Smallest solder I’ve ever done… PSP USB charging mod

I have a first generation PSP (PlayStation Portable) and after it’s charger over-heated and died I started using a variable adapter to charge it. Once while charging, I set the polarity on the adapter the wrong way around and well it burnt out the diode on the PSP circuit board!

So now I had a dead PSP because of a hardware problem. (Hint: I’m more of a software guy!)

After wasting a lot of time on google, I came across this one post on how to charge a first gen PSP via USB. Originally a first gen PSP does not support USB charging. All I had to do was solder a wire from the mini-USB port to the PSP power-port. Easy. Only that after opening up the case, it didn’t look so easy. And this is why:

For comparison, I took the photo next to a 5p coin. Yes that’s a 5 pence coin which is 18mm in diameter! It is the best and the neatest solder I’ve done so far without burning a hole through the circuit board or any other components!

[Solution] Facebook Hacker Cup 2012 – Qualifying round – Alphabet Soup

This was by far the easiest problem out of the three.

Here’s my solution, written in PHP. It reads a file called input.txt and outputs the results to output.txt!

UPDATE – a much more optimized solution here.

$filename = "input.txt";
$input = fopen($filename, 'r');
$theData = fread($input, filesize($filename));
fclose($input);

$file_content = explode("\n",$theData);
$test_cases = intval($file_content[0]);
$outputFile = "output.txt";
$output = fopen($outputFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");

for ($j = 1; $j <= $test_cases; $j++){
	$freq = array();
	$word = strtolower(str_replace(" ","",$file_content[$j]));
	$len = strlen($word);
		for ($i=0; $i<$len; $i++) {
		  $letter = $word[$i];
		  if (array_key_exists($letter, $freq)) {
			$freq[$letter]++;
		  } else {
			$freq[$letter] = 1;
		  }
		}
      if (!isset($freq['h']) || !isset($freq['a']) || !isset($freq['c'])
       || !isset($freq['k']) || !isset($freq['e']) || !isset($freq['r'])
       || !isset($freq['u']) || !isset($freq['p'])
       || (intval($freq['c'] == 1)))
                {
		$stringData =  "Case #" . $j . ": 0\n";
		fwrite($output, $stringData);
		}
	else {
		$counting = array();
		$letters = array('h','a','c','k','e','r','u','p');
			for ($z = 0; $z < count($letters); $z++){
			$var_name = "count".$letters[$z];
				if ($var_name == "countc"){
				    $$var_name = $freq[$letters[$z]]/2;
				    $counting[] = intval($$var_name);
				}
				else {
				    $$var_name = $freq[$letters[$z]];
				    $counting[] = intval($$var_name);
				}
			}
	$stringData = "Case #" . $j . ": " . min($counting) . "\n";
	fwrite($output, $stringData);
	}
}

fclose($output);

Download link: alphabet-soup

aPcBuild – because its technically not my first!

Technically I built my first PC 6 years ago. It was made from scrap parts from random old PCs I had lying around and any PCs that had been just given to me.

Didn’t have a proper case for it though, so it just sat on my desk with all parts lying bare. It looked something like this…

The specs were something like a dual core 1.8 GHz processor and 512Mb RAM with a 256Mb graphics card. Nothing amazing, I don’t even remember what the exact specs were.

Three years ago, I built my current PC that I’m using now. It was a budget build and total cost was kept under £400! Running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and I do all photo-editing, web-designing and gaming on it! Not a gaming PC but runs them well.

The case is a Galaxy Black Mid Tower case with blue bubble lighting and clear side available here at ebuyer -> exactly what I wanted, cheap, some lighting and a side panel allowing for simple mods! for £35

Processor is an AMD Athlon II X4 620 -> a quad core 2.6 GHZ processor …great for < £70!

Motherboard is an ECS GeForce6100PM-M2 -> memory support up to 16GB however only 2 DIMM slots but < £60

RAM -> Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 CL6 for around £50

A cheap DVD player/writer for £15 from ebuyer.com

Front panel card reader for £10

NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 1GB (DDR5) < £70

HDD1 WD Caviar Blue 500GB – 600 MBps – 7200 rpm < £65

Led strip lighting < £5 ebay!

Cabling for around £10

The DELL screen was given by a friend and the HP screen by another friend.

Mouse and Keyboard were just lying around?

Total cost of a beautiful budget build < £400

Since then I’ve added the following:

HDD2 WD Caviar Blue 1TB – 600MBps – 7200 rpm < £100

Slimline Widescreen Tablet = £60

It’s not the most powerful PC but it does the job and does it well! I use it mainly for web development, and all I use for web-dev is a local installation of Wamp Server and Notepad ++ Runs games pretty well on the highest settings, will put up benchmark stats if interested, but I’m not much of a gamer.

This allows me to cross off number 15 of my things to do before I die list.

#thetimecapsule.org – Become a part of Internet history!

thetimecapsule.org was launched on 1st Jan 2012. The basic idea emerged from the fact that I was coming across a lot of things: a lot of events, individuals and corporations who change our lives everyday and help form the year!

So I decided to create a ‘time-capsule’. But then I thought, creating a time-capsule will mean that I only add the things I’ve come across, thus missing out on what other people found important, etc. So, that’s where my holiday project emerged from: to create a website which will allow people to add ‘profiles’ on things and people that help shape and form a year, every year. But how to limit it? Well the time-capsule is limited to a 1000 top-rated entries. So each user can add up to three entries (free user registration), and all the other users can vote on the entries. The 1000 highest rated entries will stay in the time-capsule. This does not mean that the other entries will be deleted. This just means that although they will exist online on the website and you will be able to direct-link to them, the time capsule for that year will only contain the top 1000 rated entries of that year.

The site was built from scratch, so there might be a few bugs here and there. Let me know on Facebook or Twitter.

Also I’m currently planning a version 2 of the site. So if you have any ideas or features that you think I should incorporate, also do let me know =)

Click here to visit thetimecapsule.org

This also completes number 11 of my things to do before I die list.

Windows Phone – a month with my HTC HD7

So I’ve now had my HTC HD7 for around a month, and its a great phone.

I was a bit vary of the Windows Phone OS. But Microsoft has done a great job upgrading their mobile operating system from windows mobile to windows phone. The basic home-screen is a bunch of square tiles. Simple yet effective. There are no multiple homescreens like you get with the Android devices, but swipe across and you are welcomed by a list of all installed applications. Simple. It’s okay when you have say twenty or thirty apps, but as you download more it gets a bit confusing scrolling through a long list of apps trying to find the one you are looking for. Unless of course you know the name of the app, then you can just quickly use the little search feature and voila, you’re done.

What I really love about the new Windows Phone OS is the ‘People’ application. This links all your accounts, including windows live, facebook, twitter, etc. and gathers all the contacts from them into once place. You can then link up contacts who are available across the different platforms and quickly write on their facebook, or mention them in a tweet, text them, call them, whatever. All the possible options of contacting that person, is listed in that one contact. Sweet.

Windows Phone links with the Zune software which can be found on Microsoft’s media devices, and also available for desktops. This is the only way to get your content to and from your phone. I would have preferred to have bluetooth transfer and managing my media manually like a memory card, but never mind, it works. I can’t complain.

What I really didn’t like was the fact that I was unable to tether my phone. Yes Windows Phone does not give you the option to tether your data connection to your computer/laptop. After searching online for hours and hours, and reading the amazing forums over at XDA developers and many other forums and came across the Deepshining v3.1 ROM. Now this is awesome. The easiest way to tether your phone and some more added functionality.

It’s a good, solid phone. Particularly interesting is the little stand on the back. Personally I’ve never used it and don’t ever plan to. But its something different and cool. The camera is not bad. Okay I lied, the camera sucks. It’s worse than my BlackBerry Torch’s camera, but who cares? The phone is quite large itself, but I like having the large touchscreen, in fact I really like the Samsung Galaxy Note, only because it has a massive screen. One thing I do hate, is the really bad battery life, o and also the fact that it takes ages to sync my emails. BlackBerry on the other hand is amazing on push emails.

But Windows Phone is still a foetus when it comes to mobile operating systems. Microsoft has made a massive jump and given its mobile operating system a massive overhaul and designed it from scratch. The Windows Phone operating system is very much similar to the ‘tablet’ look of the Windows 8 Desktop version (public beta to be released sometime early 2012) . This post wasn’t meant to be a full review of the phone, you can easily find great reviews on many sites; it was just meant to be a rant about the phone and my month that I’ve spent with it.

It’s impressive. And still developing. The UI is amazing, but it still doesn’t have much of a unique and amazing factor to it; if I hadn’t received it for free, I would never have bought it. But all in all, a decent, large touch screen, smooth UI phone, with adequate camera, crap battery life, decent app availability, but great looks!

If you do want to read a full detailed review, TechRadar have a done a nice review of this device. Click here =)

#QRCode – Property for Sale!

I’ve been really interested in QR codes lately and yesterday while walking down the road I saw a great use of this simple technology.

Everybody’s seen them boards telling you the property is up for sale or to let. Well in Sheffield a lot of landlords are signing contracts for the next academic year. Students want to be early and grab the best properties. And students, have smartphones. And smartphones scan QR codes! Owh yes, just thought it was really clever, so I took a photo of it.

Owh and the photos were taken with my HTC HD7. Read about my month with it =)