So it was a nice surprise when I walked into a Game store in Reading yesterday evening, while I had some time to kill, to find that they had a Demo version of the PSP Vita. Even better was that the shop was practically deserted, meaning that I could get some hands on time with the monster.

The above photo shoes the PSP in the Hand – its a pretty big machine. At almost 2cm thick, you know it’s there, but once you adjust to the chunky feel, it almost becomes an extension of your arm. And it is light. While you can feel the Vita with your hands, the weight barely registers, meaning you don’t tire of it quickly.

The 5″ (127mm),m 16:9 capacitive, multi-touch screen has a resolution of 960×544 which struck me a surprising low given the 960×640 resolution of the significantly smaller iPhone 4, yet it looked rather good. Supporting 16 million colours, the clarity of the screen was better than that of the PSP S&L or the PSP Go, both of which I have owned in the past. Additionally, the backlight was strong and you don’t have to strain your eyes to see what’s going on. Finally, the sensitivity of the screen was spot on, allowing for smooth navigation of the menu systems both on the Vita homescreen and in game as well.

While we are on the subject of software – this PSP was running version 1.52 showing that the old PSP software has been ditched in favour of a whole new interface built around touch. That being said the menu system seemed to have no real structure – unlike the old PSP software which seperated your media into categories, the Vita seemed to randomly place its icons, mixing Games into Videos, Pictures and Music.

The dual analogs are a welcome addition to the front of the Vita, allowing for more interactive play in games like Uncharted which utilises one for the character movement and another for the camera – much like many of the current console RPG’s on the market.

The back Touch Panel allows for an added degree of interaction in games – although there wasn’t much on the demo model that supported it. The only game available on the device with back panel integration was Uncharted 3 where it was used for some actions like climbing ladders, traversing walls etc, however it really felt like this was a last minute addition to the game- some of the demos seen when the Vita was first announced showed some really interactive gameplay where the back panel almost became another dimension in itself but this wasn’t reproduced well in Uncharted.

Getting down to the bare circuits so to speak, the Vita has a quad core ARM Cortex A9 at its core, giving the software a really smooth feeling. App’s open quickly (although games can take a very long time to load) and you can swap between them instantaneously, while closing an app or game completely is as easy as a swipe of the finger. The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is the SGX543MP4+ which might look like a mouthful, but is also Quad-Core – giving the Vita an octo-core platform to base its games on. Hopefully this overhead will make for some really nice multi-threading in future games to bring really great performance.

In-game performance of the PSP was smooth…once the game loaded. Wipeout was fast paced and vivid (although that didn’t make me a better player) and the graphics were clean and crisp. While 6-axis control wasn’t enabled, Wipeout is said to support it, which would be a wlcome addition and work much better on a portable platform that on the console.

Everybody’s Golf, besides having a very Japanese twist (which I liked), has some cool capabilities too, such as using the motion sensor on the Vita for a first person game – you have to physically ‘look’ down the fairway to see where your shot went.

It was hard to tell from the limited time I had with the Vita but it did seem that there is no internal memory, which could explain some of the loading times for games. Personally, I am a little disappointed that a next-gen platform couldnt fit in a bit of flash memory – although no doubt its planned for a later hardware refresh.

Sony has confirmed that the PSP will launch in the UK with a 4, 8 and 16GB memory card available for it, but with no 32GB option some gamers have been more than a little annoyed. The shot below shows the memory card slot on the right, and the USB slot on the left.

In terms of connectivity, there will be two versions of the Vita available, one with just WiFi and one with added 3G (supported in the UK by Vodafone) allowing online play on the move. Additionally, both devices have built-in GPS and WiFi location services which makes the prospect of a maps app very likely.

The Vita is due for worldwide release on the 22nd February for both 3G and WiFi versions. So far 25 titles have been confirmed for US release, with the UK number seemingly a lot lower. The unit will be priced at £229.99 with games retailing at around £35.

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Well flats mostly to be honest. After a week of trying to study for CCIE and viewing wedding venues and prices, I find myself in the Holiday Inn in Reading with my colleague while we look for a place to base ourselves when the next phase of our work begins. While we will be working in two different teams, the scope of work will be roughly the same, so we will benefit from the shared knowledge and at the same time, it means I don’t have to pay a fortune to live somewhere on my own over here (I can imagine it costing me £2/300 more than sharing.

We’ve seen some nice places and some..no so great ones. The housing market in Reading actually seems to be pretty limited so we really need to jump on something once we find it. Out of the 5 places we have viewed today, there was two that we have both liked, although we seem to be revolving around one in particular, but there is still plenty to view in the next day so we shall see how the rest of the time pans out.

Meanwhile, CCIE study is starting to scare me a little. There are some parts which I am really confident about but at the same time it is far to easy to forget simple little things – like neighbour statements on non-broadcast multiple access frame relay networks using OSPF – this stumped me for about two hours the other night, even though I had used them on a previous lab.

Other tricky things I  have come across include Layer 2 protocol tunnelling – something I had never heard of before but is required to run ODR between two routers connected via a switch. So there is a lot still to learn and a lot still to practice. I will keep trying for the exam but part of me is pretty certain that I won’t get it the first time.

Time to wrap this up as there is another property to view – not many pictures I’m afraid as most of the apartments were actually occupied but keep checking out the photoblog.

With Wikipedia announcing its complete opposition the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) it has also announced that tomorrow, the 18th January 2012, it will remove its English language website from the Internet for 24 hours. Several other websites such as Boing Boing and Tucows will also be joining in the strike. The website http://sopastrike.com/ has been rallying website owners, bloggers and anyone in opposition to SOPA to join together and blackout their sites from the internet for 12 hours between 8am and 8pm EST. Super-Zero will be participating. Both Super-Zero and the Super-Zero PhotoBlog will go offline at 00:00 GMT+1 and remain offline for 24 hours.

For those not familiar with SOPA, it is a bill introduced in the US which will allow domains associated with copyright infringement or file sharing to be erased from the internet, regardless of whether or not the site is US based. The bill also gives the US Justice department the power to instruct ISP’s to block the domain, stop advertisers from affiliating themselves with the sites, and stops paymnent services, such as PayPal, from doing business with the website in question.

THIS IS A POWER NO-ONE SHOULD POSSES.

The internet is a free medium. It always has been, and it always should be. It is the personification of our freedom of speech, thought and actions as human beings and to have that controlled by ANYONE is an infringement of our human rights, the right to share knowledge, experiences, msuic, ANYTHING. No-one should have the power to stop that.

The vote for the bill to be passed will occur on January the 24th 2012 - I urge you all, anyone who reads this, to please head over to http://sopastrike.com/ and register your support. If you have a website, blog, even a Tumlr – take it down in a show of what damage a censored internet can have. and tomorrow, the 18th January, Tweet, Facebook and share as much as you can about SOPA, the SOPA strike, using the #SOPASTRIKE on all your tweets.

It’s not often I believe in something enough to take strike action, so I urge you all to join in and support this movement. Keep the internet a free and open media!!

This is my last week working with TAC at Cisco Brussels – on Friday I return home for a week and a half of study for CCIE along with a few days house hunting in Reading with my soon-to-be roommate. It’s been a really awesome time working with the security team and I’m glad I got the time to learn about a totally different area of Cisco – especially one that really interests me.

Additionally some of the work that I have been doing over the last will be featured in a Cisco Live! presentation – so really looking forward to seeing how that pans out in the future.

So, with the launch of the PhotoBlog last week I am starting to find myself getting into a nice routine of uploading images and also looking out for interesting new shots. Todays post is a collage of photos of my new Canon IXUS 220HS while I now carry everywhere. Te pictures were taken with my DSLR which is still my camera of choice for its flexibility and range of features but I have been extremely impressed with the features on the 220HS and combined with its slim size it makes it a great pocket companion. Additionally its image quality is great and it has a fantastic macro mode which makes for some really interesting images and angles. Another little bonus is the 5x Optical Zoom in place of the normal 3x on pocket cams. Also the inclusion of a 24mm lens makes for some nice wide angle shots – a really great camerea for blogging and photography a like.

I also received another new toy last week – but more on that to come later.

The Super-Zero PhotoBlog has launched today!!

So I have been hyping this up for the last few days, but what exactly it? Well the photoblog is a daily updated blog consisting mainly of pictures It will be a day-to-day journey through my photography, influences and hobbies. Some posts will have blogs or small explanations accompanying them while others might just be pictures, or a gallery of images.  I spent quite some time getting everything up and running  as stable as possible, so I really hope you enjoy it.

Check out the photoblog at http://photoblog.super-zero.co.uk/ – Also keep an eye out for post on twitter with the tag #SuperZeroPhotoblog

Also, to accompany the launch of the site and to keep me actively photographing, I have upgraded my Canon IXUS 70 to a Canon IXUS 220HS which should be with me this week. Expect a full review!