I came to Tokyo Japan in late 2008 and I'm very  excited to explore new opportunities here. Before that I was working as a Training Specialist for a human resources company in Dalian China, as well as doing some  freelance writing and web design in my spare time.

Here's a little bit more about what else I do:

Covering Japan on CNet Asia
http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/tokyo-shift
I write for CNet Asia, covering technology and the internet with a special focus on Japan. If you have a Japan-related website or gadget you'd like me to review or beta-test, or if you have other inquiries, please drop me a line. CNet.com, recently acquired by CBS Corporation, is the biggest technology news network in the world today.

Covering China on InventorSpot.com
http://inventorspot.com/writers/rick_martin
While I'm now living in Japan, I still have one eye firmly fixed on an ever-changing China next door. On InventorSpot I discuss new developments and innovations in Chinese technology. Inventorspot is one of the top 1000 most referenced blogs on the internet according to Technorati.com.

While in China I worked for Pasonatech as a Training Specialist catering to corporate clients, offering both in-class instruction and supplemental online training materials. As a trainer/educator, I especially enjoy applying new technologies to enhance learning. In the past I have built e-learning websites that implemented audio and video instructional content, user-generated knowledge bases, and wiki communities and forums.

In late 2008 I created 2JPN.com a website which gathers useful resources about Japan from all over the web and repackages it in an organized, categorized, and easy to browse manner. The site relies on two new and interesting technologies to collect this information: 1) RSS Feed Aggregation, and 2) Page Scraping. 2JPN credits and links to the original sources without exception.

DalianDalian.com is an English language city portal for Dalian, a city in Northeast China. Built on a Drupal CMS, the site includes restaurant listings and ratings (integrated with Google Maps), a blogging platform, classifieds, and news. Myself, Chris Amico, and Alex Bowman are the co-founders.

DS Ninja is a Nintendo DS game review site. It is a team blog with a revenue sharing system so that each writer is paid for the ads in their own post.

While in China I enrolled in Mandarin study, and passed the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test. Now that I'm in Tokyo, I'm trying to pick up Japanese as well.

During my university years, I worked part time as a mural artist to pay for tuition. Most of my paintings were large scale, and done on a contractual basis for various organizations. Samples can be viewed here.

• I'm the oldest of 4 sons.
• I have played and coached competitive chess.
• I grew up in a small fishing community of 150 people.
• I don't eat seafood. But I will make exceptions for raw tuna.
• I'm a snobby Mac user, and you should be too.
• I own a Pekinese dog named Pepe.
• I skip church religiously.
• I'm pretty much addicted to twitter.
• I'm beta testing Windows 7. On my Macbook.