Lionel’s Blog

You can check my oral about the “Three Day Rule” (by Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother) > here <

Enjoy.

In this text, I’ll try to develop you my point of view about the French soccer. At first, we can say French soccer, since many years, has been dull. Only the “Olympique Lyonnais” has won every titles since 7 years, and no one among the other 19 teams could tease them. They really dispelled any lingering hopes from other teams. Last year, while Paris was undoubtedly out of his season, Bordeaux ended up second and Marseille was on top of the ladder. But this year, there is something different which makes it more attractive. Today, may, the 16th we are having a huge suspense about the team winner’s name to this title: Marseille, or Bordeaux? Lyon or Paris in the European Champions League? Who knows.

Although Lyon was the Winter Championship, the team has dialed down the rhythm of her game by many player’s injuries. These injuries revived bad results. Claude Pluel, the new fresh manager of this year, is now in an uncomfortable position. At the 35th day of the championship, Lyon gets 64 points, 7 behind Marseille and Bordeaux, 1 before Paris. At this time, they’re just trying to focus on a place for the European Champions League.

The 7 last years this opportunity has rised up and has promoted the outbreak of the two outstanding teams, Marseille and Bordeaux. Since the beginning, these two teams have been behind Lyon. Now, they are before and are fighting for the title. They have the same points, but at the difference of goals, Marseille is the first. It’s a good gift, if they win the title, for their manager, Eric Gerets, who will leave the team the next season. But, the farmer French World Champion, manager of Bordeaux, Laurent Blanc, wants too this Holy Grail.

Paris got up step by step the ladder to the 4th place. This summer, with the new President, new players came in the team, like Hoarau (2^nd scorer of the championship), Kezman, Giuly or Makelele. They have to go on in the same way if they want to take a place for the European Champions League.

Then, we can say, we have our “Big Four” in France (Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Paris), but it’s second to none of the “Big Four” of our English neighbours.

The past year, in the last square of the European Champions League, there were the English “Big Four”, Chelsea, Manchester United (the winner), Liverpool and Arsenal. This year, 3 of these 4 teams are English and the other one is Spanish. In France, for several years, it has been Lyon who went as far as possible in European Champions League, but didn’t take “part in any final, or any semi-final.

Finally, we hope that next year with Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon or Paris, we’ll be able to do something better. Instead of doing a slow game based on defence, we have to take pride in doing a swift game and many relentless counterattacks to score as possible (like Barcelona for instance) and to win events raising up the French level to our European neighbours.

So, see you the next season, we only have to cross fingers.

And here is my 50 phrases > here <

• To take pride in doing something.

“We take pride in doing quality work.”

• To be second to none.

“I personally came from a copper work environment, and here, it’s second to none.”

• To swoop in on something.

“he swoops in on his target.”

Here is an other transcription!

The transcription is from the begining to 2′26.

“Plank was started… actually it’s a long time now already, it’s almost ten years. Plank was started in 1998. The basic way to describe: it is we build websites. I can talk about a million of other things. I can say we’re more a multimedia studio, we do this, we do that, we do…, we do CDRoms but really, 95% of the time, we build websites.

With that, we also started off as more as a design company. But over the years we started to build up some other work. Designing websites, trying to make them look beautiful, usability, and try to really build something that, that looks great when you get to the site but we’ve also got a lot of technology and tools to help run sites behind of a content management systems, chameleon systems, *** exportations, all kinds of stuff, just to really make site useful as well.

I don’t want to say but we’re the best company of the world. You should work here because we are fantastic and cool and… No, the truth is, I think, we take pride in doing quality work, we take pride in doing stuff that we’re all proud of, and we try to work on projects that make us happy.

You know, I’m sure, you will spin round and see how people work here but the funny thing is, most people who work here, well actually a lot of people here are friends, or friends of friends, and a lot of people here come from a more creative background. It’s funny that actually people here all have side art as photography or music. You know it’s… surfing. So we really have a diverse group, people who are not just, people who work and go home.

That’s a fun working environment. I mean, that, to me, makes all the difference. I personally came from a copper work environment. I used to work as a lawyer on a big law firm and I’ve gone from one hand of the copper’s culture factory to the other. We really have a relax working environment which comes from the top down. Our president is really the type of guy who likes to stay out of trouble and have a good time to the office. And I admit for an environment that’s just… it’s second to none.

Up to now, I’ve been pretty much the main contact for all the clients, because I…, on myself, really have invested interests in making sure they are happy, that they enjoy the work, and we really take the time, and I take the time to spend with them and understand things. But, at the same time, Plank‘s been growing and we are taking a lot of bigger projects we’re… right now, basically, the best way to describe it is I need help. So what we are looking for is a Project Manager.”

*** = words that I don’t understand.

Here is my Transcription. Enjoy !

“My name is Elspeth Tory. I’m project manager for animation on Assassin’s Creed. Our main character Altaïr, has well over twelve thousand animations, which is pretty impressive and one thing that people got to see, right of the bat, is how fluid everything is.

We wanted to put the character Altaïr in this very very realistic setting. So in order to do that, we needed to create tones and tones animations that fit each context everything he’s going to do because, Altaïr can do basically anything: he can climb, he can run, he can jump, he swoops in on his target. So we needed to create contextual animations for all of these moves.

Then you also have the crowd. We have hundreds of characters that meaning about through all over 3 different cities that have completely different looks, different clothing, hairstyles, everything but on top of that, we wanted to create characters that look different and real that didn’t all look like a bunch of zombies walking threw a crowd. Each different kind of person will have different sets of idle animations, different little movements, little quarks about them that they really neat.

The sure quantity of animations on this, I think it’s… I don’t know if it’s unrivaled but it’s pretty darn close, I’m sure. Just the quality of animations we added also the manage stuff was done by hand. At beginning we started looking into technologies to see, you know, was the stuff at the level we needed it to be at to go ahead and do lot of procedural animations. And in the end, we felt that, to get the quality that we looking for, we would do a lot of transitions, a lot of the stuff was done straight by the animator and not by the computer, it wasn’t automatically generated. So you’re gonna see the artistry in his movement and I think that where you get that special touch. The fact that, he does he look so fluid and so, I don’t know, realistic and easy when he moves threw all the environments.

We don’t have video footage of what it would have been like 1191, so you have to sort of put yourself, literally, in their shoes and imagine what it would have been like to fight with this heavy swords and heavy armor. So when you go in to the Mocab Studio. You know, you have to do a lot of takes and kind of work it out as you gone along.

So for the combat animation, we wanted to create a style, that wasn’t necessarily a trained, specific style of combat. We wanted to get that feeling, raw *** evil violence. So in order to that, we actually got our animators to get in to the mocab suits, get out there and act all the moves themselves. So we have an artist director for the animation, Alex Drouin, who had some great ideas in terms of how to make these moves look cool but also not necessarily look like a specific style. You really get that sense that the… , your  opponents  are reacting to you ***. This timing where… they’re gonna attack you, but if you do a lot of cool counter of moves, kill some of their friends, they gonna back off and go defensive. So you really have to adjust your style of combat depending on how there are attacking you and how they react to you. And look for openings where maybe they’re weak, may be they’re taunting you and go in for an attack when you see an opening.

Just a few more weeks now and you’re gonna have it! So really excited for all you too. Get the first chance to play this game.”

*** = words that I don’t understand.

Let’s talk about iPod

Let’s rock baby !

• Lloyd (the Welsh) :

Here is the oral version with Vincent, me, Marilyn, Alexis and Lucie.

Stacy’s Story

“Today I went to an Irish pub. The pretty barmaid Stacy drinks a lot. Sometimes she even stops drinking just to do her job, which I find very funny. On the other hand I am always drunk because she often serves me free drinks. She does a good job and charges me about 5 euros for the first drink, which is the cheapest drink I found in Paris.

She told me that she came to France as a 12 year old, 12 years ago. She went to IMAC School and then worked for a Web Agency for 5 months. She was fired because she spent all the time in the Irish Pub in front of her flat. She knew all the owners and drinkers. After her dismiss, she became THE barmaid because all the owners had cirrhosis of the liver.”

Here is the transcription of a podcast ( here ) of the Linguist.

“Today, I went for a haircut. My barber talks a lot. Sometimes he even stops cutting just to talk which I find mildly annoying. On the other hand, I am always entertained for 30 minutes while he cuts my hair. He does a good job and charges me 18 dollars which is not the cheapest but not the most expensive haircut in Vancouver.

He told me that he came to Canada as a 16 year old, 20 years ago. He went to hair dressing school and then worked for a chain of hair salon for 5 years in different locations in the city. He got to know the personalities of different kinds of clients. He found he did not like working in the heavily Chinese district of Richmond because, in his words, the customers would arrive late and expect to be served right away. If they were not served immediately, they assumed that the customer who was being served in their place had paid extra. He did not like the pressure of that situation.

He eventually opened his own shop in North Vancouver. He said that he made sure to learn about all the subjects that his clients were interested in, from fly fishing to the stock market. He knew that if customers liked him, they would come back.

After 20 years in Canada, dealing daily with English speaking Canadian clients, his English is just terrible. His pronunciation, use of words, structure, you name it, are all quite poor. When he talked about a leading politician and his wife, he and she were regularly used wrong. I had trouble understanding whom he was talking about. People who are not used to Chinese accents must have trouble understanding him. His English is poor even by the standards of his native Hong Kong. Just being immersed in the language and talking the language will not necessarily improve you. You need to want to improve. You need to have a deliberate program of improvement. You need to listen.

On the other hand, he was successful at building up a customer base and did not seem to feel inhibited in any way by his poor English. He was a communicator although a better talker than a listener. I have not suggested to him that he join The Linguist.”

II would like to become a Project Manager in multimedia, so I searched videos about this subject.

Plank is hiring a Project Manager. The director explains the quality of the job.

Artistic Project Manager of Assassin’s Creed.

A little one : Interactive Agency.

A big Project Manager.