Life is all about the choices we make. Some good…and sadly some not so good.

In the past I haven’t always made the right decisions. But who has? All in all, I’m pretty happy with where I am at this point in my life. But what’s next?

I haven’t posted to my blog in quite some time because frankly I didn’t really know what to share in this public forum. Actually there aren’t many people stopping by because I haven’t really brought much of value. My site was geared toward telling everyone about my successes as an online marketer. Not much to share there, because there hasn’t been much success.

I say that with some hesitation.

Success is relative.

I’ve found a great product that I really enjoy and have shared it with others who love it as well, but therein lies part of the problem. Being a successful marketer means making money. That has been the all elusive carrot I continued to chase.

Once again I’ve found that the few, who recruit the many, are the only ones making any real money. That doesn’t take away from the quality of a product, or a company, it simply means that as with many other things in life, a small percentage benefit from the effort of the masses.

But I digress. The purpose of this post is to discuss my new direction with my site. Exactly who is Tony Logue and what can I bring to the world in the way of value.

That’s a question I have been pondering for the past several months.

To be a mentor or a teacher one simply has to know a little more than the student, and be able to share that information in a way that the student is able to grasp.

Truly gifted and effective teachers have a few things in common, and go far beyond that.

First they are passionate about their subject. They can’t wait to share it with you. They can go on and on for hours, and when they talk you see a glimmer in their eye and hear a lilt in their voice.

Secondly, they have a depth of knowledge. You get the feeling that when they share something with you it is simply the tip of the iceberg. They talk fast, because they don’t want to miss anything, and they can’t wait to squeeze it all in.

And finally, they are able to instill in you a true desire to learn. They light the fire in you, and you begin to feel their fire.

So I began thinking,  what am I passionate about?

For many years it was music. I made my living for over 15 years as a professional musician. The part I loved the most about being a musician was entertaining. I love to be the center of attention. Obviously that’s not possible on the internet. Or is it?

If you carve out a niche, and develop an audience that can’t wait to hear what you’ll say next, then you truly can become the center of attention to your large or small group.

So again, what am I passionate about.

Let’s list some of them.

Travel

My wife and I simply love to travel. We really are gypsies at heart. Luckily our current job allows us to travel 9 or 10 months out of the year and get paid while doing it. How cool is that?

Computers

I realize I’m not alone here. I often feel I’m really knowledgeable about computers until I get around someone who really is. But I’m often in a position where I come in contact with friends and co-workers, and I realize that I know more than the average person. And I can literally spend hours at a computer and never flinch.

My newest love of computers is in the iPhone. My wife couldn’t understand what the big deal was until I gave her my old one when I upgraded to the 3G s. Now she has iPhone fever.

Photography

I haven’t been deeply involved with picture taking for a number of years, but 20 years or so ago the wife and I developed our own film and printed our own black & white photos for several years. We were absolutely immersed in picture taking. I then switched to video for a number of years, but I’ve now come full circle and recently bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D40. The passion is back.

So how does this all tie together? What does it mean for you if you’re one of the 2 or 3 people who are reading this?

Simply this. Let me introduce myself. Hi, I’m Tony Logue…Travel Photographer.

Last year I was in 25 states. This year I will be in close to 20. When I travel I spend 8 weeks in each location. Not as many places, but I really get to know the local attractions.

So if you’re planning a vacation or a visit, or maybe live in the area I’m working, I can assure you I’m turning up stuff and going places that will interest a lot of people.

So we’ve got travel covered.

Now computers. Well, I can’t discuss this without talking about photography. What I realize is most people aren’t interested in all the latest plug-ins for Photoshop, or what they can do with Lightroom, or Elements. They just want to know how to make a simple DVD to show their pictures to everyone, or get them uploaded to the web or their Facebook page.

Or maybe create a simple blog on blogspot, or a host of other things.

That’s my new direction.

As I take photos and work with them, and as I travel to new and interesting places, that’s what I’ll be sharing here, and on our travel blog, RobinTony.com. Here the nuts and bolts of computers and photography and the travel stuff on our travel blog, which by the way is a free blogspot, simply using a redirect url. Don’t know what that means? It’s okay, we’ll cover that soon.

And what do I hope to gain from all this? A new audience that I can entertain as I did with my music. Meet some new friends along the way, and share some of my knowledge and passion.

So let’s have some fun together….take care….Tony

Well, the past couple of days have been pretty trying on my tech savvy.

I decided to upgrade to the new 3.0 software on my iPhone because I learned an app I was using, Twittelator, was no longer working. After tweeting with @twittelator and learning I needed to upgrade I took the plunge.

That was at about 11:30 am yesterday.

First of all make sure that your iTunes version is 8.2. Then follow the steps as you normally would to upgrade to 3.0.

Hopefully, it will go smooth as silk and you will upgrade easily. But if you’re like countless others about half way through the process you’ll get a screen on your iPhone telling you to connect to iTunes, AND that your iPhone is now in Recovery mode.

That’s when the panic sets in. After 5 hours of scanning the internet and nothing working, I shut down and decided to try again today. Up to that point nothing that I found online worked.

This morning was a new day, and I began with high hopes. I had downloaded a piece of software yesterday (won’t mention it because it didn’t work) but it did have some comments from Apple on how to set the iPhone in DFU mode. Not sure what that means, but here is what I did that finally worked.

Full Hardware DFU (required for downgrades):
Note that using a cable instead of the dock may make it easier to press
buttons in the following steps without losing the connection.

1) Start iTunes and plug the phone in.
2) With the phone powered on, hold both the POWER and HOME buttons for
seven seconds. The screen should turn black.
3) Wait two seconds while the screen is black and release the POWER button
while still holding the HOME button.
4) The screen will remain black, but after a few more seconds iTunes will
detect the phone in recovery mode.
5) Release the HOME button and proceed to restore firmware with iTunes.

Timing is fairly important on this.  If your phone reboots or ends up in
recovery mode, just try again.  You might want to look at a clock that shows
seconds while you do this.  The timing needs to be exact for it to work.

Now, in my own experience timing was not a huge factor. Simply hold down the power button (on top) and the home button (lower front) and when the screen goes black wait a couple of counts and let up. iTunes will then find your iPhone and finish the install.

Some problems that occured after the install completed.

1) All phone contacts disappeared. I don’t know where the contact synch was taking place before, but in version 3.0 it must be different. So make sure you have this info saved. Version 3.0 gives you the chance to sync with your gmail contacts so this may be a good place to start.

2) It took a while to get the apps, pictures, and music, etc. reloaded. It almost treats your phone as a brand new setup.

So, in summary, be prepared to spend a few hours to make this happen. If you like many others find yourself staring at the Recovery Screen asking you to connect to iTunes, I hope this helps.

Holy cow!

I just got an email from blip.tv saying my “tonysdrink” account had been suspended.

Here’s part of the email.

I’m sorry, but we’ve removed your account from blip.tv because it looked to us like you were posting videos to our service that had as a primary purpose the advertisement of a particular product or service. Blip is a site for original Web shows and our Terms of Service prohibit content that’s primarily advertisement.

We’re wrong about this sometimes. If you believe that your content truly has value to the blip.tv community (other than in getting them to buy something from you) please reply to this e-mail and tell us why. A real human being will review your e-mail and we’ll figure out from there.

You’ve got to be kidding me. I can think of dozens of accounts right off the top of my head on blip that the only videos they have are talking about theirproducts or their companies and then they link them to there blogs or capture pages.

What a joke. Just glad I began moving my videos over to YouTube. Mainly because YouTube videos also play on iPhone, but now it was obvious that it was a goodmove anyway.

Of course, what can you say about a free service. They hold all the cards. I do have a backup plan however. All my videos are stored on my drives and I am able to convert to flash and stream them off my server, so if they think that’s stopping me….forget it.

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