and “contacts” to “treasure map” and “crew.” There were also many “Arr’s” on the site.

Joy of Tech done a cool tech comic, “Rationalize Like a Pirate” Day. The comic consists of a boy watching a pirated movie and his mother behind his asking if he is watching a pirated movie and saying that it is not good. The boy then says that it is not bad, it is green because it is protecting the environment.

All of the sites that made changes have now reverted to their original look with not remains of this day with only screenshots people have taken as evidence of this days existence. Well at least we have a cool, funny comic to remind us of Talk Like A Pirate Day 2007!

About two hours ago, Apple’s Presentation would have ended. I have just woken up and don’t know where to go. There is going to be Apple information from the presentation everywhere on the internet. But where sold I go first to get all the information and pictures in a single, easy location so I don’t have to muck around sifting through information to get everything I want to know.

Digg will definitely have this in the top 10 dugg stories. Digg is one of the many bases online for Apple Fanboys and any big technology news is on there. Apple + New Product + Hype = Top Story! My guess would be that the story either links to Engadget, Gizmodo or Mac Rumors or all. If this is the case why not go to the original source first because I’m sure the information is spread across multiple posts.

I could go possibly go to Twitter, Pownce or Tumblr. Someone on there would have definitely linked to a website with a lot of information on it. My guess would be that it would link to the same article(s) as seen on Digg. The only problem is that there will be quite a few people with different links and I wouldn’t want to go to all the sites to find the exact same information on it so this method of getting all the information quickly might not be the best solution.

I could try the my RSS feeds because I know for a fact that there will be at least 5 different sources with information on the new iPods. The only problem is that this information will be mixed with other stuff so I would have to siff through my feeds. Also if I wanted to see any extra content, for example photo galleries, I would end up going to the site anyway to see these so why not just go to one at the start.

I guess I will just go straight to a website and have a look at the news. Now I have the problem of deciding which one would have the best content, whether its Gizmodo or maybe Mac Rumors of possibly Engadget, now thats a big decision. Well off I go. *crosses fingers for new iPods* :p

Yesterday evening I had planned to watch the lunar eclipse. The 4 days building up to Tuesday were perfect, no clouds and warm weather. On the day of the event, the weather changes, rain and clouds! 30 minutes before the event I went outside to look for the moon. Lucky for me, I could see the glowing ball in the sky. I got the camera set up and took a few pre-eclipse photos of the moon.

Just before the time it was going to start, the clouds came in I couldn’t see the moon! About 20 minutes later the clouds cleared and i saw the moon, being slightly shadowed. I was hopeful of seeing the spectacular event. But no, thing couldn’t turn out right, the clouds came back. Why do the might gods smite me?

As time went by, the clouds didn’t clear. I though I was going to miss out. Just before I was going to call it a day and hit the sack, I looked out the window to see a faint red glow in the sky. It was the moon. As I watched, I could see the clouds around it clear and could see a clear sky, full of stars. I tried to get a picture but I couldn’t hold the camera steady. I needed a tripod. I didn’t get the picture I was looking forward to taking but I guess there is always next time, in 10 years or so.

Here are three pictures I took. Better luck next time.

• Pre-Eclipse
• Shadowed Moon
• Blurry Red Lunar Eclipse

For other people’s pictures of this amazing event, go to the Lunar Eclipse Flickr Group

• Lunar Eclipse - Aug 28th 2007 (Pool)