Weeknotes 190

After ignoring it for a couple of weeks I tested my keyboard and it no worky. I cannot lie, I feel a bit dejected by this as I felt I’d done a fairly good job for my first second time at soldering a keyboard. But apparently not. I can’t face troubleshooting this at the moment.

Both awful in their own ways, sure. But this is undeniably funny.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responds to Elon Musk’s nonprofit buyout offer: ’no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.'

Tapestry from IconFactory is interesting. I really like the idea, but I’m not sure it works for me. I couldn’t work out what was read and what was new. I will watch with interest though.

There was a hole in my lifetime warranty socks so I thought why not make a claim. Am I running out of things to do? You be the judge.

The manufacturer (Darn Tough since you ask) required that I send a photo of the socks cut in half. I understand why, but doing so when the socks are fine otherwise didn’t feel great. They will make good dusters.

Some Game Boy wins and losses.

The contrast wheel on a Game Boy Advance I acquired was visibly very rusty so I decided to replace it with a new one. I desoldered it, but unfortunately whilst doing so the pads came off the board too (the pads are the gold bits that components are soldered to). This means I have nothing to solder the replacement component on to – bad times. So a trace repair will be required. This is a bit above my pay grade at the moment (and I need a couple of tools). Still, it’s a learning opportunity.

❌ Lose.

Two out of three Game Boy Colors I have are now working. One was already working so I can’t take credit for that, but another had a dodgy power switch which I cleaned out with Isopropyl Alcohol (99.9% pure) and it started working. That one was relatively easy.

✅ Win.

The new AMOLED screen and shell arrived for one of the Game Boy Colors. The install was fairly straightforward. You only need to solder two joints to hook up the power. And yet, it does not work. I’ve tried it on two different GBCs now and the same result, so I’m wondering if it’s just faulty. Disappointing.

❌ Lose.

Taking another break from breaking things, I moved back to the remaining non-working GBC. There were very small signs of life in this one. When you turned it on you would only get a quiet noise from the speaker. I cleaned the power switch and changed over the SMD capacitors, which I’ve not done before so that’s a win. I also changed the DC jack just because. Nothing.

Given my lack of actual electronics knowledge I thought I’d give A.I. a chance to guide me and with Claude’s help I managed to work out that the GBC is not getting the 5v it requires, and that something is wrong with the “power regulation board”. Whatever that is. You can’t typically buy a replacement for these, but I managed to score one second-hand on eBay for a few quid. I’m going to try that and see what happens and if it springs to life go back and inspect the broken one more closely.

✅ Win.

Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems

This is true of any to-do list that gets worked off too slowly. A malaise creeps into it. You keep adding items that you never cross off. If that happens enough, you might one day stop putting stuff onto the list.

Finally, something I fixed. We use an Anker Soundcore 2 portable Bluetooth speaker for bathroom tunes that has been unreliable for a while. It still works great when it’s on. The issue is getting it to turn on. The power button was not working.

So, with ideas above my station (I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube fix videos), I decided to attempt a repair. I’d opened the speaker a few weeks previous after following a teardown video but I didn’t get very far with it other than knowing something was up with the button. This week I revisited and I noticed the button switch didn’t work when it was outside of the speaker housing. On a whim I swapped out one of the other buttons into the power button position to see what would happen. It worked 🎉

Definitely a knackered switch. I may purchase a replacement so all the buttons can be working. Or I may not.

Recently I noticed that I’ve not checked my Mastodon or Bluesky accounts in a while. Now I know this is because I’m looking at Reddit instead, but I still thought it was interesting how quickly I fell out of the habit.