Category: how to

  • How to get rid of iTunes ugly new blue icon

    The most recent versions of Apple’s overstuffed iTunes app made an almost universally hated change by switching to a boring, blue icon. I was among the masses who wanted to figure out a way to switch the iTunes icon to something better. It’s not as easy as it used to be to swap icons. There…

  • Not so simple way to grab screenshots on the Nexus S

    As I’ve noted a few times, unlike the iPhone, there is no simple way to grab and save a screenshot on the Nexus S phone, or on any Android phone that hasn’t been rooted. There is a complex work-around, however, that delivers beautiful screenshots. Credit to this post from Androidcentral for getting me started. To…

  • How to use Twitter to promote your blog: go narrow

    In the beginning, the old-school media man is stuck to his ways. But over time, he evolves. When I first started blogging, I blogged about anything of interest to me — sports, books, gadgets, the weather, whatever. Eventually, I realized that was no way to build an online audience. I am not a personality of…

  • Assembling a network storage server from spare bits

    I have a pile of old hard drives sitting in an attic closet gathering dust — but out of the hands of identity thieves, not polluting the water supply and generally staying out of trouble. So when I saw a diskless version of the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ super-cheap, I decided to buy it and conduct…

  • How to exclude some pages from your WordPress header menu

    I am planning to change my header image to something more fall-like and as I started mucking around with some image files in various dimensions, I got tired of tweaking the various settings and php files of the SubtleFlux theme. So I decided to investigate alternatives. Just on a lark, I clicked on the new…

  • Using a new HDMI Mac Mini with my TV: Early days

    This will be the first in a continuing series of posts about using a brand new Mac Mini with an HDMI port (purchased in June 2010) connected to a high-definition television. To read all of our adventures jumping through hoops, losing remotes and forgetting the password to bypass parental controls, see this page with all…

  • Best way to sync Mac and Google contacts? There isn’t one

    It’s kind of a disaster when your two most critical IT vendors won’t play nice. And it’s happening right now to me with Apple and Google feuding over iPhone apps. Google had an iPhone app for managing its fabulous Google Voice service but Apple nixed it (or didn’t approve it, or whatever). Now I have…

  • Apple makes deleting a Boot Camp partition super easy

    A couple of years back, when I upgraded the hard drive on my then-new Macbook Pro, I used Apple’s incredible Boot Camp software to install Windows Vista. Using Boot Camp, you’re not just simulating running Windows under Mac OS X — you can actually boot up into “pure” Windows on your Apple hardware. The only…

  • Interviewing myself and learning about CSS styles

    I’m not sure exactly how or why I got so obsessed with the hyper-cool interviews on the web site Waferbaby but I did. It just seems like the height of hip to offer a few quips about yourself and your online persona followed by a detailed treatise on what gear and software you use. For…

  • Reading Infinite Jest on the Kindle versus dead tree pulp

    When I was a younger man sans spouse and kids, I had more time for the more diverting pursuits, pursuits like reading post-post-modern, 1,000-page novels written by genius authors who loved footnotes. Exhibit A: Infinite Jest by the late David Foster Wallace. You can see the beast pictured here to the left. Ah, but those…