View the TranscriptWorking on Computers and Gear
Hi, I’m Jennifer O’Rourke.
And, I’m Charlie Fulton.
And this is our tips and techniques segment.
Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a few interesting little tips for you today. Should we start out with the TV dinner one?
Why not!
Ok, so this is one of my tips. And that is, if you’re working on a computer or other things that use a lot of little screws like what I have here in my collection of screws and jumpers and telephone stuff, then you’ll have to be able to sort it out easily somehow. And one way I found is to use a TV dinner tray. And these things are terrible for you; but you know, the tray that you get from them is really useful for having little screws here or if you’re working on a computer and you’ve got slots or the brackets that go in front of where the drive would be if you don’t have a drive installed in the computer. It makes it easier to manage all the little parts.
And, Charlie does a lot of computer work. And, I have heard other ways you can do this is with little, well, this is a pill box and a larger pill box, ice cube tray, and then this is one of those tupperware dinner things.
Oh, ok!
But what I like about what Charlie has here is that you have the wider opening for larger items that you want to put in there, just to hold it and to carry it with you, stick it in your box of tools and then when you have to go work on someone else’s system, you’ve got a way of keeping track of everything.
Yeah, definitely!
Good Job.
Thanks! And then you’ve got a tip too.
I do! We’ve got all sorts of props on the show today. I have this! When you’re finished with a project, what do you do? You’ve got to get all of your stuff off your hard drive because it takes up a lot of space. And so, actually this tip came to me from Hal Robinson, one of our columnists. He stores all of his tapes in little boxes like this. And, you know, this is a documentary I was working on; I’ve got 20 little tapes in here. And I have these things, silica gel. These are the things that you find in shoes, in purses, sometimes you just actually see them in pepperoni and sausages. It’s a moisture absorbing product called silica gel that absorbs moisture if you’re working on machines, equipments, these come within some of the boxes when you buy computers and stuff. And it’s really to help the condensation from getting into your equipment; when it’s traveling overseas, coming in.
It protects your stuff; even just domestic shipping, if it goes through the south, you’re going to get a lot more moisture, lots of humidity to deal with.
So people always say the first thing you do, you take it out and throw it away because it’s very very dangerous. The silica gel is actually not as toxic as some people think. It’s a lot of the stuff they put inside it, other things that they put in with it. Brain Peterson, our Editor in Chief, was telling us what he does, because he has a lot of film and slides. He puts, he gets the little box and he’ll buy a full bag of it; and he puts them down on the bottom of his trays in a slide cabinet and again it helps absorb moisture. And you have to re… what was it he was saying, you have to re?
Reactivate it, sort of, basically take the water that it has absorbed out of it. So the way to do that is to put it on like cookie sheets, put it in the oven for an hour, 350o, 300o, low oven and then basically it’s as good as new. You don’t have to buy it again. So, pretty handy.
So, if you’re just doing like what I’m doing, you’re just storing things in here, then these little packets are great. Don’t throw them away, don’t eat them, and don’t give them to your kid. But, you know, I’ll open one here, so Melissa can pan over here real quickly and see what it looks like. They’re just little beads. They get all over everything! Don’t eat them, watch out for the dogs. Just a couple little tips about it, just because I was talking about it and did some, little research on it. The substance actually came, was known in existence in the 1640s and they were just kind of using it as an oddity. But they used it a lot during World War I and World War II for the gas masks and absorbing the gas, liquid and moisture that got inside the gas mask. So again, silica gel, a very good tool for packing your stuff up. And I think that’s it for tips and letters. If you have some tips, please write to us and give us some of your ideas at editor@videomaker.com.
Yes! And be sure to also check the blog at videomaker.com/blog and the forums at videomaker.com/forums. And I think we will go right over to our Take 20 segment.
Which is me and Brian, we’re going to talk about A Bed Time Story. So, we’ll see you then!
