2010 – Page 5 – Nicolas Demers

Pride Movie Night

This event, part of Vancouver Pride Week, and taking place on July 29^th, featured two excellent—and locally-made!—documentaries.

she’s a boy i knew

This film by Gwen Haworth chronicles her transition from male to female over the course of several years. It uses her own narration, as well as interviews with her parents, sisters and ex-wife along with old photos and home movies of her family, to weave a brutally honest and moving story. She takes us through every step of her (complex, often frustrating) transition process and, without judging, lets her loved ones express their feelings and concerns, in their own words.

The movie’s message (at least, what I got from it) is that finding and accepting yourself is hard work, but definitely worth it in the end. It looks like Gwen is now closer to her parents and siblings than she had ever been as Steven. And her mother was there with her at the screening. How awesome is that?

Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride

I love this flag, no matter how many tchotchkes it’s been made into

These are the words of Ken Coolen, current President of the Vancouver Pride Society, in this documentary on Pride movements around the world: Vancouver (yay!), Toronto, New York, Sao Paulo, Warsaw and Moscow. It brings home the fact that while we’ve got it easy in Vancouver (and Toronto, and New York, and…) there are many parts of the world where waving a rainbow flag runs a real risk of getting you beat up, or worse. There are 70 countries where homosexuality is illegal, including a few carrying the death penalty.

Even when it doesn’t, things aren’t exactly rosy. Warsaw’s parade attracts a couple of thousand people (as of 2007), and at least that many police officers, to protect them from some really scary (nationalist/hard-right Catholic) protesters. Moscow has similar anti-gay forces, except that their parades are illegal. Mayor Lushkov has consistently denied Moscow Pride a parade permit, which forces them to sneak about and perform quick public actions (though with lots of media present). Things are changing, though. The police still does arrest marchers, but they’re not as rough and don’t detain arrestees as long. So that’s progress, and it’s thanks to a few score incredibly brave, incredibly stubborn individuals.

A couple of segments looked back on our history: Ken interviewed one participant of the Stonewall Riots, as well as Gilbert Baker (creator of the rainbow flag, and one of three Grand Marshalls in our 2008 parade). It’s easy to think that the old queer revolutionary spirit is gone, what with the relentless partying around Pride Week, the massive sponsorship and commercialisation. But no, it’s not gone: witness the hilarious (and unofficial) New York Drag March, witness InterPride, where Ken initially connected with many of the people we saw in this film; witness efforts in Vancouver events to put our rights and privileges in perspective, with (e.g.) posters on Vancouver/Canadian queer history at the Pride Picnic, as well as a map showing how queers are treated worldwide.

And it’s easy to think that these parades are pretty pointless, except as huge parties and billboards for corporations eager to court the queer dollar. But hey, there’s more to Pride than this. It’s about visibility, and empowerment, and connection. Ken argues that Pride marches/parades are not the end, but a step on the road to true equality and human rights. And that the rainbow flag—overexposed though it is, maybe—has meaning, beyond just a pretty pattern to put on your bath towel.

I’m not as cynical as I used to be, back when I stayed away from the parade altogether. But even when I went back to watch, and later participate, I think I was missing something, and now I know what it is: a sense of perspective. About where Vancouver Pride fits in the grand scheme of things, and how yours truly, with VGVA, fits in Vancouver Pride. Food for thought, definitely. And, a renewed belief in the value of the parade.

Nikolai Alekseev, founder of Moscow Pride, was one of the special guests at the screening, and will be one of this year’s parade Grand Marshalls. After the screening I plunked down $5 for a lovely Moscow Pride ’06 keychain (which they were selling to raise funds). It’s the least I can do; gawd knows it’s not like they’ve got corporate sponsors!

Celebration of Light 2010: Team Mexico

That was… different. I don’t think I’d call it a success, but Mexico’s show was definitely interesting. If I had to pick a word to summarise it, it’d be “refined”. The music (from what I could hear) tended towards the classical, with some very soft, very soothing stretches, especially towards the beginning.

That was probably a mistake, since the fireworks show during those soothing stretches was also extremely low-key. For a couple of minutes, we were treated to small sparkly golden arcs, rising in time to the music (I think)… and nothing else. One little girl sitting close by told her father, “They look like tears!”—which I didn’t really see, but I thought it was too good not to write down.

The big problem, I think, was that Mexico’s team designed the show around the music, with the fireworks only as accompaniment. But that leaves people without a radio out in the cold. The firework should stand on their own, and I don’t think these quite did. There were some good photo-worthy moments, but on the whole it didn’t gel. Sorry, Mexico.

Celebration of Light 2010: Team Spain

It’s fireworks time in Vancouver, with the Celebration of Light, taking place on July 21, 24, 28 and 31. I have already gone to the first two shows—Team USA and Team Spain, and will definitely see the rest. Hey, it’s great entertainment, and I live right by Sunset Beach, so why not?

The Team USA show on the 21^st was good but not great. Honestly, I’d half-expected them to do a long rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner and a red-white-blue theme, but they stuck to red and green, with Big Band and old-school rock music, which was all kinds of fun. Yet, it didn’t rise much above fun. Catchy? Entertaining? Definitely. But, it didn’t feel creative or inventive; it didn’t feel special.

I didn’t have my tripod with me on Wednesday because I’d come straight from volleyball to the beach. Saturday, though, I came prepared. That included getting there extra early, and staking out a spot by the Inukshuk. The crowds were already fierce, even a couple hours before sunset, but at least I had a good unobstructed view.

And my god, was it worth it! The Spanish fireworks were moving and captivating, telling half-understood stories in sound and light and overheard snatches of music. Beginning with sharp, shocking thunderclaps—guns, war, death—rousing music (I think I heard Flight of the Valkyries) interspersed with calm, soothing, Celtic-ish-sounding notes, gold light falling like rain—heavenly grace, peace, or death—all leading up to a deliriously over-the-top explosive finale, it drew me in as non-verbal art rarely does.

Later I found out the theme was “Hell and Heaven”, so I was kind of right. Great job, Pirotecna Igual!

Pride Picnic in the Park

Vancouver Pride Week kicked off Saturday with the Pride Picnic in the Park, a fun and casual all day event at Brockton Oval, near the eastern tip of Stanley Park. I was there with a small group from VGVA to set up a volleyball net for picnickers to enjoy. Last year we put it up way over at the south end of the park, and hardly anyone came over until the end of the afternoon. This time we were playing near the booths and beer garden, and you know that’s where the action is.

The picnic’s a very casual, family-friendly event. There were lots of parents (queer and otherwise) with their kids and/or doggies, hanging out and enjoying the day. But there’s lots to do besides getting some sun (or staying out of the sun)! The kiddies (and kids-at-heart) can enjoy a number of fun queer games, such as the high heel toss:

(Unfortunately I snapped this picture a tiny bit too early, getting only the windup.)

Then came the sack race:

And the drag race. The challenge here is not to race in drag, but to put on your outfit piece by piece (bra, dress, scarf, purse, wig and hat), then race back to the starting line. No cheating by wearing your dress around your shoulders like a cape!

Then the tug of war. The picture here is (I think) of the second round, with gay men against lesbians. One of the guys said they were going to, quote “beat some pussy.” Joke’s on him, because the lesbians won.

Lastly, melon eating is a good way to cap off a scorching hot day.

We took down the nets around 5:00; the picnic was winding down by then, almost all the remaining people were sitting in the (cool, shady) beer garden. I got home, showered and changed, and got ready for some fireworks…

The New Look

Well, that took a lot longer than I expected. But then these things usually do, right?

The design really only came together in the last couple of months. I remember at Northern Voice I was still struggling with placing a daily photo on the front page, with all the headaches that would entail. I still think it’s a cool idea, but I just couldn’t make it work. On the other hand, I’ve still got Sunset Beach and the West End in my header image. Right now it’s a static photo, but with a bit of thought I’m sure I could make it dynamic…

The other thing that pulled everything together was playing with Twenty Ten. As soon as 3.0 came out I dove right in and started building a new child theme. In hindsight Twenty Ten might not have been the best place to start, since a lot of my layout ideas came from a beautiful theme called Erudite.Though the documentation for Erudite mentions specifically that it’s for writers, I’ve found that it does pretty well for any content. (Hell, my inspiration, the lovely Life For Beginners, is very photo-heavy, and it works quite well.) I was attracted to Erudite’s clean and open layout, with minimal content in the sidebar, and had decided then that blogrolls, category archives, or what have you, could either go in the footer or just disappear.

Mind you, Twenty Ten is a great learning tool, so it certainly wasn’t wasted time. At WordCamp one of the speakers said you should try to develop your themes from scratch, because when adapting existing themes you may wind up with unknown design issues or unnecessary features. True enough (for example, I’m not using half of its widget areas): but I’d never gotten so deep into a theme before, and at least now I have first-hand experience of all these features I may or may not need.

What else? A lot of little things: threaded comments, gravatars, an honest-to-gosh contact form, courtesy of the excellent Contact Form 7 plugin. A redone blog archive page, inspired by that of Equivocality, and using the same plugin, Smart Archives.

Also, I decided to drop categories and go with tags. For a while I thought about using both, but every category scheme I came up with was either (a) so broad it became useless, or (b) so fine-grained it might as well be a tag cloud.

And finally, a portfolio! I’ve been talking about my volunteer web design projects for a while now, so why not show them off?

Movie Review: The Last Airbender

Against my better judgment I went to see The Last Airbender. Ohmygod, that was bad. I blame the heat wave and needing to spend an afternoon in an air-conditioned theatre. Plus, let’s be honest, a sick train-wreck curiosity. I just had to see if the movie was as bad as everybody said.

I loved the original TV show. It had a great story, well-developed characters, cool mythology, amazing visuals and exciting action. This movie… has none of that. The acting is sub-par, the martial arts and special effects are just about decent, the writing is awkward and painfully expository, the characters are boring and one-dimensional, with none of the zip and fun of the TV show. Shyamalan claims to be a fan, so I hear, but nothing about this movie tells me he really respects the source material. None of what made the show really come alive was translated to the big screen.

Part of the problem, I’ll admit, is that Shyamalan decided to condense all of season one into 1 hour and 45 minutes of movie. Fair enough, I guess, though it does mean dropping a lot of excellent characters and world-building, not to mention development of the characters that remain. The Kyoshi warriors? King Bumi? the “sexyfine” Haru? Jet? Jeong Jeong? Bato? The mechanist community? Master Pakku? Avatar Roku? Fucking Koh the Face Stealer? All gone, sorry. Gone also is the chemistry between Aang and Katara, gone is Katara’s growth into Team Mom and badass waterbending fighter, gone is Iroh’s sweetness and coolness, gone is most of the world’s mythology, the Avatar’s history and their relationship with the spirit world.

What’s left? The bare bones of the first season story arc: the premiere (Aang is found and captured, escapes, and head north with Sokka and Katara, pursued by Zuko and Zhao); a bit of The Southern Air Temple, where Aang deals with the loss of all his friends and his culture; a bit of Imprisoned, which begins a fairly irrelevant subplot of the Gaang fomenting rebellion in Earth Kingdom villages; most of The Blue Spirit, where Aang is captured by Zhao and broken out by Zuko; and the finale, where the Fire Nation attacks the Northern Water Tribe city (more about that later). In between all that we get told some of Aang and Zuko’s backstories, in flashbacks and amazingly awkward exposition.

What’s also left, of course, is the magical kung fu, but that mostly falls flat. The FX are competently done, and so are the martial arts (I guess; I’m not an expert), but together they just don’t work. The connection between physical movements and elemental effects are broken because for some reason, Benders need to do various moves for a few seconds (to “warm up” their ch’i, I guess) before anything happens. These moves are usually too quick and small to really look good on screen. The end result isn’t cool, it’s not pretty, it’s just really distracting. Maybe it was a mistake to translate an animated show to live action, or maybe a better director could have made it work, I don’t know.

Shyamalan’s failure as a writer is most obvious in the climactic battle between the Fire Nation and the Northern Water Tribe: almost all of the amazingly epic scenes in the series were either left out of the movie, or simply ruined. Not just done badly: done wrong. Zhao killing the Moon Spirit, Iroh unloading a can of whoop-ass, Yue’s sacrifice, Aang saving the day, Zhao’s death, every single one of them was a middle finger aimed at the fans. I honestly can’t understand how Shyamalan could think his changes are an improvement on the series. I’ll just highlight a couple:

In the TV series, Yue’s farewell scene was touching and wonderfully done. She becomes the new Moon Spirit, ascending to a higher plane of existence, and even has time for a final ethereal kiss with Sokka. In the movie she just… dies. Her life energy flows into the Koi fish, and her body stays floating in the pool. Lame.

In the TV series, Aang merges with the Ocean Spirit to lay some righteous smackdown on the Fire Nation fleet, in an awesome spectacle that combined stunning visuals, lovely music, and epic action. In the movie, Aang was never near the spirit pool. But that’s okay, I thought, he doesn’t need the Ocean Spirit. Yeah, he’s in the Avatar State now, that’s awesome! And summoning a tidal wave, like he almost did a couple of times before. He wasn’t ready then, but “water is the element of acceptance,” so let your emotions flow, and unleash all your rage and grief at the Fire Nation fleet!

…

… any minute now…

…

No? You’re just going to… hold it there? Oh, you’re waiting for the fleet to turn and run? Huh. Okay. I was hoping for some epic kickassery, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The movie ends with Aang accepting his destiny and the Firelord expositing about Sozin’s comet, thus setting up the rest of the trilogy. But with the horrible reviews this movie’s getting I’d be very surprised to see the sequel. Good thing, too. The last thing I want to see is Shyamalan fucking up Toph, Azula, Zuko’s change(s) of heart, and all the shadowy, creepy plots in Ba Sing Se.

Mind you, if he does make that movie, I have a feeling I might go see it. Because I am weak that way. Though if it’s any comfort, I promise I’ll feel really bad about it.

My Adventures With WordPress 3.0, Part 2: Featured Images

I’ve been playing around with the Twenty Ten theme, which incorporates a wonderful feature called Featured Images. Those have actually been around since 2.9 (where they were called “thumbnails”), but I’ve never gotten around to exploring them. Mark Jaquith explains all about thumbnails / featured images, but here’s the bottom line: FI’s are just like any other attachment, except a given post or page has at most one. Thus they can be used to visually represent that post in archives and search pages (as a thumbnail), or displayed in the post itself (full size), in any number of ways—inserted in the post body, for example, or maybe used as a custom header image like Twenty Ten does. I’m sure there are a million other options.

And all without mucking about with custom fields! All you need to enable this feature is to add three lines to your functions.php file:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
set_post_thumbnail_size( 50, 50, true ); 
add_image_size( 'single-post-thumbnail', 400, 9999 )

The second and third lines set the dimensions for the image either as a thumbnail, or in the single post. From doing a bit of experimenting, it looks like only the first two are required. As the name implies, add_image_size() registers different image sizes, to be used in different contexts: search pages, main page, what have you. set_post_thumbnail_size()‘s third, optional, argument (and add_image_size() fourth argument) determine whether or not the image is hard-cropped (by default, it is not). WordPress’s editor UI lets you determine the cropping for images that don’t fit the preset proportions, easy as pie.

Note that the switch in terminology from “thumbnail” to “featured image” only happened in the last few months, and is still ongoing even in the official documentation.

This is a wonderfully easy-to-use, yet very versatile, feature; I’m working on a project for which it’ll be absolutely perfect. Stay tuned…

What I learned from managing the COMP 1950 project

COMP 1950 — Intermediate Web Design & Development. I decided to take this course because, though I’ve been doing Web design for years, it was all self-taught, and I figured there were some gaps in my knowledge and methodology.

Most of the course wasn’t too challenging to me. XHTML? CSS? No problemo (though it was a useful refresher on some advanced CSS techniques I’d read about but never used, like attribute selectors). The class on development methodology was a good formalising of techniques I’d been trying to use on my own, and the jQuery class was quite useful.

I admit I got a little overconfident about the midterm, and flubbed a couple of questions I could have answered if I’d studied a little more. Or, y’know, at all.

Then came the final project: five of us doing a small site mockup and design. It wasn’t a terribly big job, but it would be a good exercise to apply everything we’d learned so far. I could have let someone else take the reins, but since I knew the most Web design of my team, I figured I was here to learn, so I focused on another one of my gaps: I volunteered to be the manager and spokesman.

What did I learn?

I learned not to micromanage. Several times I was tempted to take charge, tell my teammates How Things Should Be Done, but I heroically resisted. This was their project too, and they had to learn by doing. I helped them along by mentoring and advising, and keeping track of the big picture.
I learned I had to plan. Realistically, it wasn’t much of an option, because we only had a couple of weeks together as a team. We got the job done, sure, but it probably wasn’t that efficient.
I learned I had to get to know my teammates. Before we got together, I’d only spoken to two of them (my immediate neighbours). I knew the skills of one of them, and that’s it. In our one team meeting we divided up tasks pretty well, mostly by volunteering, so that turned out okay.
I learned I could do it. And that’s a big deal, because I’d never been in a leadership position before, and wasn’t sure I had it in me to do it. And sure, things didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but we finished the project on time, didn’t kill each other, and I got praise from some of my teammates for my managing. So hey, mission accomplished!

You Can’t Take The Sky From Me

Hey, who’d have thought I’d be back at the planetarium so soon?

This Saturday I went to Can’t Stop The Serenity, a fundraiser by the BC Browncoats to benefit Equality Now and the BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre.

Hey, who’d have thought I’d be back at the planetarium so soon?

This Saturday I went to Can’t Stop The Serenity, a fundraiser by the BC Browncoats to benefit Equality Now and the BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre. There was a silent auction, an evil laughs contest, and a whole lot of Whedon- and Firefly-related things to watch. Including a few costumes, though not as many as I expected. There was a fair number of Jayne hats, a group of three people (including at least one girl) dressed as cowboys (i.e.: Bad Horse’s chorus), and one woman dressed like a Vulcan in a blue TOS uniform. Huh. Didn’t see that coming. But I’ll say this for the Firefly/Serenity crowd, they’re pretty ecumenical. The auction items ranged all over the sci-fi spectrum, from an awesome foot-high plush Dalek to signed Stargate: Atlantis posters.

First up was Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I actually hadn’t watched it in its entirety in a long time, which is a shame because it’s a damn good story with damn good songs. (Usually I just watch “Brand New Day” because it’s catchy and evil Neil Patrick Harris is fucking sexy. Well, sexier.)

Browncoats: Redemption is a fan-made film set shortly after the events of Serenity, and starring the crew of yet another freelance transport. It’s got a neat plot, so-so acting, and crappy special effects, but hey, I’m not going to make a big deal about that.

We also watched Whedon’s acceptance speech, from when he received an award from Equality Now (“Honoring Men on the Front Line”) back in 2006. And… okay, I’m going to be contrary here, but this is what I think:

Whedon isn’t all that. There, I said it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s done some good TV. I love Buffy (well, mostly the first 3 seasons, though it only started sucking in seasons 6 and 7) and quite liked Angel though I kind of lost interest about halfway through. Firefly is hella fun, though there’s a lot more style than substance. And I fucking adore Dr. Horrible. (Never watched Dollhouse.)

But his Equality Now acceptance speech really got my dander up. The way he went on and on about creating strong female characters seemed incredibly smug and self-congratulatory. Buffy is strong, yes, in that she can beat up any living creature and most nonliving ones. But when you get right down to it I don’t see how that makes her really special, or even especially feminist. It certainly doesn’t make her revolutionary, because William Moulton Marston has Whedon beat by 50 years.

Not to mention that whatever character development Buffy had was absolutely demolished in the later seasons, what with her creepily abusive relationship with Spike, turning into a one-dimensional cold bitch to the Potential Slayers, Brother Caleb’s over-the-top (and not in a good way) misogyny, and here’s the kicker: discovering that Slayer power really came from primordial male wizards, who created the original Slayer in a weird act of magical borderline rape. Wow, way to crap on seven years’ worth of female-centered mythos there, Joss.

The only comparable characters (that I know of) in his other shows are the badass warrior Zoe, and—here’s a better match—River, who rather like Buffy is a small, harmless-looking girl that had her powers thrust upon her against her will (in this case, nasty medical experiments). Huh. Never saw that pattern before.

No, I don’t think Whedon was trying to make any kind of statement with Buffy, or any of his later characters. I think he just lucked into a character that (with great writing and a fine supporting cast) got picked up as a feminist icon. That said, I’ll give him props for:

Being a feminist man, and using his fame to campaign for women’s equality. It is a big deal, in real life as well as fiction.
Being brutally honest. In his speech, one of his many answers to “Why do you always write these strong women characters?” was “because it’s hot”. (Incidentally, Marston’s bondage fetish formed a big part of the early Wonder Woman mythos).
Writing at least one series with something close to gender parity. Of Firefly’s 9 main characters, 4 are women. Actually, since the two who died in Serenity were men, that brings us to a female majority. A nice variety of characters, too, from the hardened warrior to the sweet wrench-wielding nerd to the crazy psychic dancing timebomb, to the—oh, let’s be honest, Inara is 100% fetish fuel.

Well, enough contrariness. Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I really did have a great time Saturday, and I’ll be sure to go next year.

My Adventure With WordPress 3.0, Part 1: The Install

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. With that in mind, this is the first of a series of posts about me exploring Wordpress 3.0. I’m working on a new project involving a fresh 3.0 install, so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the install process.

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. With that in mind, this is the first of a series of posts about me exploring WordPress 3.0. I’m working on a new project involving a fresh 3.0 install, so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the install process.

For one, it’s dead easy. Granted, Dreamhost lets you the one-click install thing, which takes care of all the messy db details, but I still remember going through a few more screens when I initially installed WP (granted, that was a few years ago, so maybe I’m wrong).

One interesting aspect of the one-screen config process is that you get to choose your admin account name, a great security feature

Another interesting tidbit (very bottom of the initial config screen) is the option to block search engines. For the moment I am blocking them, because this site is obviously not ready for prime time. Site visibility is managed in the Settings > Privacy page.

Mind you, that setting’s not unique to 3.0, I’d just never noticed it before.

Next up: probably something about child themes, or custom post types. I’ll be working with both those features.