Zip ties

My lightning detector stopped working last week. I suspected a problem with the batteries because it had been acting up, but I was nonetheless doubtful that the batteries could be low. The quiescent current of the detector is low enough that the shelf lives of the D-cell batteries are barely affected. I did suspect that the battery holders could be broken or that the batteries could have become dislodged. I opened it up, and sure enough, one of the battery holders had broken again. I had fixed it once with a combination of a few tapes (aluminium and masking), but the adhesive had pulled off. Not having a replacement on hand and not wanting to make a trip to the overpriced cell phones and maybe some electronics store (Radioshack), I decided to try zip ties. Long story short, they seem to work very well.

This is just a quick post of something interesting yet obvious. I move in to the dorm tomorrow, so I have been busy. HOWEVER, I should have a more interesting and full project writeup soon on something that I began and fully completed within the last few days. Hopefully it is impressive enough to be featured on Hack A Day or a similar site! 

Laptop Thermal Compound Replaced

Lauren, my primary laptop (HP tx2), had been overheating, burning my lap, and shutting down unexpectedly. Upon installing Speccy (same people as Ccleaner), I found out that she was running in the high 90 degrees Celsius. Considering that my AMD processor is rated for under the boiling point of water, I knew something needed to change. Task manager showed usual idling CPU usage, so I couldn't blame the heat on any one program. Lauren was just getting old and dusty. I also expected that she had poor quality thermal compound on her processor.

My best friend, neighbor, and fellow computer expert, Lukas, had a partly used tube of Arctic Silver 5 that he was willing to give me. Today, I took the time to disassemble Lauren, clean the heatsink, and replace the (dry and crappy) old thermal compound. After a scare with the screen's cable not being properly in, she is back up and running and COLD!!! Well, cold in comparison. (66*C with a few tabs open in Chrome)

For those of you wishing to do as I did, Arcticsilver.com has good instructions.