Tuesday, July 31st, 2001: While I wait to hear if Electronic Arts will see me about their Assistant Producer's job (I'm not exactly holding my breath), I while away the quiet hours consulting Gamasutra, the best online resource for electronic entertainment that I know of...

And what of traditional showbiz fare? You mean, like Planet of the Apes, the movie with the two-dimensional characters (plus some apes) and plot points you can see approaching from the distance like a meteor in a clear night sky?

Feh! Crap like this makes me wish you could pay for films as you leave; that way I'd at least have some leverage for haggling the ticket price!

Sunday, July 29th, 2001: That hit counter o' mine is getting sooo close to twelve grand. What to do? Better milk this Tokyo thing for all it's worth...

When deciding on a hotel for my trip, I had to look no further than WIRED:

"Tekka Mecca: In the heart of Tokyo's Shibuya district - ground zero of Japan's dotcom boom - the latest hangout is the Excel Hotel Tokyu.

The West Tower of the 25-story glass-and-steel Shibuya Mark City complex houses NTT Electronics, game-software giant Konami, and incubator SunBridge Venture Habitat, run by former Oracle Japan head Allen Miner.

Just across a mezzanine-level bridge, the adjoining hotel artfully caters to the needs of entrepreneurs on the go, with each of the 120 rooms designated for business travelers boasting a 10-Mbps Net connection. If your laptop doesn't make it through customs, the front desk will loan you an NEC notebook. Pay phones scattered throughout the hotel feature IR ports that let you connect your handheld. Even the hotel's toilets are high tech: The seats are electrically warmed, and a timely spray of water offers users back end support. The hotel's rooms feature ultramodern furnishings set in a decor as simple as an ikebana flower arrangement - a calming respite from the traffic and neon mayhem outside. Two floors of the hotel are female-only, with beefed-up security, and all guests receive Japanese yukata robes for lounging.

When you're ready to power lunch, duck out to the nearby Kaikaya for Euro-Japanese fusion seafood in a lively atmosphere of capitalist decadence. It's a favorite haunt of dealmakers, where the drink of choice is a frosty Kirin lager: Building Japan's infobahn can work up a mighty thirst."

Yeah, whatever. I'll be at Wendy's... Kidding!

This snippet appeared in the magazine last August, so I'm sure that by now there's a newer, hipper place to stay. If you know where that is, send some info this way!

Saturday, July 28th, 2001: Gee, waddaya know? I'm not the first western slacker who's into video games and visiting Tokyo!

I didn't know it, but Justin Hall, author of one of very first personal homepages on the web (and a big influence on this one) is returning to the land of the rising sun for his second solo visit. The chronicle of his travels is here. Note that the itinerary for my trip doesn't include visits to any strip joints...

Friday, July 27th, 2001: What the hell am I doing?!

That's what you're gonna say when you read this: I'm about to book a week-long trip to Tokyo.

Now that my nerd-schooling is done I'm experiencing a serious bout of career schizophrenia: one moment I'm auditioning for the usual TV ads, and the next I'm uploading my resumé to the Electronic Arts recruitment site. In a moment of weakness I also attempted to apply for a content producer position at MSN, but fate intervened when the Microsoft site crashed my browser... Five times!

And did I mention that browser was Internet Explorer?

Clearly there is no lack of opportunities in new media; I just have to find one where I can put my life's work in comedy to good use. After all, I ain't abandoning the funny; I just want to aim it in a new direction. Given the glass ceiling of Canadian television -- after 80 episodes of Improv Heaven & Hell the CBC still doesn't know who I am -- and the short attention span I have only improvised comedy to thank for, do I have any other choice?

I'm hoping a visit to the motherland of video games will give me some perspective, or at least some interesting photos...

Saturday, July 21st, 2001: ... And I did!

Friday, July 20th, 2001: "Brave New World" my ass!

This was supposed to be my first Internet-enabled vacation since 1996, when I took my black and white PowerBook 190 to SIGGRAPH in New Orleans. This time I was taking my sexy iceBook to MacWorld Expo in New York City. Before leaving I signed up for an account with Inter.net, a world-wide consortium of ISPs that lets you dial in from multiple points in North America, UK, Europe and Japan. And did I mention it was cheap?

I should've known trouble was coming on the morning of my departure, when I couldn't get a proper feed from Steve Jobs' keynote webcast. It must be pretty embarassing for Apple to preen about how superior QuickTime is to RealPlayer and the like when they can't seem to stream any better themselves...

I decided to wait until after the fact to see what new must-haves Apple would unleash, and successfully got on the Internet from my brother's Manhattan apartment a few hours later. Big Woop. A new faceplate for the G4 and an update for OS X in September. I came to New York for this?!

It gets worse: I took a half-hour cab ride through ugly mid-afterrnoon traffic to the Javits Center, only to find the biggest crowds in AirPort-enabled wireless zones, a bunch of fat, bald guys checking their email on their Titanium PowerBooks.

Two days later, after I had apparently fried my brother's phone line with my own laptop, I was back at MacWorld, trying to configure my computer so that I could check my email in one of the AirPort-enabled wireless zones. Did I mention that I've recently shaved my head and put on a few pounds in the last couple of months?

I finally got connected, and in the dying moments of my battery wrote an earlier version of this update. Then my computer crashed. Now I'm back in my brother's apartment. His phone line is working but Inter.net isn't.

As God is my witness, I'll upload this entry before returning to Canada, or die trying!

Monday, July 16, 2001: It's good to be back!

This morning I woke up to a message from my agent, informing me that a whack of cash for a TV spot I did last year was waiting for me in his office. In the interest of karma, I spent the rest of the day preparing a video of my prototype launch, just for you :-)

Sunday, July 15th, 2001: Good news and bad news today...

First, the good: I've got some photos, fresh from my Film Centre prototype launch. We also taped some surveillance video of the lucky folks who tried the game. I'll upload it to my Treats page before Wednesday. Then I'm off to MacWorld Expo in NYC :-)

Now the bad: I'm taking my trusty iceBook with me, and as I come to rely on it more and more, I'm realizing that I've no other choice but to install Microsoft software on it. It's a sad day; part of this web publisher wants to conform to Internet standards, and Internet Explorer has 'em all. But the other part of me recognizes that Mac ports of M$ programs are shit, and IE is no exception. Maybe OSX will have some alternatives for me. I sure hope so :-(

Wednesday, July 11th, 2001: In a word... Wow!!!

Maybe it was just the free booze we were offering, but our prototype was a huge hit! We were packed to the rafters for a solid two hours last night, and didn't do our last showing until after 11PM. Unfortunately I didn't get to do any schmoozing or wine and cheesing; I was busy toiling behind the scenes. For all the folks I didn't get to network with, all the good ideas in our five-person project came from me ;-)

I'll try to upload some photos from the launch this weekend, after I get some downtime. As for today, I have to make one more goddamn trip up to the boonies to clean out my locker...

Monday, July 9th, 2001: Got nothing to do tomorrow night? If you're anywhere close to Toronto, why not crash The Canadian Film Centre's New Media Prototype Launch? You can see me get my nerd school diploma at 7PM and/or play the videogame I've been working on for five months at 7:30. Here's where it all goes down:

Friday, July 6th, 2001: It's crunch time at nerd school; that's my only excuse for the lack of updates.

Well, that and I'm on a tear to get myself a new cell phone. I tried out Fido's new Nokia Internet handset; its design is based on those cool phones from The Matrix, only the North American models don't get the spring-loaded, trigger-activated flip. Oh, and the phone is overpriced to the tune of about a hundred bucks. Oh, and you can sync up your contacts with a computer, but only one running Windows. Oh, and WAP is pretty much useless except for movie listings and directory assistance. Oh, and the damn thing is huge!

I clearly haven't learned my own lesson; check out this cell phone rant from 1998!

Thankfully, Fido, in their infinite wisdom, has allowed me to return this phone within thirty days, which I've done, and might also do with some other handsets I'm interested in. clearNET used to let their customers do this too, but I don't see any evidence of this on their new site. What's worse, now that they've been taken over by Telus, their handsets are only discounted with extended contracts, like Rogers/AT&T. Hopefully this won't mean that if you lose your phone, you'll have to pay the unsubsidized price to replace it. This is precisely what forever drove me away from Bell Mobility three years ago.