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Chicago last weekend. Awesome time. Chicago is probably my new favourite American city, at least for architecture. New vs. old on every street corner, and loads of art deco. Combined with the water everywhere, I had more than a few BioShock moments.

More photos to come, though time is constrained as always.

I was in Ottawa this weekend past. I'm never exactly sure what to think about Ottawa. On one hand, a beautiful town. Immaculately clean with beautiful architecture. On the other hand, the cleanliness has a decidedly artificial vibe to it; I always get the sense that if the parliament wasn't there the cleanliness would evaporate.

Be that as it may, Ottawa is a town that appeals to the history nerd in me so I'm always happy to go exploring. KT and I went on a ghost walk Saturday evening and it didn't disappoint. While the ghost stories rarely stand up to even the most casual of scrutiny, the historical information that comes along with them really make it worth the price of admission.

For example, did you know that Sparks Street used to be a cemetery, hastily moved at the turn of century? They found a mass grave as recently as 1970 when breaking ground for the new arts centre. Macabre fun fact of the day.

Chicago this weekend coming up! Can't wait.

I've had a spare Patriot 120GB WARP V2 SSD sitting around my house for the past 6 months. It was my MacBook Pro system disk until January, when I upgraded to an Intel X25-M. Since then it's been floating around my house, finding it's way onto shelves or under stacks of mail or paper whenever someone tidies up. Every now and then I catch site of it, sitting in it's little cardboard OEM box just begging me to do something with it. It's a shiny SSD after all, so it seems a waste to let it gather dust.

I was downloading some updates to PlayStation Home and the slowness of the "Installing..." cycle gave me an idea. If an SSD made my computer way faster, surely my PS3 would benefit as well. Sony fully supports hard drive upgrades in their console (there's even a section in the manual explaining how to do so) and the SSD has the appropriate interface (SATA-II).

Even if it didn't have awesome performance, it would still be pretty awesome.

Of course, there were some concerns. I wanted to keep all of my movies and save game files. Additionally, I'm half way through Final Fantasy XIII and I've heard nasty rumours of trophies that no longer unlock when jumping between consoles. As a trophy whore, this wasn't a pleasant thought. I wasn't technically changing consoles, just system disks, but the idea of doing a full backup, restore and re-installation of the system software makes the I.T. professional in me assume trouble is lurking around every corner. I ultimately decided that in a worst case scenario, I could put the original spinning hard disk back into the console and go back to Final Fantasy, so I decided to barrel ahead.

In the end, it worked out perfectly with 100% of my data restored exactly as it was and a much faster PS3 experience. Menus load faster, installations happen faster, and the whole system just feels a little bit "snappier". Highly recommended upgrade if you have a spare SSD, or perhaps more money than sense.

If you want to attempt something like this, you'll need: 

1. A SATA-II solid state drive (or any SATA-II hard drive), 2.5" form factor (notebook size) with at least the same capacity as your existing system disk (or less if you're not using all your space, but you will need enough capacity to hold what you currently have). 
2. A USB hard drive, FAT32 formatted, with enough capacity to hold your existing PS3 drive contents.
3. A copy of the latest firmware file, available for the Sony web site. I used v3.40 (the latest as of this writing)

First, start by creating a location for the firmware file on the USB hard drive. When the new solid state drive is installed we'll need something to install from. The PS3 relies on having some (or all, it's hard to tell based on how it works) of it's firmware data on it's internal hard disk. You want to create a folder called PS3 and then another folder within that one called UPDATE. Copy the firmware file you downloaded from Sony into that UPDATE folder. Make sure you uncompress (unzip) it first. You only need the single file, called PS3UPDAT.PUP.

What you'll end up with is:

Mac/UNIX: /PS3/UPDATE/PS3UPDAT.PUP
Windows: D:\PS3\UPDATE\PS3UPDAT.PUP (where D: is the appropriate disk letter)

Second, power on your PS3. For each account you have on the system, go to "Trophies" under the "Game" menu, hit triangle, and say "Sync with Server". This only works if you have a PSN account and are signed in, but since having a PSN account is free there is no reason not to have one. If you don't do this step, all your Trophy accomplishments will be gone. You've been warned!

Third, connect your USB hard drive to one of the PS3's USB ports. Under the Settings menu, go to "System Settings" and choose "Backup Utility". Follow the onscreen prompts. This will potentially take hours depending on how much data you have on your system.

When this is done, power down the PS3 and disconnect the USB hard drive.

Fourth, remove your existing hard drive and install the SSD. This is pretty straight forward. On the older "phat" PS3 system this involves prying the drive door cover off the end of the system, unscrewing the blue drive release screw, and then popping out the drive tray itself. You you can then unscrew the four retaining screws on the bottom of the tray unit and reassemble it again with the SSD instead of the original disk. Re-install it into the system in the reverse order. There are only 5 screws and a drive door in this procedure so it's pretty painless. If you have any parts left over, something horribly wrong.

I'm not sure what is involved on a newer slim system, so see your user manual - though it should be fairly obvious. Also, remember to keep your old hard disk around at least long enough to make sure everything has been restored and is working properly. If this all goes pear shaped you'll want to get back up and running with it. 

Fifth, power on the system and follow the prompts. This part is quite straightforward. You'll be told that the system needs to format the new drive (the SSD) and you'll be asked to connect a USB drive with the system update on it. Do so when asked and follow it through. The system will eventually reboot off the SSD in factory fresh mode. You'll need to reconfigure the network, video and audio settings from scratch. Do so to taste. 

NOTE: At some point during this firmware installation process you'll be asked to identify your username on the system. Just go with the default of "User 1", or if you previously used "User 1" on your pre-SSD system, go with something else. You don't want to use the same name as you did previously as you'll be restoring that user to your new system along side the "User 1" account. 

Sixth, on your new SSD powered system, go to the Settings menu, then "System Settings", and then "Backup Utility". Follow the prompts to restore all of your data from your USB backup disc to the new SSD. Make sure you choose to Restore rather than Backup as you don't want to risk deleting your backed up data.

When this is done, the system will reboot and you'll have your old user account (or all of them if you had more than one) available on the system again, good as new.

Seventh, and finally, repeat the "Sync with Server" phase for each account. This will take much longer this time as it downloads all of your trophy data from the PSN, but your precious accomplishments will be returned safe and sound so this step is well worth the wait.

And there you have it... a speedy PS3. 

A few things to know:

1. Contrary to some reports on-line, even "Copying Prohibited" files will be restored. As long as you are restoring to the SAME console, even if it's a new hard disk, they will transfer just fine.
2. The PS3 stores Trophy data on the hard drive but doesn't include it in the backup for some reason. If you don't do step 2 and 7 you're trophy data will be lost.
3. I didn't try this with any PSN Video Store content on my disk as I'm in Toronto and the store hadn't launched here at the time. Best bet is to independently back all of these up using the "Backup" option under "Video" (hit triangle for each file). Your mileage may vary. Caveat emptor.

Hope you found this useful.

Want to hear us play music? 

2010/06/26 - Toronto, ON - Silver Dollar Room (w/ Pedro Parker Band)
2010/07/03 - Toronto, ON - Pero Lounge (w/Groove Therapy)
2010/07/25 - Toronto, ON - Pedestrian Sunday in Kensington Market
2010/07/22 - Toronto, ON - Black Noir (w/ Tru-Paz)
2010/07/29 - Toronto, ON - Drake Underground Mixtape Night
2010/08/06 - Kingston, ON - Wolfe Island Music Festival
2010/08/13 - Etobicoke, ON - RockPile (w/Tru-Paz)
2010/08/26 - Toronto, ON - Drake Underground Mixtape Night
2010/08/29 - Toronto, ON - Pedestrian Sunday in Kensington Market

More dates TBA.

Yes indeed, a website.

I've grown pretty nostalgic for the "good old days" of having my own web site rather than just posting everything to my Facebook profile. 

I'm not deleting my account or anything. Ownership, privacy, security and information siloing issues aside, the reason for doing this is simply because it makes me happy.

It's a little sparse right now, but that will change quickly. In the meantime, I'm reposting some recent photos and adding more thorough descriptions. 

It's good to be home.