Taking the redeye to Toronto wasn’t exactly fun.  After getting hassled for two and a half hours in Vancouver customs over whether I needed a work permit or wasn’t allowed into the country at all, they finally gave me a little wink, told me not to tell anyone and stamped my passport.  Thanks Canada.  Here I am telling everyone, too. It’s my small way of getting back. 

The trip was for a video interview with AMD.  What a trip!  AMD definitely made up for all the Canada airport crappiness.  Here’s the video if you want to check it out – linky! (I’m in the third featured video on that page).

Let me just say this: there’s some amazing, undercover ninja stuff happening in graphics right now.  There were all kinds of hints… when you see an AMD/ATI person get that silly uncontrollable grin on their face when you’re talking about photorealistic graphics, that’s when you know we’re on the brink of something miraculous in gaming.  I want to giggle with delight when I think about it.  Can you imagine?!  All the rendered environments and characters in Lord of the Rings in the same quality and beautifulness, but in a game where you can control the story!  If you think about it, almost everyone watches movies, but not everyone plays video games.  What if a video game looked as realistic as a movie?  The popularity of video games would explode!  The game industry would get lots and lots of money because everything is so popular, and we the gamers of the world would reap the benefits of better gaming experiences.  *sigh* I’m just so happy.

In the end, it was a surprisingly enjoyable trip.  I met some cool people, got a kickass graphics card, and basked in the thoughts of our future.