Attempting to fix my ASUS Transformer TF101’s blank screen

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Been a while but finally I’ve got a moment to update my journal, lol. Saturday night, Andera (my TF101-B1) slid off the mattress and ended up with a blank screen, and briefly some green garbles. The backlight was still working and my tablets survived the same and worse landings unscratched so, plus I know what kind of guts these things are made out of, so I knew it couldn’t possibly be hardware failure. The photo’s I took are all captioned and in an Album here.

Determined, on Sunday I went out in search of a torx screwdriver. As it happens, Fry’s didn’t have any T5’s left, just T6’s and the threads over at xda-developers said T5. So I spent the worst $10 of my life, on one of these. It’s a real piece of shit beyond the driver bits. Turns out though that some joker decided to stuff a Phillips PH000 in place of a Torx T5, and not include the T5 anywhere o/. Fucking bastards! But on the upside that was the right size for the Phillips screws I had to work with.

So I ended up undoing the torxex on the bottom (by the docking port) with a T6, and left one of them stripped by the time I was done. After that it was time to pry off the bezel, which I did a dandy number on; when putting it back on resulted in a barely working power button,I pryed it  up and used gravity to fix the power button before snapping it back in. What I found was that it’s a lot easier to pry off from the back end, YouTubest be damned.

There are three screws on top and bottom, and two on each side. I kinda missed the top three taking off the back plate so it might be good that it’s just cheap plastic.

Getting the base plate on/off was easy. Also under the metal plate that goes over the battery, is an empty space that looks like it is where you would install the 3G modem on a TF101-G.

Most of the connectors are the ugly ribbon goes into stupid pin slot with flip holder kind of Flexible Flat Cable thingy. I hate those and don’t know why they are so popular, but alas, I didn’t build the darn thing or design it. So next up I had to figure out which one is the one I needed, I tried all of them that were readily accessible just to be safe (bad idea).

In my poking around xda-developer’s I found a link to somewhere that sells replacement screens, that told me where to find it. There is even a YouTube video on the whole procedure (I’ll edit in a link from my browser history later). I personally found it easier to remove the power connector so I could access the video FFC better:

To be sure I was right or would more likely figure out what it does (in case of gross ID10T error on my part), I pulled it and reseated it very firmly.

Fired it up and voila! The touch screen was working. So I studied how much I fractured my bezel and put it back together, note carefully that the holes nearest the docking port are for the TORX screws that go in LAST!

On boot up, everything went perfectly well until I noticed that back and home didn’t work. A little bit of testing showed that entire portion of the touch screen is not getting any touch events :'(. I’m not sure if it’s another ribbon out of place or just that I missed a couple screws on the back plate (d’oh). But since I  have the dock, I’m pretty much able to use it. The one torx is now too stripped to drive, so until I figure out a solution to that, Andera is missing touch input on the left most (view able) inch of the screen.

I don’t have a drill or I would just hit the hardware store for a drill bit to get the sucker out, and trust me,  my trusty awl doesn’t seem to one to carve a slot in it. Don’t have any rubber bands good enough to try, so I’m thinking about grabbing a tube of epoxy on the way home from work and see what happens….if I can fix it, I’m gonna fucking fix it! In the mean time, I’ve ordered a Transformer Prime / TF201-B1, because the best I can get here is a TF101-A1; and I’m already using over 10GB on my TF101-B1, so $400+whatever memory card Best Buy has, is not worth it. Like wise, if I’m getting stuck spending so much money, may as well buy the prime instead of a later version of TF101-B1 (mines a B50 with no Q/C issues). I’m very partial to my mid-generation TF101….

Oh, btw don’t forget to put the screws in the back plate if you try this at home.

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Well, I suppose all awesome footwear must wear out eventually, such is the nature of the clothes you love. On my way to visit my girl friend and her family over the break, coming through security in Calgary, while I was putting my boots on I noticed a nice hole in the lower port, inward side. It’s about large enough to put a finger through. I don’t know when the breakage happened, never noticed it before; leaving Atlanta I was a tad to pre-occupied with getting to my gate to notice.

While I was in Canada, I showed this to my Firefly and she noticed that the outsoles were also dead on arrival.

I should probably have noticed this myself, once I started to note unusual traction loss and “Sliding” around the past few months. I looked up what it would cost for having them resoled with vibram

My boots outsoles are pretty cheap, clicking through the picture in this journal entry links to their page at Rotcho. Actually, I think everything they make is pretty cheap but the quality to cost ratio is reasonable enough in all the cases that I’ve tried. These boots are Pretty Damn Comfortable and the material is sufficent for my environment, now if I was jumping out of air planes for a living or a park ranger, I might decide otherwise.

If it wasn’t for the hole in my port boot, I’d likely try to have them resoled. That would probably cost more than my boots are worth, or at least with something like a vibram outsole. Maybe that’d still be like putting lipstick on a pig, but I really like my boots lol. Bet a decent shoe repairer could even fix the hole.

So, bit of a debate: just buy a new pair or invest in something better. I’m thinking that if I bought a new pair of Rotcho 5057’s, I’d may as well buy a new pair every 8-14 months; however long it takes to wear out the outsoles. I’m not really convinced that even e.g. a vibram outsole is going to offer /that/ much greater life, but hey, if you’re gonna spend the $ to resole boots, may as well have a quality boot worth more than the resoling cost, eh? In looking around, I’m thinking about Belleville 790’s or 795’s. The former is unlined like my Rothco 5057’s, where as the latter has almost half a pound of insulation. My feet don’t really get very cold, at least not under socks and inside my boots, even when we were walking out in -8C/+18F kind of temps with ice/snow, I was perfectly warm of foot. In particular I like the look of the Belleville’s construction versus the Rotcho. What I don’t like, is there is NO one here that sells the darn things, so the only option is online.

Of course, if it doesn’t work out, I could always get up early one Saturday and take a drive over the Bear Paw Army & Navy in Griffin, and see if they’ve got anything I could use.

Dropbox 2.0 for Android: fixing your folder

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I don’t get why so many people are pissed at this. The old folder location was at ${sdcard}/dropbox. This is really good for an app like Dropbox and I wish they would have kept it, but to be honest, it does technically belong in the new location of ${sdcard}/Android/data/com.dropbox.android/files/scratch. Although I would’ve used dropbox or cache instead of scratch but whatever.

Don’t like it? Well guess what, fix it yourself. Open a terminal emulator [0] [1] and do the following:



example# ln -s /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.dropbox.android/files/scratch /mnt/sdcard/dropbox

If you get an error about no ln command being found, you should install busybox and add it to your $PATH.

If you’ve got a real MicroSD card, you may get an error about the operation being unsupported (etc). In which case you either need root or you need to use a file system that supports symlinks. Which means probably reformatting your memory card as NTFS, or EXT4, or YAFFS2. Whatever your shit can read, because FAT32 is probably not going to support symlinks.


If you’ve got a device like my Transformer, that has an internal memory on /mnt/sdcard (${sdcard}), odds are the actual data is somewhere behind a FUSE shim, and is really stored at something like /data/media on an ext4fs partition. Easy symlinkage!

If none of the above makes any sense, you only no one tenth the power of Android and should have learned more about unix and Android, or maybe have bought an iPhone.

Thoughts on Android Game architecture

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Games for Android are a little different than writing for PC or console, really seems to be less of the dull grundge as well. But at the price, for more advanced efforts there are less resources sitting right there on Fresh Meat or Source Forge for the hunting up. Me being me, of course, I aways have an interest in cross platform portability (as well as a general disdain for Oracle Java).

One thought that occured to me, is why not do it the same as I would on a PC?

What is the activity to a game? What the user sees. All it really needs to know is processing input, rendering output, and talking to the big cheese. That’s it. Hell, before we talk communication methods, step back and think there: an Android activiy and a Windows executable could both function as clients, talk to the same server, and have a cross platform multiplayer game. Or even a screen like detach/reattach feature where you could begin playing on your mobile phone, then switch to a PC with way better graphics. Threating the user side of the app as a “Client”, it would be possible to have a low-end client for basic phones and a high definition client for sexy tablets.

To make it work, we need a service program to communicate with. On a PC, I would probably use shared memory for offline play and sockets for network play. In favour of shared memory, would be the ease at which C++ code would likely be tweakable to use a shared memory allocator to store command objects, rather than having to do as much extra leg work to serialize the information within across a process boundry. Android land makes most issues a moot point. Network wise, I’d probably just use JSON.

Something that interests me, is how much of the core game design be implemented in such a way, that it could be used off Android by reusing the same library. C code, whatever C++ code the NDK can compile, or Java code should all work, as long as long as one watchs what non-portable bits are stuffed in there.

Putting this much thought into it, can probably be blamed on poking around the FreeBSD and Q3A source trees over the years, and finding the possibilities fascinating lol.

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My word, if you’re not using Opera and it’s Dragonfly for web development, all I can say is Firebug users, eat your bits out.

Hello old friend

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Well, I’ve just done something unexpected: I installed Opera on my workstation.  It has the operating systems default (a red dinosaur) and Google Chrome setup, which I have used since I got tired of diving into Firefox only for Firebug. In practice, I find Chrome’s stuff to be equally useful to me.

Now, why did I install opera? Generally I like to keep my environment pretty much the same; a look at my shell profile would make that obvious. At home, Chrome has developed an odd problem on my desktop, Dahlia. No sound plays: be it from Flash or Silverlight. Haven’t tried anything else, since e.g. WMV and QuickTime seem to have died out in the last lustrum (good riddens QuickTime!).

So, I am considering replacing Chrome with Opera as my defacto standard browser, as much as I love Chrome, do I really like openning another browser whenever I want sound? If you say try Firefox (or relation there of) I will find where you are and unplug your Internet with a vengeance. The only other browser Dahlia has is Internet Explorer 9; which is actually a nice enough browser to use but doesn’t even meet my criteria as well as Mozilla.

Pluses for Opera:

  • We’re old friends: I used to use Opera 8.5 – early 9.x as my daily surfer.
  • It’s stable, tried, true, and reliable.
  • I use Opera Mobile on my Androids.
  • It’s not the fattest ass at the track, *cough*.
  • Tomorrows staple feature is usually probably be todays Opera feature.

Negatives:

  • Some moron developers treat Opera like a deranged step brother.
  • Silverlight isn’t officially supported, but probably works.

I find it startling how much alike Opera Mobile and Opera is. All that is really missing is more advanced settings, and ‘lesser’ used features like gesture support (cool) and panels.

We’ll see what happens but I’ll give the experiment a go. Something that especially interests me, it seems that Opera Dragonfly is more or less the same thing as what Chrome has, plus “Opera Turbo” may be a viable option. At work, things can get really congested on the network, especially the wired one my desk switch, workstation, and test units mate with. So WiFi is usually the only way to browse to Internet resources – Opera Turbo might help with the network spikes, so I’ve got it set to automatic here, at home I won’t need it.

Opera Turbo is a function that feeds data through a proxy server for compression, all that means to normal people is that if your computer is older than petrified dog shit or you’re on a slow network, you get faster page loads. The privacy issue doesn’t bother me much, not at work. No one is watching closely AFAIK but there’s little to find past e.g. editing my calendar.

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I’ve read my first bit of Lovecraft today, in the form of a “The Tomb”, a quaint tale that gives cause to question the narrators sanity or our reality; that or I just think to much! That puts me about 1% through The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft according to the Amazon Kindle app on Andera. So far, I think I’m going to like these,  and along with the games and various development tools on my tablet (and my jot), should help pass the long flights I have coming up after Christmas.

Hmm, that was about 160 some screens by my arithmetic,  which should translate to maybe 50’ish pages in a real hard cover book; going by the standardesque side for a novel anyway. Most are short stories as well, so it sounds like the stories should be a good fit for my current life style. One that sadly, doesn’t seem to find room for that many good novels :-(. I’ve always had an avaricious taste for reading, but the fluctuations of time and money over the last lustrum, have been rather, light. I don’t really have any shelf space left either, so aquiring new (from my perpective) books is best done in electonic form.

Can’t say that I will ever appreciate the feel of a computer as much as a real concreate book in hand, but I will admit: for cost, space and travel reasons. It’s a damn good idea. As much as I like the idea of digital copies though, I do not look forward to a world without “Traditional” books in it. Yeah, so what if I’ll probably belong in a mausoelum by the time I’m legally an old fart. I like sitting with a book in hand!

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For a little while, I have been looking at two possible resources: Amazon Prime and Netflix. I’ve used the free offerings of Hulu and paid offerings at Comcast’s XFinity (our ISP) and Crunchyroll.

Amazon Prime I think is just this awesome deal, that you can’t beat for the price; assuming you’re willing to pay. Basically, you get free two-day shipping and some of the films on Amazon Instant Video can be streamed for free, rather than renting or buying it. Supposedly streaming should work anywhere that Flashplayer does. Not my favourite software but it’s a better option than Silverlight IMHO, assuming you want cross platform support. I don’t order that much stuff but when I do, it will usually come from Amazon or eBay, whoever gives me the better deal. Between the video and the shipping, it’s like an awesome deal. Can’t say that I’ve looked at the Kindle part much, so IDK how well it integrates when using everything but a Kindle device. Selection also looks pretty good but not unlimited, sadly. I may very well give it a try, but will hold off until the shipping is more useful.

Netflix on the other hand, is an interesting wild card that I’m trying out now. A lot of people either left Netflix or have an uneasy relationship with the company after the whole fiasco with the Qwikster idea and the plan split; if I was an investor I would. You can get unlimited streaming or disc rental, or pay more for both. I’m fine with that, especially with the price tag. What interests me though, is the recommendation stuff and the selection. I was impressed with the selection versus XFinity and Hulu, majorly impressed; although the starz thing worries me. How it guesses how likely I am to like something seems accurate enough to take into consideration when choosing a movie, based on what it’s given me for movies I already know. That on it’s own is worth while, with a sufficient selection versus XFinity. The number two problem I have with XFinity is of course, out of what I /can/ watch: what should I watch? That’s a time investment in entertainment you know.

XFinity is a great, if you already get a premium cable service through comcast, it is worth checking out. What irks me though is that a lot of things are either unavailable or only can be played via the set top boxes on demand programming. They’re not the best at web development, only support Windows and iOS for playback; which is a sequence of progressive groans for me but at least there’s a pretty reasonable amount of content, at no extra charge past the cable bill. The problem is, when I want to watch something, it’s a crap shoot whether or not I’ll be able to—and I don’t haven’t had my own TV for a year.

Hulu is better for general TV, not so much for more premium content IMHO, so I don’t really see any sense to a Hulu Plus subscription. For people that prefer series it’s likely worth it, especially if you want more recent ones and don’t have all the DVD sets.

Crunchyroll, if that sort of thing rocks your boat, is worth membership just because the advertising is too frequently the same.

Of course, another option is renting stuff off the Android Market or similar but I’m too cheap most of the time lol. Odds are I could even get a new TV tuner and hook it up to my modem but I’m to lazy and to cheap for that.

Well, I would say things are at an all time low.

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My mother curses at me for walking away from my family in favour of a stranger, and I can’t help but wonder, why on earth would I walk towards her? I’ve done nothing unduly hostile towards the rest of my family, except block them from my photos: because she would not stop using that situation to attack me. It’s between her and I. Just like when I was a child and my mother and brother were at near constant state of war; she tried every method of using me as leverage against my brother. As she often worded it, we were a “Packaged deal” and he wasn’t allowed access to me unless he chose her as well. Ain’t it a peachy family I grew up with? Damn she even leveraged my father ordering it as often as her packaged deal crap. Present day, every now and then I get bitched at because I have little to do with my brother. He now lives 70 miles away. Well guess what, when he lived 200 feet away I was regularly forbidden from having anything to do with him without being given much pain for trying to. We’ve more or less been grown into our present relationship, by our mother, because that is what she wanted for years, and expressed on more occasions than I can enumerate. Just because they’re at peace now is magically supposed to change something there? That is ridiculous! It changes nothing that my turning 18 didn’t. Now she makes efforts to do the same bologna with bringing extended family into the affair. I don’t care. 95% of my extended family have nothing to do with me 100% of the year: her GOD parents and occasionally my father’s sister. It’s not a weapon, it’s just words she can throw. My mother is a small and hateful person in private. I and the girl I love have been verbally abused and slandered enough that I am no longer on speaking terms with my mother until an apology is issued wich is about as likely as being hit by a meteor. And I have no intentions of changing that decision what so ever, my concious will not be bothered in the least if that lasts for life. Some time ago I learned the meaning of “A hater is going to hate”, because that’s how my mother is. She doesn’t know how to love or care past her own concerns, not in my experience over twenty some years. I gave my mother nearly seven years of my life, as unpaid labour in her under the table cleaning business. I put up with her trying to crush my efforts to get a driver’s license and a real job; I tolerated her hatred for me finding a truly awesome job and her attempts to derail it; I paid her more than I could afford out of my income, never asking for a dime back; I skipped moving out so I’d know she’d be O.K. and paid for it, then let her skip paying it back; I have even loaned her money, to the point of skipping my desires and getting in danger of being stranded, and allowed her to borrow enough that I’m not writing it off. But I am not a retard. My mother complains that she didn’t get anything out of having kids: since my grace, patience, and mercy are not as great as Mother Teresa, I think maybe she shouldn’t of had any then. I once needed antibotics for an abssessed tooth that had my jaw swollen up like a golf ball. That’s the kind of condition that can become fatal if left untreated. It’s been used against me at every turn she pleases, that she took me to a dentist for that (instead of letting me get worse and die?). I’ve given her many times the cost of that dentist trip without any expectation of return and loaned her many times more past that, to the point that I need to make it a standard debt just to stop her from using me for a blank check. Every time she has needed to go in for a checkup, I’ve taken her and lost count of how much I’ve helped her there in terms of cash. But wait, it’s still attempted leverage against me because it fits into her little world view of things. Everything a parent should do in that type of regard, is used against me and I’m treated like the scum of the earth when I help her. I don’t think my mother can love or care for anyone because it seems like nothing can get past her shelfishness, or maybe I’m the only one that thinks you have to care more about someone else than your own interests, at least some of the time. Is that being a loving and caring parent? I don’t think so. I think maybe my mother could use mental help but I’ll be damned if I’m paying this time.
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This entry is just to test the share to g+ thingy; if you haven’t converted from Blogger profiles to G+ ones yet, you ought to :-).

I just wish it was automatic or could be made to work with something like twitterfeed.