We’re two short weeks away from our second show. Exciting, no? Yes you are excited. It is an unequivocal fact. You are also excited about this week’s events, which I’ve described below:

• Monday Meeting: Monday, January 23, 6PM, MC 4063. Planning for show 2, and other such business. Our meetings are hotbeds of bureaucracy where we discuss all the serious issues that affect…no, not really, but they’re usually fun, and followed by a random activity and/or dinner. So come out.
• Mini-Cosplay Panel: Wednesday, January 25, 6PM to 7PM, SLC 2133. For the first hour of project night, in the first of what is hopefully a weekly event, Amy, our resident cosplayer extraordinaire, will be giving lessons on everything to do with cosplaying. For details on what specifically she has in mind, check out this forum post.
• Project Night: Wednesday, January 25, 7PM, SLC 2133. For the first time in at least a year, Project Night has changed rooms! Not by choice, mind you. We were unable to book the usual room. But this new room should be fine. Same stuff, same time, different place. It’s all good.
• Games Night: Friday, January 27, 4:30PM, PHY 313. Games night continues, as it does on every weekend without a show. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys games, plays games in your free time, buys games, or otherwise views games in positive light, come be an awesome person and play games with us.

Anime Conventions: More urgently this time, our VP, Josh is collecting money for our group registration for Anime North. Get $40 to Josh by Show 2 (Feb. 3 & 4) if you want to get in on the discounted rate. Also, closer at hand, Con-G, an anime convention in Guelph, is coming up February 25 and 26. For more information, check here.

That’s all for this week. Time to go!

Dylan “Un-convention-al” Mead

Sorry for the delay. I had a busy day yesterday and couldn’t get around to this.

We’re back to our regular schedule starting this week. While you look forward to the next anime show (February 3 and 4), we’ll have a bunch of our regular events to keep you happy and having fun. Here’s what you can expect for this week:

• Monday Meeting – Monday, January 16, 6PM, MC 4063. Now that show 1 is behind us, we’ll be looking forward to the other events we have upcoming, and other miscellaneous business. May include a fun activity and dinner.
• Project Night – Wednesday, January 18, 6PM, SLC 2109. Great for new members who want to meet people, or anyone looking for a fun social experience. You can come play a game with other people, or otherwise just have some all-around social fun. Come to the SLC every Wednesday. You know you want to.
• Games Night – Friday, January 20, 4:30PM, PHY 313. This is our all-purpose games night, rampant with video, card and board games galore.

Also, you may have heard, but the largest convention within reasonable driving distance, Anime North, has an attendance cap this year, so if you’re planning on going, you should decide soon. As with previous years, CTRL-A is organizing group passes, as if we buy our tickets in bulk, we save a bit of money. If you want to get in on this, get forty of your Canadian dollars to our VP, Josh, at any time you encounter him until January 31. He will be available at all meetings, and accepts cash, cheque and PayPal.

That’s all the relevant info for the moment. Any later updates will be indicated in bold at the top of the news post, until it is no longer relevant, so you can check back for new updates at later dates.

Dylan “Formula to maketh verbs archaic: Addeth “eth” to the end of every verb” Mead

It’s that time again! Time for an exciting new term, which means lots of great events to look forward to with everyone’s favourite club that really likes anime, the Club That Really Likes Anime! For those of you who haven’t heard my spiel over the last year, this is your webmaster, Dylan, and I’ll be here every Sunday (I try to keep a regular schedule) to let you know about upcoming events that you need to know about. If you’re joining us for the first time, please view the introduction that I’ve provided below.

Upcoming Events

The beginning of the term is always ambiguous as we scramble to get rooms booked, so I’ll update this when room info becomes available. For more details on a particular type of event, check the introduction below, where I’ve described each of them more generically.

• Monday Meeting – Monday, January 9, 6PM, MC 4063. This meeting will feature planning for the other events this week, clubs days and show 1. More on those below.
• Project Night – Wednesday, January 11, 6PM, SLC 2109. If you’re interested in meeting more people, this is one of the better events for that. Come by and play a few games, help some people out, and have some general social fun.
• Clubs Days - Thursday, January 12 and Friday, January 13, 10AM to 3PM, SLC Great Hall. For the FEDS-run Clubs, Services, and Societies Days, we’ll have a table and will be attempting to attract new members by showing off how awesome we are. We may be selling memberships there, and we’ll be getting people to sign up for our mailing list as well. Feel free to drop by and hang out.
• Show 1 – Friday, January 13, 4:30PM to 10PM, AL 113 and Saturday, January 14, 2:30PM to 9PM, EIT 1015. And it begins! Our first anime show of 2012 is sure to be a hit, so don’t miss it! The schedule is available here. As usual, we’ll have our concession stand in full force, ready to serve your cup noodle cravings, among other things. Pizza will be sold on the dinner break, and some sort of group activity will be held during the same break. Our shows are traditionally our most popular events; everyone has a great time, so definitely try to make it.
• Weiss Schwarz Tournament – Saturday, January 14, 11AM, AL 211. Due to its success last term, the Weiss Schwarz tournament suite will repeat this term, slated to take place on the Saturday of each show. The tournament should be done by around 3pm, so there’ll be plenty of time to get to the show afterward. As per usual, the tournament does require you to sign up beforehand, so please indicate that you will be attending in the forum thread, linked here.

Election Results

If you missed the last meeting, or just have terrible memory, here’s your CTRL-A executive team for the Winter 2012 term.

President: Asher. Runs meetings; is officially the coolest guy in the club for the duration of the term.
Vice-President: Josh. He’s in charge of everything to do with shows. Also, he’s a pretty cool guy.
Secretary: Riel. I don’t know him yet, but since he supports the club, I like him. He keeps minutes of our meetings.
Treasurer: Kyle. Just kidding, of course it’s Karl again. It’s always Karl. In charge of the dollars.
External Relations Officer: Jon. He’s very good at relations. External ones. Talks to people external to the club to get permissions and such.

Publicity: Alcina and Jess. By their powers combined, they will advertise the club.
Electronic Communications: Drew. He tells you approximately the same information I do, in email form.
Activities Coordinator: Sam. She plans lots of fun stuff to do during meetings and shows. If you’re having fun, she might be responsible.
Webmaster: Dylan. I am the master of the web. Don’t deny it. I maintain the website, post news, and moderate the forum.
Concession Manager: Andrew. One of my favourite people. He sells food at shows, and is one of the nicest people I know.

Winter 2012 Anime Shows

Four regular anime shows will occur this term, as per usual. Shows will generally take place on a Friday from 4:30PM to 10PM, and the following Saturday, from 2:30PM to 9PM. The decided show dates are as follows:

Show 1: January 13 & 14
Show 2: February 3 & 4
Show 3: March 2 & 3
Show 4: March 16 & 17

Exact schedules will be announced closer to the dates of the individual shows. What anime you can expect to see will be announced soon, so check back here later this week!

Club Introduction

For those of you just joining us… Well, first of all, welcome! We are the Club That Really Likes Anime (CTRL-A for short), a club built around the love and enjoyment of Japanese animation.  But we’re so much more than just an anime club. We are a social club, first and foremost, and we have many weekly events that promote socialization between our members. I figure the best way to explain who we are and what we do is to give a quick rundown of the events we normally hold.

Anime Shows – On four predetermined weekends every term, we actually sit down and watch some anime. This is the bread-and-butter of CTRL-A; without it, we couldn’t exactly call ourselves that, now, could we? The typical format is to show 5 continuing series (meaning that each show will have more of the same series), 8 sampler series (2 per show; we only show the first 3 episodes, hence, sampler) and 4 movies (1 per show). See above for what you can expect to watch this term. We also run a concession stand (profits go to support the club) and order pizza for a dinner break on both days.

Monday Meetings – These happen every Monday, starting at 6PM, and are usually followed by dinner. This is when we deal with all of the official club business, and make important decisions that influence the direction of the club, such as deciding what anime to show and when. All important decisions are decided by vote, so if you want to have your say, you are welcome to come, provided you are a registered member of the club. If you have something you want to discuss at the meeting, you can bring it up then, or send an email to prez@ctrl-a.org and get it put it on the agenda. The room will be announced in each week’s news post.

Project Nights – Every Wednesday, a smaller subset of Ctrl-A meets for what is best described as “general socialization,” meaning you can pretty much do what you want. There’ll be lots of gaming, and if Jeremy is there you can be sure there will be a board game played, but the core purpose behind these nights is to give you chance to work on any projects you might have. If you need people to help you with an idea or half-finished project, come to SLC 2109 at 6PM every Wednesday.

Games Nights – On non-show Fridays (that is, Fridays where we don’t have a show scheduled) we get together and play games. Whether it be card games, board games, or video games, games are happening. Show up at 4:30 and get your game on! The room will be announced in each week’s news post.

And much more… Those are just our regular events. We also have sushi lunches, hot pot, card tournaments, survival tag, an anime marathon, and more! Trust me, stick with us, you’ll have a great time.

Getting involved – The best and most obvious way to get involved is to come to our events! Our shows are the most popular event, but if you want to get to know us, the best way is at one of the other events, where it’s easier to talk. Another way is via our forums; many of our members have accounts on there, and there is plenty of ongoing discussion to jump into. If you’re not feeling quite so adventurous, you can also comment directly to this post too! Either way, we read everything that comes in here, so you can be sure your voice is being heard. Oh, and don’t forget to sign up for our mailing list to receive weekly updates on all the events, if you’re too lazy to come back here every week.

Any questions? – That’s what we’re here for! Send an email to the appropriate exec (if you aren’t sure who’s appropriate, check out this handy reference page), or just send it to ctrl-a@ctrl-a.org and we’ll sort it out for you.

That’s it for my term-opening info-splosion. If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you at many of our events. Here’s looking forward to a great term!

Dylan “A new frontier” Mead

Happy New Year! New year means new term which means more CTRL-A!

Yes, we’re really back. I know you missed us. It’s okay. We’re here for you now. Cry no longer.

We have our term elections coming up this Wednesday, January 4 at 6PM in AL 105. If you are interested in voting or running for an exec position yourself, then be sure not to miss it. Even if you’re a new member, you’re welcome to run for one of our officer positions. For descriptions of each of the available positions, check this page. CTRL-A is a complicated machine and it can’t operate without the contributions of its dedicated members. If you have the means to assist us in any of our operations, please consider it.

Our first meeting is also the meeting where we decide what anime we want to watch for the term, so it’s doubly important! This is the one meeting you don’t want to miss, so you’d better be there!

This, again (I’ve said this three times now), might be the last post I make as webmaster of CTRL-A. If so, I’ll take this opportunity to say that I’ve had a great time crafting these posts for you all over the past year. Here’s looking forward to a great new year, and a great term with CTRL-A.

Dylan “Webmaster, 2011″ Mead

And we’re back. Wait…

No we’re not back. But I have a bit of news to relay. First is an upcoming event in Kitchener which may be of interest. The G33K Art Show, presented by Jacques of Trades, is “a gathering place for sequential artists (aka comic artists/writers), steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, gothic and other alternative craftsmen to showcase their work all in once place!” It’s happening this Saturday, December 17 and Sunday, December 18 at the Kaufman Arts Studio in Kitchener. For more information, check out their Facebook event page here, or alternatively, if you don’t like Facebook, see the same information here.

If that’s not your thing, remember that we have our very own event, a CLAMP-themed marathon show, on the same Saturday, December 17, in SLC 2109, from noon to 10PM. All the details for that are available here.

So everyone better be having fun this weekend. No excuses!

Dylan “The Examinator” Mead