From PC to Mac and Greece Videos

People have been e-mailing me asking me of anything is wrong because it has been so long since I have written anything in this blog section of my site. They assume I am still getting over the death of my friend Dorian in November and the death of my friend Ed Leight exactly a month later, and while those were both major events and life changing experiences for those of us who were friends and family, I have had another life shattering event that I am embarrassed to say has derailed me even more than the death of my best friends. I bought a Mac.

For those who just do the most basic things with their computer, answer e-mail, go to Facebook.... (am I leaving anything out?)... going from a PC to a Mac is like going from driving a Ford Taurus to a Honda Accord. It's the same thing. You still open the door, turn the key and drive. But if you have been using a PC for over 20 years and have learned to do a large number of things on it then it is like going from the guitar to the violin. They are both made of wood, have strings and make music but there the similarity ends. If you are feeling comfortable with your life and the way you do things, then there is nothing that will shake things up more and let you see what an unstable world you have created for yourself than to switch from PC to Mac. I have learned more about myself and my abilities and the fact that these are dwarfed by my inabilities in the last few weeks, than I have in the last year. Learning the Mac is forcing me to change, and there is a lot of me that does not want to change and fights back. How many times have I said forget it and closed the Mac, thinking this task is impossible to learn, and then found my mind wrestling with the problem when the computer was not even within throwing distance, and then gone back and figured it out? You know how they say some guys never want to ask directions or read instructions? I am one of those guys. I figure it is an adventure to drive around in circles looking for something rather than to stop and ask someone where it is. When I find it I have a feeling of pride and I have also found several other things on my circuitous journey towards truth. But trying to learn the Mac  I have discovered that you get the same feeling when you type the keywords to a problem you are having into google and you find someone who had the same problem, posted it to a bulletin board and there below it is the solution.

To be honest with you, right now I am on my PC because I have not gotten to the point where I will transfer all my Greece sites to the Mac because unfortunately, the web design program I use, which is called Namo Web, is not available for Mac. For that reason I had a backup plan and put something called Parallels Desktop 5 which enables you to run Windows along side of the Mac operating system which works reasonably well. But really I want to learn to do web design within the Mac operating system so I am downloading and trying trial versions of other web design programs until I find something that gets me somewhere close to my comfort zone which seems further and further away. Answering e-mails, which is what I seem to do most of anyway is still pretty much the same. I use Thunderbird and their Mac version seems somewhat familiar, only smaller. But to learn the other stuff, for example using iphoto and photoshop instead of ACDsee, I have taken the site I made for Paris (www.aparisguide.com) which has sort of been an embarrassment because I have so much material that I have yet to add to it, and loaded it onto the Mac so I can re-learn how to create and edit a website, while building one rather than messing up my Greece sites which people actually use. Maybe in the end I will say to hell with it, PC is better and my Mac will become the world's most expensive itunes player or I will keep it in the kitchen to look up recipes on google. But I have come to the realization that it has been a long time since I tried to learn something totally new and yes it is hard and can be frustrating. I like to take big leaps, not baby steps, but when you leap you miss a lot of important things that help your learning become easier in the future. Going from PC to Mac can force you to change your personality which for some people can be said to be just a collection of bad habits that I call 'me'. It's back to school.

So as you can see my whole world is upside down. But there is more to tell you and probably you will find this a lot more interesting. Andy Emery of Outsider Entertainment has put together a series of HD videos on several hotels and places in Greece, a cruise, and a short video on Fantasy Travel which I love. There is also a one minute version of my song 'All My Friends from Greece' that we may put on TV somewhere to promote Greece, since the Greek National Tourist Organization has been downsized and tends to create really boring, pretentious ads that show you nothing. So go to www.youtube.com/user/GreeceTravel  and check out the hotels and stuff. You can double click and see them in full-screen HD. I assume these videos are the best you will find on the web about Greece. Become a member and leave your comments and if you know anything about advertising on TV and how to do it cheaply and effectively please let me know. I would love to see that video on TV. If you are trying to choose a hotel these videos will help.

Well, back to the Mac.