News 09/25/07 – Meet and Greet – Hey guys! Guess what tonight is? The first meeting of AIYA! Where we get together talk rules, membership the line up for the year and eat CAKE! Yes there is cake! Communications Facility 120 at 6:00! Be prepared for an awesome night! 08/14/07 – Fall Quarter – So this has been posted for a while on the LJ com. Unfortunately when I switched computers I forgot to install the ftp program that lets me upload to the universities webpage. So here is it about 2 month later. ^_^;;;;;; Hey everyone! I hope summers are going well and that everyone is having fun! The next school year is coming up and I just wanted to update you on some things. For starters, we are still in Communications Facility Room 120! YAYZ! From 6:00-10:00, we will be meeting every Tuesday From October 2^nd to December 4^th. At this time it is not clear if we will be having a beginning of the year new member meet and greet like last year on the 25th, but I’ll let you know. ^_^ As for new rules this year….. I’m really sorry to say that rotator will have to be kept to licensed anime on DVD or VHS…..maybe laser disc if you really have to….. Why? The University changed user settings so that we cannot download and install any programs, codec’s, etc. This means that watching fan subbed material is nigh impossible without extra equipment. The officers from last year decided that it was too much time and effort for us, and a waste of time for members to bring in a laptop every week and trouble shoot shows so that we could watch them. I’ve also talked with a member of ATUS and have been informed that because we are a not an “educational” meeting, that there is no reason for them to install the codec’s or programs we need, and that they refuse even to let us go back to the system of installing a program just to have it deleted when we logged off. They’re worried about the security of the university’s network and will allow no leeway. If those reasons aren’t good enough for you I can point to the slew of recent “cease and desist” orders sent to anime clubs throughout the united states and the fact that I don’t really want to deal with fighting “the man.” I’ve got classes and a job for crying out loud! ; P I know that it is a shame that we can no longer watch any material that is coming out currently in Japan, but I would like to remind members that not everyone has seen everything. There are many shows that have been released state side that attendees have never seen, old and new. Not all members have been in the anime scene since the 80’s and not all members watch new shows as they are released in Japan, so there are a lot of shows - like Suzumiya Haruhi - that not everyone has seen. Rotator is a chance to bring interest to a series you love, give people a taste of a series they have never seen or heard of, and/or raise interest in a potential Marathon. So even if we can’t show digital media we can still share in something we love. Please do me a favor though, ^_^; when choosing an episode to bring interest be careful. Many people stick to the first episode paradigm, in which they believe the best episode to show when trying to interest people is episode one…. This is not necessarily true. Sometimes episode two or three is better. They tend to have less setup, are still close enough to the beginning for viewers to learn the basic premise of the plot and almost always recap what we learned in episode one, just in less time. On the other hand of rotator are the people who like showing their favorite episode. This can work well, or it can back fire; especially when club members don’t know who characters are, what their motivations are or even why they’re going on the crazy adventure in the first place. So there was my big rant on rotator slot and ATUS. So I guess that’s it until Fall. You’ll see me at info fair, I’ll be cosplaying again. ^_^ see you then!