I usually don’t track week by their number. But as I was building and releasing the new version of Calendar applet for PointUI, I was made aware that it was week 22 last week, as I blog about events over the weekend.

 

Firstly, of course it’s the new calendar applet I have released over the weekend. Not exactly an “official” release, but more of a release candidate, so that I can validate the applet’s device compatibility especially with non wide vga devices.

    

There’s a breakthrough in this major version release, as I have built an external program to query the PIM database in Windows Mobile, so that I can display the busy status for each day in the calendar’s month view. While this is possible in PointUI scripting engine, but it’ll result in a big performance hit. Since this is the first time I have ventured into POOM (pocket outlook object model) , I thought it was a personal breakthrough for me as well 😉

 

Anyway, it’s a near but not a finished product yet, you can find more information about the applet and its development from this thread

 

Then, the weekend started brilliantly with the boys (my nephews) participating a half day 5-a-side soccer tournament, organised by their soccer coaching school, and held at Tampinese SAFRA club. It was scorching hot and I admire the boys perserverance  to withstand the heat to compete in this tournament. Before the game, we had a casual bet with Ray that he would have to score 6 goals, since he scored the only goal in the last tournament, which unfortunately was an own goal. Kang had a jibe on the bet, saying that it’ll be a 6 own goals. Eventually, Ray bagged 7 goals, in 6 games, helping his team to win the cup final. And no, they are all well taken shots, not own goals! Arguably the top goal scorer in his age group (under-8), and certainly he had grown alot  from footballing perspective, as evident from his performance in his games. Inspite of his achievement, Ray was not over the top, and instead gave credits to Kang, for shaping him to be such a prolific goal poacher! Kang did well too, scoring two goals, and a couple of assists which landed his team a plate champion. The boys however, were disappointed of the lack of trophies, as the organiser decided to pack candies as prizes to the cup winners! What a bummer!

Then I had the chance to meddle with the PSP firmware. It all started when Kang’s PSP firmware had upgraded to official firmware accidentally, and it means he couldn’t play the games he used to be able to play. I tried to have a go on upgrading his psp, and it turns out, as I have realised from reading the internet forums, that I need to have a “pandora” battery along with the custom firmware installers in the memory stick. The latter isn’t a problem, it’s the “pandora” battery that’s a breaker. Apparently, the battery has a function to instruct PSP to boot from the device’s ROM, where the official firmware is contained. In order to overwrite the original firmware, the PSP needs to boot from the memory card, and the only way to do so is to use the pandora battery so that it can instruct PSP to boot appropiately. The difference, in terms of hardware design, between a “pandora” battery, and normal PSP battery, is that the pin #5 in the battery circuit, is de-soldered (or removed) so that the instruction (to boot from the device ROM) is by-passed. 

 

In the end, it wasn’t a fruitless attempt, as I have upgraded yeez’s PSP (as she already had the custom firmware installed). Certainly there’s a feel good factor, although I’m going to experiment with the “pandora” battery later 🙂