Author Archives: jaypoc

Brains Trains and Automobiles!

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It’s been a long weekend, and although I can say I’m glad that it’s over, I had an awesome time.

Friday night was the premiere of 28 Weeks Later, so Casey and I headed into New York’s Union Square in full zombie makeup and torn clothing to take part in the festivities put together my my old roomate, Action Vance from Zombie NYC.

We got there and found about 40 other zombies torturing innocent bystanders and eating Brains. (Props to the people who brought the brains! lol). Aside from zombies, were personnel from Fangoria, Village Voice, and other random photographers, videographers, etc… After just hanging out in Union Square for a while, we headed down the block to the theatre where we saw the movie. From what I’m told, it was not as scary as the first one (I havent seen it), but it was pretty good. I enjoyed it.

We then headed out to the Black Bear Loge, a small bar on 3rd Ave. We were the first zombies there, so we were welcomed by a small crowd of regulars and the bar staff. The night was a lot of fun, as everyone [who wasn’t afraid of us] was very friendly and social. The place actually got pretty busy as the night went on. Lots of brains, leering, and drinking happened that night. A few pictures too…

By the way, if anybody has pictures from the event, and especially any of me, please email me a link or the pictures themselves. Thanks!

I think the fact that we were dressed head-to-toe zombie made it a more unique night. A few people came up to me and Casey, after passing many other zombified people asking about the event. We must have looked like the poster children of the thing. It was good times though.

See you in Undeath

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So this weekend is ZombieNYC. A bunch of zombified individuals are gathering in New York City to wreak havok during the rush hour and then head off to watch “Another 28 Weeks”. Afterwards, meeting in a local bar to enjoy brain hemmorages and other zombie-loved beverages.

Casey and I started working on our costumes. We headed to the Thrift store to pick up some nice clothing that we won’t feel bad about ruining for the zombie cause. I picked up a white(ish) button-down shirt, dress pants and a sport jacket. It cost me under $20 for the whole thing. Casey came over last night and brought some paints and makeup picked up from Wal-Mart. Tiffany joined us and had a look of sheer horror on her face as I took to my new Ralph Lauren sport jacket with a butterfly knife and scissior. Hey, it only cost me $7!

After tearing up the shirts and pants, we began painting blood on. We made two shades of red paint and covered the garb around the tears and smeared it around other areas as well, especially the collar and chest (Blood drips down all over you when you eat brains!)

We ran out of paint so I’m going to swing by Wal-Mart later and pick up some more. I’m also going to swing by Party City and see if they have any leftover zombie makeup from halloween. We were going to use the acrylic paint, but once it dries I think it’ll crack too much. I’m going to see what I can find as an alternative and use it as a backup.

I’ll try to get some pictures up at some point.

Playstation Portable Hacked

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I’ve recently reached a milestone in my life which I have been working on for approximately 5 years. Since Jillian’s opened two locations in Farmingdale and Westbury, I have been a fan of playing video games and winning small prizes. As Jillian’s was bought by Dave and Busters, I was worried that saved tickets might be lost, but D&B was good enough to honor the previous company’s vouchers. with about 15,000 tickets from Jillian’s as a start, I began saving up for the big prizes. 2 weeks ago, I secured a Playstation Portable for 41,000 tickets (and thanks to a donation of 7000 tickets from Casey, picked up GTA: Vice City too!)

There’s a lot of web sites out there that you can download home-brew or even actual games for the PSP, but in order to play them, you need a really old version of the PSP software. Even my PSP had a fairly recent version so I had to hack it to get the capability. I researched a few sites online and will get more technical below, but mainly, I was able to revert back to the older software and then upgrade to a hacked version of the newer software. Now I am able to play current games that I buy or download, home-brew games and even Playstation 1 games that are ripped from CD and prepared for the PSP.

 

I picked up a Sony Playstation Portable from Dave & Busters with the 2.71 firmware on it. It also has a TA-082 motherboard which for the longest time could NOT be hacked. There’s infinite warnings on websites saying NOT to run certain firmware updates on a TA-082 system, but some of them are outdated and pre-date the newer hacks which work properly. If you have one of these motherboards, be cautious, but once you downgrade it seems that you’re in the clear.

I found a TA-082 friendly downgrader that could bring me down to version 1.5 of the firmware, but I had to install the Home brew Enabled, HEN-D. Once I installed HEN and the system settings displayed version 2.71 HEN-D, I was able to downgrade the system to 1.5. Once at 1.5 I was able to run most (but not all) downloaded and home brew games. Some games wouldn’t run, including those I had on UMD (Universal Media Disc) but that was fixed by running DevHook.

DevHook is a great application that emulates different firmware versions. While my base system was 1.5, I could emulate up to version 3.11 and access any resources necessary on my PSP. There were some bugs, such as if I didn’t pick the right emulation, I couldn’t use Wi-Fi and some of the Playstation games wouldn’t run properly

Research found that 2.71 could be downgraded to 1.5 after installing HEN, a Home brew Enabler. I installed HEN (I think it was HEN-D) and then ran the downgrader. I admit I was sweating as my PSP reverted to tex-only mode and went through it’s reboot cycle. After a short amount of time, the PSP reboot and started up. System settings showed version 1.5. I was successful in downgrading the PSP!

I installed 2 versions of DevHook so I could emulate various different revisions of the firmware (depending on what I wanted to run). The newer versions couldn’t support the Wifi, but the older versions that could, weren’t new enough to play GTA:VC.

The next step was to install a hacked firmware. After chatting with a few people online, they recommended that I not go for the most recent version but a slightly older one that was more reliable yet had all the features I wanted. I installed Firmware 3.03 Open Edition Revision C (3.03 OE-C).

The hacked PSP now gives me a few benefits:

* Recovery Mode
I could recover if future hacks/updates fail! Previously, if there were any problems downgrading or upgrading firmware, I could render my PSP useless, and since Sony does not warranty a hacked PSP, I would have a $200 paper weight.

* Play ISO images of UMD games.
I could download games from UMDs (Universal Media Discs) or the Internet and play them straight off the memory card. This is much better than carrying around a handful of UMDs and having to switch them each time.

* Play ripped PS1 Games
I can download or rip my old Playstation CDs and encode them to be played on the PSP.

PSP TA-082 2.71 -> 2.71 HEND -> 1.5 -> 3.03 OE-C!

YAY!!!

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Got my car back with a rebuilt transmission. I’m limping and have to get used to using only my left arm, but it was worth it. I made it back to work and the car is riding nice and quiet. The sounds that 2 mechanics couldn’t find/fix is gone. Yay. Now i’m at work about 45 minutes early. It’s nice to sit in my car and listen to XM.

Thinking about it, I forgot to refuel the rental car. Oops… I guess they’ll charge me. Oh well.