I think I am fully recovered from what little jet lag I had. I only became very sleepy at 4:30PM yesterday so I went to the grocery store to shop and to hopefully avoid the inevitable nap. Today I am feeling good, up since 6:30 piddling around the house. Right now the requisite transfer of MiniDV tapes to the computer is in full swing. I expect I should have, at best 2 videos of the Debate Tour up tonight, at worst, one.

Meanwhile I have put all of my photos up on webshots. Most of them are of food, but I think there are some pretty good shots in there. When I have a few minutes I try to tag and sort them, but that’s going to take some time to completely finish.

I also have some smaller video clips I am putting up on YouTube and Facebook from my digital HD camera, which works well for small clips of experiences rather than longer films such as debates. The MiniDV is pretty unsurpassed for capturing full debates. My Flip Camera has completely died, even after sending to the manufacturer, it still fails to work. I have given up on it but might be inspired to mail it off to them again this week.

Well in other news, I have been thinking about WUDC and the crazy registration process. It was easy for me as I was in Tokyo, with high bandwidth and it was 3 in the afternoon.

WUDC registration ended in 90 seconds! This was totally not suprising, but does point out some of the problems with a first come first serve system. I don’t know why they don’t just give a rotating number of slots to people. So round one, everyone gets 1 team 1 judge. Round 2 opens, and you get the same if you want, but only if you are in the first round. Round 3, the same, and after that take an assessment of representation and give the remaining slots to those waitlisted. Voila! A fair tournament registration system.

It’s just going to get worse as the popularity of Worlds continues to increase. Imagine what it will be like in 5 more years as the midwestern U.S. schools start to become involved. I know from my recent trip that Worlds style parliamentary debate is gaining steam in Japan as well. What happens when the U.S. and China are fully engaged in wanting to attend Worlds? I don’t think a venue could be found to host 500 teams, so there will just have to be concessions made in the registration process. It just might not be possible to allow traditionally strong Worlds universities to admit 5 teams anymore. But this is good if one supports diversity of participants. I think this debate will be interesting to track if it comes up at Council or on the internet.