I haven’t blogged about all the little projects I engage in, because not all of them are successful. But I’ve decided to break the "Matthew Is So Awesome" narrative, and tell you about my failures.
For the past year or so I had been using this $20 mp3 player that I got off eBay. It had a few problems, which I fixed, and then one day I pulled out the USB cable and the whole plug came with it.
Not willing to waste twenty bucks, I decided that I would solder the USB cable directly to the motherboard. So I dragged out the multimeter, and using a magnifying glass and jumper wires with sewing needles clenched on the end as probes, I sussed out the connections.
To make sure I had them right, I used jumper wires to connect the motherboard to the USB cable, and fired up the laptop and MP3 player together. And it worked! I could use the jumper wires to access the flash memory onboard the MP3 player.
Then I tried to solder the connections, and as soon as all those tiny, hairlike wires got hot, they fell off the circuit board, leaving no visible connection at all. So, yup. Had to get a new one. But the new MP3 player only cost $12 and has more features, so who’s complaining?
In a similar appliance repair failure, the LCD screen on my cellphone stopped working, so I ordered a new one off eBay. Cost me seven bucks.
But it came with a little extractor doohickey, which was pretty cool.
But it still didn’t work. So I had to get a new phone.
Then I made this plastic-encased LED light.
But soon after the plastic hardened, most of the LEDs stopped working. It still kinda works though.
My most brilliant stupid idea recently was to turn all the used plastic grocery bags in my closet into rope. You see, most rope is made by twisting fibers together, and then twisting two strands of twisted fiber together in an opposite direction of the original twist. That way the untwisting of the two twists lock together. Makes sense, right?
So I strung some of the bags together.
And I used my cordless drill to do the twisting.
And technically it worked.
But now I have slightly less than three feet of extremely ugly rope.
I have vague plans of making sandals entirely out of recycled plastic, using this as the straps, but that’s most likely only going to compound the ugliness.
