A dab of hot glue [UPDATED]

In a rather unsuccessful attempt to interest my two and a half year old in the world of making stuff, I showed her an episode of "Sylvia's super awesome maker show". Instead I learned a neat trick that will solve an issue I haven't yet experienced... well at least it seems like a very good solution to a problem I might have in the future.

Anyway here it is: If you solder for instance, battery wires directly onto a perfboard of some sort. Fixate the connection with a dab of hot glue to ensure that the soldered joint doesn't break due to cable movement.

I added some hot glue to my Arduino Standalone Atmega
but I probably should have done this prior to soldering
some of the nearby components.

It may not look very pretty but it does keep the stress-point
of the cable away from the solder joint.

By the way apparently it's Sylvia's birthday today so congratulations and thank you for the tip!

[UPDATE] 
With my hot glue gun in one hand and a fistful of desire to fixate cables in the other I managed to destroy a potentiometer. I failed to notice a small hole in the potentiometer near the solder tabs and got glue inside the potentiometer, increasing the inertia quite a bit.

Heed my warning and be cautious when glueing!

How I fixed a rattling laptop fan

So my laptop fan started rattling recently. First I thought it might be my hard drive that was about to give up, so I was kind of glad it was "just" the fan. Until the noise of the fan started to drive me slightly insane. My first attempt of silencing the fan was a failure. I opened up my laptop and cleaned out all the dust in the fan and the vents. I also checked if there any loose pieces of something in the fan, but didn't find anything. After putting the laptop back together again it didn't take long for the fan to start making noise again.

So yesterday evening I opened up my laptop again, about a month after my initial try. I took it one step further this time, I removed the fan completely and disassembled it up til the point where I had the fan blades removed from the housing. After cleaning everything as good as possible I  put a drop of oil (for sewing machines) on the spindle where the fan blades sit. When I had put everything back togheter I could verify that my laptop now indeed was quiet as a mouse. And yes before you ask, the fan i still working.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this but hopefully it's quite easy to understand anyway. If you don't please just ask and I will try to give you an answer.