Reid Burke

  • California Day 0: Great Food, Weather, Hotel…

    Yesterday my mom and I started our vacation in California. The trip here was very long, taking several hours flying from St. Louis to Orange County and finally to San Jose. But after staying here for only 1 night, all of that was definitely worth it.

    Valencia Street View

    First of all, the weather difference is night and day. Coming from Southern Illinois where high humidity is the norm, the climate here is great. We are staying at Hotel Valencia Santana Row, an upscale hotel which is jaw-dropping beautiful. We had dinner a block away at The Counter where you are given a clipboard and pencil to literally build your own burger (which tastes amazing). This morning I ate breakfast at Citrus which was just as good as everything else here.

    The Counter: B.Y.O.B.

    So far, the only negative has been finding a place to park, but what can you expect in California?

    Today, I’ll be taking a tour of Yahoo! with some of my friends who work there and then hopefully go see some of the other area attractions.

  • Phantom Vibration Syndrome

    Ever get the feeling that your cell phone is vibrating, but it really wasn’t? Hello, Phantom Vibration Syndrome.

  • My Problem With Facebook Platform

    Facebook Overflowing Requests
    I’m getting tons of these junk requests every day. I wish Facebook would provide a mechanism to “ignore future invitations” so I wouldn’t have 5 new iLike invitations whenever I login. (Besides, I already use Last.fm.) Otherwise, my requests page is becoming just as bad as my MySpace.

    Other than annoyances such as this, Facebook’s Platform is a great concept. I hope that Facebook further refines their Platform to accommodate for situations like this.

  • Quickly Accessing Related Items in iTunes

    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 quotes) into a Terminal and restart iTunes. Enjoy!

    Thanks to John F. Whitehead for publishing this hack.

  • Hello MacBook

    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. An hour or so later, my user account, files, settings, desktop background… everything was back to normal.

    I also bought a DVI to Mini DVI adapter that works great with my external monitor. I now have 2 displays for my Mac… it has made me a lot more productive with everything. Definitely an improvement. Add the 3rd display from my Windows box, throw in Synergy and I have what could be the ultimate computer workstation.

    I take it to school a few times a week and carry it around all day. Although the MacBook was heavier than I thought it was initially, it really doesn’t feel very heavy in my backpack. This thing is very useful… it is so convenient to have everything with you all the time: being able to burn a DVD for someone on the spot, school files, music, movies, photos… all available instantly by waking the computer from sleep. It’s great.

    As far as usability, the keyboard is great, the key spacing isn’t as bad as I thought. The glossy display also is better than expected: the glare isn’t as bad as some pictures suggested. I have yet to run down the battery but I had 75% or so power remaining after spending an hour in Panera using WiFi last night. I typically keep it plugged in. The included power brick is worthy of praise all by itself: it’s square, with interchangeable “plugs” that allow for using a long cord or a flip-out plug for use on the go. Tangling up the wire never happens thanks to flip-out clips that you can wrap the cord around for easy storage in a bag.

    Finally, his thing looks gorgeous. I was initially concerned that the black case would not be as good as white, however, it is still distinctly Apple, gets attention, and after a week of use, is more durable that I expected. (Thanks to everyone at work who helped with the color choice!)

    So, these are some of my first impressions with my new notebook… and everything is good so far. I hope it stays that way!