The pain of mending broken headphone wires

Well i am back again, after a long hiatus. So its about time i published something else, right? Today's topic is about my struggle to repair my headphones. For the last two days the bloody thing had gone deaf on me. So i decided to take things into my own hand. Opening up the volume control unit i found that the soldered portions have come off. So i thought, what the hell? All i have to do is solder them back to the circuit board. So i cut off the old wires and cleaned the board with flux.then i removed the insulation exposing new wires. And boy oh boy wasn't i surprised! Each insulated covering has two wires within them.

Each insulated part encloses two small wires

Ok now this us new to me. So being the noob that i am, i simply soldered the wires as in the previous arrangement. Then the i connected the audio jack to my PC to check and surely there was no sound. So now what? After a moment of deep thought and contemplation i said to myself "blame it on the soldering". There rip it all apart and do a fresh soldering. Give plenty of contact and solder. Believe me when i say that soldering these audio wires is a real pain in the ass. They are almost as thin as a hair and awfully hard to handle Same procedure,same connections still no 'sounds of life'. At this point i was getting all mad at myself and it was Just like the lab exams, all connections are correct yet no output.

A picture showing the paint burning off;
courtesy of alexwhittemore.com

 I was getting desperate and i made a decision. And so to make things easier for me i ripped apart the connections for a third time. And threw away the volume adjuster. Then i removed the insulation and got ready to wire them up directly. I did just that. Again disappointment. Finally i got onto the Internet, which i should have done at the very start of this mess. As always the Internet saves the day. The reason i haven't been getting the connections right is simply because i hadn't removed the second layer of insulation. Yup you heard me! There is a second layer of insulation on the wires. So far i had only removed the outer plastic
insulation. But the wires are coated with a special paint which insulates them from one another and so a single core can carry two wires namely the live one(which carries the audio signals) and the ground. So in order to remove the paint which insulates the wires you have to use a sandpaper and scrub it off. But the easy way is to burn them. Just expose the wire to an open flame and it just burns away the paint.

There you have it! Thus remove the paint and then solder together the exposed parts...

I cant believe i wasted almost 2 hours on such a trivial thing..

Avengers Assemble! (Movie Review #3)

 The posters all said “SIX SUPERHEROES, ONE MOVIE”. Well if we consider only those with superpowers as superheroes then its incorrect. Because we all know that Black Widow and Hawkeye are both humans and Iron man is a ‘genius, billionaire playboy philanthropist’ in a suit of armor. Yes I am talking about THE AVENGERS movie. It has undoubtedly lived up to our expectations and left the opportunity for many more reunions of these six superheroes. I saw the movie on the third day and still the theatre was fairly packed. You should know that English movies rarely do well in Kerala. I think I know why there’s a good crowd. Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and Captain America have a good number of followers. So put them all together in a movie and there you have it, the perfect formula to satisfy all the fans.

Theatrical release poster

An interesting thing to note is that movie deviates from the original Avengers Comics. In the comic, the avengers were formed without Captain America, and he was rescued from his icy tomb by them. In the comics the first avengers consisted of Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and Wasp. But here we have Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, The Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow. The bad guy is Loki in both the versions. Joss Whedon has done a remarkable job of  using just the right amount of  each of the  six characters. The movie doesn’t rely too much on any one person. All the six had their moments and even Nick Fury was all pumped up. If there was a personal favorite for me, it was The Hulk, wait a second, I wouldn’t be wrong if I said the whole theatre was rooting for Hulk. The movie has given a total makeover for the Hulk. They have made him more aggressive, more human looking and funny! Mark Ruffalo replacing Ed Norton made me a bit nervous but he was to the mark both as Bruce Banner and the ‘other guy’. Chris Hemsworth dons the role of Thor for a second time and so does Chris Evans as Captain America. Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Scarlet Johansson and Clint Barton appear as Black Widow and Hawkeye respectively.

All in all I am just so happy that they have pulled it off successfully.The best scene of the whole 143 minutes is without doubt the rotating shot which features all six of the avengers ready to jump into action. After the great build up which consisted of  Iron Man 1 & 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America the grand finale isn’t disappointing at all. Enough said just go see the movie….