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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On the flipside, when it comes to blogging the key focus is the writing, and smooth minimalist designs that really bring the focus back to the text can be very attractive. So when I chose my current theme, I thought I was getting a mixture of both. An interesting and eye catching design but with a clean and straightforward layout for the posts. But it took me a while to settle on a theme, and even now I’m not particular sure I like it. So I thought I would give you a look into the themes I narrowed it down to.

The Minimalist

Surprisingly, a large proportion of my choices were in this area. I think its hard because at times I want my site to be a full featured site, with daily updates full of interesting news and articles collected from all over the web. Conversely, I have no time to do any of that and my site reverts to a standard blog, and the minimalist themes suit that style of writing better.

Elegant Grunge

Besides having a cool name, this theme offered a nice blend of dark and light. I love charcoal greys and really thought the contract of the header and body was attractive. What I didn’t like was the way it tended to mangle my tweets on the right hand side, and the lack of justification in the sidebar made it feel untidy and distracting.

Simple Dark

Another elegant theme, the dark gradient really appealed to me, as did the better separation of the twitter posts, making it much easier on the eyes. I only steered clear of this one as I often use dark themes and wanted to go for something with lighter colours.

Margot

Another neat theme with a good contrast between light and dark. Once again however, the lack of support for my Twitter feed caused me to toss this one aside. The design is very smooth however, and very much appeals to me if I were just reading/writing posts.

The Pretty

These few themes were ones that I found visually attractive. I actually have a lot more, but I am trying to move away from this sort of style and into something a bit cleaner and more professional.

Motion

Motion is a beautiful theme to look at, incorporating transparent bars and a futuristic background along with a clearly separated sidebar area. However, it’s almost a little too distracting and really takes away from the posts themselves. In this case, eye candy isn’t everything.

Game Site

Game site is a theme designed for news and articles. It was originally made for games but can be used along with wordpress categories to create a fully integrated platform, with featured posts, thumbed posts, javascript and ajax functionality. However, in order to do all that considerable time must be spent in configuration along with graphics design and implementation. Far too much work for me…

The Blend

These are the themes that I felt had a nice mix of simplistic layouts but pleasing to look at as well.

White Gold

This theme uses a 3 column layout – something I normally don’t like, but its blend of colours and slight 3D looks from the shadows makes it feel very natural. When it comes to reading, the layout is simple and concise although it doesn’t seem to like line breaks in text. For someone like me who loves paragraphs as a way to break up subjects or topics, it was a major downside to an otherwise great theme.

Desk Scape

Perhaps by the time you are reading this the above theme is how my site looks. This is because Desk Scape is the one other theme that I would really consider sticking with.  It’s layout is clean and simple with great use of layers. The one problem that turned me away from this theme is the post summarising which occurs beneath the most recent post. As I would be moving towards a blog, this would be one feature that I think would decrease readability and flow.

zeePersonal & zeeSynergie

Both these themes have a nice clean feel to them and each provides an easy to read post. One thing that I really don’t like about them however is their use of the categories as a sidebar, and difficulty in making them a top bar. However as simple but attractive layouts go, these two are pretty good.

So there you have it. My current theme was the best out of this bunch although there are still plenty out there if I ever feel the need to change. What do you think? Drop me a comment (top right) and let me know!

So this is OmmWriter for Mac. It’s an interesting interface and certainly not without its charm but I’m not really sure about the text noises and relaxing music.

The music gives me the feeling that some massive monster is about to leap out and grab me – years of playing video games have taught me not to trust gently melodic music (read: Limbo) and even though there is a selection of  tracks, none really help me at all; much better just to switch it off as far as I am concerned.

For some reason the text noises remind of the tree spirits from Princess Mononoke with their gentle clicking and chirping in the background as I type. However due to the sporadic nature of my touch typing skills, it means that the noises tend to be a little disjointed and almost more of a distraction than I would like. However if I was wearing headphones and not just using my normal speakers I could see how it would be more ambient and relaxing.

The font size is a tad on the small side as well although I believe there is a setting to change that (there was). The background is nice however, and certainly is calming if not a tad modern for my tastes. The ability to also use grey or white as a canvas instead of the background is also refreshing.

Also, the cursor and text settings are quite nice and the ability to switch to plain text font makes for a relaxing environment – at least for me anyway. The problem I fell with a lot of these apps is that everyone is different and what appeals to one writer to actually be another writer’s worst nightmare.

I think what is important is that this app is free and all neurotics aside, it does what its means to do – stops you getting distracted from what you’re writing. When I first started writing this piece, I was simply testing the features of OmmWriter I and yet I have just written a review on it, totally disregarding anything else I was doing moments before.

I still prefer IA Writer on the iPad for its lack of anything. OmmWriter’s settings can almost make you want to tweak, keep changing the sounds or the background music until you find something you are more “comfortable” with. And being a top notch procrastinator I can tell you that sometimes, getting those settings “just right” can can take enough time in itself.

I cant really talk about its interface because, to be honest, it doesn’t really have one. But on this occasion that is entirely the point. It has a keyboard, it has Dropbox integration and it can spell check.

In actual fact, in its full screen and distraction free mode, IA Writer doesn’t even check spelling or punctuation which in some ways is great because I actually find myself looking more at what im typing and concentrate more on what im trying to say.

So much so that I haven’t actually deviated from this article once since I started to write it. Even with my computer screen on in front of me. It certinly does seem to be effective at getting down ideas and keeping you focused on the writing instead of the layout. All for £2.99 (for iPad) or £10.99 (for Mac).

Another interesting thing I stumbled across today while reading about Groupon royaly screwing up is the website ShouldIChangeMyPassword. It allows users to enter their email address and then searches through a host of publicly available leaked usernames and passwords, checking to see if their email match any made available.

Not only is the site fully secured via HTTPS but it stores nothing that you enter into the email field and it hasnt a cached version of the usernames/passwords either – it just searches through what is already publicly available. Certainly a great idea given the recent activities of LulzSec and Anonymous.

As for IA Writer, so far writing this post has been a breeze and almost relaxing. I shall certainly be using it a lot more in the future.

Y’know, sometimes I really wish I had some sort of system of updating everything at once…not necessarily with the same stuff but just something that appears and makes me update stuff…

But alas, there isn’t.

So anyway, my exams are on their way in and as per usual the faculty has decided to lay on the coursework. So before the exams start I have 3 pieces of coursework to hand in. Now for once I happened to be on top of my work and I have one of the pieces pretty much done however with all this coursework going on how am I meant to get the time to revise?!

It’s so stupid.

Anyway, on the webcomic front, its defiantely up and coming so watch this space, I’m sure it will be here soon.

Also, I have been playing a fair bit of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 recently and there really is such a good change from the first one. The online play especially – the system is easy to use and understand. Even though there is only 2-3 game modes, they don’t really get old. And the unlock system is so much less complciated – I actually know how to unlock things, how I get points and how to rank up which i didn’t really understand in the first game.

And blowing the shit clean out of everything never gets old.

The game feels snappier to play too – I often felt the oldone really didnt respond well, you pulled a trigger and a second later (or so it felt) the gun fired – and that was both on and offline but so far I have been impressed with the game engine.

And the grahpics – I have this game for PC and 360 and the graphics are fantastic on both. Well the PC is much better than the 360 when turned up full with AA and texture filtering but the 360 version is also fantastic considering the hardware it’s running on.

So anyway thats all from me for now!