Code Monkey Happy Ninja Banana Surprise!

No matter your faith, your culture, your station, I hope all of you have a day filled with warmth, good cheer, and time with family, friends, and loved ones. May you find comfort, hope, and gladness in this brief time of pause, and may you begin to look ahead to the new year with a renewed heart, a rested mind, and a hopeful soul.

Merry Christmas to all!

Brian’s probably gonna hurt me for this post, so if I’m not still around later this week, it’s because I have a crushed lens up my ass or down my throat. Or both. Ow. That hurts just thinking about that. Poor camera lens…

Anyway – the photo of me seen here, that looks like a freakin’ headshot and is a photo that I finally, actually LIKE because I believe it shows me, true to myself, not making a face, not being stupid – and yes, I KNOW, miracles happen – that photo is the work of Brian Heiser.

To give a little background – I’ve known Brian for… three years? Four? (correct me Brian if I’m off on this) He’s worked at the neighborhood cafe, Dollop, for years and in the past couple or so, really focused on his photography. Pun not intended. What I realized in seeing his pics was that he excels at natural lighting, textures of the environment, and portraiture.

I personally believe good portraits are seriously hard to take. It’s hard to find the right natural lighting, the good day of sunlight, the right breeze and, of course, the subject in the right mood. I have nearly always “mugged” for photos because I just plain dislike the “set smile” photo. It’s why I made it a habit of taking unplanned, “candid” shots. So getting a photo that’s obviously set, but getting the subject to look themselves, is a trick indeed, and to me, that’s a talent.

So take a break from Facebook/Myspace/wherever and peruse some photos of a guy I’m grateful to for capturing what I believe is a good shot of me. You can find his perspectives here.

Thanks Brian! You rock!

I’ve always wanted to know how things work, especially electronically, so whenever I have a chance to destroy dismantle something, I relish the thought. Many of you probably do not. And yes, frankly, depending on what you’re doing and what you’re working on, it can definitely be a time-consuming affair.

However, should you happen to own a Mac and should the day ever occur that you find yourself needing to replace or swap out a hard drive in anything older than a MacBook, or you need to really dig around and see if the display cable is pinched, or something like that, I have the site for you.

ifixit.com is an awesome, awesome resource of information, guides, and parts. And, they also service gear themselves, so if you feel daunted by a particular task, then just have them do it. Or your local Apple store. Either way, you will end up paying quite a lot of dinero just for the time spent. And that’s when I look at things and say “I can do that, I just need a guide.”

Like this past weekend when I swapped logic boards on some old iBooks. First of all, the iBook was designed to induce a certain level of pain and suffering into the mind of whoever decides to open it up and do anything other than change RAM. It is a ridiculous piece of Rubik-like puzzlement and definitely falls under the category of “Let’s play operation!”. Seriously. You have to nearly dismantle the thing just to swap out hard drives. And then, if you’re like me, and you put in a drive that’s too “hot” for the board, you get to do it again. Yeah. (I put in a hard drive that had too high spin speeds and the board/os wasn’t built to keep it cool enough.)

All of iFixIt’s guides are online in a clear, photo-enhanced step-by-step process. They are all also available as PDFs, which you can then download and access at your non-online leisure. On top of that, they include a sheet you can print out to track all the tiny, microscopic screws that will very soon pile up and become a disorganized batch of metal during the taking apart process. Handy!

However, even with these guides, there are some loverrrly little tools you must have in order to finish the project. Just like a surgeon needs some specific tools for different operations, one must have some specific tools in order to really crack open a laptop. Especially an iBook.

Over the years I’ve discovered that Belkin makes what you need (mostly) and packages it in a nice and tidy zip up pouch. I have this toolkit from them, and have used it for about four years now. I have definitely gotten my money’s worth. But wait! THERE’S MORE!

Yes the Belkin toolkit has Allen wrenches of the tiny variety. However, Allen wrenches, as standalone wrenches, suck ass in terms of really getting some leverage, aka torque, when using them. So I have a folded set of Allen wrenches, like this one here. I’ve had this since my skating days, and it rocks because when you flip out the size you need, you have the body of the whole thing to use as a grip. Really good for the things that are stuck – especially when trying to loosen virgin screws. They’re usually reallllllllly tight. Giggity giggity giggity! And now we can all get back onto street level out of the gutter. HA!

The other set of wrenches that you MUST have is a set of Torx wrenches. Again, I have a folded set, like the one found here. Torx looks similar to Allen wrenches in shape, but it is NOT THE SAME. [singing] Which one of these….. is not like the otherssssss… [end bad singing]

And there you have it. Now all you need is a little time, a little patience, and you can really swap/fix/replace anything you need!