My teacher occassionally gifts me old tech that he doesn't want anymore. He gave me a couple of iPod classics to fix up, and I was able to replace the battery, back housing, and front plate on one of them. He knows how much I appreciate older tech, so he gifted me a white CDMA 8GB iPhone 4. Now it was time to fix this iPhone 4 he had "rotting in his closet."

The only issue with this phone is that the power button appeared to be stuck, as it would rest on the switch and make the phone think the button was being held down. This renders the phone unusuable, as holding down the power button shuts off the phone. This wouldn't be much of a challenge for me, as iPhone 4s are really simple internally and are a breeze to get into.

I forgot how easy the back cover is to take off. Once you unscrew the two bottom pentalobe screws, you can slide the phone's back glass off; simple as that! From there, I disconnected the battery, and pulled the "Authorized Service Provider Only" tab to take the battery out. No adhesive strips to worry about! Life was great. The rest of the repair... is nothing to go on about. Unscrew this unscrew that. Disconnect this disconnect that. Fast forward to where I got access to the power button, nothing appeared wrong with it. The switch could still click, it's just that the power button wasn't seated correctly. Maybe it was dropped power button side downwards.

To properly seat the button onto the switch, I applied a dab of glue on the switch, waited for it to dry, and put it back together. It doesn't really click, but it did register and that works for me. Once reassembled, it took a while to charge. I took a talk down the street and back to give it some time to charge. Once it powered on, it was PIN locked, but fortunately there was no iCloud account on it, meaning that I'm able to restore it without a problem. Once restored, it was time to downgrade to iOS 4... I mean iOS 6...

Apparently this phone was shipped with iOS 6.1.3, meaning that's the lowest it can downgrade to. I already tried iOS 4 and 5, and it failed to restore everytime. That sucks, I wanted something lower than iOS 5 because I'm already familiar with iOS 6 as I've used it for years. Can't complain about a free iPhone 4 though! At least it's better than iOS 7, which is one of my favorite iOSes, but since it runs horribly on the iPhone 4 it's not something I'd want on here.

Once downgraded, everything works just fine. It was still pretty snappy with only a couple slowdowns here and there on iOS 6. I don't know what to do with it now though. I already have a 4S on iOS 6 which is basically the same thing but with more storage, power, and it's in better cosmetic condition. Maybe i'll just use it as a jailbreak toy to mess around with a bunch of tweaks.

My dreams are always super weird, and I often forget most of my dreams. But when I do remember a dream, most of the time it involves meeting a music artist. Here are some of the three that I remember.

Last night, at the time of writing this, I had a dream where it was the last day of school and The Sunshine Underground were playing What You Like and Out of Control in the gym, and I was able to talk to their lead singer Craig Wellington for a while before he had to go, Because nobody knew who they were, I think I told him that I was a big fan of the band and What You Like was my favorite song from them, he was also talking with my teachers outside of the gym. Craig seemed to put on a couple of pounds, as he seemed chubbier than I remember him being when he used to play at concerts.

Last summer I was at a DJ set playing LCD soundsystem’s “45:33” and I saw from the very back what appeared to be James Murphy; I kept playing (I think it was Part 5?) as he progressively got closer and closer to the DJ stand. By this point, he was directly infront of me, expressionless. He never said anything, he just stared at me with a “PUSSY RIOT” shirt that was thrown on him (see image below) and as soon as Part 6 of the song played, he slowly walked backwards while keeping eye contact and left the auditorium. After that, I woke up and felt like shit, but I think it was worth it for that dream.

That same summer, I had a dream where I supposedly pre-ordered the 30th anniversary Selected Ambient Works II expanded edition that released that year, and Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) himself showed up at my doorstep and delivered it to me, saying "stone in focus" then closed the door. That's all I remember from that one.

Maybe I'll make another post about these strange dreams if I have more of these. They're fun to look back on, so I hope I have more.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up this iPhone 6 on iOS 8 from Japan. I couldn't find any affordable listings for nearly a month until I was able to find this one for 70$. This is the most I've spent on a legacy iOS device, and for the condition, it probably wasn't worth that much as it looked like someone chewed off the aluminum on the corner, put a dent where the volume buttons are (you can kinda see that in the photo below) and a significant dent where the audio port is, which warped the shape of the port. The port works, the only problem with it is that it scratches any jack that gets inserted into it. I'm not in a position to burn through headphones, so I decided to perform my most ambitious repair yet; a housing swap.

I ordered a somewhat complete new-old housing off eBay. It had some third party parts in it, which ended up working just fine, if not better than the parts that were in the device initially. It took a while to get shipped over here (the seller gave it to USPS the same day I ordered it, so it's the carrier's fault) but I eventually got it into my hands. This housing came with flash, microphones, vibration motor, Lightning port, audio port, ribbon cables, and buttons. All I had to do was put the rear camera, logic board, antennas, screen, and batteries in myself. My father told me ribbon cables are a nightmare from when he worked on older tech (Xbox 360, PS3, etc) so I was glad I got one with the ribbon cables preinstalled.

I followed an iFixIt guide to aid with my repair. This isn't my first rodeo with an iPhone 6; a friend of mine years ago told me he wanted the battery out of a waterdamaged iPhone 6 Plus so "he could shoot it". I'm sure he had fun with that. The insides are very familiar to the 6 Plus, they were just smaller here. It felt reassuring that I knew what I was getting myself into, and boosted my confidence.

The screen was fairly easy to open. The dent near the audio port was so bad that it bent the sides a bit, which allowed the display to stick out by a bit which made opening the device fairly easy. And of course, once I was in, there was dust, pocket lint, and hair that definitely wasn't mine was in there. Before going ANYwhere further, you need to disconnect the battery. It was protected by a small shield, and was easy to disconnect. Removed the shield that protected the cables that connect the display to the phone, and carefully disconnected each cable one by one. The display was off, now I need to get the Wi-Fi antenna out, which was pretty easy! There were a few screws holding it down, but I was able to keep track of them by putting the screws next to the part by using the lid of my iFixIt repair kit.

First obstacle; stripped screw near the camera. This was the only thing holding the logic board down. My father didn't even know he had a standoff screw bit until he looked closely at his kit and found the bit, so that was an obstacle adverted. That same kit had a flathead bit small enough to get the stripped screw out of there, which I was thankful for because I couldn't have completed the repair without that. The logic board is off! And now we get to the most dangerous and frustrating part; the battery.

I was expecting every adhesive strip to snap off. But I did the impossible and these strips slid right off with a little bit of patience. I was genuinely surprised. With every single battery replacement, I end up breaking the strips and resort to heat the phone up with a heat gun. There were a few moments where it felt like it was about to snap, but I was able to take action to save the strip. All that was left was the rear camera and some small antenna.

The antenna and the rear camera were the easiest parts of this repair. Just unplug and unscrew. That's how simple repairs need to be. Right to repair FTW. And just like that... the disassembly was all done. Now I have to reassemble everything by going in reverse.

So... if you use the wrong screws when you put the logic board back on, you could permanently damage the logic board. That's... pretty scary. I had everything sorted out on my lid, until I accidently bumped the lid with my elbow and the screws got displaced. I pushed forward and took my chances by looking closely at the screws. Some were 3.1mm, and some were 1.2mm. Which is insane for a phone like this, but it also makes sense because of how thin this thing is. Now it's time for the real difficult part of the reassembly. The lower antenna connector cable... This thing did NOT want to go back in. It took extreme precision to get it where it needed to be. 5 minutes pass, and I got it on. As for the rest of the repair... let's TL:DR; I reassembled everything without losing a screw.

That was a stressful, but satisfactory couple of hours. I'm glad everything worked out, I was expecting everything to go wrong, but what'd you know? It went very well. I would do it again, only if anything goes wrong with the internals. (if it ain't broke, don't fix it!)

Yesterday I stayed home from school because I was suffering from allergies, and I had a lot of free time to kill. I watched some DVDs on my PS3 for most of the day, then an idea stuck out. "I have a bunch of data that I have yet to archive from my old PC. Why not put this 5" spindle of DVD-Rs to good use?" And that's exactly what I did.

Most of the data on this old PC is from 2022, making this hard drive is a time capsule of memories. Some memories I'm not so proud of, and some memories I'm glad I was able to save. Old YouTube videos, old home videos, mobile phone picture backups, everything. It was time to backup the most important things on there and store them onto my server.

Now, what I could've done is connected an Ethernet cable from my old PC to my server to quickly transfer the files, but I already put my mind to using the DVD-Rs. These aren't good DVD-Rs either. "Is it live or is it Memorex?" It's Memorex. the factory Memorex was partnered with produced cheap unreliable DVD-Rs that should not be used for long term storage. I'm only burning discs to transfer data, not to archive data. Which is what these discs are perfect for. A short term WORM disc!

I made 5 DVD-Rs and 1 CD-R, containing 4.1 to 4.3 gigabytes of data each. Each disc took around 7 to 8 minutes to burn, and it took around the same time to rip data. I spent around an hour finding files to put onto the disc, burning, and ripping. I was able to efficiently use my time by burning a DVD when a DVD was being ripped onto my other computer. At the end of the day, I was able to get 22.9GB of data from the discs.

Again, there are far better ways to transfer data, I wouldn't reccomend this method to anyone unless if it's the only way someone can transfer data between two computers.

Between 2019 and 2021, I used to be obsessed with BEMANI's rhythm games, and the game that stuck out to me the most was DDR. I started out emulating the PS2 games on my grandmothers laptop (you gotta start somewhere, right?) and using the keyboard to get a sense of how the game functions. We then bought a cheap Chinese dance mat which wasn't the best, but I got a little bit of milage out of it and it set the foundation for my journey ahead. I learned to twist my body to hit arrows more affectively, I began building muscle memory, and my skill improved even farther when my middle school was giving away Cobalt Flux GS (grade school) edition pads which usually go for hundreds of dollars which is way out of the budget a 7th grader would have. And so I took one of the pads, and really enjoyed using it.

Not sure what happened after that, because that dance pad sat in the corner of the basement for nearly 3 years without any usage. Until recently, when I reviewed dj TAKA's 'milestone' last summer, which sparked my interest in BEMANI's rhythm games again. Because work was so tiring, I never had the time I once had to play the game. School came around, and a few months later, I was completing LV. 15 songs. The difficulty scale goes from 1 to 19, and as you could imagine, LV. 15s are pretty difficult. I wasn't even able to pull these off back when I was obsessed with it.

Somehow, the muscle memory I developed years ago stuck with me for all this time, as I was twisting my body like I used to and my form was still solid on the first song. Currently, I'm most comfortable clearing LV. 11s and 12s without feeling too exhausted at the end. And I've been doing this a couple times a week since January! I also forgot how much weight there is to be lost with DDR, after just 2 weeks I was able to lose 4 pounds just from playing the game. I think it's a very fun game to get into, only if you have the right pad. That foam pad was far from reliable.

My only issue is that I play on my toes most of the time, which won't get you too far. I need to learn how to play flatfooted, but I've ran into some issues with the pad when I do play flatfooted; double registers. As much as I love that pad, it'll register more than twice on the same step, messing up my combo. Maybe it'll even ghost step if it feels like it. I'm not in the mood to spend 400 dollars on a newer, more reliable pad, as that's hella expensive! I'd rather get the most out of the pad I have.

Here's to growth in my skills! My goal is to get an AA or higher on a LV 16 song by the end of the year.

I've always known about Bloghouse's existence ever since I got into the New Rave genre a couple of years ago, although I never really thought of it as much as I do now because Bloghouse lived a life just like New Rave; it's been dead for so so long, and there hasn't been much ever since the 2010s hit.

Bloghouse has always been so closely related to New Rave because the scene came into existence at the same time of the height of New Rave. And everyone was remixing songs from the New Rave scene at that same time! I never really got into it because I always thought the original tracks were better than the remixes, but there's some standouts that take the formula into it's own hands, as well as some new examples that recently emerged in the height of New Rave's short lived resurgence last year.

My main exposure of Bloghouse has consisted of electro-house remixes from some of my favorite bands, Bloc Party remixes (Silent Alarm Remixed, and the shit stain that is Intimacy Remixed), Justice's Cross, and some Kitsuné Maison compilations. I can really get behind the Bloc Party remixes, but everything else hasn't stuck with me as much as the original, unremixed material. An album that uses the Bloghouse formula to an extent is The Hellp's "LL". It's essentally a time capsule that has everything that was relevant then and now in electronic music. Bloghouse is scattered all over that thing!

Enough of me, now we talk about why it's "relevant" again. Apparently it got added as a new genre on the Rateyourmusic site, which is definitely the main reason why I'm hearing all of this discussion about it. I've talked to several people already that have experienced the genre back then, and with people that are new to the genre. This resurgence in popularity will likely die just as quick as New Rave did, but this is something that I was not expecting to happen this year.

Here's hoping we can get some new Bloghouse or even New Rave out of this resurgence; I've always wanted to try and remix some songs myself, perhaps I could contribute? I don't know. Maybe check back soon?

Calling this a "fiasco" would probably be much of an overstatement, since iOS 3.2 successfully restored to my iPad, it's just a shame that the iPad keyboard dock does not work on iOS 3.2. Apparently, you need iOS 3.2.x to use the dock, which sucks considering I've already poured a bunch of tweaks and apps onto this thing. I guess it's not too big of a deal considering the how LukeZDG made iOS downgrading so easy with Legacy iOS Toolkit. Massive shoutout to him for making such an awesome tool that's capable of so many things.

The process is pretty simple. You restore to iOS 5.1.1, then you "downgrade" using the blobs from iOS 5.1.1* to whatever iOS version the iPad supports. It's honestly amazing and unbelievable how we're able to do this. In this case, I'm going to restore to iOS 3.2.2 in hopes of making this keyboard dock compatible with the iPad again. I know that the iPad on 3.2 knew about the keyboard dock's existence as I was able to charge and sync it to my computer using the 30 pin port on the front of the dock, it just did not want to pick up any input from the keyboard.

After going into DFU mode a couple of times, I successfully downgraded to iOS 3.2.2 before the end of the study hall. I'm surprised it didn't take longer, and I thought I was going to be screwed for interupting it in the middle of it's process because of class. And to my surprise... the keyboard dock still doesn't work! And yes, it syncs with iTunes, but it cannot detect any input from the keyboard. That stinks.

I used this keyboard dock at least 2 weeks ago with a different iPad on iOS 6, and it picked up input just fine. I don't want to upgrade to iOS 4, as that version is reserved for my iPad 2 I plan to dualboot with another cool tool from the same cool guy that made Legacy iOS Toolkit. I'll do some research and come back to this scrap once I have more information on exactly why isn't this iPad picking anything up.

* - I'm probably wrong about this part LMAO

It's been 3 days since the last scrap, and I feel miles better than I did while writting that scrap. The fevers, chills, headaches, and nausea are gone, but new symptoms arose today. I could probably blow all the snot out of my nose every 5 minutes, and every cough feels like a punch to the gut. My loss of appetite still persists too, where I just don't feel like eating anything. Thankfully, I'm slowly regaining my appetite. My tiredness and slight weakness isn't as bad as it was before, but it's still here.

What a shitty week it's been. Already the worst week of the year. Thankfully I have Monday off due to that day being reserved as a teacher in-service day. I'll likely fully recover by Wednesday or Thursday, it just sucks that I couldn't put the plans I had set for this weekend into action. We even got dumped on with several inches of snow and it was warm enough to have an enjoyable time out there in the snow, but I was too sick, and could only admire the beauty from my window.

In the previous scrap, I talked about my school and the students that attend there. Some of them are absolutely disgusting, these students in particular seemingly forgot how to cover their mouth when they cough or sneeze. And every day I have to sit next to these people in class, and I'm very sure they're the ones that got me sick.

Yesterday morning I felt like absolute crap, my body was burning, and I was coughing like crazy. I wouldn't want to go to school with a fever of 101.2 and terrible headache, so I was able to get called in sick. I took the rest of the day to get some sleep, it was difficult due to the nausea and headache I was having. The medicine and the rest worked, and I was finally able to eat something without feeling like vomiting everywhere. Instant ramen was my choice as I don't think my stomach was ready for the porkchops we were having.

I'd say last night was the longest night of my life. I stayed up till 1AM downgrading my original iPad to iOS 3.2 because I couldn't sleep and had nothing else to do. Then the headache kicked in again, and forced me to try to sleep. Of course, I wake up three hours later, sweaty, nauseous, weak, and my headache got even worse. I think I lied down and waited three hours until it was morning because my body just didn't want to fall back asleep.

Called in sick again, the morning was rough. Thankfully we still had some ice packs in the freezer and they helped a ton. Too bad my nausea prevents me from eating anything without taking my time. I'd say it took an hour just to eat 2 square waffles with nothing on 'em.

Over the past couple of years, I've gotten more and more socially awkward and introverted, and it's gotten to a point where I hate being around people, even those I've known for years. I've considered the idea of online school, as I find myself getting more work done within the comfort of my own room instead of being forced to wake up at six hundred hours and be trapped inside of a building for eight hours. Every day I find myself annoyed by other people's side conversations, which doesn't help.

It's hard to tell how I got here. I would assume one of the leading contributors of this social awkwardness is the lockdown caused by the COVID pandemic, where we were trapped inside of our homes for nearly a year as cases kept rising. Looking back, it was a really odd feeling. It felt cozy and frankly helpful, as I had more free time to work on my passions, which was web design, YouTube, and art. But it was also really unfortunate that I couldn't pursue some of my other interests outdoors.

Another leading contributor would be my friends switching schools. These really good friends of mine either moved to another school, or moved towns. I made some new ones, but now that I'm in high school, I rarely ever get to see them. And last but not least, my interests. If you've known me on the Internet for a while, you know I'm into some really niche things. New Rave, old tech, corruption videos, Pokémon, and likely the most normal interest here, biking. I've tried introducing these topics to several audiences (friend groups, entire classes) by word or presentation. I did a presentation on New Rave since one of my teachers last year wanted us to present ourselves to the class with something we're interested in. Surprisingly, it caught a few people's attention and they wanted to learn more, unfortunately it didn't really go anywhere.

I think I show an incredible amount of self awareness. I have a sneaky feeling that the people around me think I'm one of those "special" kids. The way they act around me is positive, but it's in a strange way compared to the interactions they have with their friends. I'd like to know more by asking around, it just seems too odd of a question to be asking out of the blue. I often overthink things, and this is probably the result of my overthinking.

I'm pretty satisfied with my internet presence. People see me as a pretty chill, fun, and often knowledgeable person to talk to, and that alone makes me proud of my image. I don't really need a strong social life in the real world as many of my peers want me to have. The connections I've made online appear to me more meaningful than the friendships I've made in the real world. Whether we've been friends over the Internet or in person, you all are amazing!

Welcome to my scrapbook! I have recently felt the need to create a "blog" to try and succeed at making another attempt at blogging. My other attempts were not successful simply because I forgot about the blog's existence. Hopefully with this new design and desire to write walls of text again, I hope to create scraps frequently.

I'll refer to posts as "scraps" from now on. I had Google's defunct Orkut service in mind when designing this page, which is where I got the name "scrapbook" and "scraps" from. Here's to many more scraps in the future!