Games on the PS3 are displayed as a little icon, but it can be animated and some games take advantage of that. Strangely, the PS3 does not even attempt to automatically thumbnail or live-preview the movies stored on it (another thing Sony could easily fix if they choose to. The Cell can decode literally dozens of movies simultaneously). However, the lazyweb rides to the rescue with the news that the PS3 can generate animated thumbnails, but you have to do it yourself. I like that I can do this, but I think it should do it by default and I can choose to override it if I don't like what it auto-captured. Basically the trick is to pause the video at the point you want the thumbnail animation to start, then hit Triangle and choose "Change Icon". The next 15 seconds of video are rendered to a little thumbnail in not very much time. This is it running on my ps3: Full instructions and the author's video are here. Bonus points to anyone who figures out how to replace the thumbnail of one movie with another. The reason? Movie Trailers make great thumbnails because these days they usually flash the locations and characters at you rapidly

I don't even remotely have space at the moment for a large TV (even a flatscreen one), also they are still a little expensive (I figure if it's worth doing, it's worth getting a 40" Sony which does 1080p, but that's 1200 quid at the moment). I really really didn't want to buy a small TV because they are overpriced (compared to higher resolution monitors) and the thing wouldn't be useful to me when I eventually get a proper TV. Instead I went with the dirt cheap Dell SE198WFP 19" widescreen monitor. It's an inch smaller than the E207WFP I use for my PC, and consequently only supports slightly smaller resolutions (1440x900 being its maximum). However, it does have some features which make it particularly well suited to the PS3. First off, it supports HDCP (the DRM system being used in the HDtv world), so I should be able to play back protected content without the PS3 refusing to trust me or downscaling it to an annoyingly low resolution. 900 rows of pixels means the maximum resolution falls somewhere between 720p and 1080i/1080p, however, the monitor supports both. This was especially surprising to me as I had expected to be "limited" to 720p (many/most PS3 games at the moment don't go higher than 720p anyway, and it's still a massive leap over standard definition TV). I need to do some more exhaustive comparisons, but I think I will be going with 720p rather than 1080i (it doesn't seem to support 1080p) because it's an uninterlaced mode, so there is absolutely no flickering. Either way the monitor is scaling the image - the question is, which direction is better? scaling 720 rows up to 900, or scaling 1080 rows down to 900. Time will tell (as will this blog!) For anyone wondering how I managed to connect a monitor which only has DVI and VGA inputs to the PS3 which only has HDMI, component and composite outputs - fear not, HDMI is actually a combination of DVI signals, audio and probably some other gumpf), so it is entirely possible to convert the HDMI output of the PS3 to DVI. That means no analogue signal/conversion at all, so the picture quality is superb and the cables to do it can be obtained easily and cheaply online (don't splash out on a stupidly expensive gold cable, it's a digital signal so cable quality matters a lot less. Just avoid the inexplicably cheap ones on ebay from the far east, they look very dodgy!). If you're looking to put a PS3 in a bedroom and don't really care for a TV, I would thoroughly recommend this monitor, especially since you'll still have the VGA port free for other things. I'm sure you won't care, but it also just happens to fit exactly into the only appropriate place for it on my desk!

This is a fantastic little game ported and improved from an original Flash version. You play a tiny micro-organism living in some kind of watery world. You swim about by tilting the ps3 controller in the direction you want to move, which is usually towards some food (ie smaller micro-organisms). As you eat more food, you grow and develop new features and can dive to deeper levels. When you hit the bottom you change into a different kind of micro-organism and start again, facing different challenges and growing in different ways. This happens a few times and then the game starts all over. It's accompanied by an excellent ambient soundtrack which is largely controlled by what you are doing (very much like the fantastic Rez), and it has a distinctive yet calming visual style. It's simple, relaxing and fun; It's not very hard and it doesn't take very long to complete. Perfect for under £4 and a few minutes of downloading.

I've been missing my PS2 a lot recently. Sure I have a copy of Windows lying around for when i want to play some games there, but rebooting is much hassle and then I have to fight with Windows. Console games are generally more to my tastes too. I flirted with a PSP for a while, but I was really dissatisfied with the games available for it (in that they are postly either not my kind of thing, or cut down PS2 games) and so traded it with a friend for a little Linux PDA. It therefore seemed reasonable to look at the latest round of consoles: Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. I think it's fair to say that I quite like Sony, so I started out with a heavy bias to the PS3. I've seen the wii in action and I completely understand why it's selling like it was illegal, but it's not really for me so I discounted that idea fairly quickly. Microsoft have done a great job with the 360, I've played about with one quite a bit and it seems like they have gone a long way to solve the various mistakes of the original Xbox. The final option is the PS3, which despite Sony's best managerial efforts, has also turned out to be a pretty stonking machine. Ultimately the PS3 won out and I'll be posting some vague musings as I explore it (actually I'm writing this a few days after getting it, so I've already got some stuff to fill in).

One of the games I picked up with the PS3 was Motorstorm, which is a dirt racing game with nitrous boosting. You've probably played games like it. It's good fun though, and very easy on the eye. Online play is great, even if it does make me look bad almost every race! I asked for this one from the second hand shelf (which most games shops seem to offer) - it's very good fun, but I'm not sure it's worth paying full whack for.

To expedite getting the thing set up, I used the supplied AV cable (3 RCA jacks for video, left audio and right audio. They're probably on the front of your TV under a flap) and a Sony TV to start with. The initial setup was pretty straight forward, I really like that I get to choose exactly where video and audio are sent - especially since I want my final setup to use the HDMI port to output video and the AV port to output audio. There are too many steps required to do all this setup, especially agreeing to EULAs, but it's all pretty simple and I quickly got the thing connected to my wireless network (builtin wifi is an excellent touch), registered on the Playstation Network and updated to the recently released 1.80 firmware. I'm not going to touch on games here, just what you can do with the PS3 out of the box once you are setup and registered. The most obvious thing is play Blu-ray movies, but I don't have any of those and don't especially care about buying stupidly high definition movies for considerably more than I get DVDs for. It's going to be a fair while before I have a decent sized TV to take advantage of it anyway and who knows, maybe HD-DVD will destroy Blu-ray before then. It plays DVDs fine too of course, and it does so fairly well. A nice touch is that it remembers where you were in a movie if you quit the player, letting you do something else and come back exactly where you were. It plays Audio CDs too (and probably DVD audio discs, but I don't even know anyone who owns such a thing, let along have them myself), and can rip tracks from them onto the internal hard disk. You get a choice of various formats all of which were irrelevant apart from the de-facto mp3. The importing is pretty quick, but can't be done in the background. It can look up the artist/album/track information about the CD on the Internet, but it doesn't seem to download a picture of the disc (or at least it didn't for the Hybrid album I tested it with). There's a vaguely useful web browser which at least has enough Flash™ support to work with YouTube. I have my laptop next to me, so I haven't tested the browser very thoroughly at all. I imagine it's significantly better with a USB keyboard and mouse (which are supported in most of the PS3, from what I can see). Unusual things lurk about, like Folding@Home. It's not listed as a game (which it isn't), so it shows up in a fairly unusual place. I guess it's nice that people can contribute to health research by leaving their consoles on overnight, but it's not very interesting to me and seems somewhat wasteful and likely to shorten the PS3s useful life. The Playstation Store lets you download full games, game demos, and videos. It doesn't have a particularly great interface at the moment and there's not a very wide selection of content, but this side of the next-gen consoles is very important - being able to download content either for free or for money makes trying and buying games easier, but also makes it practical to release small games. I have bought flOw and Tekken 5:DR for about £10. Neither would make sense on shop shelves at regular PS3 game prices, they're too small/simple to justify it, but for a few quid each and a short download, everybody wins. I hope this trend explodes into a vibrant marketplace and community, and gets some UI love from Sony! As well as those two games, I grabbed a bunch of demos and some very pretty HD movie trailers. All very nice and shows much potential for the future. Printers and digital cameras are supported somehow, but I lack the equipment and inclination (respectively) to test them. Throughout the media related sections of the PS3 it offers a tantalising "Search for media servers" option. This probably refers to some Sony thing you can buy, but I discovered online that the PS3 supports UPnP (a way for media devices on a network to announce themselves). A quick setup of MediaTomb on my Ubuntu Feisty desktop (which holds all my music/media) and I could browse all of my media through the PS3. Note that I said browse and not play. It plays my mp3s fine, but it can only play MPEG1, MPEG2 and H.264 movies (plus some basic MPEG-4 that isn't H.264). It doesn't play divx, xvid, Real or Quicktime. Still, the formats it does play are available and easily converted to, so I can make some things playable on the PS3 (usually with a recent SVN version of ffmpeg). I don't really think the UI for browsing media scales well to the amount of media I have on my computer, but would be fine for stuff copied onto the PS3 itself. I hope this changes over time as digital media density continues to increase. The menu system you get when you turn the PS3 on is called XMB (Cross Media Bar) and is basically the same as the one on the PSP, but it lacks some features at the moment (RSS/Podcast and Themes, most obviously). Some other bits from the PSP are also missing which make much less sense, such as network connection profiles. I will quite likely take my PS3 to other peoples' houses, so it's a pain to have to re-enter all the wifi details every time (or even if I just want to quickly move it to the wired network to copy a big file). Lots of things you can do from the XMB can't be done as background tasks (ripping CDs as mentioned previously, which really has to change. It's not like the PS3 isn't powerful enough to rip a CD, download files, install a downloaded game and browse the web at the same time. Network updates make this all entirely fixable, but who knows what Sony will choose to do. The settings menus are comprehensive and useful, but fairly boring. There are CompactFlash, SecureDigital/MMC and MemoryStick interfaces, plus 4 USB ports. Media from any of these can be played (if you organise them correctly). Another nice touch is Bluetooth, which can at least be used for in-game voice chat via a headset (which come with many phones these days, so you may already have one). Adding "friends" to the Playstation Network stuff is pretty basic and the games don't all seem to hook into it, which is a shame. This is something Microsoft have been doing better since the original Xbox and Sony should really have worked harder here, but they don't want to run a big, centralised server operation like Microsoft does with Xbox Live (which also means you don't have a pay a subscription, like you do with Xbox Live). Local users can be added too, presumably to separate media out between members of the family. It's my PS3, and mine alone, so I don't care about this either. If you want to put media on a PS3, get your own! ;) I think that about covers all the stuff you can do at the moment that isn't playing a game. It's a pretty impressive list of stuff too and has so much potential for more. It also looks nice, and changes colour slightly during the day. As a side note, the unit itself is huge, heavy and hot. It does look nice though. I'm happy so far :)

This is a PSP game which has been ported to the PS3 and had its graphics restored to the original arcade levels. It's a Tekken game, what do you want, poetry? You fight people in the traditional rounds system. When you beat one, you fight another and it gets a bit harder. That's it. There are a couple of slightly different fight modes, but nowhere near what it should be to be considered a full and complete game. It's a small download for about 6 quid and it's fast, Tekken fun. I can't argue with that. That is until Soul Caliber comes out in a few months. That most certainly ought to be worth a full game.

The title says it all really. I've banged on about games a bit and now it's time to do something involving curiosity! So I know how to, should i want to for any reason, this is how you can make videos that are playable on a PS3 (only tested on firmware 1.80). Note that it doesn't transcode to H.264, but instead uses a lesser MPEG4 profile of some kind (mpeg4 appears to be entirely too complicated to figure out!). This mostly comes from here, but the gist is that you grab a specific version of ffmpeg from SVN and compile it against a variety of media libraries from multiverse. This makes me think ubuntu should have a bleeding edge version of ffmpeg in multiverse that links against the libraries there - if licences allow for it. For what it's worth, this is the command line I've been using with it (note that it will strip surround audio down to 2 channel stereo. That's all i have, so I haven't bothered to figure out anything better). ffmpeg -y -i /path/to/source.avi -acodec aac -ab 192kb -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1500kb -mbd 2 -flags +4mv+trell -aic 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -title "Blah 2: The blahing" /path/to/output.mp4

For those who don't know me on IRC, I go by Ng there, and I claim that the following log is the greatest IRC conversation that has ever taken place.

    <koudelkat> He's such a boar
    <Ng> koudelkat: bee quiet, that's a terribull pun ;)
    <lilyj> Ng: No need to be piggish
    <Ng> pathetick ;)
    <koudelkat> I can't bear this any more :'(
    <lilyj> Now you've got koudelka cowed
    <cdavies> lemur alone, he's had enough.
     * koudelkat eyes lily's sheeply curves
    <lilyj> koudelkat: stop being so catty
    <koudelkat> I'm no pussy!
    <lilyj> true, you're definitely not henpecked
    <koudelkat> Don't egg me on.
    <koudelkat> Ok, we've milked this quite enough
    <lilyj> Chicken
    <koudelkat> :'(
    <cdavies> koudelkat: I don't think you've been gibbon enough credit.
    <koudelkat> then I shall crow in delight over the recognition
    <koudelkat> I don't mean to worm my way in though
    <cdavies> civet you've done now? You can your puns.
    <lilyj> ok, time to stop monkeying around
    <koudelkat> yeah, it's not cricket
    <cdavies> let me stick my proboscis in to this conversation.
    <lilyj> cdavies: OK, but just what is it giraffe-ter?
    <koudelkat> lilyj: nothing at all, he's lion
    <cdavies> lilyj: I can see you're a shrew-d operator.
    <lilyj> cdavies: No need to fawn
    <cdavies> lilyj: yes, deer.
    <koudelkat> you guys are doeps
    <lilyj> don't be a dik dik
    <cdavies> marmoset I shouldn't talk to strangers.
    <lilyj> cdavies: I was expecting "marmoset there'd be days like these."
    <koudelkat> she toad me the same thing!
    <lilyj> cdavies: it would have rammed the pun home
    <cdavies> If I can't think up a good pun soon, I may have to fall back on a meer cat joke.
    <lilyj> but ewe missed it
    <koudelkat> what an ass!
    <koudelkat> he should have mule'd it over more.
    <lilyj> cdavies: If you had responded to "he's lion" with "he's not lion, he's a meerkat" you could have even gotten a rimshot
    <cdavies> I didn't want to hog the glory.
    <koudelkat> I'm sure one of us would have swined about it
    <koudelkat> But we've no need to ham i tup
    <lilyj> probably not.  we're too busy putting on hares
    <koudelkat> and steaking our own claims
    <lilyj> steering each other in wrong directions
    <cdavies> owl come right out and say it, this coversation makes me want to shriek and run out to the barn.
    <lilyj> a rather mousey response
    <koudelkat> we do hawk bad puns :(
    <lilyj> It's getting harder to ferret them out, though
    <cdavies> maybe it's time to clam up then.
    <lilyj> cdavies: I think you're just being shellfish
    <koudelkat> lilyj: you'd better krill him!
    <cdavies> don't mount him though, he's been known to humpback.
    <koudelkat> cdavies: not if she starts whaling on you
    <cdavies> yeah, squid pro quo for putting up with your puns.
    <koudelkat> cdavies: you're a sucker for them
    <lilyj> he wolfs them down
    <lilyj> damn, this conversation is just beastly
    <koudelkat> it has a tendency to dragon though...
    <lilyj> maybe we could sire a new one
    <lilyj> if everyone is done horsing around, that is...
    <koudelkat> you're such a cheetah
    <lilyj> you're going to have have to pony up an explanation for that accusation
    <koudelkat> that wasnt stipulated in the rider agreement
    <lilyj> don't try to jockey around the subject
    <lilyj> Your telling of tails gives me paws
    <koudelkat> lilyj: mare-ry me?
    <lilyj> koudelkat: am I the gorilla your dreams?
    <koudelkat> lilyj: i'm homoerectus for your man though :'(
    <lilyj> salamander of taste, I suppose
    <koudelkat> I'm actually newt-ral on the subject..
    <lilyj> I gnu you would be
    <Ng> after all this punnery there's going to have to be some lion down
    <koudelkat> yeah, they've got no sole now
    <Ng> oh my cod this is getting bat ;)
    <lilyj> I can't be herring this correctly
    <koudelkat> We should really put lox on our mouths
    <Ng> lilyj: there there deer, it'll be ok
    <lilyj> now Ng is fawning over me
    <lilyj> salmon should stop us
    <Ng> noo! wevil got to keep going! ;)
    <Ng> frogging and country
    <lilyj> Ng: I thought bad puns were your bugbear
    <koudelkat> Ng: Flea while you still can!
    <lilyj> Fly away
    <lilyj> before the bull gets any thicker
    <Ng> eel brb ;)
    <cdavies> and with that, he's herring off in to the night.
    <koudelkat> i'm just gonna tuna you guys out
    <koudelkat> I dont want us to get into a roe about this.
    <lilyj> Ng: We'll whelk-ome you back with open arms
    <koudelkat> lilyj: he's such an urchin
    <lilyj> cdavies: Yeah, he left us to flounder about on our own
    <cdavies> always musseling in on our punnage.
    <koudelkat> he crabs all the good ones :'(
    <cdavies> he's sole'd out.
    <lilyj> what a rat
    <koudelkat> to another orca-stra.
    <cdavies> what a cheap skate.
    <koudelkat> let's make him walk the plankton
    <lilyj> he'd just fish himself out
    <lilyj> but i suppose we could just gopher it and see what happens
    <koudelkat> that's what he went to school for
    <cdavies> I swear, he's one of the pod people.
    <koudelkat> can't trust men of that elk
    <cdavies> you moose love punnani bad.
    <koudelkat> well, i do love critter-us
    <cdavies> Oh well, I can't just yak on. Must work.
    <lilyj> that pun will hound me for days
    <koudelkat> i'm gonna be feline it for days
    <lilyj> I might even bitch about it
    <koudelkat> I've haddock with you guys, I'm gonna work.
    <lilyj> koudelkat: OK, simian the morning and we'll continue
    <koudelkat> lilyj: I hope we can include frogging in the agenda, I've been bad.
    <cdavies> we wouldn't have to frog you, if only you'd toad the line.
    <koudelkat> lilyj: Meat you in the morning, then.
    <Ng> cdavies: he always weasels his way out of such things
    <cdavies> Ng: Oh, I didn't know, I'm newt to this.
    <lilyj> cdavies: that' stoat-ally untrue
    <koudelkat> we just spent an hour on delicious puns
    <koudelkat> i didn't even notice
    <lilyj> it was our dogged determination that got us through
    <cdavies> that and years of squirrelling away puns.
    <lilyj> But we were finally able to come out of our shells
    <lilyj> fur what it's worth
    <cdavies> and that the audience didn't let fruit fly.
    <Ng> I'm impressed, I thought it'd die out quickly, but you all kept beavering away
    <lilyj> cdavies: They're just gnat like that
    <lilyj> of course, sometimes they can bee waspish
    <koudelkat> I canter do this anymore. :(
    <lilyj> koudelkat: no need to get your gallop
    <Ng> koudelkat: come bacteria tomorrow
    <Ng> and your salvation shall be found virus
    <cdavies> you shouldn't ape jesus.
    <Ng> cdavies: he won't be back until the raptor ;)
    <kif> woah, this has been going on for ages
    <Ng> kif: I'll bison time while you catch up ;)
    <Ng> then you can yak with us! ;)
    <kif> sow you say...
     * kif just bees quiet
    <cdavies> kif: If you don't think of puns, you ruminant for the rest of us.
    <cdavies> and that gets my goat.
    <lilyj> besides, it probably won't beetle tomorrow sometime that we decide to stop
    <koudelkat> i'm horny
    <kif> lilyj: but you've ewe-sed mouse-t of the possibilities already!
    <lilyj> kif: Don't be a tit :D
    <Ng> kif: so start robin other peoples' ;)
    <cdavies> that'd just be cuckoo
    <koudelkat> lilyj: she just squeeked by
    <lilyj> yeah, don't just try to badger us into quitting
     * kif admits to being out-foxed ):
    <Ng> lilyj: we could surely take a little fowl play? ;)
    <kif> i prefer it when you guys just paste rude lynx (;
    <lilyj> like lynx from hornet?
    <koudelkat> kif: that's our of sty-le
    <lilyj> a crime against hu-manatee
    <Ng> our ewe-nun is good though, you get days off for good bee hive here
    <lilyj> well, bugger that for a lark
    <Ng> lilyj: don't get antsey
    <cdavies> termite be cake later
    <lilyj> Ng: Yes, mallard
     * koudelkat ducks the bad puns
    <Ng> koudelkat: don't have a cow, man
    <koudelkat> Ng: well stop with insect-uous relationships with lilyj
    <Ng> koudelkat: cheeky monkey!
    <koudelkat> butt of course :D
    <lilyj> ok, you're boar-ing me now
    <kif> I think he's just aping you now
     * kif wonders owl this end?
    <koudelkat> kif: we'll probably all flock to the icecream place
    <Ng> koudelkat: well flamingo then!
    <lilyj> kif: WHenever we're out of puns to panda to the masses
    <kif> oh deer ):
    <learath> Panda Style!
    <lilyj> don't listen to him, he's just raven
     * kif leaves you guys to rabbit on
    <cdavies> alls whelk that ends whelk, I say.
    <lilyj> cdavies: I don't swallow that
    <cdavies> lilyj: I cow-tow to your superiour wisdom
    <lilyj> ooo, mushroomtwo.  i bet he sable to pun with us
    <lilyj> at least, he mite be
    2007-05-10 17:38:07-!- mushroomtwo [n=shroom@71-221-183-99.bois.qwest.net] has quit [Remote closed the connection]
    <lilyj> aww, heron away
    <lilyj> Ibex he'll be back
    <cdavies> people just flamingo-ing away away like that gets my goat.
    <cdavies> It's like they're coming the raw prawn.
    <lilyj> I just turn the other chick
    <cdavies> it just gets to me, I fillet deep in my heart.
    <lilyj> Dingo let off some steam
    <lilyj> no use letting it make you bittern callous
    <Ng> damn, you two are pun animals
    <lilyj> bullocks
    <cdavies> I've just got the gift of the crab.
    <lilyj> I should probably go to lunch.  I'm getting a bit peckish
    <cdavies> Ng: I think it's your tern.
    <cdavies> Once bittern, twice shy I suppose.
    <kif> yous guys are genus
    <cdavies> guillemot hold it against you.
    <cdavies> but I suppose it could become auk-ward.
    <lilyj> kif: enough of your barbs
    <lilyj> gar-na go wolf something down
    <cdavies> if you're cooking, make sure not the char anything.
    <lilyj> howver, albino catfish.  I can't abide catfish
    <kif> stop tigress-ing!
    <cdavies> lilyj: I trout they're edible.
    <lilyj> of horse they are
    <cdavies> maybe I'll cook some for you, salmon-chanted evening!
    <Ng> I hope someone is logging this for later reproduction as a short story ;)
    <lilyj> A Big Fish story?  or a Fairy Tail?
    <Ng> lilyj: definitely a shaggy dog story
    <Ng> cdavies: you should cook up some rat-atouille and chick peas ;)
    <lilyj> toad in the hole
    <lilyj> maybe you could get mouse-cerpone instead?
    <Ng> ooh, I have tara-mouse-lata at home
    <lilyj> moose-aka
    <lilyj> baabaa ganoush
     * Ng had bull-ognese last night
    <lilyj> haha, terribull!
    <Ng> yeah, it was
    <Ng> stupid ready meals ;)
    <lilyj> m-eels?
    <lilyj> maybe I'll get some hum-mouse
    <lilyj> with a side of PETA...mmmm vegans

I picked up the latest Hybrid album recently, called I Choose Noise. It's outstanding, if you are a fan of Hybrid you will definitely like it. If not, go and listen to them on last.fm or something and then go buy the albums! In the process of faffing around again with music libraries and ripping CDs and rhythmbox I found myself quite irritated that I couldn't control my music from my laptop (which I use more than my desktop these days), so I installed Music Player Daemon (mpd) and then a gnome client for it on my laptop. It rocks! The client UI could use some love, but it's fully capable of playing music, which is what I wanted :)