Well, I managed to get Ippo to eat with a little trouble:

I have three hide spots for him: On the warm side is a plastic container with a hole cut in the side; half of it is about 3.5 inches high while the other half is about 1.5 inches high. In the middle is an upside down ceramic pot base with a hole chipped out of it, and on the cool side is a potato salad container set on its side with a hole in the lid and some damp sphagnum moss inside.

According to the breeder where he came from, he will only take live at the moment but that I should try to get him onto P/K or F/T when I can. For acclimatization's sake, I thought it best to stick with live for the time being, so I brought back a live mouse today.

Ippo was hiding under the potbase in the middle. I think the opening was too small or something, because everytime he lunged at the mouse he missed, not coming out far enough. After a while, the mouse was getting scared and I thought it was cruel just to wait for this to go on and on. Ippo on the other hand wouldn't come out to go after the mouse either. I was worried that Ippo wouldn't strike if I removed him from his hiding spot but I decided to give it a try anyway as things were going nowhere. So, I took Ippo out into the open and set the mouse inside the box it came in inside the tank with the box opening facing Ippo. This time around, the mouse tried to make a break for it, Ippo got a clean strike, and that was that.

So, I have a few questions:
1) Do ball pythons generally only lie in wait of their prey, refusing to go after them or is Ippo still nervous in his new surroundings? He's been venturing out quite a bit the last few nights so I thought he'd be both comfortable and hungry by now. All the other snakes I've ever had have always stalked their prey so an ambush hunter is a little new to me.

2) How many more times should I feed live before trying to switch him to P/K? I imagine Ippo is somewhat finicky about dead prey or the breeder would've switched him already so I get the feeling this will be a difficult process and that I should make sure he is absolutely settled in before trying. (Ippo is already about 8 months old by the way, as you can see from my sig)

Anyway, putting the mouse into the tank while still inside its box seems to be a good idea to me; the mouse's smell will be nice and concentrated meanwhile alleviating any potential substrate swallowing problems. I think this is the way I'm going to go about it in the future; it will still allow Ippo to take the mouse ambush style and perhaps it will be easier for me to condition him into taking dead prey this way.