I'm going to present to 60+ Windows Media Center developer type folks near the Microsoft offices in Shinjuku. It's the Mix06 presentation on steroids done in 10 sessions over 2 days. I don't speak any Japanese, plus I'll have a mix of jet lag + time difference (Tokyo is 8 hours behind Redmond, but a day ahead due to the international date line -- yeah, it's confusing to me as well). Luckily, the Japanese folks are very gracious.

My first trip to Japan involved fugu. My second trip involved basashi (raw horse) along with a lot of other sushi, including whale and many, many items which I didn't recognize by name or sight. I had some of the best Kobe beef ever last time as well (I'm a huge fan, and it balanced out the basashi quite nicely). This is my third trip, and I'm willing to bet my hosts will want to take me towards even more exotic foodstuffs. I'm willing to try anything -- once. :-)

So, what am I taking to keep me company on the 10+ hour flight...?

Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC with movies from a legit download provider. I'm a first time user of this particular service so I'm anxious to see how well it works and the quality of the content. I've temporarily restored it to Windows XP so I can test out the solution (which doesn't yet work on Windows Vista). It's also the backup PowerPoint machine in case the next item starts to balk at all the beta software. As soon as I get back, it gets yet another recent build of Windows Vista.

HP Pavilion zd8000 running Windows Vista Beta 2 (5384). This puppy is the 17" widescreen model so it sucks a ton of juice -- not sure if the airplane system can handle the pull -- if not, its battery will be short lived. Still, should be able to crank out a few more MCML samples -- I just got one to work tonight where a 720p WMVHD was twirling and spinning all around -- with nary a glitch, no matter how fast the keyframes! This is the main demo machine, the same one which worked so well at Mix06.

Creative Zen Micro -- I've tried a couple of times to get it to sync with Urge to no avail, and that's got me just a tad bummed. There were a couple of new albums I wanted to check out. Still, it's got plenty of content on there to not listen to anything twice over or back. I can play with Urge a bit more when I return.

Sony Playstation Portable -- David Fleischman (Dude. Blog. Now.) now has me hooked on Syphon Filter. Plus, I've copied some recorded TV (the PSP has a GORGEOUS 16:9 screen -- just perfect for downsampled high definition DVR-MS). Oh, the Portable Media Center is staying here with the fam while I travel -- they won't let me take all of the toys these days.

Seagate 100 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive -- Primarily for backup, this really small, USB powered drive has (almost) become my favorite peripheral -- Once the HP battery gives up the ghost I can keep coding on the Tablet without missing much of a beat.

Well, it's now around 6:00 PM today (weird) in Tokyo. I've spent the last couple of days attempting to acclimate to the local time so I'm not sucking wind so much during the presentations. This blog post was my last attempt to keep sleep staved off -- but now I'm pretty finished, so off to bed before the afternoon flight tomorrow.