I love using my MacBook Pro on the go (such as working from a nearby coffee shop), but its underside does get hot sometimes, and I’ve often struggled finding a way to keep it cool.
Normally, I use Rain Design’s wonderful iLap at my desk, which features an angled anodized aluminum base to support a laptop computer and keep it cool. However, while this ($49 to $70) base sure is stylish, I find it a little too bulky to fit into my laptop bag at times, so it usually just stays on my desk.
Griffin also makes a nice laptop stand (the Elevator) for about $30, but it’s also a bit awkward to take with you, and requires using an external keyboard.
Recently, I came up with a more cost effective and pretty ingenious (I think) solution to keep my laptop cool when I found myself without a much-needed cooling base while traveling.
I simply purchased a cooling rack – the kind used to cool off cookies, pies, and cakes – and set my laptop on that.
While this five dollar purchase gets me a number of odd looks when I first take it out of my laptop bag – it’s thin enough to fit behind my laptop and add extra support to it – people around me quickly see the “clever logic” behind it, and often ask me for the “name of the specialty store” where I found this “chrome device”, so they can buy one.
They’re usually even more surprised when I tell them they can find a number of sizes wherever kitchen gadgets and baking equipment is sold, or buy a pair at Amazon for just under ten bucks. Plus, you can use it to make cookies.
“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.” Jean-Luc Godard
More lists. While doing some cleaning up this week I found the 2009 spring issue of Canadian Screenwriter (the journal of the Writer’s Guild of Canada) that has a great article about writing spec TV scripts, and “how to show what you know”.
It features a number of prominent Canadian writers, agents and producers commenting on Jane Espenson’s “ten commandments for spec writers”, explains them in depth, and adds a few bonus rules to that list.
Espenson, if you didn’t know, is a former writer for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and worked as a co-executive producer for Battlestar Galactica. Her list says:
- Don’t spec a show you don’t respect.
- Don’t make your spec about a guest character. Focus on the main character.
- Get sample scripts of produced episodes. Study them.
- Follow the show’s structure exactly.
- Find a story for your spec that plays on the show’s main theme.
- Don’t write an episode that resolves the show’s mystery or consummates its romance.
- Place the story turns at the act breaks, and give us a reason to come back after the commercials.
- In a comedy, spend time polishing the jokes, especially the last one of each scene.
- Spelling, formatting, clarity of stage directions – they really matter.
- Use strong brass brads.
The WGC suggests the following five rules are equally important:
- Use surprise and motivation.
- Never send the spec to the show that you’re specing.
- Write stand alones.
- Choose your show with care.
- Consider using a feature spec or writing an original pilot instead.
The article also suggests that 2009’s specs of choice were House and Dexter for procedurals, Mad Men and True Blood for dramas, 30 Rock, Weeds and The Office for comedy, and Two and a Half Men for traditional sitcoms.