TCOBaG – kNow ThiNkIng AllOwEd

Last week we broke down and bought a Mac Book Pro.

After about 20 years of being a PC, hehheh, and having not bought nor used a Mac for the last several years, well, other than the ancient iMac taking up a corner of my desk in my home office and acting as a glorified jukebox, I bit the bullet and went (back) Mac.

The shopping experience was certainly something. The Apple store in downtown Nagoya has a great bunch of staff there. I was prepared to talk things out in Japanese, but was pleasantly surprised by the English abilities of the salesman I worked with.

I was also pleasantly surprised by his lack of pushiness which we see all too often in computer stores in the states. He was really helpful, and I felt quite honest about getting a machine to meet our needs.

I’m hoping to use it mostly for video and photo editing, and for doing some simple multi-track audio recording using Garage Band.

We also go the free with rebate, wireless printer, and an iPod Touch which would have been free with rebate had we not opted to go for the 32 GB version instead of the 8. I think it’s a great toy, and I’ve added some guitar apps and a math app that the boys are enjoying a lot. I didn’t get any wifi plan (don’t really need connectivity outside since I’m not outside that much really) and only use that with the wifi I have set up for my home and home office. That’s not bad though.

It is interesting to see some of my web sites on there though and see what that browser does to the layouts and designs.

Things I like:

Speed — everywhere, from bootup to opening/closing video files that are being edited, I’m really happy with that speed (2.88 mhz and 4GB of Ram)

Clean desktop – okay, it’s new, so that would/should be the case with most new machines, but also while you’re working there’s not a lot of clutter.

The boys love the iPhoto and playing with the built in effects on the video and photos. Ahn has been playing ‘on the scene reporter’ and taping videos of himself in front of the various backgrounds doing these mock ‘live reports’. Very funny, too. Some of them run for several minutes — I think his longest is in the 6 minutes plus range — but I don’t think any CNN reporters need to be  worried, yet

Things I’m getting used to:

All those new commands. After using a PC for so long, there are just so many things you take for granted, like copying folders or files to folders, opening new windows or new tabs.

Safari in general. Pretty much like Firefox as far as I can see, but haven’t surfed much with it.

The video editing software doesn’t seem to be as able to handle things like title pages or converting, but part of that is just me not knowing my way around everything yet.

Anyway, that’s where I am with it now. Hoping to get more time to play around with things during the upcoming Golden Week holiday here in Japan.

"Be Unreasonable" author, Paul Lemberg

My friend Paul Lemberg, author of the book “Be Unreasonable” (a very good read, with some really good information on getting more out of life, and your business — this coming from me, a guy who really doesn’t need to read about being unreasonable ) just told me he’s planning on taking a trip to Madrid for 3 weeks with his wife.

Paul travels a lot, and I’ve heard him speak about some of his experiences and it was very interesting and insightful.

He also told me that this time he’s going to be posting to a special blog about his travels as he goes along so we can follow along with him on the journey. Sounds like fun to me, and since Spain was the one place me and my wife didn’t visit when we were in Europe, I’m looking forward to hearing what he’s got to say about his travels there.

You can follow along at the blog located here:  www.lembergstravels.com

He’s also trying to plan a trip here to Japan early next year, so I’m hoping I’ll catch him there, and that he’ll be blogging about those travels as well.

A recent discussion on an email list I love (Paul Myers’ TalkBizNews) about how email marketers lie, trick, and cheat to get you to open their emails, made me pay extra attention to a recent post from a guy I trust a lot in the Public Relations field about similar tactics in PPC advertising. While some PPC services are very, very (read: sometimes wayyyyy too strict) some, as in this example, or way too lax.

Here’s an article by PR specialist Don Crowther on what not to do to win customers’ trust, and the sale. He gives a great example, well, _great negative_ example of a current ad running on Facebook.

Bottom line? Make your ad intriguing, but be honest, and upfront. The long run, what we’re all in it for, will see better results.

read more | digg story

Here’s a little silly song I wrote while messing around after some conversations about the sometimes misguided and misinformed try their hand at the social media site Twitter.com

Some people get it, some people don’t. Some people forget that what they’re ‘saying’ is being read, and saved to be read (or found by SE’s later!).

Twitter is something I do use, participate in/with, but I’m by no means a maven. I like to think I’m pretty much the kind of user Twitter wants and works best for: someone who wants to have real time conversations about topics of interest with a wide variety of people that I have a connection, in some way, with, and to share a thing or two I find interesting/helpful/useful.

Anyway, here’s the video:

Feel free to leave a comment here, or at YouTube if you prefer, or pass this along.

Here’s the lyrics just in case my Kentucky accent got in your way

Tweet, tweet, twiddly-diddly-deet 3X

Maybe you’ve tried your hand,
At the latest net phenom.
In 140 strokes or less,
Share your life at twitter.com.
As long as you keep it clean,
Write anything at hand,
But some folks need to realize
“Don’t say it just because you can!”

Chorus

I don’t care about
the kind of coffee in your cup.
And I don’t give a hoot about
where your dog threw up.
Don’t send me links to sites
to help my organ grow.
Share something interesting
I might really like to know.

Chorus

Be careful who you follow,
and who follows you.
And telling everyone everything
in your day you do.
Just heed these words carefully,
or it could be your loss;
That silly @work follower,
Just might be your boss!

Chorus

But if you really get it,
and you’re none of the above,
you’ve got a life, but still some time,
then sign yourself up.
And if you think I’ve got some things,
you might like to see,
Then take some time to look me up,
And click the link to “Follow Me”

Chorus

Yes, I ‘sampled’ from a little J5 for the ‘twiddly-diddly-deet’ And yes, it’s hard to keep saying that without tripping over your tongue, hehheh.

And, oh yeah, if you want to follow me on Twitter…

http://twitter.com/PowerMeUp

Today I had last class for several classes at Chukyo University.

It was another very interesting and fun semester.

Today in last period (4th) I took a couple of photos of the group just before everyone left and wanted to post them so the students could share them as well.

Here they are. If you’re in this group (my OC V-VI 4th period) then feel free to copy them from here.

Last Class, hurrah

The real last hurrah! Thanks, gang!

I have some larger file versions as well so if you need or want them, you can get them from here:

http://www.tcobag.com/images/Chukyo-OC-V-VI-2008-9.JPG

http://www.tcobag.com/images/Chukyo-OC-V-VI-2008-9-2.JPG

See you guys later.