The Chap’s music has always been created with a nice piece of software called Logic. Many years ago, Logic stopped being developed and released for PCs. This was a bit of a nightmare for us. For about a year we struggled with the final PC version which we had a horrible problem with. We could only select Audio Plugins whose name started with a letter between D and S.

And another great problem was with Now Woel from Ham. There was a guitar part which played even if we deleted everything in the song. That was OK, we just structured the song around it.

Anyway, we eventually jumped into MacBook world, and now we all have a MacBook each. The MacBook even gets a lyric of it’s own on the new album. But after a year, mine was gasping for breath as soon as you switched it on. Perhaps something to do with blowing smoke over it whenever I’m awake, I dunno.

Being the official Chap nerd, I decided to investigate, and followed some friendly instructions on how to dismantle it. My heatsink was clogged up with dirt, but the amazing thing for me was how much thermal paste was on the chips. There should be a microscopic film of thermal paste to transfer the heat away from the chip to the heatsink, but Apple had decided to splodge it on like it’s ketchup.

Now my computer is cool and happy, and I have vowed that next time I buy a MacBook, I’ll immediately open it up and replace the thermal paste.

Oh, and here’s a great article about using Vegemite or toothpaste as thermal paste.