items from the mind of an idiot savant

not fit for print

Here’s a special treat. Not only was I asked this question, but I needed to do it for myself too.

Hey Rick, how do I update my credit card and billing info for the iTunes music store?

That’s not a difficult operation, but an important one. Launch iTunes, and click on the green Music Store playlist from list or Sources on the left. This should load up the iTunes Music Store home page. [You don't necessarily need to be on the home page. You can do this from any page inside the iTunes music store.]

Click on the Account button in the top right hand corner. Shown here. It should have your email address instead of mine.

At the login prompt, enter you iTunes Music Store Password.

You’ll be taken to your account page. Click on the Edit Credit Card button.

Enter your updated credit card info on the next page, and submit.

That’s it, your done.

I get asked a lot of tech questions. I don’t always have the answer, but I can figure it out, AND FAST! I’ve been meaning to start a section called “Ask Rick” for the questions I get. So here is the first one. [In retrospect, I think the iPod email I posted way back might have been the first one.]

Hey Rick, in Mac OS X, How do I take a screen grab of only the window I’m on?

You should know by now that Command+Shift+3 takes a screen grab of the entire display.
Command+Shift+4 lets you select a portion of the screen to grab. You just draw a rectangle with the selector.
If you do a Command+Shift+4, but hit the spacebar before you make a selection, the mouse pointer will turn into a camera icon that you can select a window and take a screen grab of just that window. It’s really useful since the resulting picture is only of the window you select, even if there are other windows covering portions of the window you want.

Here are some samples.
Command+Shift+3
Command+Shift+4 (a selection)
Command+Shift+4 (a window)

DAMN I’M SLOW TO BLOG.

Some dude walked into an apple store with his iPod, hooked the iPod up to one of those new iMacs with the built in iSight camera, and copied the Photo Booth application that comes with it.

WAIT WAIT, it gets better!

He posted the application on his web site, and then posts the link to digg.com. Less than 24 hours later, the file is all over bittorrent. And a day later the link is removed from digg.

WAIT WAIT, it gets even better!

So I have the program now. And now my dream of have a bed-head blog can come true. See!
I’m all Emo and shit.

On the tech side of it all, the file weighs in at just over 2MB. I noticed that there is no mention of the app being an iMac exclusive. I also saw that someone else noticed the support docs for Photo Booth state that it woks with any external DV source like an old external iSight, or video camera. I expect that Photo Booth will be available as a free download in the near future.

Oh, a few days later. I found a hacked copy of Front Row on bittorent. It’s useable, but flakey. I should go to a store and test it the real official copy is as flakey as the hacked one.

LOOK PAL! I’ve been busy. I’ve been too busy to blog. I’ve got a lot of shit going on in my life and in my head. I’m sorry if blogging doesn’t take priority over life. After all I have to have something to blog about.

I caught this headline the other day. A new home for NetNewsWire. I’m clearly not an avid blogger, so my relationship with MarsEdit was not a deeply rooted one. In fact I’ve been meaning to try another blogging app. ecto! It’s a bit different, and clearly much better. It has a few bugs/lack of features that I’m willing to live with for right now, but they make it for Mac and Windows. I’m switching! I think I’m going to purchase a license or two this week. Also, I’m actually looking forward to see how NetNewsWire evolves because of this. I doubt they will fuck it up too much. They’ll obviously make a bad decision or two along the way. The important question is can they learn from their mistakes.

Oh yeah, I finally posted the conclusion to my PowerBook fiasco story. It’s been sitting in my drafts folder for about 5 months. Like I said I was busy. And I’m not going to make some bullshit promises that I’ll blog everyday, or more often, or whatever. You get what you get. And you’re not paying for it, so get over it!

That wild and crazy guy of a coworker of mine posts: One Word….