Nick's Café Canadien

Meine Damen und Herren, Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies (and Gentlemen): for your enjoyment this morning, evening, noon or night, I am proud to present PianoBlog.

I do a number of things for the University of Alberta Debate Society over the course of the school year, one of which is the maintenance of the website to which I just linked. I put it together over the course of a few afternoons back in the summer of 2003, and the only real change I have made since was changing the typeface from the now thoroughly out-of-fashion Verdana to the slimmer, more scalable Lucida family.

Looking back at it now, there are a number of things I would do differently. In fact, when I have time, I want to give it a complete overhaul. I did that site after about two years of dormancy from the wild, wild world of web design, so it represents a kind of blend between old and new. By “old” I refer to the liberal use of <table> as a layout device in the old three-panel tradition; by “new” I mean that it was with this site that I swore off <font> tags for good and used CSS for all my formatting. As is the case with this weblog, I eventually want to redesign it with a pure-CSS layout and pretty it up with some glitzier, more flexible design elements.

Good debate society websites are hard to find – on the CUSID circuit, I see Carleton as the role model, which is no real surprise since it is by Wayne Chu, who runs Freethought.ca and served as CUSID’s Executive Director before I took on the job. (He also plays a mean trumpet – or did, anyway, back when we were both in the Sir Winston Churchill Symphonic Band under the direction of Judy Wishloff.)

The other big project I do for the Debate Society is a quarterly newsletter entitled The Times Tribune. I spent most of last night working on the latest one (split into two PDFs about a megabyte apiece, here and here), which features an, er, interesting comic strip on Page 2. I do all of the layouts in QuarkXPress, but its handling of image scaling is becoming an increasing source of irritation, as is evidenced in part by the girth of the resulting output files. Cost-related prohibitions notwithstanding, I would ideally get a hold of something like Adobe InDesign, just for the smoother integration with other Adobe tools.

The first UADS meeting of the 2004-2005 season was earlier tonight, and I was one of the participants in the annual demonstration round, arguing in favour of negotiating with terrorists. There was some serious head-eating going on, only part of which was alleviated by a reference to Star Wars. No more will be said of this.

On a Gateway-related note, yesterday’s issue featured a Letter to the Editor from Gary Wicentowich, whose turn it apparently was to deliver the ritual explanation of why it is the Engineering end of campus sees so much in the way of development, facilities and cash. This is one of those issues that pops up in the Letters page rather frequently, probably because the complainants never read the responses. I’m beginning to think the Engineering Students’ Society should just prefer a standard draft statement on the subject, they’ve had to explain it so many times.

I do, however, wonder about a slightly tangential remark on Gary’s part:

Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to give Mr Sobchak a good old-fashioned sack beating, because believe it or not, very few engineers are “huge nerds.” Continuing to perpetuate the idea that people who are good at math and science are nerds is not only outdated and unjustified, it’s also rather offensive.

To which my immediate reaction was: really? I wasn’t aware that this commonly-propagated sterotype was either a) inaccurate or b) derogatory. More than any period in contemporary cultural history, now is the time that wearing the geek subculture on the sleeve is becoming a chic thing to do. Are the films of The Lord of the Rings not enough of a flagpole? Be proud of being absorbed in the high romances of intellect, I say.

Of course, take this here online writer’s word with a grain of salt; he’s not exactly speaking of this as an outside observer.

A number of major newsmagazines routinely have an inset with plusses, green arrows pointing up or some other graphic connoting positivity interspersed with minuses, red arrows pointing down or what have you. They place them next to the names and organizations that have done something worthy of recognition of late – or at the other end of the spectrum, shot themselves in the foot.

If I were to make value judgments of such generality on this here column, my biggest green arrow this week would go to one Angela Thomas, last year’s Engineering Students’ Society President. This year she is the Editor-In-Chief of the ESS publication The Bridge, which has returned to a broadsheet format for the first time since I arrived at this institution. I finally picked up a copy of the September issue earlier today, and by and large, it is praiseworthy in many respects.

The quality of the layout is the paper’s most immediately striking feature. While the type design is in itself nothing special, it comes off as clean and professional without being overly tight or roomy; in a word, legible. None of the photography is out of place. The attention-grabbing headlines contrast well with the wall of text on every page. That’s the other thing: The Bridge is packed with content. Part of it is the absence of advertisements with the exception of the events and services that fall under the ESS, such as the tutorials that are affectionately known in the faculty as the Carmen & Markus seminars.

The section headings are easily my favourite design element in the whole works. In keeping with the Engineering theme it is styled like a measurement that stretches across the page from one margin to another, where the caption box in the middle has the ESS insignia in the background and a tidy small-caps section heading taking centre stage.

Content-wise, there is a piece on Page 2 that deserves a mention. Every paper on campus has tried to tackle the Universal Bus Pass issue in one way or another, but leave it up to the upstart Engineering student publication to get it right thanks to an exclusive contribution from Chris Jones of Points of Information, who is an alumnus of the faculty.

The comics and crossword on Page 7 are all syndicated from the Web, but my, what a crossword. This comes from a whole set of technical crosswords at RF Cafe – and Mr. Christie, these are tough cookies. Even industry professionals are in for a puzzle that will rack their brains for acronyms galore.

Page 8 is a very effective use of the back page, with a visual calendar of events in the bottom half and an alphabetized one on top. There is a blurb there on Talk Like A Pirate Day, today’s excuse to link to a Language Log post. (I should start a fan club, honestly.)

I do have a few gripes about this issue of The Bridge, and most of them will rightly come off as nitpicky. On the first page, Will Helary offers “Seven Steps to a Better Degree” and writes as one of his subheadings, “Don’t *just* meet other engineers.” I’m not sure why an asterisk was used there for emphasis when making it a bold-oblique would have done perfectly well, as it reeks of “chatspeak” and is a bit of a distraction on the printed page.

Line-spacing is consistent on the cover page but not so much on Page 2, where Jessica Mueller’s “Students Deserve More Than Half-Ply” is a little cramped while the Jones article above it has more room to move than it needs. The paragraph indentation is also a tad inconsistent between the two. I also see two mistakenly doubled Is on the page; one is the acknowledgment of one “Mustafa Hiirji” for his design assistance, and the other is more ironic: “Thiink this issue sucked?” reads the volunteer call.

Additionally, writing in all caps for emphasis is unacceptable in a print publication. Please avoid that from now on. The only person who gets away with doing that is J.K. Rowling, and even then I do consider it one of the blemishes in her otherwise commendable writing style.

But as I said, these are all minor qualms – mistakes, as it were – that are entirely avoidable in future issues. The Bridge has made a strong debut, and I wish it the best of luck as the year progresses.

Now, for that other student paper.

I checked the DemocracyNow website today and was pleased to see that there is indeed a functional site there, as opposed to the “Coming soon” that greeted any visitors who might have accessed it after seeing the address in their Clubs Fair pamphlet. What I was looking for was the answer to this question: what’s up with The Independent, anyway?

Right now, an assessment is tricky. I still see a whole lot of ambition and not a lot to show for it. I also see one change of plans after another. After reporting just last week that their brochure spoke of The Independent as an online publication, their About page calls it “a new and refreshing University of Alberta weekly student newspaper.” This really belongs in the future tense, as their plans according to this page are to publish once every three weeks in 2004-2005. I’m still waiting for the first one.

Hacks take note: they are aiming for a dedicated fee referendum.

I know I pick on The Independent a lot in this column, not out of prejudice so much as frustration that they have so many bullet points about what an inspiring and necessary forum for discourse their publication is, and hardly anything to prove it. I like to think of this as constructive. A few words of advice: Fix your logo. Fix your typography. Fix your grammar. Solicit contributors not named Rob Anderson. Stop getting ahead of yourself when it comes to marketing how big, important and objective you supposedly are. End this shroud of anonymity and attach some names to yourself so you can make yourself accountable, which is supposedly something you value in the political process. You are not The Economist, so stop pretending to be.

The first issue of the revitalized Bridge was a pleasure to read. As for the first issue of The Independent… let’s just say I’ll begrudgingly give them a second chance, and leave it at that.

This is the Main Street Electrical Parade.

This is the rain on that parade.

This whole thing reminds me of the old hackneyed quote, “You can’t fire me, I quit.” The benefit to all is that in two years, Michael Eisner will be out of Disney’s top seat. Unfortunately, it will be on his terms. Now, I for one could care less about Disney’s hotel business, their handling of ABC or opening Disneylands all over this planet and a few others to come, but what I am interested in is the effect this will have on what defines the Magic Kingdom at its core, feature animation.

By the time Eisner is gone, two or three of WDFA’s first all-CG features will be out of the pipeline, and if they turn out well, he may be riding his way out of his tenure on a wave of success. But the last thing these films need is more micromanagement and mismarketing, and if Eisner plans to step up his involvement in his last two years at the company, this could be a problem. The CG projects are already a double-edged sword by themselves, because as much as one would like these films to bust the blocks, it could very well justify the death knell of traditional animation at the Mouse House in the eyes of the suits.

Interestingly, 2006 is when Pixar’s first movie outside of their Disney contract, Ratatouille, is targeted for release – and it has yet to find a distributor. A distribution deal with Disney may well be possible, and Eisner’s successor – be it his hand-picked recommendation Robert Iger or not – will be off to a rocking start.

For now, let’s sit back and see what Roy and Stanley are going to do about all this.

It’s cool enough that Japan’s getting an anime series based on Capcom’s incredibly stylish video game Viewtiful Joe, which I have praised on many an occasion as the best side-scrolling fighting game since the golden age of Mega Man. But word is that after the 52-episode Japanese run that begins in October, there will be an English release bound for Europe and the United States, though there is as yet no word on whether or not Canadian networks will pick it up.

I have never been much of an anime fan myself aside from “The Origin of O-Ren” and the occasional Miyazaki, but I’ve seen the tremendous potential for such a project since I saw the anime Viewtiful Joe commercials that promoted the first game. While most video games, perhaps all of them, are butchered in the transition to television – anyone remember the atrocious Legend of Zelda episodes every Friday in the Super Mario Bros. Super Show starring Captain Lou Albano? – bringing VJ to television could work out a whole lot better. The entire game is already a tribute to manga art and popular film in general; and as I already mentioned, the existing commercials are a testament to the kind of quality we could expect.

On another note related to stylishness in the video game industry, check out this new glamour photo of the Nintendo DS, easily the best picture of it released so far. It tweaks the last design overhaul and resolves the one reservation I had about the colour contrast, since the plasticky black is now closer to the charcoal grey that took the PC industry by storm a few years ago. (This was possibly not a design change at all, but just something revealed by a higher-resolution photograph done under better lighting.) Also note how the DS logo is now emblazoned just beneath the touchscreen.

For those of you wondering about what in the blazes happened to the headline above my piece in today’s Gateway, it has been corrected for the online version. So that’s what it was supposed to read; I had my bets placed on “By-elections are exposé of Council’s weaknesses” with an omitted accent and “of”. Guess I was wrong.

You see, Kratos is the token mysterious mercenary fighter with dark brown anime-hair and a purple get-up who follows you around in Tales of Symphonia.

Here is an interesting subtlety sighted today on a student group pamphlet at the U of A Clubs Fair, courtesy of DemocracyNow, formerly known as Students For A Stronger Alberta:

DemocracyNow is a non-partisan organization that fulfills its mission objectives by… Sponsoring the creation and operation of a University of Alberta online student newspaper called The Independent. This newspaper will be devoted to the unbiased repoting and evaluation of national, provincial, municipal, and campus issues from a student perspective.

So it looks like The Independent will be returning after all, but not in the manner that was expected. Mind you, the transition to an online format does not come as a total surprise given their rumoured financial constraints. Indeed, it looks as though its print run will only total one issue. Now instead of being poised to compete with The Gateway, which it never really did given the significant difference of intent between the two publications, it seeks to go head-to-head with Points of Information.

SFASA’s rebranding is an interesting move in itself. The copy on the DemocracyNow pamphlet is almost identical to the now-defunct SFASA website, so the group clearly has the appearance of maintaining a very Albertan focus. It will be interesting to see if this is a sign of them branching out.

As for The Gateway, it has yet to post the already-released first issue of this academic year on the website. This is a pity, since one would be hard-pressed to comment on Chris Samuel’s piece on the Bobby Fischer trial without the ability to link to that specific article.

As anybody who has experienced the marvel and joy of Almost Famous would know, the song in question is Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”. This is also the song that Josh Groban played and sang as an encore at his concert at Rexall Place last night. He is a remarkable vocalist, and his reputation – not to mention his legion of fans – is well deserved.

Curiously enough, my first introduction to Josh Groban was not through my mother, who has been to six of his concerts (four of them in the past week), something I have no right to make fun of in any case given what I do for every new Star Wars film. Back in 2001, apparently long before he became all the rage, he sang a duet with Lara Fabian (“For Always”) on the theme of John Williams’ score to one of the most underrated movies in recent years, A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Williams’ compositions for that movie are, I find, the best work he has done in perhaps the past decade, with odd exceptions like “Across The Stars” from Attack of the Clones. The jovial return to his jazzier roots in Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal are in a category of their own, and he was certainly in top form with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but A.I.‘s haunting piano melodies remind one of the similarly acronymic E.T. in its more sombre moments.

The Fabian/Groban duet at the end of the movie was itself only heard by few, most of them movie soundtrack buffs such as myself, and surprisingly many Groban fans have not wound the clock back and discovered it. I prefer it to “Remember” from Troy, but primarily for compositional reasons.

Yesterday’s event was not even the first time I’d seen Groban live – he had previously been featured in one of Sarah Brightman‘s tours, which I caught when it passed through Calgary. (That was, however, the first time I had seen the former Mrs. Lloyd Webber perform, being too young to have seen her in her signature role as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera.)

Since then, his rise as a solo artist has been astronomical enough that many a major publication has covered it more extensively than I will on this humble web page. For our purposes here, let us be satisfied with describing last night’s concert as a display of incredible vocal talent. You really do need to see Josh Groban live to get a sense of how powerful his voice is, as his recordings do not impress on quite the same level.

There was also that bit at the end where he put on the Oilers jersey, but being a Calgarian – albeit one who respects the Gretzky dynasty – I remained strictly indifferent.