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Well, it seems like absolutely ages since I last posted anything here, and indeed it has been. I've been beavering away on a million and one things (at least it seems like that!) and have basically missed about four postings I could have made but didn't... 8)
Oh well - here's an update!
I've been reading lots, messing about with computers, laying new laminate flooring in the living room (I'm going to do the dining room at the weekend), making excellent progress on the stuff I've been doing at work, going out (talk about a social whirl these last few weeks or so by comparison with my usual mundane existence)... so on and so forth. To cut a long story short: I've been keeping myself busy. 8)
I'm really not used to it.
Anyway. One of the things I might have posted (had I been so inclined at the time) would be The Saga of Runcible, my trusty notebook PC.
I've put Runcible through quite a lot over the past eighteen months or so (what with numerous operating system installations and the scrapes and knocks of general day to day use) but I'd never actually taken it to bits - well, at least until a couple of months ago, when a screw came loose and ended up rattling around like an old tooth inside a maraca.
It was not a nice noise.
So I decided I'd do something about it. I pulled out my trusty screwdriver and proceeded to take Runcible to bits. Well, at least I attempted to take Runcible to bits, but the practice was slightly more convoluted than I had initially suspected. It took about two hours of bending, twisting, levering and cursing before I finally worked out how everything was fitted together and I was finally able to extract that damned tooth. I mean screw.
But succeed I did. I was very pleased with myself.
Feeling cocky (not to say "Uber 31373") I thought I'd have a go at fixing Runcible's internal fan, which occasionally made a nasty rattly noise during periods when the CPU was hot and needed cooling for a long period of time. This occured to me as I'd just installed gentoo linux which, whilst easily the best linux distribution I've ever used (and I've been rabidly evangelising it since discovering it) requires you to build the OS and its component packages from source code. The upshot of this is that your programs are fully optimised for the processor, and run a bit faster as a result, but at the expense of time spent installing.
Compiling packages from source can be a lengthy, CPU-intensive task (particularly if those packages are complex, like a desktop environment or a web browser). It can even be a "start it off and leave it overnight" kind of a job. Especially if you're trying to build stuff on an 18-month old laptop.
Needless to say, that fan was rattling a lot.
I ended up taking Runcible almost completely to bits in order to get access to the fan mounting panel. And when I'd succeeded, I found that the fan was (basically) a sealed unit and I'd either have to get a new one or live with the noise.
I looked up prices for new fans on the web. As it turns out, laptop fans are expensive. Quelle surprise. I decided to give it a miss.
Anyway. I put everything back together, and started a major compile, before finally going to bed. It all seemed to be going swimmingly, and I fell asleep happy and contented. (Note to self: I really must get a life at some point).
Next morning, I woke up and checked that everything had compiled OK. The screen had blanked, and a tap of the keyboard didn't seem to have the desired effect of bringing everything back to life. Slightly annoyed, I power-cycled the machine and waited for everything to start back up.
The keyboard wasn't responding to input. At all.
Aaarrrrghhh!
I took everything apart again to check that I'd put the keyboard connector back correctly, but it was firmly in place and seemed otherwise fine. I checked for loose connections, something, anything that might explain why it wasn't working... but I found nothing. It appeared that I had officially Knackered My Notebook®.
If I'd thought replacement notebook fans were expensive, it was only because I hadn't seen the price of replacement keyboards. Yikes!
Glumly, I thought I'd have one last look at the keyboard ribbon connector, a flimsy piece of plastic with thin metallic contacts, which joined the keyboard to the rest of the machine via a pressure clamp that forced it against the pins running into the motherboard. Studying the ribbon in the morning light the contacts looked... oxidised. Maybe something had happened after I'd removed the keyboard, and those contacts had lost their conductivity?
"Ahaha!", I thought to myself, "That MUST be it!!!".
I know, deep down, I should have stopped then and there. But I was on a roll. I was L337, dammit, I'd installed gentoo, and I wasn't going to let some dodgy keyboard connector get the better of me! It was also quite early in the morning.
I am not a morning person.
I found a pair of sharp nail scissors on my bedside table, and started to merrily scrape away at the contacts, trying to get rid of that horrible oxidised layer that was causing me so much pain, and expose the bare copper underneath.
Now, I don't know if you've actually ever looked that closely at a ribbon connector, but those contacts are very, very thin indeed.
I'd scraped away at about half a dozen of the connectors before my brain kicked in properly and I realised I was actually scraping the contacts off the ribbon completely. I could have screamed. And it was only the blind panic that stopped me from doing so.
Later that day, I went to Maplins to pick up some conductive paint, a tiny vial which cost the best part of a tenner; it was the only thing I felt I could do.
It took me absolutely ages to paint those damned conductive strips back. I really didn't want to make things any worse than they already were by accidentally painting the contacts together.
I let everything dry properly, and tentatively replaced the ribbon connector back into the clamp. I tried to give it an extra tight fit by placing a piece of insulating tape on the back of the ribbon, but it made the connector slightly too fat to fit back in properly, so I had to do without.
I took a deep breath, and switched Runcible back on.
I barely dared touch the keyboard.
I tried to log in.
Nothing.
Not a sausage.
The keyboard was as dead as Jeremy Beadle's career.
It has to be said - I wasn't entirely surprised. I tried plugging in an old PS/2 keyboard I had knocking about just to check that everything was still otherwise working properly and it was. I propped my notebook up against the side of my bed, and didn't touch it at all for six weeks.
Plainly put, my heart sank whenever I saw it.
Eventually I managed to shake myself out of my reverie and I got around to switching it back on, with the aim of using it with the PS/2 keyboard and a spare USB mouse I had. A still-depressing thought, but needs must.
Getting the mouse working under gentoo took me longer than I'd expected - it just didn't seem to want to recognise that I was actually plugging a mouse in. Cursing, effing and blinding (a regular part of any gnarly debugging exercise), I found myself constantly inserting and removing the USB connector for the mouse.
It was during this session when I held the computer in a slightly unusual way, with my thumb slipping into a space previously occupied by a tiny, spare "key". I'd popped it off whilst I was trying to extract the tooth, stupidly thinking there might be a screw hidden underneath. At the same time, I also hit the "1" character on the keyboard.
A "1" registered in my console window.
I couldn't quite believe my eyes. I tried again. More characters appeared on the screen - as long as I held down my thumb on that seemingly insignificant part of the keyboard I'd vandalised six weeks ago. It was true. It was working.
I was overjoyed; I ran around the room, hooting like a loon.
See, I knew I was l33t!
Of course, the story wasn't quite over. I had to find some way of maintaining pressure on the appropriate part of the keyboard, as as soon as I lifted off in any way, it would either stop working completely, or start behaving erratically. Which obviously wouldn't do.
After a few failed attempts involving both insulating tape and blu-tac, I finally fixed the problem by tightly winding the bit that needed pressurising around and around using a needle and thread. My home economics teacher would have been proud. 8)
Anyway. I've blathered on enough. Just be happy that I've decided not to bother with the laminate flooring story for now... 8)
I kind of glossed over that bit a little lest I end up with a post even longer than Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy".
It wasn't the keyboard that needed pressure, but a connector underneath the key I popped off. If I'd have put a screw through that, I'd have probably been back to square one!
I'll have to arrange a photograph. A picture is worth one thousand five hundred and forty-five words, don't you think? 8)
What became of the tooth? Why, I screwed it back into the place from which it fell out! What else was I going to do with it..? 8)