Fanjita's Rants

Welcome to Fanjita's Rants. This site is just a repository for random thoughts and jottings about the state of the PSP scene. Anything you read here is my opinion, and mine alone - it does not represent the opinions of the Noobz team, or any other websites I might be affiliated with.

Note: If you're looking for the latest information about eLoader and other PSP homebrew news, you should be looking at www.noobz.eu. Fanjita.org hasn't carried any development news for a long time.

I've been experimenting with creating some sort of instrument tuning helper device, as it seemed like a good mix of analog and digital, as well as a useful thing to have around the house after the arrival of a Ukulele shortly after Christmas.

More on the trials and tribulations at the code level later, but I thought I'd experiment with the Fritzing circuit design package as a means of recording my more complex circuits, starting with the AF input stage for the tuner. At first glance, Fritzing seems like everything I need:

• It can handle breadboard representations - in fact, you can enter your circuit via the breadboard view and it will automatically generate a schematic and PCB design, if you want them.
• The output looks nice
• It seems popular
• It's free!

Continue reading "Instrument Tuner - Audio Input Stage"

Most recent first... Yesterday it occurred to me that I haven't ever played with servo motor control, despite having received one in my Sparkfun starter kit.

Since I'd just received a Wii Nunchuck breakout adapter from ThingM Labs, I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and have a bash at controlling a servo with a nunchuck.

The circuit couldn't be much simpler, just connect the servo power to 0V, 5V and digital pin 9, and plug the breakout board (after soldering on a simple 4-pin header) into analogue pins A2-A5:

Continue reading "Servo toy"

Gosh.  It seems like forever since I blogged here.  And that's maybe because it is.

I've discovered a new playground recently with Arduino, and the world of physical computing, and so it seemed worthwhile to start recording some of my adventures.

Arduino is an incredibly easy way to prototype embedded computing hardware - sometimes known as physical computing, because it's all about the process of interfacing microcontrollers with the physical world.  Once upon a time, prototyping such hardware required a lot of knowledge, equipment, money and effort - so although I was capable of doing it, I rarely bothered.  But Arduino changes all that - making it trivial to run software within gadgets, and to develop intelligent hardware that can easily interface to a standard PC.

Arduino consists of an IDE, a standardised hardware platform, and a set of libraries, all of which are open source.  If you've never tried it, then I urge you to give it a go - you can buy a starter kit that will give you weeks of fun, for less than £50, and it's a completely open-ended hobby.

Anyway, this section of the blog will be used to document some of my Arduino projects, and the lessons that I've learnt along the way.  That's assuming that I can tear myself away from playing for long enough to type things up...!

If you live in the UK, you may be aware that some of the major ISPs (Virgin Media, BT) have been in discussions with an ex-spyware company (Phorm) to set up a system (WebWise) that will eavesdrop on all of your internet activity, so that it can send you adverts.

This is unacceptable - it contravenes several privacy and copyright laws, and although there are claims that it is 'completely safe', the companies involved have displayed a terrible record of deception and disrespect of people's rights.  The authorities have so far refused to intervene, so it's up to the people to try to sort things out for themselves.

There are plenty of activist sites on the net to give you information on the issues involved (start at Bad Phorm), and I urge you to take a stand if you value your privacy.  If you're with one of the affected ISPs (especially BT), then you really should be thinking about getting a new ISP, one that will not sell you down the river.

I've done my bit by starting to pull together some easy-to-use tools for webmasters to control who gets to visit their site, and to automatically warn people who are subject to Phorm about the issues facing them.  You can check it out here: Phorm Check Database .

On a similar note, I've put up a couple of summary pages covering the general consensus on the legal status of Phorm / WebWise, and the trust issues surrounding the whole nightmare.

It's with much regret that I have to announce that I'm going to retire from the sharp end of the PSP homebrew scene. The betrayal of trust that preceded the Pandora release was extremely hurtful, and has left me unable to fully trust the people I'd previously enjoyed working so hard with. And so, I have had to decide to stop working on projects that require that level of trust.

Besides that, life continues to be very busy in the run up to fatherhood, and there are various non-PSP projects that I'd like to play with. Not to mention the fact that I'm tired of the continual pressure and idiocy of the PSP scene - long gone are the fun days of pioneering amongst like minds, in a mutually supportive and gentlemanly environment.

The Pandora Battery therefore marks my last major PSP project. I expect that Team C+D and Noobz will continue to release stuff without me, and I still hope to finish up some of the non-exploit projects that I'd been working on (Installotron, piKey etc.).

It was a fun ride while it lasted.

I mentioned a while back ("Busy Busy Busy") that I've been working on a non-PSP project recently.

Well, it's a website that has recently gone live, although there's lots of exciting content still in the pipeline for the next few weeks. The website is FringeGuru.com, and essentially it's a visitor's guide to the Edinburgh Festivals (including the famous Fringe) - not so much about what's on, but more how to make the most of it and to "do" the festivals most effectively.

I think it's going to be a great resource for the thousands of people who descend upon Edinburgh each year - if you're planning to come here this summer, then why not take a look?

Aharrrr! Here be a list of scurrrvy dogs that be writing to me for blatant help with piracy.

Don't want to be on the list? Then don't send me stupid emails.

Continue reading "The Roll of Dishonour"

So, we recently released the v3.50 PSP downgrader, and it was interesting to see how many people commented on forums etc, to the effect of "every time you release a downgrader, you're boosting piracy on the PSP". That got me thinking - is piracy my fault?

After a lot of soul searching, I'm satisfied that the answer is no. And here's why...

Continue reading "The morality of downgrading"

I was interviewed recently for the gaming section of a local events and reviews magazine, "The Skinny".

Although a few of the details are slightly off the mark, the gist of it is on track and makes a decent read.

You can find the article here.

EDIT: Some people have asked, "Are you really writing your own firmware?".  The answer is no - that comment was in the context of a discussion about custom firmwares, specifically OE, and how that was really the future of homebrew exploiting.  I don't have a secret all-new firmware release hiding up my sleeve!

It seems that various events in my life mean that I won't be able to spend as much time on PSP projects as I would like for the near future.

For one thing, my wife is expecting our first child (yay!), and there's a LOT of preparation to be done - not to mention more things that I need to help out with around the house.

And it's not just time, but money that's in short supply. Since PSP development doesn't pay any bills, I've been having to do some web development work.

Continue reading "Busy busy busy"

Big thanks to Nathan Heaps, who told me about this deal at the Discount Computer Warehouse.

They're selling new Targus PA870 keyboards (which are ideal for piKey) for just $17, which seems like a good bargain to me.

UPDATE: So, apparently people have had bad experiences trying to order keyboards from DCW, so I can't really recommend them any more.  You can try viewing this thread in the piKey support forum for some more cheap suppliers, with better recommendations.

So, it's been a while, mostly due to a nasty, hard-to-find bug that took a few weeks to fix, but a new release for piKey is now nearly ready.

All that's left to do is the packaging (documentation, installer etc.), so hopefully the release will be done in the next few days.

Continue reading "New piKey release on its way"

I don't know why so many people believe that I'm a good place to get help with pirating games. It's not like I make a secret of my anti-piracy stance.

Still, time and again I get emails like this - without even an attempt to hide the intention...

Continue reading "Help me run my ISOz plz"

You may have noticed that sites I run (this blog, Noobz, the Homebrew Database) include advertising. Why is that? Should you just use an ad-blocker to remove them?

The simple reason is that, on the modern internet, unless you're running a subscription service then some level of advertising is about the only reliable way to cover the bandwidth and hosting costs.

Continue reading "Why so many ads?"