Cleaning my mechanical keyboard
Friday, March 29, 2013

CM Storm Quickfire TK with 80% keys removed

Bought this baby about 3 months ago, and I have been using it rather extensively everyday since. If you know one thing or two about keyboards, it's that it is dirty. How dirty is it exactly? It's dirtier than your toilet. [source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4]
*to be fair, a toilet is actually really really clean. It's built to be anti-germ and anti-bacterial after all.

So it's the first time since I got this that I'm going to clean it extensively. This of course, requires taking out all the keys as you can see.


Just in case, I aligned all of them correctly when I took it out, better safe than sorry.

I think my skills of taking pictures/blogging has dropped. I should've taken a picture of the ring I use to remove the keys, I should've taken a picture of the keyboard with the dust and hair in it, but I didn't. So you have to put up with the following paragraph.

The keys comes out fairly easily, there's a little plastic thingy that you jam into the keys and just pluck them out. Now for the disgusting part, most of your keyboard's junk comes from your hair. It may seem mild until you see strands and strands of hair stuck in the weirdest positions, interlocking each other. It's something you have to see for yourself to understand, just clean your keyboard, you ought to. 
(random thought: the one time being bald is beneficial)

Went out today to get this bottle of compressed air. You won't guess how expensive this bottle of air is.


It's fifteen fucking bucks, spelt with an F.

I don't know how they manage to persuade me to buy a bottle of nothingness for $15, but they got me good, real good.

Alright enough jokes, it's more expensive than it needs to be but it's not as cheap as you might think. It's not totally compressed air inside, there's a liquid that evaporates to generate the pressure needed, then the bottle will get cold Result, it works far longer than just a bottle of air.

Anyway, as you can tell I get a little OCD about my hardware. I was going to clean my desktop at the same time but I just couldn't find the vacuum cleaner for whatever reasons. However, all these little quirks doesn't exist without a reason. It's not that I must have a keyboard in pristine condition*, but for something that I'm going to put my hands on for a prolong period of time, I think this amount of cleanliness is appropriate.
*my Logitech Illuminate is still in good shape

Man, in retrospect, this seems like such a pointless thing to write about. Oh well, who cares.

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Disassembling and cleaning my laptop
Thursday, June 14, 2012

Sony VAIO VPCEA16FG

It has been about 2 years or so since I got this. This is the first time I actually opened it up fully. (the other time was just upgrading the HDD to SSD)

My only reason is just to clean it. Mainly because it's running really hot lately and I'm pretty darn sure it's because of the dust building up inside. Surprisingly, there really isn't as much dust as I expected. Probably due to me regularly cleaning it. So here's the unveiling of the internals!

It is, really a lot easier to open up than ACER laptops. I hate ACER laptops due to the way it's constructed. I took a couple more shots for the sake of it.



I noticed something interesting. The way the heat is distributed across is kind of shitty. The orange thingy you see is a copper pipe. It transfers the heat from the presumably graphics chip along with the CPU beside with a separate pipe to the fan/heat sink. It's ingenious, but a really cheaps way of doing it. CHEAPSKATE.

There is... almost no airflow to speak off. At least that's what I can tell from the design of the fan.

It's the moment of "oh, no wonder". Also, if you notice, there are some discolouration in the copper pipes. That's because it probably sustained high temperatures for quite a long period of time. Which causes it to oxidize, as you can see from the darker blotches. That translates to lower conductivity over time.

Of course, my parents wouldn't understand WTF I'm saying, I'll just be waiting for this laptop to fail. Let's hope it doesn't fuck up during something important.

Oh well, this has been an interesting experience for me. 

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Daily Photo #7
Sunday, November 06, 2011

Awesome FR-1 bearings

Clean my skates day! 

I realized that it's been really, like really long since I've cleaned it. It came to my realization that a few of my bearings are fucked. But it could still be used, so oh well. who cares, right?

The wheels have gotten pretty small


HEEL DAMPING SYSTEM. What a load of BS


I think I need to do something more meaningful with my life. Practically slacked the whole day away. Though, it's a refreshing change from the 8am classes every single damned day.

I think I'm not really awake yet. Feeling pretty damn groggy the entire day.

Now.. I'm thinking really hard if I should get a really cheap guitar and start learning how to play it.

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