PSP Love

Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Apr 24, 2005

After my bittersweet introduction to the PSP earlier this week, I have to let you know: I’m in absolute love with my PSP! This is one hell of a nice piece of hardware, and I just can’t get enough of it. I’m now playing RIDGE RACERS, which I think I’m enjoying even more than WIPEOUT PURE (some nice Jazztronik-type tracks on there). Contrary to my habit of using portable game systems only when on the go, I’m finding myself crashed on the sofa for hours playing games with it while at home (even watching videos at night while Yuko is asleep).

As for video, I’m now using ffmpegX to do the converting, which I find does a much better job than PSPWare (although I still use that to sync up the files). The files end up smaller, looking better, and it will convert anything — PSPWare had some trouble with a few anime shows I tried feeding it. It’s a hell of a nice program.

Again, I still think Sony has dropped the ball on the “dead pixel” issue, but if you can get your hands on a non-defective one, you will probably be a very happy gamer.

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PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens June 4.

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

Codex is a weekly music podcast hosted by Jean Snow, recorded in Tokyo. Playlists for all episodes are posted on the site, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of posts and episodes.

Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.

He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.

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Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.

A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.

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