Archive for July, 2005

Trains to the future

Thursday, July 21st, 2005

Going by train is gorgeous… you don’t have to worry about traffic jams or time… you just can sit back and wait, until you arrive at your target point. You can also listen to your favorite music as loud as you want (unless you have earphones that are louder to the outside than to the inside). The only thing, that is strange is, that everybody is staring at me. Sitting here with my iBok and my iPod (in a pink sock) listening to Keane. I just feel right.
We are currently halting at Frankfurt Main main station, it took 1:30h from duisburg. We traveled with an average speed of around 200km/h. Really nice.

If this is communication… I disconnect.

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

Currently, I’m on the train to Wuerzburg. Thats the second of 4 Trains, i’ll have to ride until I am in Roedental near Coburg, where Inoad will pick me up. The first train was from my hometown Xanten, departure 12:00, then I waited in Duisburg nearly 45 minutes and am now on ICE727. The other passengeers are very very openminded and talk to each other… that was diffferent in the other train and on the platform, where I was waiting.
4 People were sitting there, all bored and alone (except a couple, that had just devorced or such… they were screaming and shouting at each other until he left on the train and she staied with me and the others at the platform, criing terribly) and quiet. I treid to start a conversation with a man, sitting witch me on the bench, but he ignored me… so I ignored all the others, took me iPod and listened to my favorite “Garbage” Album. Its really sad, how people treat each other nowadays and slowly, I am getting bored. How should i get to know new people, if everybody ignores each other.
In front of me at the table, there is sitting a nice older couple, who travel from Duisburg to Munich. My train goes to Munich, too but they have to change the train in Wuerzburg, just like me. Its terribly strange, how a company can treat people like that.

Currently I am thinking about, what i did to my friend Tim. We decided to live together as a comunity in Oberhausen, but i just can’t. In major, its not him (well… perhaps a bit, but that hadn’t been a cause for me to cancel the whole thing) but me, who messes up the situation. I currently just can’t live with someone in the same flat. I just wan’t to be alone, studiing, achieving my goals and making my dreams come true on my own.
Apart from that, he doesn’t know me very well (even if I am sure he thinks that after the 2 Years we know each other). He really doen’t know or at minimum doesn’t understand how I sometimes feel about lonleyness. As i know him, he’s a person who just can’t be on his own and feels uncomfortable, if he iis alone. Maybe that is why he told me, that I broke his base, he currently stands on.
On one side, i think that i am a coward, not to try it… on the other hand, I think, if i push my self too much to try it without really wanting it, it might break later on… and I don’t want to think, of the base, that might brek for him, then. Hes a friend of mine after all… thats what i think. He tried to call me in the last days, when i was off, so i still have no further reaction, but i could understand, if he distanced totally from me.

So… while thinking and not having to drive by myself… the Starseeker

Gifts from Hell

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

Hello and welcome to the Starseeker GiftShop! Here you will find … only one gift, namely the Model I (short form for Model Inoad). Its a modification of the very populat Model M Keyboard for my friend inoad. Its her favorite keyboard, so I thought, how I could modify it for her to like it.

The original Model M
take a look at the original one first
I decided to make it Black/Red, (the keys, that have a bit darker grey should be red (with some excludes)), bought red and black color spray, made for plastic and some plastic primer, to make the spray stick better on the glossy keys.

The first thing I did was cleaning the key caps. This is important, ’cause here the most dirt waits, to give the color a hard time. I put all the key caps into a “bowl” and applied a special “you-dont-want-to-know-whats-inside”-cleaner on them…

A bowl full of key caps and cleaner
Thats me, holding the bowl of key caps… (yeah… with my feet. I needed those hands to make that photo).
Then I mixed (watch MaBUs whirly-curly video) the cleaner with water and extracted the REALLY dirty part. I also double checked, that they were really clean. That was really important, because the keyboard was in use in my fathers school since its production date in mid 1987. Thousands of students mistreted it and its still alive! Well-designed huh?

A bowl full of key caps, water and cleaner
mix …
A glass full of dirt
… sicken …
Me, hanging over the basin
… vomit …
After cleaning them from the worst dirt (and washing my own hands, cause they were full of dirt, too), I double checked them again…


… and i came really close ;)
After that, I dried all the key caps on the floor. They had enough time to say goodbye to their old look.

Key caps on the floor
and look how nicely they’re all sorted :P
I had strong help. Michael, a friend, came by and helped. He was holding the keyboard, so that I could take a picture (actually he was hiding behind it… but thats another story).

Michael behind the keyboard
he’s a bit shy on photos
After cleaning the caps, I started opening the keyboard. Until now, everything was unsure… if the color would really stick on the pastic, if i could open the keyboard, if all parts were easy enough for me to disassemble (and reassemble) them, if the red diods could be inserted… all that was unsure… but I tried my best.

What am I without the right tool in my hands? Nothing. So I searched the right tool… (a really scary uncommon 5mm 6-edge socket wrench) but couldn’t find it. So I used my fine metal rasp and tortured my needle-nosed pliers to be thin enough to fit into the screw holes of the keyboard.

Me and my rasp
Thats the long haired me at the file…
Me and my rasp 2nd
… really busy. (thanks to Michael for making these Photos)
After opening the Keyboard under hazardous conditions… I was faced by the glory of an 18 year old keyboard’s internals and everything seemed well.

Opened keyboard on my knees
Even exchanging the leds on the led panel seemed to be managable
So I disassembled the keyboard body parts, cleaned them and hung them to dry.

Keyboard body online ;)
Yeah! Senior keyboard body surfing the clothesline!
After doing that, having a coffee for wait and lining up all the keys on small paperboards I applied the plastic preconditioner to the keyboard body and the keycaps. This stuff is REALLY sticky… i had to take care, not to glue all the keys onto the paper surface. That had been really bad, because the paper had soaked all the water out of the color, which had resulted in an unequal colored surface.

Keycaps on a paperboard
Watch them dry in small groups…
Keyboard body on the desk
… or as a perfect couple
After another 20 minutes of waiting for the preconditioner to dry… they all waited until they were black… (german phrase)

black keyboard body and the black keycaps on the desk
Watch nearly the whole family reunited
Then there happened some very generic things like sleeping and waiting…
The other day, I colored all the other keycaps red and black, corrected some errors and went on to the most tricky part… changing the diods.

I’ll entertain you with some pictures first.

3 green diods on a PCB
Thats the diode PCB… small, simple and normally glued onto the main plate of the keyboard.
My 'third hand' holding the PCB
‘Your best friend: The third hand’ – exchanging the diods WITHOUT burning myself (really uncommon, cause i seen not to be scared that much about the heat on the solder).
3 red diods on a PCB
Thats the diode PCB again… can you tell what changed?! Yes! Right! The perspective is different!
There are two videos of me, testing the bare electronics of the keyboard (one and two). I was so relieved, when i noticed, that all 3 LEDs were lighting red after all.

Then, I cleanded the main plate of the keyboard and branded the internals for my “sister” inoad :)

The original IBM label and my writing beside it
There is some writing on that metal, but you might not be able to figure, so:

IBM Model M
Produced 21.9.1987 07:06 PM
Modification 17.7.2005
by Joel Garske
For his Sister Inoad
new name: Model I

While I was changing the diods and cleaning the main plate, all the parts went dry enough to be reassembled step by step.

Red and black keycaps
The new mainplate with nearly all key caps set up
Red and black keycaps in the body
The new body with nearly all key caps in it.
I had to totally recreate the main “return”-key, so its still missing on that pictures… its still driing. While it was, I made a journey to finally find the mysterious uncommon scary and even impossible to find 5mm 6-edge socket wrench. I was in nearly every shop in this town that sold things made of metal. I didn’t want to torture the freshly coloured Keyboard body with that filed needle-nosed pliers, but there wasn’t any other possibility.

After breaking my fingers while reassembling the electronics and mountign the screws as carefully as possible, the whole thing, WITH the missing “return” key and the “Short Haired Me” looked like this:

Red and black keycaps, the keyboard body... and mine.
Look at my smiling comfortable and pleased face :)
Thats for you Inoad … may you have good luck, coding with this (sadly very sensitive) keyboard!