R4DS 1.17 Kernel

Due to me not blogging much lately, I missed the fact that the R4 Kernel has been updated to 1.17.

Update R4 v1.17 kernel 2008-3-18
1）Solved the brightness problem after soft-resetting
2）Solved 2107 the “Thanks” problem
3）Solved 2110 problem

Once again, more fixes for ‘commercial’ games instead of adding more functionality or something.

Anyway, click to download.

A brief instruction list for people that need mummy to wipe their bottoms.

1. Once the zip file is downloaded onto your computer, use a program like Winzip, Winrar, 7-Zip (highly recommended) or even Winace (seriously NOT recommended though) to unzip the files. Winzip, Winrar and Winace are shareware programs which need to be paid for after the trial period, 7-Zip is free and heck, it’s a .zip file, you don’t need a separate program as even Windows can unzip it!
2. Transfer the _DS_MENU.DAT and _DS_MSHL.NDS files and the _system_ and moonshl folders directly onto the Micro SD card via whichever card adapter you have.
3. Put the Micro SD card into the R4 card, put the R4 card into the DS (the ‘top’ slot, SLOT-1 where only DS cards will fit) and turn on the DS.

If you can’t figure it out after that, put down the DS and find the nearest railway track and put your head on it. As patient as I have been in the past with people asking n00ber than n00b questions, I’m sorry to inform you that enough is enough and I really can’t understand why such a simple process is too simple for some people, so don’t expect me to answer any more dumb questions.

Watch this video I made to see the process in action, if you don’t get it after this, see the above suggestion.

The aceman returneth

What can I say? I’m a total Sims addict and the last couple of weeks has been simtastic as I’ve been playing a little of The Sims, but mostly The Sims Online or as it’s now known as, EA-Land. It still seems kinda pointless unless you subscribe, but it’s a good way for me to waste time and have a bit of a laugh.

I’ve also finally bought The Sims 2 … and then The Sims 3 gets confirmed for release in 2009, so I’m thinking, I really need to sort out my 200GB HDD and get some kind of external enclosure so that I can stick games on it to play them without filling up the one in my system.

So, I haven’t been ‘online’ as such much, I’ve been around in IRC, but really not a lot. I’ve been playing a browser game called Ikariam which is pretty good for passing some time away while browsing the net and adding game news to Mental Gamers… which has been slightly neglected last week due to so much Sim gaming.

At the moment, I’m listening to Skip Jenkins’ returning show of which you can find out details on his blog. I don’t normally listen to podcasts and it’s actually the first ever ‘podcast’ I’ve ever listened to due to me never really seeing the point of them before and more to the point, I’ve not actually found the time to listen to any, but it’s entertaining stuff and worth a listen.

The Family Guy Season 6 DVD set has finally dropped down in price to £9.99 and so since I don’t really eat a lot of chocolate, meaning Easter eggs would be a bit of a waste (I still have a small Simpsons one in one of those spring eggcups from about 3 years ago), the missus bought me that and I also got a Lee Evans 6 DVD + 2 Audio CD set for £12.99.

I finally managed to send my Xbox 360 off for repair and it’s actually due to be returned today, so I’m kinda psyched about that due to getting Burnout Paradise and Army of Two for review, I haven’t been able to play them .. I’ve had a few Wii games and a couple of DS titles which I’m soon to put reviews up of and as it’s now coming to the end of the Skip Jenkins Show, it’s also the end of this post.

Another thing I’m pretty psyched up about is that tonight I’m going to see Justin Currie (of Del Amitri fame) in an acoustic set, that’s gonna be the highlight of the year so far for me!

So, until I can be bothered to blog again…

Using SUPER © to encode DS videos

Due to boredom and the fact I like messing around with programs, I decided to make a video of how to use SUPER © to encode videos for the Nintendo DS.

I made a post about it in October 2007, but now you can see the process through this video…

SUPER © can be downloaded from http://www.erightsoft.com/Superdc.html and is completely free.

Featured music is a free download of Disturbed – Perfect Insanity which can be found on www.disturbed1.com and their MySpace @ www.myspace.com/disturbed

Although I use ©acemanonline Productions Ltd. 2008, this video is non-profit, non-commercial and under this Creative Commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

New BatchDPG released

For all you DS homebrewers out there, a new version of BatchDPG has been released which brings it up to version 1.54.

This is what’s new in BatchDPG v1.54, according to Ghost:

• Added Context menu at job list
• Fixed wierd bug when clicking job list
• Better file Drag&Drop speed
• Fixed System Shutdown related bug after encoding
• Added System Shutdown alert message, shutdown can be canceled by click OK

You can get BatchDPG along with AviSynth 2.5.7 in this zip file.

The Sims Online, the point?

So, I was elated when discovering that The Sims Online had become free to play, so I suffered the slow download of around 1.4GB and managed to get online last Saturday.

Then I discover that people like me with ‘free’ accounts can’t work to earn money, the only way to earn money is to either to do odd jobs for paying subscribers or sell custom content. The odd jobs part could be pretty difficult since most people would just do it themselves and/or be low paid, but custom content? I’m not exactly sure what you could offer that hasn’t already been made or done, so I’m beginning to wonder what the point of it is.

I’d prefer it if it was like offline where you build up skills, get a job, buy stuff and so on. The only thing you can do is go to ‘welcome’ houses which generous people let you hang out at to skill up and basically do what you do in the offline version, but I think I would enjoy it a lot more if it was possible to go to work, earn enough Simoleons to buy a plot of land and build a house, etc etc without having to pay, it seems silly that you have to have a paid subscription in order for you to work and earn money…