QJ.NET presents ‘Know the Developers’ – Part 2!

It’s another Sunday, and it’s time for the next developer to be known. I must admit though, I’m quite surprised at the response I got over here. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting this much of encouragement. Well, I guess the people really do want to ‘know the developers’.

So who is it this week, eh? I’ll give you three hints.
A] He likes to pimp up stuff.
B] He has helped me stream all my porno, err, media anywhere in my house.
C] The first release of his application was on the 1st of April.

More about this week’s guest after the jump!

It’s another Sunday, and it’s time for the next developer to be known. I must admit though, I’m quite surprised at the response I got over here. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting this much of encouragement. Well, I guess the people really do want to ‘know the developers’.

So who is it this week, eh? IÂ’ll give you three hints.
A] He likes to pimp up stuff.
B] He has helped me stream all my porno, err, media anywhere in my house.
C] The first release of his application was on the 1st of April.

If you havenÂ’t guessed by now, well, itÂ’s none other than DickyDick1969, the guy behind PiMPStreamer!

Seriously, if you have a wireless router at home, you shouldnÂ’t be without PiMPStreamer. ItÂ’s one of those must-have wi-fi applications. Configuring it takes less than a minute, and afterwards, youÂ’ll be streaming all your media anywhere in the house. The number of codecs it supports is amazing (AVI, M4V, VOB, MP4, MPG, MPEG, MP3, WMV, ASF, MOV, WMA phew…)

And if that wasnÂ’t enough, the latest versions even allow you to have subtitles. I must say, DickyDick1969 has definitely pimped up PMP Mod.

So you must be knowing all these things if youÂ’re into using homebrew a lot. How about some of his personal info?

DickyDick1969 is Dick Verweij, a Dutchie! And if you havenÂ’t guessed his age, well, he was born in 1969. That makes him approximately 37 years old. Funny how most of the awesome developers today are over 28 years old!

Anyways, he does have a strong background in programming considering his education

• Atheneum
• Computer Science University Utrecht

And his work shows his programming prowess

• All kinds of software, WIN32/.Net, Java/Unix, Perl, PHP, C/C++/C#, Assembly
• Flash Games
• Creator of BitMagic MediaPlayer (Obsolete)
• Lots of websites. (Always flash related).

Anyways, this is all academic. (Pun intended ;). I know you guys are eagerly waiting for the interview. And boy, was it fun. Let’s check it out, shall we?

— Interview —

QJ: Firstly, if you donÂ’t mind, can you reveal your real name and age?
Dicky: My Real name is Dick of course. Dicky Verweij. And ageÂ… Very old.

QJ: I’d love to know and so would our readers.
Dicky: You can see it in my handle.

QJ: Ooh! 1969… Lol
Dicky: Yep I coded for the amiga once.

QJ: So, when did you begin programming?
Dicky: Pfew, back when I was 15 (1984), my father bougth an IBM XT. And in school earlier… (14 playing with P2000T)

QJ: And when did you start programming for the PSP?
Dicky: When Jonny first started his mod (PMP Mod). After that David Voswinkel (optixx) made a curl version.

QJ: I remember covering your first release of PiMPStreamer. Did you program anything before that?
Dicky: Yeah, lots of things. (I’m a certified Java/Windows dude). But PiMPStreamer is my first on the PSP.

QJ: Oh ok. So did you buy your PSP just for homebrew? Or do you play games as well?
Dicky: No for the games. I own Virtua Tennis, GTA, Wipeout, Daxter, an RPG game. But I made some homebrew for the PS2 (Which got never released).

QJ: Ah, I love Virtua Tennis too.
Dicky: Yeah the fact that you can play with Sharapova.

QJ: Lol, you seem to have programmed on other consoles. What would be your favorite console for modding/homebrew?
Dicky: The PSP wins. But PS2 is more of a challenge. The PSP has a lot more potential, but Sony refuses to do anything with it, so it was a kind of a personal challenge to make something useful.

QJ: I’ll get to that in a bit. What would be your favorite homebrew on the PSP, apart from PiMPStreamer, of course?
Dicky: iR Commander. It is silly, but I really love it.

QJ: Ah, AhmanÂ’s iR Commander.
Dicky: After that itÂ’s the VNC (Portable VNC by zx-81) client. And PSPRadio is third.

QJ: Lol, everyone loves PSPRadio!
Dicky: Yeah. It is really good, and of course a shame Sony did not make this built-in, although RSS feeds are handy (with my new 2.6)

QJ: Yeah, Sony has been doing a lot of stupid things lately. Anyways, like I said, I remember covering the first release of PiMPStreamer. And I was thinking that this will be big. Did you expect this much of a following?
Dicky: Of course not (Politically correct answer =). No really, it all depends if I got the streaming working at a reasonable speed. So I had to spend lots of hours debugging the frigging TCP/IP PSP stuff to get it right.

QJ: Well, I’m sure EVERYONE appreciates it. PiMPStreamer rocks!
Dicky: At first the people were thinking of an April fools’ prank. I released v0.1 around the 1st of April

QJ: Yeah, remember that. It made front page along with the Fanjita’s prank which I made on April 1st.
Dicky: Lol. And of course getting attention from bloggers is also a huge task ;-P

QJ: Well, it was because nobody was expecting it.
Dicky: Yep. Someone even said it was impossible. But anyone with some logical sense can see, if you transcode a file (with any transcoder) the transcoding is always done earlier than the actual movie.

QJ: In the PSP ‘scene’ it’s more of a one-upmanship game. People like to boast stuff. And this, coming from a relative unknown, was quite surprising.
Dicky: Yeah. Once in the good old days (where you had to do real 3D assembly) I was in a demo-group (Dutch).

QJ: Wow! That’s awesome! So, what platforms did you make demos for?
Dicky: For the PC. I made TextureMania which was one of the first Dutch 3D texture mapping demos.

QJ: This is oldskool. Most of the PSP homebrew developers are 16 year old kids.
Dicky: Yeah. Im a 37 year old kid =). That is also the main difficulty with PSP homebrew. The time! I’m happy I can spend 2 hours a day.

QJ: It’s quite obvious that you’ve had a lot of headaches fixing PiMPStreamer. Any ‘unkind’ words for Sony?
Dicky: Hmm nah Sony did not make the Win32 TCP/IP shit. It was M$$$! C Sockets are evil. But they helped me understand important issues.

QJ: Not just TCP/IP in particular. Anything you think that could’ve been better? Like maybe more ‘homebrew-friendly’?
Dicky: Hmm, regarding PSP developing or PSP-wise, they should make some kind of interpreter language (like lua) standard on the PSP. Or just make use of the functionalities. You make a great device (WIFI/USB/IR) all built-in but no software to actually utilise it. Everyone could think the people want a streaming video solution, or even decent Network browsing. The main reason for PiMPStreamer was that I wanted it for myself.

QJ: Regarding streaming video, Sony has one. Only the fact that it requires a fat-ass $250 location free base player.
Dicky: Yeah I know. But I never saw one where I live. And way too expensive for the target PSP audience.

QJ: Yeah, and that’s why PiMPStreamer is so popular. Anyways, you’ve been a part of the PSP ‘dev scene’ for a few months now. What do you think about the ‘non developer’ crowd?
Dicky: Hmm I think are a lot of potential 16 year old programmers out there. But often lack decent development software. Most of the ideas for PiMPStreamer, I got from feedback. So my word to all the wannabes, just start! And don’t stop! Everything has been done on the net, but you can always think of something smarter.

QJ: Final question: If you were to recommend a programming language for the PSP, what would it be? As in, Lua, Python, or simply C/C++
Dicky: Just start with Lua; get the basic skills to program a pacman, or rather, PiMPMan ;). If you can make a Pacman game, you can make everything. Don’t make the mistake of trying too much too fast. And always get your environment right. I recommend linux as PSPdev, although Windows PSPSDK looks promising.

QJ: Thanks a lot! This interview was a blast.
Dicky: No probs. Keep up the good work. I love PSPUpdates.

— End of Interview —

So thatÂ’s the PiMPMan, DickyDick1969 for you. IÂ’m sure all of you thoroughly enjoyed this weekÂ’s feature. I myself loved it!

And thatÂ’s it for this weekÂ’s feature. Next week, weÂ’ll again have another developer in the QJ.NET box. And I can guarantee you that it will be another popular developer. And like I said the last time, keep guessing who it is :).