Archive for March, 2009

Fixing a MacBook Keyboard. Or not.

Saturday, March 21st, 2009
Been given a MacBook with a duff keyboard to “fix”. Looks like something’s been spilled on it. Thought I might take the keyboard apart, clean it and re-assemble it. [Check out for disassembly instructions]. Bottom line? There’s no way to get at the back of the keyboard from the all-in-one “Upper Case”. I could slice the head of each plastic rivet and bend metal etc, but my experience tells me that I’ll spend two hours doing it, cut myself twice and still end up buying a replacement keyboard anyway. I decided to cut my losses and save the physical injury buy heading off to eBay, searching for “MacBook Upper Case” and ordering one from the States.

keyboard1.jpg

The back of a Macbook keyboard (they call this the “Upper Case”). Not much in the way of “user serviceable parts”, other than a complete replacement!
keyboard2.jpg
Here are the moulded/melted plastic rivets that signal there’s no point in taking this apart — you’ll never get it back together. 

keyboard3.jpg

The front of the Upper Case showing the [escape] key recess. The plus side is that this recess looks like it will keep dust and crumbs away from the circuitry. The minus point is that liquid will get behind it, with no hope of being reached again.
Quick fix: replace keyboard/upper case
Long fix: replace keyboard/upper case

To Obey is better than Sacrifice

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Albert played this video in church last Sunday. Not really heard much of Keith Green but this struck me as a pretty powerful song, especially during Lent. Lyrics after the video.
Plenty of one-liners here to consider, but for me the line, “How you thrive on milk, but reject my meat” tells of our often superficial Christianity of Bible Stories and Festivals, but lack of engagement with the real heart of the Gospel message: especially obedience.
Reminds me of a book title that Mrs Mac has on children’s work, “Don’t Tell Cute Stories — Change Lives!” [Amazon]
[yt]TzWyZxlwGKI[/yt]

To obey is better than sacrifice,
I don’t need your money, I want your life.
And I hear you say that I’m coming back soon,
But you act like I’ll never return.
Well you speak of grace and my love so sweet,
How you thrive on milk, but reject my meat,
And I can’t help weeping of how it will be,
If you keep on ignoring my words.
Well you pray to prosper and succeed,
But your flesh is something I just can’t feed.
To obey is better than sacrifice.
I want more than Sunday and Wednesday nights,
Cause if you can’t come to me every day,
Then don’t bother coming at all.
Lah, lah,lah….
To obey is better than sacrifice.
I want hearts of fire, not your prayers of ice.
And I’m coming quickly, to give back to you,
According to what you have done,
According to what you have done,
According to what you have done.

Computer Clean-Up

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Quite Literally!

Often I get the odd computer/laptop to fix/install/upgrade etc. As Part-Of-The-Serviceā„¢ I usually give it a physical clean too. Today’s specimen was particularly grotty: marked, finger dirt, sticky label) etc. With my “cleaning kit” I managed to get rid of it all and return it to a fairly respectable MacBook that someone else would be happy using.
 cleaning_kit.jpg
In the kit: 
  • Monster iClean (screen cleaner and microfibre cloth)
  • Maplin Label Remover (great stuff for taking sticky labels off virtually anything)
  • Ambersil’s Amberclens anti-static foaming cleaner (the real heavy-lifter here)
  • Cloth
  • Glass scraper handle with blade
Before and After:
keys_dirty.jpg
keys_clean.jpg

Take Three

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

OK folks, this is the third take at regular blog posting over the last few years. I’ve been saving up a folder of bloggable topics, but never quite got around to doing anything with them. Expect a rush.

Or not.