There comes a time, when your shiny white Apple keyboard gets so dirty that you can’t bear one second more. For me, that day was today. I love the Apple keyboard, it is nice, ergonomic and looks very sleek. However the only ‘disadvantage’ (if you could call it that) is that it is white. It gets dirty easily and you can see really clearly everything. A simple wipe of the keyboard with a damp cloth was not enough. There was still remains of tons of different things, and I wanted it off. You never really notice how dirty your keyboard is, unless you use a white keyboard, or something of a similar colour. But with the Apple keyboard, the outer shell is clear, so you can see everything there too.
This little how-to guide will show you how I cleaned my keyboard to perfection. Click on for the detailed guide (with lots of photos).

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UPDATE: I’ve been dugg, TUAW’d and del.icio.us‘d.
UPDATE 2: I had to change the photos to get them from flickr as I am burning through my bandwidth really quickly. I am at 18GB, and my max is 21GB per month!

The very first thing you need to do, is grab a camera, anything in which you can later use to read the keys is enough. Take a picture of the keyboard, a few would be helpful, so that you can remember what keys go where. You musn’t miss this step, otherwise you will be spending hours trying to find out what key goes where. It is not a pleasant experience. If you can zoom in on your camera, and see the keys then you are fine. But if you can’t then transfer the photos onto your computer and put them on the screen, or print them out.

Note: Reader Mark kindly pointed out that a view of the keyboard can be seen in the Keyboard viewer, that can be found in the International section of the System Preferences. Thanks Mark, this will save many users some hassle. I completely forgot about this!

A few of the keys (right shift, enter/return (both), backspace, space and the zero (number-side key)) contain these ‘attachment clips’, as can be seen above, that are used to make sure it is evenly pressed down. Please make a note of which one is attached to which key, this will save you a lot of hassle. I forgot, and I can’t put it back into the remainding place, because the key doesn’t operate properly.

The next step is start removing each key one by one. The easiest way, is to tuck your finger under one of the buttons between the small gap that separates the directional keys from the rest of the keyboard. You need to be careful and don’t rush. If you pull too hard it could break the clip that holds it onto the keyboard. That would be really annoying, as well as frustrating.

What you need to do next is gather up all the keys and put it in a re-sealable bag. For this I used a standard zip-lock bag that you can find at any grocery store (used for freezing food). It is perfect and allows plenty of room for all the keys, and the water to come.

Next comes the water. Make sure you use warm water. Fill it up about 3/4 full so that all the keys are engulfed with plenty of room to spare (for the keys I mean).

Once you feel that you have enough water in the bag, add some soap. For this I used a ‘foaming’ soap that comes out as foam out of the bottle. You can use a ‘gel’ type soap as well, however that is probably harder to lather. Give a good few squeezes of the bottle so that there is plenty to go around.

Next you need to seal the bag tightly, making sure that there are no gaps in the bag. After this, shake! Not too vigorously, as you don’t want the bag to pop and the buttons going anywhere. Shaking for about 3-4 minutes, with a short break in between (~ 1 min) will allow the soap to clean the buttons and fill all the nooks and crannies.

Now you need to open the top fully and wrap your fingers around the top portion. Then rotate the bag upside down letting the water trickle out. If you want you can rinse it through with cold water to remove any excess soap, though this is rendered useless by the next step.

Empty the keys into an empty bath or wash basin. I then used the high-power setting of the shower head to remove the remainding soap and dirt from the keys. It will most likely not be fully clean, because of the grease/oil used to lubricate the attatchment clips. Rinse for a minute or two.

Transfer the keys onto a clean towel. Grab the keys in a bunch and shake before you put them onto the towel. This will remove a lot of water, so the drying time is reduced. The way you do this next part is upto you. I mixed the keys in the middle, and with a firm but gently grasping action rubbed the keys against the towel. Do this for a minute or two, until the keys are mostly dry, but not totally. Leave this to dry for around 5-10 mins, during that time you can do the next few steps.

You don’t just want the keys clean, but the surface of the keyboard! Grab a paper towel/kitchen towel and damp it in water. Make sure you use sparing amounts, as not to get any onto the electronics; it can seep through the hole where the keys affix to. If you have a keyboard duster, then you can move onto the next step once most of the dirt is removed. However if you don’t then you will need to spend a while to remove all the dirt and grime, it is quite painstaking!

With the duster go over the key spaces and push quite hard to shift away the dirt. This is really important, as the grease from the attachment clips can cover the surface, causing it to attract dust, which is harder to separate. A good idea is to do this over a sink, or outside so that you don’t make a mess. After all we are removing the dirt, you don’t want to put it onto the floor, do you?

Alass, your keyboard surface is now clean! Go back to your keys now, and place them onto a table close to the keyboard, making sure that each one is free of water. If it isn’t then go back and use a kitchen towel (or something similar) to remove the rest.

We now start the long and arduous process of grabing a random key and placing it back onto the keyboard, using those photos that you took earlier on. Then you are finished.

The photo above is a macro shot of the new clean keys. Don’t they look beautiful. You can now go and type away on your clean and non-repulsive keyboard. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, feel free to ask any questions.

FAQ

Q: Why don’t you put it through the dishwasher / washing machine?
A: Yeah, I’ve heard that one too. But I use my Mac a lot, and it will take much longer to wait for everything to dry. Even then there is a risk that the keyboard won’t work. Dishwashers and washing machines have chemicals in their detergent, as well as salt, which could damage the electronics. The heat could fry it too. Yes, you could remove the detergent and the heat, but then there isn’t any soap. This was much simpler for me. If you want to, you can try it, but I can’t be held responsible for any errors you make.

Q: There seems to be some sort of oil under the keys. What is it, can I remove it?
A: This is from the grease that lubricates the ‘attachment’ clips so that they can move freely. As long as you don’t remove it from these clips, it is fine to clean it from the keys and the keyboard. If you find that it doesn’t work, you can always remove the clip (not really ‘essential’ for the smaller keys), buy some more lubrication grease at a DIY or electronics shop, and then use it sparingly on the clips and replace.

Q: Does this work for the Bluetooth keyboard, or on laptops?
A: From what I know, the cleaning process for the bluetooth version of Apple’s keyboard should be the same. However if you are going to try and clean underneath the white plastic, be careful as you could damage the electronics. Make sure to remove the battery first though!
For laptops, the keys a very different, as they contain two ’scissor’ clips which can be very hard to refit. They also come loose very easily so if you do clean it, then be very careful. Underneath the keys, the electronics is tightly packed, so you should only wipe with a dry cloth or a duster. I wouldn’t venture into this area, as I would hate to pay to replace the keyboard, they are very expensive. If you do though, anything you do is at your own risk!

Q: Why don’t you try [insert idea here]?
A: I probably never heard of it, or I was weary of trying it incase the keyboard failed. This worked absolutely perfect for me.

Q: What is the point in this? Can’t you just buy another keyboard?
A: I suppose I could but the nearest Apple store is around 50/60 miles away. I know I could go online, but why should I pay money for a new keyboard when this works perfectly. It’s not like I don’t have any time. It didn’t even take that long.

Q: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to do this, this is useless!
A: If that’s what you think, I’m cool with that Now onto the point: For those who are inexperienced, or are scared of doing it incase something goes wrong, or just don’t know how to do it, it is very useful and can be of great benefit. That’s what most people have said, anyway.

Q: So how long did it take?
A: Not as long as you might think. The whole process took around 50 mins. Around 25 was spent cleaning the keys, 15 for the whole keyboard and another ten for putting it all together and finding all the keys. I nearly lost one!

Q: What kind of a geek are you, can’t you remember the layout of the keys?
A: I know where 98% of the keys go. I can touch type pretty well, however with the ’symbol’ keys like the square brackets, tilde (~) and ‘§’, as well as the page up, down and those sorts of keys, I would probably get them confused. I took the picture so that it would save me time, and I did use it in the end. Also on the number pad keys, I wouldn’t know where the add, subtract, divide and multiply symbols would go. It saves time.

The shorts for Thursday 12th October:

• The EggCuber in action – above (video) [link]
• It’s been four years, but Windows XP SP1 support ended on Monday [link]
• Developers are from Mars, Programmers are from Venus [link]

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Geek24.com went geek licence plate spotting (on Flickr of course), and found some very good ones. There are quite a lot of them; The above few are just some of the ones that I found funny. If you look in the comments of the article, you will find links to other pictures of similar types of licence plates. If you don’t get them, well then shame on you

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I thought I’d mention this because it is really cool! An LED flashlight was built using an old tic-tac box and a few other components. You basically shake the tic-tac for 60 seconds which is enough to power the LED. As you shake the tic-tac, the rare earth magnet inside the coil (the red thing) moves up and down and cuts the coils of the wire. This creates an AC current. However the LED needs a DC current, so a simple rectifier is built using 4 Diodes. This will ‘convert’ the AC current to a DC current which will then charge the rechargeable battery. The switch can then be used to turn on the LED. You can try it yourself, the instructables article gives you all the details, and a simple schematic for the rectifier can be found here. There isn’t anything that you couldn’t find in your local electronics shop (or RadioShack for you Americans)
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Shorts for 24 September 2006.

• Amazon UK attribute the Zune to “Apple Computer”, recently fixed it (above) [link]
• Xbox 360 add-on HD-DVD drive adds 1080p, for $170, to be released on November 22nd in Japan [link]
• Digital fingerprint lock broken by MythBusters’ photocopied fingerprint! (video) [link]

The shorts for today (and some from the past) are:

• Rotating Lego Chaingun that shoots elastic bands at 11 rounds per second – with video [link]
• Why Linux doesn’t need defragging (good article) [link]
• World’s worst hacker – IRC transcript (absolutely hilarious) [link]
• iTunes 7 for Windows includes a Software Update like app to update Quicktime and iTunes [link]
• Joystiq’s Wii rumour roundup [link]

You know you can get those IR devices that turn of your TV sets? Well this is an awsome mod made to the most readily available one: the TV-B-Gone. This instructibles how-to details on how to mod that puny one IR-LED into 20 LED’s working in series and parallel (4 parallel blocks of 5 LED’s working in series). Now this will truly have greater range, capable of turning of every TV set within a 90-foot area, albeit it has to be line-of-sight. But be warned, if you go around toting this thing in pubs/bars, make sure you can run fast!

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The shorts for Thursday June 29, 2006.

• LAPD to trial GPS darts, like in the moves (above) [link]
• Apple replacing some MacBook’s with the colour defect [link]
• MacWorld’s 23 things we want in Leopard [link]

I don’t know what a typical college campus is like. Everything I’ve experienced at Georgia Tech is apparently not normal for a university lacking “tech” in the title. I’ve compiled a few things I’ve noticed around school for your enjoyment on this slow news day. Here we go. You’d be surprised at how much I’m not exaggerating.

This is pretty funny and interesting. We don’t see much of this at our high school, as our tech support is quite unfriendly! We have some evil people there, (and some nice ones too), but they don’t like you sniffing around, even if you know what you’re doing!

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You can’t get more simple than the Galvanic Skin Response [GSR] sensor. It is just a cut 9V LEGO motor wire and some aluminum foil wrapped around your fingers with tape. I was inspired by talks by Mindfest panelists Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich who talked about using this type of sensor. The theory is that; the more relaxed you are the dryer your skin is and so the higher the skin’s electrical resistance. When you are under stress your hand sweats and then the resistance goes down.

This is really cool. Now anyone can make their own lie detector for not much money (assuming you already have a LEGO mindstorms kit). Nice hack!
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Many of you may know about the new UK comedy show called “The IT Crowd”. It is a hilarious TV show airing here in the UK on Channel 4 which is about 2 IT guys in a company and a new girl who claims she can use computers on her CV (resume) but can’t and when she gets the job she cannot do anything. It is typical British humour. Either you like it or you don’t. But what is special about is that you can download it for free before it airs through the Channel 4 website. But for now Channel 4 have removed the first 2 episodes, so you can download it here. I have watched the first 2 episodes and I think it is fantastic. It is sort of like ‘Little Britain’.

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I was bored this afternoon, so I had a look around to see if there was anything interesting I could mod in my room.

I had an old RC Airplane that was pretty useless. The ‘arms’ were made out of foam and when it crashed it broke. So I took out the parts from the inside and put it all together. So now I have my own portable fan which I can control via a remote, and the thing is pretty powerfull!

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I found this video that shows you what a balloon looks like when it is popped (by a knife in the video) in slow motion. It is really interesting to see that the water keeps its shape after the plastic has gone!

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This is a limited (only one made) edition Xbox 360 wireless controller made by Microsoft, out of yummy chocolate. Mmm, I wonder who will be the lucky person to eat it?

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These webcams were found automatically through a variety of clever search techniques. Their owners might or might not have intended for them to be public. But they obviously are. Many of them are security cameras in companies or semi-public places. If you hover over the picture you’ll see what location information is available. If you click on it, a window will open and you can see a live video feed, plus comments and ratings and other information.
1343 webcams are available as of last scan.

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This is really cool collection of photos that are taken by a Nikon D100 digital camera. They must have used an incredibly high shutter speed to capture something like this. There are other photos as well, such as a small wood pole. They are really amazing!
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About 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article about hard disk recovery that was quite popular (I received approximately 20000 hits for it). The article covered a couple of solutions to help you in the case where your hard drive would stop working. While I was doing some research for this article, I ended up on a few stories about people who were putting their HD in the freezer to help fix it long enough to be able to recover their data. I guess that by doing this, some metal parts in the HD could contract, putting back in place defective parts, and making everything work again for a few minutes.

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Lightbulb uses a special bulb, inside which magnets and circuitry are hidden. Using a magnetic hall effect sensor, an electromagnet, and a [modified] PD feedback system, it floats a lightbulb stably in the air, while power is transmitted wirelessly from the base of the sculpture into the bulb. LEDs in the bulb rectify this AC power and convert it to light. The power transfer functions very similarly to how radio station tuning works and requires a well tuned matched pair of resonant windings, but allows power transmission over through the air.

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Since I buy burnable media in bulk I usally have lots of unprotected discs lying around. One of my housemates suggested using an origami CD Case. The first thing I found on Google was a set of instructions made by a guy named Tom Hull. I have mirrored these instructions HERE.

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