When a Good Nexus 4 Goes Bad

I accidentally dropped my Nexus 4 off a cliff, and now its touch screen does not respond. I can see that I am getting calls/texts/etc, but I cannot interact with the phone in any meaningful way.

The touchscreen has also become unglued, so I started pulling it away as far as it could go. This resulted in a snap, and some pretty cool glitch patterns.

When a good Nexus 4 goes bad...
Here you see the touchscreen being removed from the rest of the phone (while the phone is still on, of course).

Luckily I was able to get everything off of the phone, because everything is working perfectly… except the touch screen. It figures that the first phone I have ever destroyed also happens to be my first keyboardless phone.

When a good Nexus 4 goes bad...
Here you see the glitch effects I caused by not caring about the phone anymore, since the touchscreen wouldn’t work anyway.

Since the peeling off glitch screen is such a thing of beauty, Doc and I decided to photograph it and make smartphone wallpapers from it. The resulting glitch wallpaper looks absolutely beautiful on my Nexus 5.

Glitch Android Desktop
Here is the Nexus 5 with its glitchy Nexus 4 wallpaper. This is how it appears in its “locked” mode.

Glitch Android Desktop
Here is the Nexus 5 with its glitchy Nexus 4 wallpaper. This is how it appears in its “unlocked” mode.

I gave some of the photos to Doc for him to touch up, and we plan on making the wallpapers available for anybody who wants to make their phones look like a Nexus 4 that got dropped off a cliff. Doc suggested taking an Android icon, and glitching it out as part of the wallpaper. I told him “That would be too confusing, unless you used an icon that I would never ever click on… like the Google+ icon.”

Apartment Organization

This weekend, we found a mini bar cabinet on the street that we took home and set up. In order to do this, we had to organize the kitchen. Once it was set up, much of our pantry space that had previously been devoted to liquor bottles was freed up, making further organization even easier. This started a huge undertaking of finally organizing the rest of our apartment, and finally buying all the shelving and organization units that we have sorely needed. We even set up an entertainment center with five of our old gaming consoles (including the Vectrex). Now that the older consoles are set up, we will be more inclined to actually use our other consoles. Oh, the difference a few shelves can make.

Southern Style BBQ Pork Buns with Coleslaw

Today I decided to make pork buns. After investigating pork bun recipes, I decided to stuff the buns with coleslaw and Southern US-style barbeque pork, instead of the usual cabbage and Chinese-style barbeque pork. I slow cooked a rack of ribs with a basic rub (brown sugar, paprika, salt, pepper, cumin, garlic, onion, chili powder). Then I tore all the meat off the ribs, chopped it up, mixed it with coleslaw, and that was the filling that went into the buns.

Making BBQ Pork Buns with Coleslaw
The Ribs.

The final product was not too dissimilar to regular pork buns, I must say. While it certainly had good Southern barbeque flavor and the coleslaw flavor was noticeable, I suppose neither substitution was different enough from the original to have a wild and unexpected flavor. At the end of the day, the filling was still slow cooked pork and cabbage; they just had different seasonings on them.

Making BBQ Pork Buns with Coleslaw
Mixing the chopped meat with the coleslaw.

Despite my disappointment that they were not completely weird and wacky, they were still absolutely delicious and I enjoyed eating them. I do love pork buns, after all. I served them with an apricot barbeque sauce for dipping.

Making BBQ Pork Buns with Coleslaw
The Assembly.

Making BBQ Pork Buns with Coleslaw
Waiting to be steamed.

Making BBQ Pork Buns with Coleslaw
Delicious.