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This post was typed on it and sent using WordPress for nokia, which is pretty cool.

Basically these guys offer access to a cluster that has been specifically fine tuned for cracking WPA encryption keys for wireless networks and at the cheapest price it’ll cost $17. I’ve seen people online build machines with multiple graphics cards and then run the code on them as well as the CPU as the graphics cards (Nvidia is the example I read) are faster at doing the math the desktop CPU’s.

Should we all panic? Well if you read the FAQ on the site you’ll see that WPA encryption is still a little hard to crack, changing the SSID of the access point to something unique makes it harder and so does choosing a non-dictionary password for the WPA key.

Yes that’s right at the end of this week my wife and I are moving into our own place, no more renting… which means finally I’ll be allowed to drill holes in walls, fix creaking doors and re-arrange stupid cupboard designs.

That means that pages of this site are no doubt going to be filled with articles as we DIY our little place into the awesome place we both want. The move also means I’ll have my own little workshop/workbench where I can finally take things apart without fear of leaving sharp things behind on the floor for the wife to step on.

Sorry guys I should’ve realised that this is not Iron Man but rather War Machine, but still its impressive.

Dead mouse, before autopsy, repair and cleaning

This afternoon I drowned my mouse with a cup of tea and killed it. The mouse was a Microsoft Wireless 4000 Notebook Optical Mouse which I’ve had for over 2 years and liked a lot… Electronics + tea don’t mix

As previously promised on Google Buzz, I’m going to “autopsy” the mouse and see if I can revive it, below are the photos (gadget lovers may want to look away).

I’ve killed or nearly killed a few peripherals with tea… the trick to keeping things alive is to disconnect power ASAP after the spill, hopefully before things short out and the magic smoke gets let out.

Open Mouse

First thing to do is get the screwdrivers out and strip the mouse, as usual some of the screws are hidden under the little “slick” pads that the mouse glides on.

Tea in the bottom of the mouse.

Once you’ve got the mouse apart you can check for damage, I was lucky that the electronics was mostly dry and most of the tea was confined to the plastic areas, some tea had got between the lenses and the little “camera chip” on the board.

Plastic Mouse parts drying.

All the plastic was stripped off and carefully taken apart and put in some hot water with dish washing liquid and brushed clean then left to dried and finally finished off the last bit of drying with a dish cloth. The electronics were dried off with a tissue, but surprisingly enough weren’t that wet.

Re-soldering the battery contact.

During re-assembly I found that the battery contact was broken, this explains some of the intermittent problems I’ve had with the mouse. After some careful positioning with the helping hands I re-soldered the battery contact.

Finally I finished screwing everything together, put a battery in and the mouse lit up, always a good sign when the thing you’re fixing lights up correct when its assembled again. Tested it on a computer and after a few seconds of windows trying to initialise it I could move the mouse pointer and click… Success!!!

Coffee Table Workbench

Special thanks to my wife who allowed me to turn the coffee table into a make shift workbench for these repairs, I can’t wait till we’re in our own place and I have a garage I can setup a proper workbench in.

For those of you don’t know a few weeks (months?) ago something went wrong and the space probe stopped sending coherent information back to earth. Now remember that this probe was launched in 1977. NASA managed to debug and fix the problem with the on-board computers remotely… which is impressive given how old the hardware is and the fact that it takes 13hours for info to travel from the probe to earth. I’m continually impressed by a lot of the “old school” space hardware that NASA built and how long it lasted and how they’ve often gotten it to work long after its expected EOL (End of Life).

You can find the official account of what happened and how it was fixed here.