Survivor 45 - 4503 - "No Man Left Behind"

Sabiyah, you were a good player. Bringing that wax-encased idol to Tribal Council was pretty smooth, and when you made your choice, I probably would've done exactly the same thing.. 

Survivor 45 - 4502 - "Brought a Bazooka to a Tea Party"

Sorry Brandon, looks like Survivor isn't your thing. But you can be proud of four things: 

1. You didn't get eliminated on the first episode.
2. You didn't seriously injure yourself on the first episode.
3. You didn't completely suck at the physical part of your second challenge.
4. You didn't ask to be voted out (= quit) on the first day like Hannah, the quitting-est quitter in all of Survivor quitter-dom. So respect to you for that. 

Good luck in whatever it is that you do. Definitely rooting for Emily now. 

Updating Vita from 3.65 Enso to 3.74 with Henkaku

EDIT (2026-02-05): Actually, plenty of reasons to just stick to 3.65 Enso. Check my other Vita posts on this blog. This post is now just for reference. 

EDIT (2024-06-09): Best video tutorial here. Original post below...

I'm a year behind on Vita stuff! The latest firmware for the Vita is 3.74. 

I decided to update my Japanese Vita 2000 because NoNpDrm wasn't as easy to use as I thought and I wanted to use that official alarm clock app again. I was aware I wouldn't be able to use Adrenaline anymore, but actual PSPs are better for everything a PSP can do (save for the smaller screen size and save states for PS1 games), and actual PSPs don't have the extra lag Adrenaline does.

My 32 GB Vita memory card should be good enough for all the officially purchased Japanese Vita and PSP games I want to play.

There are a lot of required updates to get everything running on 3.74, so I'm just going to document the order in which I do things:

1. UPDATING TO THE LATEST OFFICIAL FIRMWARE: I couldn't simply update from 3.65 to 3.74 through Wi-Fi even if I disabled spoofing, and eventually I had to reboot in Safe Mode and start from scratch. I think I selected Restore System here. Signing in again, I used the 2FA secondary password I had made for my Vita a while back.
2. GETTING HENLO: https://deploy.psp2.dev/ (EDIT: The preferred URL nowadays is jailbreak.psp2.dev )
3. UPDATING VITASHELL: My VitaShell was on 2.02, but the latest is a 2.04 unofficial fork which is what you want for 3.74. I can't use VitaShell to update VitaShell, and installing henkaku doesn't restore Molecular shell. Using the Vita's browser you can go to https://deploy.psp2.dev/ for the HENlo app, install henkaku and VitaDeploy,  and delete your existing VitaShell icon if you haven't already. Go to Vita Settings and enable Unsafe Homebrew, use VitaDeploy's file browser to open the old 2.02 VitaShell (which isn't truly VitaShell I guess), then install the 2.04 vpk and launch that on the Vita home screen. 
4. USING SD2VITA: VitaDeploy has a tool for this built in.

EDIT: Trying again with my 1000:

1. On Enso bubble, hit Triangle to uninstall hack. Restarts. 
2. Vita prompts to update system software, but upon getting from Wi-Fi it says already it's already on the latest (C3-12049-6). Memory card updates database. Stuck... Trying Settings > Restore Settings. That did the trick! New system software is downloading and installing. 
3. Bubbles will return (if blank) by going to VitaShell > Refresh LiveArea... but will take a LONG time (several minutes for 1%), and will stop around 20-30% because you'll run out of actual space on the LiveArea (max is 10 pages)... so collect your bubbles in folders and try again, maybe multiple times. 
4. For white/invisible bubbles, tap on them to get to the splash screen (no need to actually start it), and at this point the bubble icon will reappear but still remain invisible on the main LiveArea through the folder preview. To get them visible there, get all the icons in a folder visible, then move an icon out of the folder and then move it back in. Don't just move the icon; you have to actually set it down it outside a bubble, then enable moving and move it back inside a bubble again. 
5. Even after all this, games that were NOT Vita games remained invisible on the LiveArea screen, but were able to be transferred from the Vita to a PC in Content Manager. 

Survivor 45 - 4501 - "We Can Do Hard Things"

I'm like 12 episodes late, and I'm only halfway into this first episode, but:

I'm very happy Bruce is back. He's the dude who got seriously injured in the very first challenge from last season. Back then I don't even think he settled into camp yet. Good luck to him. 

Dang, Brandon... how hard is it to climb up a ladder? Was it just that slippery or was the water just that cold? You couldn't have been that out of shape.

Emily... I instantly hated her the second she started giving Bruce a hard time at the very beginning of the episode. And then I really, really hated her as the episode went on. That is, until halfway into the episode when the rest of her bonehead tribe started talking about how aliens built the pyramids. The second you give aliens credit for anything, you're the enemy of humanity. What, are human beings only capable of building the same crappy huts you build? Or even worse, that particular race of people couldn't have possibly built anything as grand as the pyramids? Crush them underfoot, Emily.

Official 3-letter abbreviations for characters in Tekken

Work in progress. How did I get these? 

• Tekken Dark Resurrection on PSP has them right in the open.
• For characters exclusive to Tekken 3, I just cleared Time Attack mode with them, which I never play. Put your initials as "AAA" and it'll turn into the official 3-letter abbreviation.

Still to do: 

• Go through Tekken 2, 4, 6, Tag Tournament 2, 7.
• Confirm Jinpachi's 3 letters.
• Confirm any differences between all other Jacks, Marshall/Forest Law, and Raven/Master Raven. 

AMK = Armor King

ANN = Anna

ASK = Asuka

BAE = Baek

BRU = Bruce

BRY = Bryan

CHR = Christie

DOC = Doctor B.

DRA = Dragunov

DVJ = Devil Jin

FEN = Feng Wei

GAN = Ganryu

GUN = Gun Jack

HEI = Heihachi

HWO = Hwoarang

JAC = Jack

JIN = Jin

JUL = Julia

KAZ = Kazuya

KIN = King

LAW = Law

LEE = Lee

LEI = Lei

LIL = Lili

MAR = Marduk

MOK = Mokujin

NIN = Nina

OGR = Ogre (large green Aztec guy, a.k.a. "Ancient Ogre" in Tekken Tag Tournament 2)

PAU = Paul

RAV = Raven

ROG = Roger

STE = Steve

TRU = True Ogre (large winged fire-breathing boss, a.k.a. "Ogre" in Tekken Tag Tournament 2)

WAN = Wang

XIA = Xiaoyu

YOS = Yoshimitsu

Palette Swaps aren't recognized, so:

EDD = Eddy or Tiger

KUM = Kuma or Panda

Best SD card for Xstation?

The Nintendo-branded SanDisk cards for the Switch. 256 GB ought to be enough.

My 256 GB Samsung Pro Plus seems to be the cause of music errors in Tekken 3...

Weird-ass dream (2023-10-01)

Had some wild dreams about live-action superhero movies.

First, Spider-Man versus Wonder Woman! This fight was all in mid-air and was awesome. 

Next, Flash versus Reverse Flash. They actually never directly raced in the movie in my dream, but they did in the director's cut version of the movie in my dream. Except, they were on motorcycles...