Resident forum goer mortalinstincts recently caught up for a chit-chat with Alek, the website administrator of Dark-AleX.org. Throughout the years, Alek has aided in coordinating several M33 releases under the guidence of Dark_AleX himself. His influence also helped formed Dark-Alex.org into the lively and respected multi-cultural community that it is today.

To learn more about his involvement in the PSP homebrew scene and his thoughts on recent developments, such as the release of ChickHEN, a homebrew enabler for firmware 5.03, hit the jump.

All credit goes out to mortalinstincts for conducting the interview! Check out previous eXophase.com interviews with well-known sceners like Chilly Willy and Mathieulh by hitting up our interview section.

mortalinstincts: What’s your name/nickname and how old are you? Currently residing?
Alek: My actual nickname is Alek, even though my real name is Alex, and I’m almost 24, residing in Spain.

mortalinstincts: Currently a student or do you have a job? (If you’re a student, what course have you chosen?)
Alek: I’m currently a student, but I help some friends on their enterprises and I do some jobs here from time to time to earn some money and be able to get my own caprices :P Therefore, answering your question, I’m studying journalism.

mortalinstincts: How did you join the PSP scene and what eventually led to the making of http://www.dark-alex.org?
Alek: Whoa, that was years ago. It was the time of the OE’s (Open Edition) in where i had one PS3 and Dark_AleX was looking for betatesters for decrypting the downloaded games from PSN. I was at some IRC chatting with his close relatives (Mathieulh, harleyg and others), and was harleyg who allowed me to contact with him. At that moment, Dark_AleX had his web-page at some sub-domain I don’t remember at the moment; but with the time dark-alex.org was created with some friends and colleagues and I ended up web mastering it in order to help him the best I could.

mortalinstincts: Apart from being the admin of http://www.dark-alex.org, what else do you do in the scene? Have you coded any homebrew?
Alek: I usually keep on doing tutorials and courses about different terms, but talking about the scene, yeah, I’ve coded many homebrews, but all (or almost all of them) are private, as they were created just for testing purposes, and to get a better knowledge of the PSPSDK and the relative stuff.

mortalinstincts: There have been a few overhauls of http://www.dark-alex.org. What compels you to make these changes?
Alek: Without any doubt, the wish of making dark-alex.org a better webpage. There have been many (many!) changes since the webpage was created, (as for example the RSS, the Wiki’s, the Forum), and all of them walk on a single direction: To make it better, stronger (as we changed our server recently to gave a better service) and more user-friendly.

mortalinstincts: Aside from being one of the golden-era sceners in the PSP scenes, are you involved in the scenes of other consoles?
Alek: Yes, I’ve been involved in other consoles’ scenes, and on other things apart from consoles with other nicks, but well, that’s other story.

mortalinstincts: What are your favorite homebrews on the PSP?
Alek: Oh man, there are so much… But iRShell gets the prize. AhMan made an excellent job with it.

mortalinstincts: If there was one thing you could do to change the psp scene, what would it be?
Alek: Drama, fakes, lammers, and the list would continue. I’d delete them all from the internetz, as a well-known colleague would say.

mortalinstincts: Does anyone from your university recognize you from online?
Alek: I hope not! Haha I like that “privacy” that internet gives you, it allows me to be “Alek” here, and to be other (very, very different!) person out of the Net.

mortalinstincts: The Xbox 360 or the PS3 or the Nintendo Wii? and why…
Alek: Well, to be honest I have both the 360 and the PS3. I like the variety of games from the 360, even though the PS3 rocks better ’cause of the Cell system and the great job Sony and IBM made on it (even though again we have to stand up with poor games that are ported from 360 with it’s DVD hardware that is often seen as a delay) But, I do NOT have a Wii, mainly because I don’t like the system it works on neither the games that I’ve seen and played.

mortalinstincts: The PSP or the DS?
Alek: Well, thats an easy answer: D..  I mean, PSP :P Sony made his handheld as the best one in the market till now, even though that new DS model, DSi will get most probably more market share on this following months; unless Sony comes up with some of those long-awaited features that every single user wants.

mortalinstincts: Will you or Dark Alex give a conference in the future about the inner workings of the PSP or the scene like Tyranid did?
Alek: I would be really pleased to do one of those, and I bet Dark_AleX will be also interested on it. We had an opportunity, some months ago, for one University here on Spain, but we couldn’t for personal reasons. Anyway, it will be quite a nice experience

mortalinstincts: With the rumors of a PSP-4000 all around right now, what do you think the future console has in store in terms of new hardware and software capabilities? How do you think the PSP scene will proceed from there?
Alek: Well, that PSP-4000 rumor has more than 1 year or so of life, and we’ve just seen denials from Sony, so who knows what will take the future. But, it’s obvious that the Sony’ handheld can be very improved, on both sides, hardware (CPU, integrated features, increased RAM just like happened with 3k), and software (Oh, lovely DivX, where are you?) Once a new model is on the market (if it’s released someday), all will start over like on 3k, like on 2k, like on 1k

mortalinstincts: For fun, what are your comments on Alek = Alex ?
Alek: That’s something that always makes me laugh. My nick has been always Alek (talking about PSP, when I started on this world on an Spanish forum), even though sometime I attached “MrTuto” when i was on an IRC to it as I love making tutorials and sharing what I know; and I came back to Alek some years ago. Many people do mistake me with AleX, and well, that’s nothing I’ve looked for or whatever, even though with those mistakes I leave him with less problems and more time to spare meanwhile I spend hours checking e-mails and with the proper affairs of a webmaster. But well, I don’t think it will work, but here it comes: We are different persons, and no, he is not a robot. :P

mortalinstincts: As you currently studying Journalism, what books have you written?
Alek: Well, that’s sorta different from PSP, uh? As you have said, I’m studying Journalism, but my books differ from what I study, on almost all the terms. I’ve written a couple of poetry books, one philosophical book (arguing about the significance of nihilism on the actual concept of society), one novel, and I’m currently working on other one (plus the poetry that I do eventually)

mortalinstincts: Your favorite game on any console?
Alek: About the favorite games, I will place my unique bet on Starcraft. I’m roaming around till the second part comes to my hands!

mortalinstincts: Finally, What are your comments on the Chick-HEN R2 and any comments for Davee?
Alek: That fresh new released ChickHEN R2 from Davee is indeed what the scene needed since sometime, like a prod for saying that the PSP Scene is far from being death, and that we are far from being obsolete or old-fashioned.
Therefore, I will always support homebrew and the ways to make it possible, (more than backups capability) so Davee has all my cheers.
So, if I was talking to Davee, I would recognize his job till now and encourage him to continue with it, offering our help if he needs to.

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