The long-time reader will know that I have a fairly broad selection of daily reads, including many political, religious, and gaming sites and blogs. The long-time reader probably does not know, however, that I also follow a few game blogs of a very different sort. Perhaps I should capitalize the ‘g’, as well; these blogs pertain to Game, the social interaction study and model that is primarily the purview of pickup artists, but also works as a general means to understanding interactions between men and women in social (and intimate) situations.

One such blog is The Spearhead, and I was struck by a post there recently in which the author spoke about his desire to cater to his international visitors by blogging not only in English going forward, but in other languages as well.

Now, I’ve tried before to learn other languages (Ukrainian & French, specifically) and the result has always been the same: I get praise from my teachers for my ability to properly inflect the words I’m reciting, but I’m never able to actually internalize the language in my memory so as to be able to draw upon it outside of the classroom context. In short: I can mimic a language well enough if I have something to read in front of me, but I seem to be completely unable to learn new languages.

Now, in looking at my site reports in StatCounter, I observe that traffic to Aiera comes from many countries. The United States ranks highest, not surprisingly, and is followed immediately by Canada (my home country)…but the remaining eight countries in the top ten are all European:

1. 32.60% United States
2. 12.40% Canada
3. 11.60% Germany
4. 8.40% United Kingdom
5. 4.00% Finland
6. 3.40% Portugal
7. 3.20% Italy
8. 3.00% France
9. 2.80% Ireland
10. 2.80% Australia

Some of these countries are also English-speaking countries…indeed, running the blog in just English, I cater to the national language of 59% of my visitors.

However, I’m thinking it might be nice if I could bring on board two or three (or more) additional editors who would be willing to transcribe — occasionally, if not frequently/consistently — site news from English into German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, or maybe even Finnish. I realize that this would technically result it some duplication of posts and content (given Aiera’s integration with e.g. Twitter, I don’t want to go the route of using the translation plugin that Team Return uses)…but I think it would be a nice feature to offer, even if only on occasion, to some of my visitors from countries not situated on the North American continent.

If you’d be interested in assisting with this endeavour, good reader, either drop a comment below or drop me a line privately.

I’ve signed on as the Technical Officer of a committee that is planning to host a gaming convention in my home city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. More details to follow, including recruitment/volunteer opportunities.

It seems I just landed back in Canada, and already I’m off again. This is it, the big weekend — as of about 1:30 PM on October 20th, I’ll be a married man. We’ll be honeymooning in Greece, flying into Athens on the 24th of the month.

Which means that I’ll be back at some point in early November (would that I could get more time off of work, but the Jamboree used up all my good graces in that regard).

In the meantime, be sure to visit Dino’s Ultima Page for all your Ultima news needs.

People who wish to post news from Ultima projects are encouraged to do so in the comments to this post. I’ll be sure to amalgamate any news into a formal posting upon my return.