Types of PS3 Hard Drive Caddies

I sent a friend's PS3 in for service, and they ask you to pull out your hard drive if you've upgraded it.  I did, but then at some point I discarded or lost the caddy that it belongs in.  There are four generations of PS3, and each has its own style of caddy.  Here's how it goes.

Generation	Models	Caddy
Old Fatty	CECHA01 CECHB01 CECHG01 CECHE01	Wire Pull-Tab
Newer Fatty	CECHH01 CECHK01 CECHL01 CECHP01	Flat Metal Pull-Tab
Slim	CECH-2001A CECH-2001B CECH-2101A CECH-2101B CECH-2501A CECH-2501B CECH-3001A CECH-3001B	Side Flange
Slimmer	CECH-4001B CECH-4001C	Swing-Out Tab

Toward a Lexicon of Nonsensical Epithets

Playing online competitive video games introduces you to a fascinating array of epithets.  These mostly have to do with sexual orientation, but some folks are creative enough to involve cognitive ability, geographical location, immediate ancestry, and gender stereotypes.

But they're just plain tired.  They perpetuate a mindset of xenophobia, but more importantly they encourage a lazy mediocrity of communication skills.  Kids, you're better than this.

Aargh! Squid-texted again!?

Let's inject a more creative, less antisocial alternative .. a new vocabulary.  This is not just a code that maps "dirty" epithets to "secret" ones.  And it doesn't initially need to indicate in what situations a phrase is most appropriate.  Language evolves .. new phrases will live or die .. the winners will find themselves framed in a consensus-built context.

I'll get the ball rolling, next round of the game, with these:

• Snuggle-shoe
• Orange-pan
• Flaxen-apostrophe (use sparingly)
• Pose a mango
• Pander to trollies
• Fly the baby carriage

Together, we can change the world into a more harmonious, playful place for anger and conflict.  Si, se piña!

Minecraft on Mac OS X with 64-bit Java

So you're a slave to warning messages and you want Minecraft to use 64-bit Java.  Here's how to do it on the command line.  These instructions were crafted on MacOS Lion, which should prefer 64-bit Java when possible (Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences).  These instructions assume the default Minecraft.app location, in the main /Applications folder.  I had a few tabs open, while I was sussing this out, including an excellent forum post, a post on JavaApplicationStub bits, and the official reference for CF keys.

Here we go.

Swap out Minecraft's JavaApplicationStub for the current OS' version:
  gzip /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub
  cp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/

Then, add 64-bit architecture to Minecraft's possibilities:
  /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :Java:JVMArchs:0 string 'x86_64'" /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Info.plist

Launch.  That should do it.  Watch out for creepers.  Have a nice day.

* * *

If everything goes wrong, here's how to roll back from here to your original configuration:
  rm /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub
  gunzip /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub.gz
  /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :Java:JVMArchs:0" /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Info.plist


How to tell if you're using a 64-bit kernel in the first place is easy.  Look for "x86_84" in the output of the below command.  If you see i386 or ppc, you might be on a system that can't handle 64-bit, or you might need to instruct the system to boot with a 64-bit kernel.
  uname -a   # should include "x86_64" in the output.


What's this JavaApplicationStub anyways?  It's like a chain loader .. only different!  When you double-click the Minecraft icon, the Finder looks in Info.plist for the CFBundleExecutable value.  It launches that, to start the app.  The JavaApplicationStub is a native binary that helps invoke Java in the right way to get Minecraft running.

What's that PlistBuddy command?  It's a command-line tool included in more recent releases of Mac OS, that lets you directly read, write, erase, fold, spindle and mutilate Plist.info files.  It's got a man page, but here's a quick example of reading your JVMArchs array, if you want to double-check that it's got x86_64 at the top:
  /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :Java:JVMArchs" /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/Info.plist

What's with you and the command line stuff?  I don't know.  I suspect that my epitaph will simply be an elegant one-liner.

ModNation Beta Code

I got this present, the other day. I'm looking forward to the ModNation game, mostly because anyone can make and share a track with the world. There are jillions of "beginners' minds" who see possibilities that a seasoned level-creator-person has learned to discard outright.

In LittleBigPlanet the popular UGC pieces were cars and rockets ... so what will we get when the pre-fab pieces *are* cars.

MAG Beta

This is going to be an interesting product launch.