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I must report a bit of sad news: despite my jury-rigging brilliance, the Hearn family’s venerable Playstation 2 appears to have met its sad but inevitable end.

It had been slowly dying for some time. A year or so ago I had to take most of it apart to clean the disc-reading laser and blow out 9 years of accumulated cat dander and other detritus. Earlier this year, the cooling fan built into it had gotten so noisy that I decided it was time to replace it, so I ordered a new one, popped the case open and put it in. Finally, last week, I noticed that it would occasionally turn itself off. I usually left it running all the time (I subscribe to a relatively-common theory among nerds that electrical devices prefer to actually have electricity flowing through them at all times, and that frequent power-off and -on shortens the life of the device) and I’d come into the room and notice that instead of the blue and green lights indicating the P2, as it was affectionately known, were off, and the red light was on, indicating that the power switch on the back was on, but the OS wasn’t running.

Then I noticed that when playing a game, the cooling fan wasn’t turning on. The poor thing was overheating and powering itself down to keep from melting. So, I took it to the kitchen table, popped it open, and started testing things. A long story short, I determined that the fan itself was fine, but that the system board wasn’t signalling it to turn on for some reason. I should probably have put the poor console out of its misery at that point, but instead I went online and ordered a cheap USB fan to stick to the front.

Then, I read a nerdy article about a fellow who took a similar fan, connected it to a USB cable, and used it to cool his enormous, sweaty forehead during extend sessions of Diablo 3. I realized that the P2 has USB ports on the front, and I have plenty of old USB cables lying about. So, I took the fan out, spliced it and a spare cable together, and plugged it in. Whirrrrrrr! Yay! I reinstalled the fan into the P2, with the fan wires going out and around to the USB connection on the front. Brilliant! Sure, the “boot OS” button didn’t work anymore. But you could simply turn the box off on the back and then press the CD load button to get things to come to life. Sadly, all I had done was delay the inevitable.

Just as I was planning another self-congratulatory post about my ability to hack anything and get it functioning again, I sat down for a few minutes of MLB: The Show last night. Powered the P2 up, inserted the disc, waited for David Wright to appear on my screen so that I could remind him that the Mets suck, and…nothing. Back to the red light. Hm. I ejected and reinserted the disc tray, which booted the OS, but again: down she went. O noes!

P2 came into our lives in January 2003, a highly-appreciated birthday present from Sarah to myself. Our first game together was Tiger Woods 2002. Over many years, we have spent many hours together playing many games of football, baseball, basketball; hundreds of rounds of golf; and slaughtered countless numbers of terrorists, Germans, rival gang members, and prostitutes. P2, we mourn you, and along with you all of the valuable saved games and customized athletes to which you gave life. Requiescat in pace.

Playstation 2, 2003-2012

Wow, I meant to post this earlier in the week and completely forgot. Who’s smart and has two thumbs? Not Matt Hearn. Ihavenowcutoffmythumbsaspunishment.Itmakesusingthespacebarsomewhat…challenging.

Okay, I figured out a way I can use my forehead to hit the space bar as necessary. So, where were we? After we had our 3,483rd child (possibly an exaggeration) last fall, we ran into a slight problem: Sarah’s 2005 Honda Accord could not fit three carseats in the back seat. This meant that either one of the kids was going to have to ride in the trunk, or we were going to have to buy a new car. We managed to get through the first three months of William’s life by simply having Sarah drive the van around, while I got to enjoy the Honda, but since I routinely drop off the kids one place and have Sarah pick them up, this was eventually going to be a problem. Plus, it meant that come summer summer summertime (summertime), our only means of vacationing was in a 13-year-old Grand Caravan with non-functioning air conditioning. Clearly we needed an upgrade.

Our original plan was to look into a Brand-A-New Honda Pilot, but I did a little research on Consumer Reports and discovered a lot of complaints about road noise. This doesn’t surprise me; our only complaint about the Accord was the road noise, which was pretty substantial at highway speeds. My guess is that Honda doesn’t bother to insulate their cars much, since insulation adds weight, which degrades fuel mileage. In my CR digging, however, I discovered the Mazda CX-9, a “crossover” SUV (Mazda no longer makes a normal minivan) that was rated well for power and road noise, and even had an “autostick” transmission (allowing you to treat it kinda like a manual, but without a clutch).

I looked into a new one, but in order to get all the options I wanted, we’d basically have to buy the top-of-the-line “Grand Touring” trim, which was running well into the $40,000 range, giving us a monthly payment of “a metric shitload.” Sarah test drove one at a dealer near where she works, but we decided we’d better start looking at used ones. I checked around a bit, and the best deals seemed to be at CarMax. The problem, of course, is that the nearest Carmax is in White Marsh, Maryland, roughly an hour from us. The bigger problem is that the Mazda we really wanted to buy (Grand Touring with nav system but no DVD, because I think DVD players built into cars are worse than terrorism) was located in Laurel, roughly another 40 minutes south. But the car had everything we wanted, so we dropped the kids off with my folks, cleaned out the Accord, and headed south.

The Carmax experience was great, and I doubt I’ll buy from them again. We’ll get to why in a moment. We met a very nice salesperson, the CX-9 drove great, they offered us a decent trade-in on the Honda and a great finance rate, so we bit the bullet and added a bit more debt to the pile.

I have to say, the car is fantastic. Easily fits all three kids; it doesn’t hold a huge amount of extraneous cargo, but that’s not really a problem except on road trips, and we have a big roof cargo tub to put on for that. The stereo is spectacular, and has an auxiliary input to connect my iPhone and listen to podcasts and weird experimental pop music (just to annoy Sarah). The acceleration is fantastic, the handling is superb, and the braking is good although I think the rotors are a bit warped (more on that in a moment as well). I still think the road noise is a bit high, but I think that’s just the way cars are built at this price level; a BMW X5 probably is better insulated, but of course costs 50% more.

Issues? Well, the nav system is a little weird. It doesn’t let you make modifications to your route while you’re moving, to keep the driver looking at the road instead of the console, but doesn’t take into account that you might have a passenger who can do it safely. Also, it gives you 2-3 options when you enter a destination: “shortest,” “fastest,” and sometimes “alternate;” the car’s definition of “fastest” leaves something to be desired. For example, we went to Ocean View for a short beach vacay a few weeks back, and the car reported that the fastest way down was this:

View Larger Map
You may notice at the bottom where you drive down through Rehoboth, Dewey Beach, and Bethany, aka the home of 35mph speed limits and countless lights. That is not the fastest way, by a long shot.

I also can’t say that I’m a fan of the autostick, because unfortunately, it’s not just a manual transmission without the clutch; it likes to think for you. If you floor it, it downshifts. For me, half the point of the manual transmission is that I can open the throttle and accelerate WITHOUT downshifting. So when it does it on my behalf, I get angry. It also will downshift when you slow down a bunch, which is fairly handy because I’ll occasionally forget to do so. Also annoyingly, the torque converter doesn’t lock up, so even when you’re staying in a single gear, the tachometer moves around a bunch depending on load and fuel delivery, which isn’t really all that bad, just disconcerting if you’re a car nerd like me.

The other issue is the brake rotors, which I think just need to be replaced, and since the car brakes fine even with the shimmying it’s not really urgent, but it leads me to why I won’t buy from Carmax again: there’s not a local franchise. They give you a 30 day warranty, but in order to get it repaired you have to go to the Carmax shop, the nearest of which is, as I mentioned, White Marsh, MD. We wanted to get the brakes taken care of, but just couldn’t find time to get down there before the warranty expired. I really enjoyed the no-haggle Carmax experience, but if we’d needed more serious repairs, getting them fixed would have been a HUGE inconvenience. If you happen to live near a Carmax, I highly recommend it. I know they recently opened a new location in Lancaster, but that’s still a solid 75 minutes away; hopefully they eventually open one near Wilmington, since my van ain’t gonna last forever and I’m gonna want a new ghettomobile at some point.

To sum up: Mazda makes nice cars, Carmax needs to open a location in northern Delaware, and if your car has a built-in DVD system because Madyszin has to be able to watch her Wizards of Waverly Place DVDs or she whines all the way to school, you might be a terrorist.

Do you have an iPhone? Did you feel that a plastic case was unnecessary? Did you then drop it face first onto concrete and shatter the glass? Did you then take it back to Apple? Did they tell you it would cost $199 to replace even if you paid for an AppleCare plan? Did you then weep openly and gnash your teeth? All is not lost!

This here’s the story of how I voided my warranty and fixed an iPhone 3G…

First, if you’re planning to do this yourself, there’s a few important things to consider: 1. these instructions are for the iPhone 3G only (the other ones are similar but slightly different), 2. I replaced both the glass digitizer (touchscreen) and the LCD screen, 3. this takes about an hour or two of your time, and 4. this totally voids your warranty.

I’m getting caught up on XKCD and came across something that wasted a solid 10 minutes of my life, and I don’t even LIKE LOtR. (Click it to get the hugey-big readable version.)

Remember the other day when I linked you to BLDG BLOG? You need to go check out a post on there with plot ideas for Ghostbusters III. I have to say, I would watch this so hard:

It’s 1997. NYNEX is on the verge of being purchased by Bell Atlantic, after which point it will be dissolved in all but name. But all hell starts breaking loose. Pay phones ring for no reason, and they don’t stop. Dead relatives call their families in the middle of the night. People, horrifically, even call themselves – but it’s the person they used to be, phoning out of the blue, warning them about future misdirection.

Every once in a while, though, something genuinely bad happens: someone answers the phone… and they go a little crazy.

Thing is – spoiler alert – halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn’t a phone system at all: it’s the embedded nervous system of an angel – a fallen angel – and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan.

Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first…

I don’t think it’d be a bad movie, actually.

It would be a fantastic movie.

Mike “Gabe” Krahulik doesn’t like Tiger Woods Golf (scroll down to his entry, under Jerry’s).

I don’t know why I keep buying Tiger Woods games every year. …Tiger is essentially an RPG. That is to say as you play, your skills improve and you get better equipment. That’s just not what I want from a golf game. Starting Tiger Woods is like walking on to the golf course wearing vendor trash and everyone else is in their tier 8 gear. You can not compete unless you put the time in. What I want is a golf game that’s more like Halo or any other shooter. What I mean is that everyone has essentially the same character and what determins the winner is the players skill.

Personally, I enjoy the heck out of the “RPG” aspect of Tiger Woods; my only real complaint is that it’s possible to get your player SO good that you can do things like shoot a 52 at Pebble Beach, which is just ridiculous, although part of the problem is that game is too easy. That seems like a self-evident statement, but the problem is that once your player gets good, the possibility of making mistakes is just removed. Screw up a little on the timing of the drive? No problem, your player is 110% in the category, so it still went 370 yards, straight down the fairway. Same thing with putting and chipping. My Tiger Woods player hasn’t failed to eagle a par 5 in recent memory. Why? Because I’m on the green in 2. And not “on the green 75 feet from the hole” 2. I mean, it was a 600 yard par 5, I drove the ball 380 yards, then 7-ironed it the remaining 220 and stuck it 12 feet from the pin. My guy gets a hole in one every 2 or three rounds.

Since you never make mistakes, the mental aspect of golf is pretty much removed. Ugly dogleg? Doesn’t matter, my player hits a 9 iron nearly 200 yards. I can go right over the trees. Lots of water around the hole? Not to worry. My shots never vary more than about a half-degree from the point of aim. Let’s put the brains back in the game! Golf shots should occasionally go off-course, something that you’ll have to account for when lining up a shot.

The other problem with the “RPG” aspect is that you start the game fully capable of shooting in the high 70s, particularly if you’ve played it before. What I’d prefer to see is starting the game shooting like 109, losing balls, occasionally failing to drive it past the ladies tee and then having to play the remainder of the hole with your schlong hanging out of your shorts. Just like real life!

As you play, you develop skills, so after a few dozen rounds you find yourself creeping into the low 90s, then the 80s, entering a few amateur tournaments, and then finally getting good enough to enter the professional stuff.

I realize that not everybody wants a career mode that doesn’t start them off as a semi-decent professional; I’m saying the option should be there. It wouldn’t be hard, really. A few more lines of code.

Gabe’s complaint seems to be that he can’t just play the game without going through the career. I don’t have the latest version of Tiger Woods yet, but can’t you just play? You don’t have to do career mode, right? Why can’t he just fire up a match and play as Tiger Woods?

I want to see everyone start with a character that has the same basic skills. Then give everyone the same number of points that they can invest in their character to improve things like driving or putting. Then that’s it, no more points no more stat upgrades. Now you’re talking about creating a custom build for your character and then matching your skills with that build up against everyone else.

This does have merit. I’d definitely enjoy a game where you spend a few minutes outfitting your player with boss points and then go up against somebody. (I’d spend almost nothing on driving, since it’s been well documented that you drive for show, but putt for dough.)

Immagine if everytime you tackled a guy in Madden your players got stronger. Then immagine [sic] you could buy footballs that flew further or were easier to catch. Sure some people might like it but most fans would say “this isn’t football”. Well that is essentially how Tiger Woods works and I guess I’m just tired of it.

But Madden, as well as NCAA Football, include this as an option! You can make a player, have a career, and slowly build him into an MVP/Heisman winner! Also, you can just fire up the game and play. I can’t imagine that EA took this ability out of Tiger Woods Golf, so I’m not entirely sure why Gabe can’t do it.

As a father who is also a geek, I have a question for nurses, childcare professionals, physicists, etc. Can someone explain to me why I can’t warm breast milk in a microwave?

Sarah and I got into a small argument the other day, and I acceded to her wishes, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. When you heat a liquid in a microwave, it tends to heat unevenly. This is why anything you heat in a nuker usually have to be stirred halfway through. So when heating breast milk, you end up with small sections of the milk that still cold, and sections that are infant-searingly hot. Obviously this is bad. The recommended technique is that you heat up a bunch of water in the microwave, and then sit the bottle of milk in it for a few minutes to warm it.

I did that the other day, and left the bottle in for longer than anticipated; the outside got quite warm, while the inside was sort of tepid. So: I shook it up. This caused the colder milk in the middle to mix with the hotter milk on the outside, bringing the whole thing to just about body temperature.

Why can’t I do that when microwave heating? Throw the thing in the nuker for 5 seconds and then shake the bejebus out of it. I don’t stick it in Josephine’s mouth without testing it on my arm either way, so what’s the problem? Why can’t I do this? Why?

If you’re a dork like me, you love to read things like this: 15 Classic PC Design Mistakes. Note that while it says “PC,” it means this in the broadest sense; Macs and Apples are included, as are a number of old “legacy” systems. If you like that, you should also check out: the Ten Worst PC Keyboards Of All Time. The modern keyboard has become so universal (aside from minor differences in backspace keys and the like) that we forget how insane some of the early keyboards are. I had forgotten how kludgey my old C64 keyboard was.

I got a new camera. Happy birthday to me!

ADDITIONAL UPDATE, YO!: Mondo pictures over at CharlesHearn.com. Fact: Charles is awesome.

Link day, y’all! HECK YES!

• I got a new haircut yesterday, and trust me, I definitely considered this. It was simply fear of my violent wife’s wrath that kept me looking my usual self.
• It’s new! It’s fast! It…is it frowning at me? That’s an interesting marketing ploy.
• I admit: in an effort to understand this comic, I looked up the Ackermann Function as well as whatever g₆₄ is. I think the brain overload gave me cancer.
• This reminded me of my Recording professor at Peabody, Alan Kefauver, who had a reputation for making dumb freshmen believe that if you held a piece of recording tape to your ear and ran your thumbnail on it at just the right speed, you would hear the recording stored thereupon. He didn’t try to pull it on me, which nice ’cause I’m an idiot and would probably have tried it, but now I can pretend I wouldn’t have fallen for it.
• The beauty of socialised medicine! (Spelt all Britishly ’cause the story’s all Britishy.)
• Speaking as a Fat American, this is hilarious.

That’s all I got! So…bye!