Episode: 4295
Title: HPR4295: Three Holiday Hacks from 2023
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4295/hpr4295.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:36:52

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4295 for Friday the 17th of January 2025.
Today's show is entitled Free Holiday Hacks from 2023.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 8 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is replacing the battery, swapping a fan, and getting a new desktop.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Q.
We are airing it now because we had free slots that were not filled.
This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive.
Please consider recording a show for Hacker Public Radio.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you are listening to another episode of Hacker
Public Radio and as you probably heard, this is a reserve show, so we are short and
shows.
So if you have any topic that you find interesting or cool stuff that you've done, people
will be interested in, only one person has to be interested in it, then send it on
in here.
R.
Today I want to tell you about three little hacks that I did over the Christmas period.
There were things that were on my wish list to do for a while, but I didn't get round
to them, so I thought, well, let's talk about them here.
First of all, my son's phone, the battery started expanding in the back.
It was Sony Xperia A10, nice phone, that was very fast, I give it runs lineage OS, absolutely.
And the battery had been expanding, but it never thought to send it to me and apparently
not everybody on the planet knows that once the back case of your phone starts expanding,
that you should not use that phone, it is, don't charge it anymore, don't plug it in,
the battery is in a state that it is now heading into dangerous and as a firehousing.
So I brought it down to the local phone guy and he did absolutely nothing to it and I
lost my faith in that shop and will never buy there again, went back a week later and
the situation had only got worse to a point where the phone was, the screen had detached
from the screen and stuck on to the back and it had totally detached.
So I thought to myself, well, it's already broken, I can't break it anymore, so I thought
I'll send off for a kit for a new battery, 15 euros, sounds a bit dodgy, but okay.
And over the intervening time I was keeping the phone in uncharged a container.
So I used a gun, a hot air gun that you use for stripping paint and a digital infrared thermometer,
the local pump shop, a few quid and I was able to tell the temperature, one of the things
is you need to melt the, the lure on the case and that I was able to do by using the
heat gun and checking the temperature and then I slid like a plastic pectrum, piece of
plastic or a credit card or all credit carders in and was able to just assemble the phone.
A particular phone won't even give you the link to it because unless you have the exact
phone yourself, but there are plenty of breakdown videos on how to take apart phones.
So did it slow and liberr, slow and carefully, kept note of all the screws on where they
went in, various different ways of doing that and then just reassemblers put the battery
in, reassemblers and the thing is as good as new.
That was one of the hacks, so quite happy with that.
The other one was I have a Rygo DS1054, I got it on an offer, saved up a few years of
birthday monies in order to get it, but I found I never really used it here because when
you turn it on it was exceptionally loud and somebody explained to me that that's fine
because in a lab environment where it usually resides, there's so much other noise as well
that.
But really for such a good piece of it would be let it down, so I spent a tenor or so on
the silent or a more silent replacement fan and it was a bit scary opening or breaking.
Manufacturers warranty thing, but then again, if you don't break that, if you don't open
it up, it's not your case, so I opened it up, followed the procedure that I had seen
people do online, was careful to make sure the flow was in the right direction, so this
tiny little bit of soldering to be done, soldering out the old connectors and soldering, put
that back together and literally within a half an hour the job was on now and that's
it before.
Very nice.
The other thing that I did over the Christmas I did is on my desk and my wife's desk, we
both have two IKEA standing desks, the Kant desks, I got, I had another one which was
a manual which had a motor on but I took this one as well.
The issue is that the desk top that it comes with it are 120, so the desk is 120 centimeters
of what's that in, is about four foot wide and that's fine, that's a nice size of a desk
for your monitors, etc.
But it comes 80 centimeters which is 32 inches, about two and a half feet deep and that
whole thing comes from back in the day when we had those, remember those big CRT monitors
on your desk?
That's where that standard desk but that's completely unnecessary and I've noticed that
I hadn't been using the front of my desk and down here where my offices is in the cellar
and that extra 20s space that I'm losing was too much.
So I thought while I'll try replacing the desk on there with something else and not
wanting to spend too much money because I'm cheap, 25 euros, they sold a tabletop in
my key as well, 120 by 60 which is two foot instead of, and I was worried because this
thing is literally made out of tissue paper, it's thin laminous with corrugated paper
inside.
But the mounting positions on either side have a slightly more material in but that only
comes in about 30 centimeters or a foot in from both sides so I didn't know if this project
would work or whether I would need to get actual connectors.
So it was a simple matter of taking off the old desk, I put some paper down and made a
template for where the holes would be, I drilled those holes and then I put it in and reassembled
it quite a bit.
In hindsight, I'd probably just clamp it and draw all the holes but either way it was
a good move to do because you gain a lot of space and I have monitored stands at the
back so the monitor doesn't push back on the desk, I still have the same amount of desk
space for doing desk stuff and it's just made the room a lot more usable workable space
in it.
So those are three hacks, I don't know if anything in the show is particularly of interest
hackers.
There were three little projects that I was quite chuffed about, I guess the moral
of the story is don't be putting on these little things that will make your life a little
bit better.
I drive enjoyment from it as far as the wriggle since then, not afraid of the sound of a
jet engine going off the desk was definitely a win, just so much, you know, was literally
10% of the floor space was being taken up by this guy, well, I exaggerate about a percentage.
And then the phone, just having a working phone when somebody says that they'll be happy
with it.
So that was it, that was my thoughts for the day, tune in tomorrow for another exciting
episode of Hacker.
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