eMarkLee » Tech

Throwing away that PS2? Use it as a media center

Mark Lee — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:50:44 +0000

I have a long history with my PS2.

Golden Era
It first came to fruition when Nelly purchased it as a Christmas gift for the Grandview apartment back in the Golden Era when Workmonkey, Nelly, and I were all living together in the same San Francisco apartment 8 years after graduating from high school together. Reliving our days of youth, if you will. This was during a time when all three of us were laid off in the midst of the dot-com bust. There aren’t that many times in your life where you are able to drink beer, play video games, and have a rowdy time all while not working and getting paid unemployment by the govenment. Ok, so many people do that all their lives…but for us, we knew the time was limited.

So after a period of playing games on Workmonkey’s Sega Dreamcast, Nelly brought us to the next age of gaming by buying the PS2 for the house. Suffice to say, it was well received and played constantly for a period of 6-9 months. There were many nights of endless James Bond: Nightfire battles that ended with Workmonkey throwing the controller, muttering to him self while going to his room, slamming the door, and drinking Grey Goose alone. Generally this occured after I kill his character with a shot to the head with a Crossbow, or after I excrete gases from my arse on his forehead. Not sure why he didn’t receive that one all that well.

Tech Era
Roughly a year or two after the golden era I decided to investigate the innards of the PS2 so that I can play my backup games. This involved taking the PS2 apart and installing a new case for it. I used it for a while to play DIVX movies using the Reality PS2 Player but ultimately it proved to be inefficient and not compatible with all codecs. It also did not read DVD-RW discs and therefore required that I burn lots of DVDs to play DIVX/xvid movies. I ultimately purchased a Phillips DV642, one of the first DVD players to decode DIVX/xVID. I used it to watch movies burned onto rewriteable DVDs for the remainder of my time in the bay area with much success.

Puerto Vallarta Event
Of course, all of these skills came together when I put my PS2 disassembly skills to use and fixed Koah’s PS2 at their Puerto Vallarta wedding. Koah had brought the PS2 out to Puerto Vallarta along with a series of Karaoke Revolution games to have a big karaoke night. When we turned it on, we realised there was a problem and that it would not read any of the discs. I proceeded to take the PS2 apart, down to its soul to fix the issue and allow a loud and fun evening of drunken, tequila laden, karaoke. Highlight of my PS2 hacking career.

London Era (now)
The PS3 is now out, and the XBOX 360 has been out for some time. Everybody is basically selling or throwing out their PS2s these days. The PS2 actually got shipped over with me to London as a means of playing games, both networked and non. It was intended to serve as a DVD player as well. PS2 is still played out there, but usually with games like Guitar Hero, Karaoke Revolution, and Singstar.

I have just recently changed my PS2 into a PS2 Media Center. This requires the following items:
1. PS2 Network adapter
2. Modchip or Swap Disc
3. SMS Media Player

Basically, this allows me to play movies and shows on my TV through my PS2 Media Center in one of three ways:
1. USB Drive
2. Streamed through the network. I can access the share on my computer through the network adapter and play movies and music off of my computer.
3. Burned CD/DVDs.(old school).

As the SMS Media Player is an open source project, it will continue to be updated with the latest codecs, which now cover around 90% of video files available. Pretty amazing how much this PS2 has been able to go through and continues to allow me to stream movies like Hannah Montana to my TV. Brilliant!

Revival of my “Tablet PC”

Mark Lee — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:42:56 +0000

In 2002, I purchased my 2nd PDA. The Dell Axim X5.

It was a brand new PDA under the Microsoft Pocket PC platform. I had become a fan after playing around with my brother’s PDA and decided that I wanted one for a number of reasons:

1. Buy a new toy
2. Read news on the MUNI/BART in San Francisco on my commute
3. Play games
4. Watch videos
5. Have a powerful platform that will allow me to adapt to changing needs.

All this was achieved by the Axim for 2002-2004. Ultimately, however, I started commuting to work and then I started using a laptop at work so there was not a great deal of need to play with the Pocket PC anymore. Hence, it collected dust on my desk for the next 2 years.

Fast forward 2 more years to 2007 and here I am again…same situation but slightly different needs:

1. Read news on the Tube.
2. Play games on flights
3. Watch videos on flights
4. Get on the Internet while traveling.

That last point is the most important. I had purchased the Axim a while back purely as a standalone device that I would sync to my computer before I leave the house for the day. Ultimately I would get back to my computer and I would sync it again. That’s old school thinking. With wifi all over the place these days, it is feasible to jump online and surf the web.

So how does a device purchased in 2002 fare today?
Surprisingly well. I have installed a set of all new software for the device (running on Windows Mobile 2003) that include:

1. Madden NFL 2006. Yeah, Madden for the Pocket PC.
2. TCMP DivX/xvid player – Allows you to play vids on the Pocket PC
3. Pocket Informant – Upgrades the Outlook piece to be more Outlook like.
4. WisBar Advance – Gives the Pocket PC a “Windows feel” with drop down Start menu.
5. Opera Browser – Adds tabbed browsing and generally good browsing to the Pocket PC
6. IM+ – IM on all platforms (Yahoo, MSN, AIM, etc)
7. SPB Weather – Gives you the local weather for the next week.
8. SPB Traveler – Gives you info about cities you enter

In the past 2 years or so, the applications for the Pocket PC have gotten considerably better where I have upgraded a lot of the old software I had been running. Most of the new software today runs fine on the Axim still, which is great. I have played around with overclocking the Axim, but it was just to try it. I’m above all that geekiness.

Of course, the looks have not gotten considerably better since the Axim was introduced and so people still ask what that thing is…some kind of a Tablet PC? I usually just say yes rather than explaining how this is the first generation Pocket PC that do not have QWERTY keyboards but do have touch screens. Damn young’uns.

Visual Craigslist

Mark Lee — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:35:23 +0000

Craigslist sucks. It was cool in 1998 but it is 2007 with all kinds of great technology(Flash, Javascript, AJAX, etc) to improve user experience. The text-only spartan look is fine, but the clicking back and forth, constant clicking of the “Back button” is just no longer acceptable in the Web 2.0 era.

The good thing is that a Web 2.0 site has addressed this exact dilemma and created a Visual Craigslist Listings site that allows you to look at an aggregation of pictures based on your search. This makes searching for a futon much more acceptable on Craigslist. Look at other categories, ie “Casual Encounters” at your own risk.

Moore’s Law in effect

Mark Lee — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:28:45 +0000

Check out this clearance item:

INTEL PENTIUM II 350MHZ OEM W/ HEATSINK for 99 cents. That’s right…99 cents. So if you have an old Pentium 1, 2 or even 3 sitting around, it’s time to let it go. 99 cents.

Update to RFID Wallet…

Mark Lee — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:00:40 +0000

Ok, I couldn’t resist and made a duct tape wallet for my passport with the aluminum foil shielding. It’s highly attractive and should be worn around your neck.

The new RFID Passport

Mark Lee — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:03:56 +0000

The new passport looks the same and feels the same as the old one for the most part. There is one big difference, however: RFID. As far as what the reason is for deploying such a insecure technology…who knows. There have been various demonstrations that have proven this fact, yet we are still stuck with it. There was one clear example performed at the Black Hat Conference last year that proved this exact point. There is probably some congressman and some salesman somewhere smiling all the way to the bank. Oh well…my passport is valid for 10 years, so I will need to figure out how much I want to live with all of my information available to be accessed with the proper RFID scanner. Yes, my lazy ass should have renewed my passport in 2006 so that I can keep using a plain old paper passport, but alas I have a RFID Passport.

You can see a lame demonstration here:

What are my choices to protect my identity?

1. Break the RFID chip with a hammer. This technique was highlighted in Wired. The problem is that what if it takes me an extra hour every time I use my passport because they ask me why my passport doesn’t work? I’m not sure if this is worth it.

2. Buy a RFID shielded wallet. Like this one. But who wants to pay $20 for a passport wallet?

3. Zap the RFID chip with your own zapper.

My Way
Or you can do it the good ol underground way, with tin foil. It’s long been used by criminals for shoplifting. Line a shopping bag with foil and toss all of those DVDs in there and just walk out. Boo ya. They even banned foil underwear in Colorado. Ha!

1. Make sure you tie a rubber band around your passport. The passport has a mechanism that does not allow for transmission when closed all the way. As the video demonstrated above, just a half inch opening is enough for a $200 scanner to detect.

2. Break out the aluminum foil (side note, why do Americans take the “i” out of Aluminium?):

3: Mold it into a bag. I will not demonstrate how to do so. but will just give tips on folding along the edges and the opening.

4: You can line it with duct tape, but I think I will hold off on that for now since it will make it heavier, and also because I don’t know where the hell my duct tape went.

Voila. You’re now safe from RFID information theft…just hide that foil in your travel bag because it isn’t exactly designer. Some people say Fritos bags work the same way, but who wants to risk getting your wallet thrown away with lunch? Some say those anti-static bags that your hard drive came in also work, but there are some rebuttals to that claim so I’m sticking with my aluminum bag. I may try to test these methods out at work with my badge and see how well they actually work….

Use Protection

Mark Lee — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:15:52 +0000

In light of recent as well as past malware such as trojans, keyloggers, spyware, and other nasty infections your machine can get, I hope you are not skimping by not installing a proper anti-virus application on your machine. While this won’t necesarily protect you from social engineering attacks, it is the most basic level of protection you can provide your computer. When you are in the information security space, you realize how broken the Internet is and how much it has changed from those benign “I’m d bEsT HaX0r” type of attacks. We are now in a world of professional fraud with real money to be made in gaining access to your most sensitive information online. There are a number of ways you can protect yourself, but at the very least make sure you are running Anti-Virus software…and make sure your parents are as well.

There are a number of free anti-virus tools out there that you can use. Take advantage of them. I currently use Norton and ZoneLabs, although I have had to repeatedly shut down ZoneLabs because it is a resource and attention hog.

Tech Library

Mark Lee — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:50:19 +0000

For many years, I have carried a number of these books around with me (to this day) for reference. I have read many of these books cover to cover and I would upgrade when a new edition came out for some of the latest greatest technologies. Oreilly books used to be the de facto standard in tech, but in the last couple of years their lead has slipped. This is both because of the lower quality of their books as well as stiffer competition on the market today.

There’s now a site where you can access man Oreilly reference books for free online! Ok, so this isn’t an official site…but at least it will serve as excellent reference until it gets shut down. Now you can review sed & awk on the Kourne shell building a web application on L A M P, all the while using CVS to store your PL/SQL source files.

Update: apparently this site got taken down…oh well, back to using good old paper.

The Street Fighter II Test

Mark Lee — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:29:23 +0000

There is a test that I perform on all of my multimedia gadgets. This includes phones, pocket PCs, and any other device that is out there. The test is the “Street Fighter 2 Test”. Yes, Street Fighter 2 was the game that many of us old farts grew up with and hence have a special place in our hearts for. Back in the day, no single arcade game swept through the country’s schools like this game did. I remember there were entire arcade centers with rows and rows of Street Fighter 2 and all of its variants: Championship Edition, Hyper, Super, Alpha, etc etc. Then when I went to college, my buddy ODJ brought his SNES and we battled nonstop for 2 years. I was ultimately crowned champion and everybody feared playing me(that’s my version anyway)

It doesn’t take a lot of hardware these days to run Street Fighter 2, but if you get a device you better make sure it meets this minimal standard. I’ve had my Samsung A920 phone for some time now, and YES, it has passed this test as you can see here:

Security Suites

Mark Lee — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:27:39 +0000

After trying the ZoneLabs Security Suite, I reverted back to the old school Norton Internet Security. I know Norton and McAfee are the weakest protection suites since they are the testbed for malware writers, I actually think Symantec has done a good job in the 2007 release in cutting down the system resources used and keeping good transparency for users that don’t want to be bothered with security unless there is an urgent need. ZoneLabs, on the other hand, will bother you on every request and sucks down resources like it’s going out of style.

I’m not sure if I’m any more secure with Norton installed, but at least it does not bother me. When I installed the security suite, the scan showed this beauty:

I’m glad AVG AV and Windows Firewall has kept me safe.

I’ve heard some people use the TrendMicro suite with success. They actually offer a free online scan, if you want to double check that your computer is not infected with malware. I’m going to stick with Norton for now as it’s quite a process to install and uninstall security suites. I was actually hoping for some free AV software at the RSA Conference, but all they gave me were pens and mints. Fdat.