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Archive June 2010
Friday 25 June 2010
Having just watched The Last Song, and several other movies of the same genre recently, I am very irked by the ridiculously common trope of "multitalented interesting kind handsome young man falls madly in love with vapid unpleasant girl who is totally rude and unpleasant to him throughout the entire movie until finally in the last five minutes he has proved his love enough times that he gets the girl, yay."

Why does he do that? Are there really no equally kind multitalented interesting girls he could get instead? Is he just so kind that he's willing to go through all that because it's clearly the only way the girl will ever have anyone, and he'll sacrifice his own well-being to charitably give an awful person a nice relationship?

I assume this is a big reason why that sort of movie is considered a chick-flick - girls watching it empathise with the girl-character, and so see "oh a lovely man showing his undying love, how nice", but guys watching it try to empathise with the guy and see "ARGH WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING, SHE IS AWFUL TO HIM, IT MAKES NO SENSE." And as someone I know grumbles fairly often, this sort of movie makes for horrifically unrealistic expectations for a girl, that you don't have to do anything even remotely decent to get your own perfect Prince Charming out of the blue. And then if he actually does come along, don't forget to treat him like crap! [23:41] [0 comments]


Saturday 12 June 2010
I've gone through two cheapo "laptop cooling pads" which, upon arrival, turned out to be "desktop cooling pads for notebook computers", in that the fan blades were exposed underneath so you couldn't use it on your lap or any soft surface because the fan would catch on things. Both of these pads also swiftly fell to pieces, foot-pads de-gluing, plastic cracking, fans falling out completely. So this time I did a bit more research and didn't buy anything that didn't have someone reviewing it saying "this actually works on my lap", which led me to this one (Amazon referral link, might as well, it's where I bought it): Targus Lap Chill Mat AWE55US (Black with Gray)

It was only about twice as much as the ones that didn't work (or the same amount as the both of them together), and it is exactly what I'd been looking for - the underside is even slightly cushioned, rather than the previous "two sharp edges that cut into your legs, and a fan-frame that prints a circle on you" design. When I plugged the USB cable in for the fan I thought there must be a switch or something, because I didn't hear a fan coming on, but putting my hand on it, yeah, there is air-flow, it's just really quiet. Not a lot of air-flow, but you don't need a lot of air-flow, a laptop is supposed to be able to work okay just on a hard surface after all. It's also lightweight and relatively low-profile.

So if anyone's been vaguely looking for a good thing to stand their laptop on to prevent their legs being set on fire, like I have for a while, this one does the trick nicely, and at a reasonable price. [12:47] [0 comments]