Nicolas Demers – Page 26 – Web, photos and assorted geekery

Night Lights

A few photos I took last night, as a friend and I went out on the town:

I wanted to see Maison du Québec, especially since I heard some Cirque du Soleil acrobats were there the night before. Nothing much was happening when we got there (6:00 — 7:00) so we wandered around Ontario House and Hockey House and a couple of other houses, swung by Robson Square, watched some foreign dancers for a bit and listened to the screams of people going by on the zipline above.

Off to Sunset Beach to check out the lights (I meant to go back with a tripod. My camera dealt with low lights very well, but the pics were still a little blurry). I tried to experiment with taking different exposures of the Burrard Bridge to play with HDR photography, but all photos ended up more or less the same. Damn. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong. Oh well, it’ll still be there tomorrow.

Then cutting right across downtown again to check out the Olympic Cauldron. Which I’ve never seen at night. Bowing to popular pressure, the powers that be did cut a little band in the surrounding fence at about eye height, so people could at least stick their cameras in and take proper pictures. I don’t know, I understand about security and safety, but surely there were better alternatives than some dreary chain-link fence?

I don’t remember if it was near Robson Square or the Art Gallery that we saw this little structure that smelled of delicious cedar. Mmm. Was that Haida Gwaii House? I’ll have to go back and check.

Next on the list: Granville Island attractions. Maritime House and Place de la Francophonie, anyone?

The Olympic Opening Ceremony

It was not a nice day. The weather was cool and overcast, predicted to rain in the evening. Which it did, but that didn’t stop me from going down to David Lam Park in Yaletown to watch the opening ceremony. My jacket had a hood and was waterproof, but I could have used a layer or two more. At the end I was starving, shivering, and my legs and neck were killing me.

It was totally worth it. The ceremony was beautiful and stirring, a wonderful showcase of our country’s culture and diversity that, dammit, made you proud to be Canadian!

But it was totally worth it. The ceremony was beautiful and stirring, a wonderful showcase of our country’s culture and diversity that, dammit, made you proud to be Canadian!

The bad: the embarrassing mechanical hiccup at the end, cheating Catriona Le May Doan out of her part in lighting the cauldron. Boy, someone’s head is gonna roll over that.

And Nikki Yanofsky’s rendition of O Canada was incredibly annoying. She’s a great singer, but the anthem doesn’t need all those frills, which messed up everybody who tried to sing along. Though I appreciated that she switched between French and English.

(Come to think of it, the whole ceremony was very bilingual, with all announcements and introductions done in French first, but the countries were introduced in alphabetical order according to their English names. Usually that doesn’t matter, but then you’ve got Netherlands vs. Pays-Bas, or Uzbekistan vs. Ouzbékistan.)

The meh: Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams’ duet. The song was alright, I guess, but I’m not a fan of those two. Also leaving me cold was Measha Brueggergosman’s rendition of the Olympic Hymn. Sorry, she’s got some incredible pipes, but I couldn’t understand a word she was singing. I could tell some parts were in English and others in French, but that’s about it. I’m not even sure she wasn’t sneaking other languages in there.

The awesome: pretty much everything else, really. The First Nations greeting and dance was stunning, Ashley MacIsaac kicked so much ass, and k.d. lang blew me away. Not to mention the outstanding visual effects, with the whales, and the breaking ice, and the trees, and the audience participation, and the… everything.

So hey, I finally caught the Olympic spirit!

Blue!

No, not me. I’m still between jobs, still looking, but I’m not letting it get me down. I’m keeping my brain active, playing around with cool Web technologies like jQuery and Flex. It’s fun.

In addition to learning new tools, I’m building my portfolio.

No, not me. I’m still between jobs, still looking, but I’m not letting it get me down. I’m keeping my brain active, playing around with cool Web technologies like jQuery and Flex. It’s fun.

In addition to learning new tools, I’m building my portfolio. This is something I wouldn’t have considered a year ago, but recently I’ve been working on a few interesting websites. Of course, you already know about VGVA.com. All it needs now is routine maintenance and content update, with the occasional new theme. I’ve got a few ideas for improvements, but for now it looks nice and it works.

Also finished earlier this month, a project I hadn’t mentioned before: http://loucrockett.com. This is the portfolio of a friend of mine, originally done all in Flash. Problem was, the code was old and failing in most modern browsers; since I didn’t know Flash and the original developer was unavailable, I decided to re-implement it in PHP. The functionality’s just the same, minus some pretty eye candy, plus a couple of little extra features. I bet there are lots of other tricks I could do to make it even prettier, once I get the hang of jQuery.

Which is not gratuitous or useless. I’m just showing off my skills, is all.

Third: Team Vancouver. I’ve been working on this site quite a bit in the last few weeks; the design’s not done yet, but we’re well on our way. I tell you, there’s no feeling like looking at a half-finished design and suddenly seeing how it’ll all come together in the end. Instead of the blah green design, I took my inspiration from the new Team Vancouver uniforms and put together a kicky blue palette with sharp lime green accents, that has zing and pizazz and all sorts of “z” words. Add a revision of the site structure and content, a reshuffling of the layouts, and we’ll have ourselves a site that’s fun, fresh and eminently usable.

So that’s what I’m up to lately. Once I get all that out of the way, I’ll have time to really get cracking on redesigning this blog.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010

And a new decade… ish? No, I think that’ll only start in 2011. Still, it’s a rollover. It feels like a new decade. And a pretty interesting year.

The revelers have hit the street
With pots and pans, their throats complete-
ly knackered from another ringin’ in
Let another new year begin!
—Spirit of the West, “Another Happy New Year”

And a new decade… ish? No, I think that technically only starts in 2011. Still, it’s a rollover. It feels like a new decade. And a pretty interesting year.

In 2009 I celebrated the one-year anniversary of working with WebTech Wireless (September 15). That was a big deal. My two previous jobs, with ABSU and Waterstreet, lasted 11 and 8 months respectively. And then in November I was laid off. That’s okay, though. Well, it kind of sucks, but I’ve gotten some really excellent experience with WebTech, which I’m sure will open all sorts of doors for me. Plus, I think I have a better idea of what I want to do with my career. Stay tuned.
In 2009 I went back to school. Not for a degree, but for a BCIT Java class, in the Spring semester. It was a good experience, and I ended up with a 92% grade. Go me! I would have followed it up with more courses, but the one I wanted to take wasn’t available in the fall, and then the whole layoff thing happened.
In 2009 I stretched my graphics design muscles, creating three new themes for the VGVA Web site (Easter, Fall, and a new Christmas one). More are on the way
In 2009 I stretched my Web design muscles, working on a couple of other projects, in addition to hacking away at the Team Vancouver site (redesign still not finished as of this writing) and my own blog (ditto).
In 2009 I read a lot. I’d resolved to read one novel of “serious” fiction a month… and didn’t make the quota. Still, here’s my list for the year:
- Karen Tulchinsky’s The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
- Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City
- Antonine Maillet’s Les Cordes-de-bois (technically a reread, but I hadn’t touched it since high school so it counts)
- Mark Danielewksi’s House of Leaves
- Michel Tremblay’s La grosse femme d’à côté est enceinte (just started over the holidays but I’m including it here because… well, that list is a bit on the short side)
- Plus assorted fantasy by Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book), Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals, Nation), 3/4 of the Mortal Engines series, The Night Land, and a really awesome Star Trek: TNG novel entitled Dark Mirror, where the Enterprise is trapped in the mirror universe and has to deal with their evil doubles, which I found in a box in my parents’ house. Took that one home with me!
In 2009 I made some cool new friends. You know who you are

And what does 2010 hold for me? I don’t know, but I think it’ll be fun to find out. Being laid off should get me down, but I’m actually kind of excited about all these new possibilities. While I’m looking for work, there are technologies I never learned but would be extremely useful for a Web developer. Flash is top of the list. I’ll figure out the rest as I go along.

Oh, and how about finishing Team Vancouver and NPDemers.net? Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. ASAFP.

Purple Mountain Majesties

Sometimes things have a way of working out. Not for the “best” (this isn’t Candide, after all) but for the pretty good.

My flight home from Ottawa was supposed to take place Sunday night, connecting in Calgary. Nothing too special, I’d done it before. Except, what with the Christmas Day terrorist attempt, all airlines were in complete and utter chaos. I was warned that my flight to Calgary would be 2 hours late, so I could (a) stay in Ottawa and fly in the morning, or (b) … hey, there’s another flight going through Toronto, leaving right now.

That’s when the fun began. Long story short, my original flight was canceled, I was put on another flight (also to Toronto) which left a little later. Not a problem, I should still make it in plenty of time. Except I ended up leaving Ottawa over three hours late. Everybody on board missed their connecting flight, and had to be put up in a hotel.

I reached the Westin Bristol Place at about 11:30PM, one of over a hundred cranky fliers. Over two hours later, I was checked into my really quite awesome room. Too bad I had to get up in three hours to catch my rescheduled flight.

And that’s where you could say things worked out. Because my flight from Toronto was pretty smooth. Checkin was easy, security seemed a little more alert but not that paranoid. It even left on time! How about that! Even better: apparently to avoid the jet stream, our plane took a southerly route, heading straight across the Great Lakes as far as South Dakota, then angling up more or less in a straight line to Vancouver. That meant I got to see some scenery I’d never seen before, except in photos and that gay cowboy movie. Too bad there was too much cloud cover for most of the flight except over Montana and part of South Dakota.

Enjoy the rest!

What I Used To Write

Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find!

Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find! The treasure trove includes:

Some printouts of my finished short stories, written around 1994, plus 2/3 of the final version of my first novel (finished 1992). Plus the maps that went with the novel. Can’t have a cool fantasy novel without maps, dontchaknow.
Notes and drafts for two more short stories, which I finished but don’t have the final versions of anymore; reams of notes on poems and various half-finished projects; all written 1994–1995
A dream journal I kept up for a few months in ’94. A self-hypnosis journal around the same time
Drafts of my Web site (first online in September 1995). Including notes of me learning HTML, and printouts of some of the pages.
Notes about my evolving spirituality—not beliefs, because at that time I was sliding into agnosticism, but playing around with symbols, rituals and made-up mythology.
Various odds and ends: a couple pages of quotes I really liked; episode guides to Star Trek: TNG and Space: 1999 for some reason; notes on an unsent letter to Phil Farrand, with feedback on nits he missed and criticism of his occasional heterosexist attitude; a map for an AD&D campaign I briefly DM’d sometime in the mid-80’s. The overall plotline, IIRC, was “inspired” (by which I mean, “ripped off”) from Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné and Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; maps and world-building notes for another AD&D campaign, a couple of years later, that I never got to play in.

I’m throwing most of it away. The story notes, the poetry? Gone. The dream and self-hypnosis journals? Outta here. The novel? Recycled (no, I don’t have a soft copy). The Web site drafts? Like you really need to ask.

Let’s be honest here, aside from the very temporary nostalgia value, I’ve got no reason to reread any of this stuff. It’s coming at me from long ago and far away, and is pretty well irrelevant. There’s nothing useful this motley assortment of words can give me. I haven’t written fiction or poetry in over ten years, and have no particular desire to pick it up again. I haven’t played D&D since the early ’90’s, and likewise don’t miss it. And if the journal isn’t helping me remember any of these dreams from 15 years ago, what good is it?

And, with all due respect to my younger self: my prose and poetry was mostly crap. I mean, there’s a reason why I never tried to publish any of it, with one exception. The novel was mediocre clichéd sword-and-sorcery fantasy, the shorts were a little better but mostly written for myself as creativity exercises, and the poems… okay, some of them weren’t bad. I put a few up on my site for a while, back in the day. But still, nothing to write home about, and I took them down when I began blogging more regularly.

The self-hypnosis stuff… yeah. I was trying so hard to deal with my many issues, and figure out where my life was going, but I didn’t really know how to go about it. I was so used to living inside my own head anyway, so this seemed like a good idea. In hindsight, it proved mostly just a lot of mental masturbation. I say “mostly” because I did get a couple of useful insights and actions out of it. I guess it was a bit like cognitive therapy, except without a trained professional.

The spirituality stuff was more interesting, but even then (late ’95–early ’96) pretty much on the decline. I’d gone through my my kinda-Pagan phase and was sliding into agnosticism, then atheism. None of these made-up rituals and things were ever that useful—see “mental masturbation” above—and I eventually dropped them by late ’97 (after I started identifying as atheist, but that’s a whole ‘nother story).

Still…

Still, in a more or less direct way, it’s all got me to where I am now. That first site evolved over many iterations, leading to this here blog, plus giving me the skills and confidence to branch out in the last year. Those fantasy stories got me used to putting words on paper or computer screen, which led to articles in student papers, and eventually this blog.

Doesn’t mean I need to spend much time navel-gazing, fun though it could be. It’s a brand new day, a brand new year, and I need to look forward, not backward. I’ll just take a few select pieces that have real sentimental value, and move on.

Game Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum

I’d heard the hype about this game, and eventually got to play the first few chapters at a friend’s place. I was so hooked that I decided to rent a disc and console so I could play it for myself. Everything about it is excellent, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. Everything.

That was absolutely awesome.

For one, the voice acting is first-rate: Batman, Joker and Harley Quinn are played by the same excellent actors as in the 90’s Batman animated series (oh, how I missed Mark Hamill’s demented giggles, and Arleen Sorkin cooing “Pudd’n”!). The other voices—Bane, Scarecrow, Riddler, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Commissioner Gordon, Oracle—are also all great. Hell, even the generic batarang-fodder henchmen sell their lines pretty well.

The visuals are beautifully done, from the brooding asylum grounds, to the oppressive Victorian architecture, to the crumbling sewers, and every environment is full of little details that add to the gloomy Gothic atmosphere. Batman’s hi-tech armor and toys looked very nice too.

The game controls are quite complex, and there’s no tutorial as such. That’s okay, though: the game introduces elements gradually enough—moving, looking around, fighting, etc…—that before you know it you’ll be tossing out Twin Batarangs with the best of them. All you have to do is remember which button does what. As for the upgrade system, it’s pretty cool, but I didn’t find that it gave you a lot of room to customise: in the end you’ll have pretty much all available skills, it’s just a question of which to get first. (hint: “Inverted Takedown” is the shiznit.)

Replay value? I’ve only gone through the game one and a half times so I can’t say for sure, but I could probably play it a couple more times, if only to see what the “Hard” difficulty level is all about. Also, I could try out some of the more advanced fighting techniques, and see how much of the bonus material I could get my hands on. On my one complete playthrough I only discovered about half the trophies and unlockable extras, including just under half of Arkham’s Chronicles.

Which brings me to the story. On the surface, it’s pretty simple: Joker and Harley Quinn have taken control of the asylum, and Batman must save staff and other innocents, all the while figuring out the Clown Prince of Crime’s true intentions. It’s an engaging story, bringing together many characters from the Batman universe. The writers’ love for the mythos is evident in the little details, like the iconic clatter of pearls when Batman, hallucinating on Scarecrow’s fear gas, is forced to relive his parents’ murder. And Harley Quinn telling a captive Jim Gordon, “Mama spank!”. Plus, nods to sillier villains like Scarface and Calendar Man.

But there’s more. A lot of the extra world building was clearly inspired by the graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean in 1989. It’s the kind of deliciously trippy mind-fuck only Morrison can deliver, delving deep into Lewis Carroll, Jung, Crowleyian magic and other esoteric themes, yet (at least to me) never crossing the line into random pseudo-profound mystical babble. In this story, Batman is presented as hardly more sane than the Joker and other inmates, and Arkham as a cursed house, fed and made strong by the constant flow of violently insane souls.

The “chronicles” hidden throughout the game are each short chapters in the journal of Amadeus Arkham, founder of the Asylum. From what I’ve seen (ie: the first half) it’s not too different from the original Morrison story—toned down, because this is an action-adventure game, and players don’t want to spend too much time hearing about Crowley and the Tarot and whatnot—but still pretty darn creepy and disturbing. And though they only show up in Scarecrow-induced hallucinations, the game does drop a few nice hints that Batman has, shall we say, issues.

I wish I’d found all of Arkham’s chronicles, though, because I want to see how this version of the story ends. Forget defeating the Joker, I want to know about the Asylum’s history!

So, to recap: fantastic game. It’s fun, challenging, full of atmosphere and details that show deep love for the Batman mythos. Definitely a keeper. And hey, they’re making a sequel!

We are the champions!

Well, when I say “we,” I don’t include me personally. My team ended up second-to-last place in the seeding, and then were eliminated right away on the second day.

Still, I had a great time at the Queen Vicki tournament this weekend. I hadn’t participated in a NAGVA tournament in ages! In fact, before Spring Bling earlier this year, I don’t think I’d been in any volleyball tournament in five years. Well, gotta make up for lost time.

And in my last entry, I mentioned that was intimidated about reffing. Fortunately, that turned out pretty well in the end. I reffed two matches and was going to ref a third, but the teams requested a more experienced ref. I didn’t take it personally, and in fact was quite relieved. It’s a lot of pressure, especially with the couple of really competitive bitches I had to deal with. I’m pretty familiar with the rules, but I was visibly nervous, and they could smell blood.

That’s okay, though. Confidence will come with experience. And the Head Official gave me a passing grade, which means I’m now certified to up-ref in any NAGVA tournament for the next two years.

That Last Step’s a Doozy

“Do one thing that scares you every day,” the bumper sticker says. In that case, I think I’ve saved up enough terror for the next couple of months. Because this weekend, some friends and I went to Whistler for zip-lining. Sound familiar? Yes. But this was a brand new tour, way more intense, with longer and steeper lines. Plus a really hot guide, though that wasn’t advertised.

The ziplining was hella fun, though my fear of heights really kicked up. I mean, yes, I kind of expected it, being a hundred feet up and all, but I’ve already been through this! Shouldn’t I have become desensitized to gliding through the air, just a little? Hmph. Well, the first line wasn’t bad. I went through it with nary a flutter in my stomach. The second and third, though? Flying over Fitzsimmons Creek? Not so easy.

The fourth was hardest, because I could see exactly how long it was, and how far down to the ground. Hell, the station was above the tops of some of the trees, and the next one was waay down in the valley (about 2000 feet away and 20 storeys down, so the guides said)! So, just like four years ago, I had to force myself forward until gravity took over.

The stations on this trek had four or five steps, down which you walked until your harness picked you up. On the fourth station I inched down those steps, taking advantage of every distraction, using my camera as a shield against the terrifying heights. Hey, that’s some lovely scenery! (it really was, too) *click* Oh, look, lichen! How interesting, I must take a picture this second!

I made it down—and across—eventually, but it was a hell of a chore. The last line wasn’t so hard, though I chickened out of trying to zip upside down.

Well, that’s okay. There’s always next time. I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, because after all it’s been four years since I did anything like this. And I wonder if maybe my fear of heights has gotten worse since my little ATV accident. I think I was a little twitchier than normal on my flight back East—not the parts where I took awesome pictures of the Prairies and lakes and whatnot, but the parts where we landed in Toronto and Ottawa amidst bad weather and a little turbulence. And I was very twitchy on the flight to Victoria a couple weeks ago, though that could have just been a healthy survival instinct. It’s hard to be objective about your own phobias, am I right?

But here’s the thing about fears: you have to face them. So what I’m doing now is studying for the NAGVA referee certification exam. Queen Vicki is coming up soon. Though I’m the most experienced ref on my team, I haven’t reffed in a major tournament in ages, and frankly I’m pretty intimidated. But hey, it’ll be an experience. As far as experiences go, maybe as much of a rush as zooming over the treetops above Whistler at a hundred kph.

The rest of the photos are right here!

Flying to Victoria

So this weekend, a few friends and I decided to take a day trip to Victoria. The twist was that we’d fly there. It’d be quick and pretty cheap, and (to me) a new experience. Plus, I hadn’t been to Victoria in a while. The upside: it really was quick, just around half an hour from downtown Vancouver to downtown Victoria, and I got to take some killer photos on the way. The downside: those little planes felt really rickety, and we hit a bit of turbulence over the Gulf Islands. Not a lot—I didn’t get sick, though I made sure an air sickness bag was available—but enough to make me nervous. Did I mention I’m afraid of heights? Because I am.

We spent the afternoon wandering around downtown Victoria, and then we took the ferry back like normal people. Oh, and on the way back I used the Canada Line SkyTrain for the first time (from 49^th Ave Station to downtown).