No magic tip today, I’m going to save the planned tip for next week. I’m glued to CreativeLive today and doing some housecleaning.

Few people enjoy house-cleaning, but do not neglect your workspace. Heat is the enemy to performance of your electronics. Fine particles of dust settle on your components and eventually bake into to circuitboards. Desktop systems draw air across these components to keep them cooler, but if dust is baked onto the surface it forms a barrier and will lead to overheating.
If you have pets fur also gets sucked into the system, and can clog your fans.
So… with your computer turned off and unplugged give it a vacuum. Make this light cleaning of your desktop part of your routine, at least once a week.

If you have a separate keyboard… and have a habit of eating at your desk be sure to clean it as well.
Just be careful so you don’t loose keys.

Ok- one small tech/gear tip.

I’ll cover tripods later, but I’ll throw this in now.
Sometimes on a shoot or wherever- something breaks… or comes loose… or you just need to hold something in place.
Duct tape, or better yet Gaffer tape works wonders as a general fix all. However it isn’t always practical to carry a roll around. So what do you do? Pre-tear some strips? Make a jacket out of it? No… that’s not so practical either. My suggestion is to wrap some around a leg of your tripod.

Now whenever you have your tripod, you’ll have some quick repair tape.