ReidBurke

You know those little arrow links that appear next to track names and artists in iTunes? Typically, clicking them takes you to the iTunes Store page for that item. What I didn't know is that Option-clicking them will take you to related items in your music library, a feature I've always wanted. The best part: you can invert the behavior so that the arrow takes you to your library's items by default. Simply type "defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES" (without ...

I have spent a week with my brand new black MacBook now, and it is amazing. I set it up on Thursday while I was at work. It was extremely simple to set up. I had a external USB hard drive containing a backup of my Mac mini. I just plugged in the drive and the first-run setup assistant asked if I was transferring from another Mac. I selected the "transfer from another partition" and my USB drive came right up. ...

After 2 years of solid, reliable, trouble-free operation, my Mac mini suddenly experienced a hard drive failure. Yesterday around midnight I was busy working on a school project in Pages on my Mac mini G4. The songs I were playing were skipping like crazy and the computer gradually slowed to a crawling pace. I restarted the machine, but the computer appeared to be stuck at the grey boot screen. The Combo drive in my mini was half-working (a problem I couldn't get ...

Speaking of the iPhone, it turns out I might actually be able to buy one when it comes out. According to Verizon, my cellular contract expires on 07/07/07… perfect timing for the June release of the iPhone. Awesome!

So, how about that iPhone? I watched the keynote last night and I was amazed at all of the features. Who couldn't be? If only it was available outside of Cingular... When I'm at work, blasting Red Hot Chili Peppers when I get a call is a bit annoying to other people, so I use the standard ring sound. It sounds pretty boring though. In contrast, when Steve was demonstrating receiving a call during the keynote, I thought the ringtone that ...

Daring Fireball presents a Conjectural Transcript of the Upcoming Negotiations Between Apple and Universal Music. Hilarious. Reminds me of DF’s equally funny conversation between Safari and Brushed Metal.

I stumbled across Scrivener yesterday from a blog post I can no longer remember. I downloaded it today and I found the interface so initiative I'm already using it to write my college essays. This Mac OS X app is great for efficiently writing. I am able to separate my writing into sections which have their own meta-data, such as notes and tags. I can also annotate and highlight my work. In addition, a live word count is always visible ...

I recieved my VS-840 multitrack recorder a few weeks ago and it's a nice little machine. I am getting started with recording and this will be the heart of my setup. Despite not having anything the plug into it yet I've already gotten used to some of its features. However, the total time I can record on a Zip 100 disk on medium-high quality is 49 minutes between all tracks. That means for a simple stereo 2 track recording I ...

This weekend I bought a Roland VS-840 digital multitrack recorder from eBay. Ever since I've done audio work for Gimme 5 I've been wanting to do my own recording stuff and this is the first step. I plan on using it to do some simple live recording stuff at first and as I gain my own experience I can go on to other things. I still need to buy about $200 worth of microphones, stands, cables and a submixer before ...

Well, my FON router finally arrived today. In cause you haven't heard, FON is a shared WiFi service. Basicially, if you share your Internet over WiFi, then you can access the thousands of other community-operated FON hotspots too. You can also pay for the service if you don't want to share or even make money from your hotspot with their different profile choices. FON is rapidly becoming popular, particularly in big cities. According to the USPS tracking website, the router was ...