Rock Band!

Finally got the Rock Band Special Edition with all the peripherals for the PS3 from FunzCentre. I enjoyed the stare of the other customers when I carried this big box out of the shop. Ha ha.

Box Contents : Drums, Wireless guitar, batteries for it, Bluray disc and the microphone package.

After bout 20 minutes of assembling, this is what is gonna take over my life.....

Google up "Rock Band Broken Pedal" and you'll see all sort of frustrations and complaints that people had their stock kick pedal broken. Initial batches of Rock Band had this problems and both EA and Harmonix acknowledged that.

In order to prevent this and the lengthly return policy/replacement/shipping/all sorts of craps, I got the COMPLETE MEGA PEDAL from MEGA PEDAL (see here).

Note : Those thinking of getting Rock Band, this is mandatory!!

Mods - removing the stock kick pedal. Its a rather simple process; max 20 minutes.

MEGAL PEDAL vs Stock Pedal. Tell me, which is more heavy metal, more hardcore? hee hee.

Final touches to the pedal

All done up, pretty simple process. Time to rock and roll!

A New Low

Got this in my gmail inbox today, wasn't filtered as spam perhaps due to the spam-friendly email title.


How low can these spammers/fraudsters get! Once I open this particular email, I can see all sorts of terrible mistakes that warrants a warning that this is just a damn crap.

1. Fedex and not FedEx
2. First name and last name in small caps? how careless from "Fedex"
3. FedEx employee with a .edu email address?
4. How inefficient are they? since 4th Dec 2007 in the in-tray? 4 mths of delay is not the FedEx I know of...
5. Grammar mistakes all over this mail
6. Contact person with a hotmail address??

Maybe there's more mistakes in this email but this fraudster is just rather amateur sending out a poorly constructed email. Guess he/she is too eager to make some quick buck without doing a proof-read first.

Project completed

As of right now, I have not slept in the past 26.5 hours! I'm damn tired now but can't sleep now coz somehow it past my biological clock. After a week of intensive preparation, I've finally completed my Oxford Brookes University (OBU) project. It consist of a main report a max 5000 words and a sub-report of a 1500 words excluding the appendixes and bibliography. I managed to clock in 4979 and 1481 respectively. This research and analysis thesis really sucked my week into it - no gaming, guitars, no fun.

Now I'm ready to send out to Oxford tomorrow morning (together with £50) and be awarded a BSc (Hons) Degree in Applied Accounting later this July 2008. Now, if only I can get some sleep...

Super Smash Bug Brawl

Stupid bug came visiting yesterday night while I was busy rushing my project. Too bad it was smashed by my remote.

Hmm... no blood but just some white mess to clean up after that.

How to upsize PS3 hard disk

My Ps3 was running low on harddisk space will all the games data, demos, HD videos, etc. Fortunately, Sony had designed in such a way that we can DIY without voiding the warranty. So b4 any last minute panic, I have to upgrade my HDD first with the 250GB HDD I've bought couple of days ago at the IT Show.

1. Backup all necessary data (game saves, etc) to an external storage drive, which has to be in FAT32 file structure else the PS3 cannot recognise the external drive. Use the backup facility under PS3's XMB to backup.

2. Turn off the PS3 (front n power switch at the back) and unplug all other cables prior to the actual hard disk swap.

3. Remove the plastic HDD side panel. Use a flat tip screwdriver and the small space on the right side of the panel to pop it off. Careful not to apply too much pressure to scratch ur shiny machine.

4. Use a phillip screwdriver to remove the blue screw which secures the hard disk tray.

5. Raise the small metal handle and slide the whole thing to the right to remove it.

6. PS3 OEM hard disk (pictured left) is in the metal tray. Remove the 4 screws (2 on each sides) to remove the hard disk. Swap the new drive (pictured right) into the metal tray and install those 4 screws.

Note : These 4 screws are very tight and be very careful not to strip the screws. Use a fitting phillip screwdriver to remove and tighten after the swap. Do not over tighten the screws.

Sony is using the OEM Seagate Momentus 60GB 5400rpm. I'm swapping with my newly purchased Samsung HM250JI 250GB 5400rpm. Don't go wasting ur $$ to buy a more expensive 7200rpm hard disk because the speed increase is negligible. (I did my reading up)

7. Put back the hard disk and slide back to its left. Then put the blue screw back on to lock the drive. Put the HDD side panel back on, attach all ur cables and start the PS3.

8. Follow on screen instructions to format and set up the new drive.

9. There you go -> whooping 200+GB of free space. Don't worry bout the "loss" of disk space coz the PS3 reserves that for other stuffs.

10. Finally, restore ur data that u backup prior to this and u're done!

All I need to get now is an enclosure to use the PS3's OEM 60GB as another external hard disk!

IT Show 2008

Went to the IT Show this afternoon at Suntec and this time, I would say the range of products and exhibits this time round is one of the widest and anyone would be spoilt for choices. Typical stuffs like laptops, PMPs, cameras, HDTV,etc. Level 3 was all SONY (well, the other smaller side-Starhub).

PlayStation 3 booth

I was browsing the selection of Blu-ray titles at the booth and at $118 for 3 titles, its a rather good deal. I was also playing with Sony's Alpha range of DSLR cameras they had on display particularly the A350 and A700. I'm not thinking of getting myself a DSLR anytime soon but if I were to choose, I would prefer the Canon EOS 40D.

Being the 1st day of the exhibition, crowds not as crazy thus I could navigate through the crowd easily and take my time to look around for interesting gadgets and stuffs, and of course, the booth promoters. Too bad I did not took any pics of them.

Hard disk prices were getting cheaper over the years even those smaller laptop hard disk. Managed to buy a Samsung 250GB SATA 2.5-inch laptop size hard disk for $170. That's 68cents per GB! Since my 60GB PS3 is 'eating' up the space with all my media and game data, I decided to upgrade my PS3 with this new hard disk.

<- Samsung Spinpoint M series HM250JI 250GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache SATA laptop hard drive

Free Earphones from Deal Extreme

Got this in the mail today. Took slightly more than a week for Deal Extreme to air mail over to Singapore. Paid for this from proceeds of some online activity, so to me its foc!

Ordered the metallic red colour to match my PSP slim and it looks great! The in-ear design provides excellent attenuation of ambient noise-perfect for the long commute .