… Here’s the film I made for Darryl’s Hard Liquor & Porn Festival. This three-minute short contains adult themes and content, but no nudity.

Sorry!

Friends, I’ve some bad news. This web site is broken.

To the casual eye everything seems hunky-dory, I know. But deep within the bowels of MySQL-this and PHP-that, something has gone fatally awry. If you’re interested you can read my cry for help here—suffice to say, I’ve better things to do than troubleshoot lines of code!

A previous entry on the subject of free web stuff has got me thinking about moving my blog over to a free blog hosting site. There are lots of them out there, but hopefully you’ll agree that the two current heavyweights are Blogger and WordPress.

Blogger was the engine that brought blogging to the masses. Now that it’s been gobbled up by Google the new owners are working on a bunch of new features, like categories and posting via text message—features that I’ve had around here for quite some time.

This is what my site would look like on Blogger. You’ll notice that I was successfully able to integrate my badges from del.icio.us and Flickr, but I’m not wild about the template, and in my mind it’s the nicest one they’ve got.

WordPress.com is a free, hosted install of the very popular open-source engine available at WordPress.org. You can’t install the myriad of plug-ins or themes on the dot-com version, but you don’t risk wrecking your blog by doing so, either.

This is what my site will look like on WordPress.com—I say will because I’m a sucker for a good design, and WordPress’s implementation of my sidebar stuff is in my opinion much easier on the eyes. WordPress also gives me the option of a static start page, where I would put links to all my breadcrumbs spread so far and wide across the internet.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the stuff I’ve got here…

Want to know what it’s like to be (almost) a billionaire? Check out this video from YouTube founders Chad and Steve…

It’s nice to know that the reckless days of internet land grabs aren’t over just yet. And I’d like to remind the good folks at Google that every website has its price, including this one!

Thanks to the modern-day wonder that is Google Earth you too can join me on my trip to Shanghai, without even leaving your ‘puter!

Once you have the software installed, just click on the icon below:

If you’ve never used Google Earth before there are a couple of additional steps that may not be second nature to you:

1. Double-click the zipped folder that you’ve downloaded to your computer;
2. double-click the “.KMZ” icon that you’ll find inside;
3. after Google Earth starts up select the “places” list named “Toronto > Shanghai Hotel”;
4. hit the play button;
5. sit back and enjoy the ride!

I’m fairly confident that all the landmarks, including our mystery hotel, are accurate. One thing that isn’t is Google’s flight plan—I would have added an extra placeholder in Anchorage, Alaska for a more accurate overseas path, but our flight is non-stop, after all…

If don’t have Google Earth and are too timid to download and install it—and I know who you are!—here’s a list of old-school hyperlinks to the stops along the way:

1. Pearson International Airport Terminal One;
2. Shanghai Pudong International Airport;
3. Pudong Maglev Station;
4. Long Yang Station, where we’ll be transferring to Shanghai Metro Line #2;
5. Renmin Guang Chang (People’s Square) Station, where we’ll be hailing a cab to our hotel.

… As you may have guessed, this is as much a reference for me as it is for you.

No, it’s not a porn site!

In addition to my continuing duties at iLaugh.com I’ve been tapped by CoEd Communications to participate in the redesign of EcoVoyageurs.ca, the environmental impact site for kids that’s part of the middle school curriculum in many provinces across Canada.

It’s a noble endeavour that will hopefully keep me from reneging on my promise to be carbon neutral in my air travels this year…

Click on the image above or right here to see my latest guerilla video for iLaugh, shot with Al Howell over the long weekend at Queen’s Park in downtown Toronto.

If it gives you a larf please do your part by rating, sharing and cross-posting it!

It took literally all day for me to add a logo and render out the best quality video I possibly could, yet YouTube still makes it look like crap. There are other, much better video sharing sites out there, but none has the mindshare of YouTube. So the mob has spoken—here is the internet’s next superstar, courtesy of (blech) YouTube and (hooray) iLaugh.com…

Have yourself a look at this video of yesterday’s Apple Store opening at the Toronto Eaton Centre; at the end of it you may recognize the guy in the orange shirt.

Full story tomorrow!

Last night I wandered deep into the vast cesspool of humanity and bad design that is MySpace. While I was somewhat prepared for the teenage poseurs, lonely, middle-aged men and thinly-veiled pornography, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find Jon Lovitz or Pauly Shore!

In his profile Mr. Lovitz writes:

I figured I’d use this web site to talk to my fans directly. Let you know what’s going on with me. And thank you for your support all these years. THANK YOU!!!

… And follows up on the blog section of his site with some very thorough answers to questions about the industry from fans. Mr. Shore’s page on the other hand is, well… Just sad, but really more in keeping with the whole MySpace experience anyway, if you ask me.

Here’s yours truly using the Nintendo download station at his local EB Games to try out a demo of the new title “Brain Age”. The game was already a huge hit in Japan when I visited there in January and the English version was likewise sold out by the time I walked into the store.

This download station idea is a great trick to get you into your local games shop—all you do is bring along your DS and use its built-in wifi connection to download all kinds of free game demos and movies. Whatever you download is wiped after you power off, though, so you’ll likely keep coming back for more!