...they were invisible

Moving on….

mesmorgan — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:05:17 +0000

Dear friends, I must inform you that this blog is making the move from WordPress over to Blogger. Old favourites and new posts alike can be found on the link below:

http://theywereinvisible.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading!

James

What’s inside a TFT Monitor?

mesmorgan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:19:00 +0000

This post is now also available on my new improved blog:
http://theywereinvisible.blogspot.com/

Have you ever wondered what’s inside a flat screen monitor? Well neither had I, but when my trusty 17″ TFT started acting up I decided that since it was already pretty much done for, I might as well have a little bit of entertainment pulling it apart and then seeing if I could put if back together again.

When I say it was playing up, it still worked, but the buttons on the front didn’t work so I couldn’t switch it off or adjust the display settings, which wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t stuck on the lowest contrast setting! Basically I decided it was broken and old enough to be replaced, so I went out and treated myself to a shiny new widescreen monitor.

So below is a gallery of photos from the evening that I spent taking a monitor literally to pieces and then put it back together. My wife thought it was a waste of time, but she just doesn’t understand, it’s a guy thing. I would also just like to point out that when I put it back together again, not only did the screen still work, but so did the buttons on the front, I actually fixed it!

Before the carnage!

Stand removed… it took me 10 minutes to figure out that there was a screw as well as clips holding the stand in place!

Once the screws were removed, it still wasn’t easy getting into the bezel.

Bezel now cracked open offering the first look inside.

The VGA port from the inside.

The internal speaker.

The inner workings split into 2 sections quite quickly, the controller section above and the TFT panel below, joined by a ribbon cable and some screws.

Here we have a side-on view of the TFT panel.

A mini screwdriver is required to persuade the panel to reveal more secrets.

Once inside we see that the majority of the panel is made up of this large backlight…

…which shines it’s light through this thin translucent LCD which displays the images.

The LCD layed flat.

This is, I imagine, where all the power is handled- judging by the capacitors and the kettle-lead socket on the right. The audio line-in socket is also on this board (light blue) so there must also be controllers for that on there somewhere.

This little board controls the graphics interface with the PC.

Here we have the hollow front of the bezel…

…and here the full empty shell.

Here are all the internal components layed out.

Here it is back together some time later, minus a couple of screws as usual!

And it still works!!

So there we have it, hopefully something else I own will break and I will get the opportunity to see what made it tick.

Things I Hate. #1

mesmorgan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:20:58 +0000

People putting soap on their hands before turning on the tap, thereby covering the tap handles with soap, so that next time I wash my hands I get soap on my clean hands when I turn the tap back off.

Do you ever just stop and look up at the sky?

mesmorgan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:00:24 +0000

Recently I have become fascinated by the sky; I love clouds, I love the colours and I love the breathtaking vistas that can be right above our heads and we don’t even notice them. The photos in this gallery are of what I have noticed so far…

I think the cat wants me out of the picture…

mesmorgan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:31:31 +0000

It may already be too late. I am writing this in the hope that it will be found and the record can be set straight. I think the cat is trying to get rid of me, and I have evidence.

I'll get you for this!

Every time I approach her lately, she has done what I initially dismissed as a yawn, where her mouth opens as wide as it possibly could for a short period of time. I realise this sounds a lot like a yawn but stay with me, because she only ever does it when I approach her. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, whether she just woke up or just ate, she only ever does it when looking straight at me, and I know why. It’s a threat!

Go on, count em!

Not only is it a threat, it’s a darn cunning one too, because if anyone else sees her doing it, it looks just like a yawn, but that look she gives me leaves me in no doubt that the true intention was to make sure I knew just how many teeth are in there, and to show me how sharp they all are.

She is trying to get my wife to leave me

The other night I went to bed a little later than my wife, I think she had an early start in the morning so I watched some TV in the lounge for an hour or so. When I went to bed, the cat followed me and jumped up onto the bed. So far, so normal, she does this occasionally, but this time I figured out exactly what she was up to.

The first thing she did was to crawl over my wife, trying to stir her a little, bring her out of her deep sleep. Then she went in for the kill; she started to rub my chest, working her way side to side across me, getting lower with every pass. Now at this point a casual reader might think that this is normal behaviour for a loving pet, wanting to do something nice for it’s best friend, but think about it, first she stirs my wife a little, and then she starts to rub me.Are you seeing what I see? She is trying to make my wife think that I am being unfaithful!! She is trying to plant the seed of doubt into my wife’s subconscious, hoping that the image of my being massaged will filter into her dreams and multiply into a series of damaging mental images.

Busted!

She disrespects me

These are her more childish tactics, some of which I am ashamed to even discuss, but it needs to be recorded. Recently she has done things which would get any human thrown out of church.

Sniff this…

On a separate night to the sensual massage incident, she crawled up onto our bed, did a few laps of the bed to find the most comfortable spot to sleep, and decided upon my pillow, – next to my head – facing away from me. This basically meant that I was lying in bed, trying to get to sleep, with the cat’s arse an inch away from the tip of my nose.Her most recent and downright unforgivable act of degradation happened one Saturday morning, when I usually try to sleep a little longer, and therefore feed her a little later than usual. I am accustomed to her vocal demonstrations of disapproval at this practice, but nothing could prepare me for the downright mockery that I suffered a few weeks ago. She sneezed on me!

Just saying she sneezed on me downplays the petulance that went into this act; she climbed up onto my bedside table, leaned towards me, and sneezed right in my face. It all happened in slow motion for me, I could almost see the fine mist of cat phlegm heading towards me, and I felt every drop land on my nose and upper lip. Words cannot describe how I felt at that point, I was in shock for the first minute or so, and then blind rage kicked in, and after that I went into full revenge mode, determined to cover her head to paw in my own brand.

She Attacks Me

I should explain that little Panther is an indoor cat, so her only contact with the outside world is by looking out of windows and watching other cats catching birds and generally taunting her with their freedom.

Oh the things I’ve seen

It is hardly surprising therefore that she has so much repressed anger, and takes it out on the only person she can, me. Of course she could also take it out on my wife, but since they have been together much longer than we have, I think she sees me as a third wheel, and therefore expendable.

Back to her outside world watching, she tends to stick to one or two windows in our house since most of them are very high with narrow ledges, so she has difficulty getting up to some. Her current favourite is the window above our bed, partly because my bedside table makes for a good halfway stage to help her up, but mostly because she has a nice soft place to land when she wants to come down, my head. Of course, there is a whole bed she could chose from, we have a king size after all, and there is also my wife’s head too, but somehow, it always ends up being my head.

So there is the evidence, but I have watched enough crime drama TV shows to know that, as far as making up a jury’s mind goes, evidence alone is nothing without motive.

So why does she want rid of me? That’s the easy part; she makes it quite clear that I am the spare part in the household as far as she is concerned. Aside from when I am about to feed her, the only attention I get from her is when she shows me her teeth or jumps on my head. She wants things the way they were, before I came along, and it seems she will stop at nothing to reach that goal.