Monthly Archives: June 2015

Fix fraying shoelaces with heat shrink tubing

Normally the ends of shoelaces are protected with plastic caps to prevent them from fraying, but they sometimes break and get loose. Once the ends of shoelaces start fraying, it is very hard to put them through the tiny holes of your shoes.  This is an easy fix:

  1. Get some glue, the right size of heat shrink tubing and a heat gun (or a lighter)
  2. Put a little amount of glue on your finger and wet the ends of the fraying shoelaces with it.
  3. Cut a suitable length of heat shrink tubing and shove it over the end of the fraying shoelace.
  4. Apply heat with a heat gun and you are done!

Booting the Asus R556LA laptop from USB

UEFI makes it harder, but not impossible to boot your PC or laptop from USB:

  • Shut down Windows and wait until all status lights on the laptop are out.
  • Press the power button and press f2 (without the fn button depressed) to get into the BIOS (Aptio Setup Utility)
  • If the laptop keeps on booting Windows and does not want to go into BIOS, try shutting it down with a long press (5 seconds) on the power button to shut it down and then power it up and press f2
  • Boot > Fast Boot: Disabled
  • Boot > Lauch CSM: Enabled
  • Security: Secure Boot menu > Secure Boot Control: Disabled
  • Save & Exit > Save Changes and Exit
  • Press f2 again
  • Boot > Boot Option Priorities > Boot Option : Generic Flash Disk
  • optional: Boot > Boot Option Priorities > Boot Option #2: Disabled
  • Save & Exit > Save Changes and Exit
  • The laptop should now boot from USB