…is up.

Thus ends an entirely unintented sabbatical from my only paying blogging gig taken over the duration of the Christmas break. Not that it was a bad sabbatical, by any means, however.

Tags: blogging, Christmas, Examiner.com

I’m tapping this out on the Wordpress app for my iPod Touch whilst seated next to my baby girl in the back seat of the car. We’re on our way, the fam-jam and I, to see Grace’s parents in Vermilion for Christmas Eve dinner; weather permitting, we’ll be headed back to Edmonton for Christmas Day, to see my family.

Grace is driving, Ella is sleeping, and I’m thinking that it’s high time I posted an update to the site; that, and it’s time for my customary Christmas greeting.

In the past, I’ve subdivided greetings into categories (for fellow Catholics, fellow Christians, other believers, and non-believers), and if I weren’t typing on an iPod’s tiny keyboard, I might have opted to repeat that format this year. But as it is, I’m sitting in the back of a Chrysler Sebring tapping away on my iPod, so I think a more general greeting is warranted.

Whether, good reader, you are a believer or not, and whether you are a Christian or not, hopefully you can recognize that Christmas has a deeper and more powerful meaning that goes beyond the usual trappings of the season. Past the gifts, the trees, the feasts, past the rank commercialism and sappy TV specials, and even past the gatherings of family and friends, there is something deeper that infuses this time of year.

That thing is love, and in particular is a special kind of love, one that most certainly can be (and is) shared between friends (in good friendships) and family members (in functional families), but which can also be shared between complete strangers. it can even be shared in a way such that the recipient of it remains ignorant of it.

Christians will recognize what I’m talking about; this is the love that Christ exuded with every breath, word, and action, and then in no way more powerfully than by His death on the Cross. But that same love’s first act was the humble birth of a baby in a stable in Bethlehem. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That humble birth was the first step on a road that lead inexorably to Calvary; the infant born that night was already bound, in His own small way, for the encounter with Pilate and then the Cross. But out of love, Jesus humbled Hinself to be born as one of us, for He desired to bring us a gift beyond any we might ever imagine receiving.

And that’s a gift offered to all of us. Granted, we don’t all — or always — see that gift. But even so, there it is, bestowed whether or not we are ignorant of it.

That’s the kind of love that infuses Christmastine; self-giving, humble, unexpactant love of others, and a desire for their betterment, even if only in some small way.

Now, before I turn this into a sermon, and before Ella wakes up, let me come to the point. It’s Christmas; to every reader, I wish a truly joyous Christmas and an earnest prayer that its days will be filled with the warmth and love of family and friends.

But I would also like to offer a challenge. We’ve all likely dropped some change in the Salvation Army collection bowl, or dropped a few cans of food off at a local food bank. My challenge, then, is: do even more, if at all you are able. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Check a local shelter’s website to see if they need help with anything. Help hand out presents at a children’s hospital. Bake cookies and hand them out to street people downtown. Put aside aprehension, misgivings, and critiques for a while and just help someone, directly, in his or her immediate need.

In other words: love, to the maximum extent you are able. If you take no other meaning or message away from these days, take that much. And if you do take deeper meaning away from these days, you already know why I’m asking this.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Now go be excellent to each other.

Tags: Bethlehem, Calvary, Christ, Christmas, Chrysler, commercialism, Edmonton, Ella, food bank, God, Grace, iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, Jesus, love, Salvation Army, Sebring, soup kitchen, TV, Vermilion, Wordpress

…there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people;

for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!”

For those readers who are traveling during this Christmastime, please travel in safety and under the watchful care of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And do mind the roads, especially if it has been snowing.

And for all my readers, may this be for you a holy and blessed Christmas season, full of the love of God and the joy of family and friends.

Aiera will resume its coverage of Ultima news in 2009, so Happy New Year as well!

Tags: Aiera, Christ, Christmas, God, Jesus, Ultima

…and if you feel so inclined, good Reader, please to put the penny in the Dragon’s hat!

No, I’m not asking for donations. But it occurs to me that the good Reader is probably quite computer savvy, and may in fact be doing some of his (or her!) Christmas shopping online, perhaps even through Amazon.com.

If this describes you, good Reader, then might I make a request? Aiera is an Amazon “Affiliate,” which means that Amazon will give me a small commission on any sales revenue generated through links to Amazon on the site here.

So if, good Reader, you had planned to do a bit of your Christmas shopping through this online medium, might I encourage you to begin your search for gifts here?

If even your initial searches of Amazon originate from here, anything you end up purchasing might just see a few pennies land in my proverbial hat. And that way, we both benefit: you get the gifts you want, at Amazon’s typically competitive prices…and simultaneously, you support the ongoing efforts of this site, in a way that doesn’t require you to donate directly.

I call that “win/win,” myself.

Tags: Aiera, Amazon.com, Christmas

Grace and I would both like to wish all our friends and family a holy, happy, and blessed Christmas season, and all the best for a prosperous new year.

(click on the picture for a slightly larger version)

“Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.” – G. K. Chesterton

(icon of the Blessed Mother and Christ Child by Ade Bethune)

Tags: Christmas

Aiera will be taking a break for the Christmas holiday, and will resume posting either just before, or possibly just after, the dawn of 2008.

As has been the case for other holy seasons in the past, your website administrator would like to offer his greetings for the Christmas season, because that is an integral part of who he is, and he feels he would be remiss not to make mention of it. So please feel free, O Reader, to focus your attention on whichever particular category below most accurately describes you.

If you are Catholic: Christ is Born! Give Him Glory! May this be a holy, joyous, and warm season for you and your family, and a time for renewal of spirit and renewed faith in Christ, whose Incarnation we eagerly anticipate and at whose birth we shall rejoice. Hopefully you are able to enjoy a safe and happy Christmastime with friends and family, resisting the trappings of materialism that are so prevalent at this time of year, and may you be safe in any travels you are making during this time.

If you are Christian, but not Catholic: Christ is Born! May this be a holy, joyous, and warm season for you and your family, and a time for renewal of spirit and renewed faith in Christ, whose birth we eagerly anticipate and shall rejoice over! Hopefully you are able to enjoy a safe and happy Christmastime with friends and family, resisting the trappings of materialism that are so prevalent at this time of year, and may you be safe in any travels you are making during this time.

If you are religious, but not Christian: May this season be a time of rest and of spiritual growth for you, and may you continue securely in your journey of faith. Hopefully you are able to enjoy a safe and happy Christmastime with friends and family, resisting the trappings of materialism that are so prevalent at this time of year, and may you be safe in any travels you are making during this time.

If you are agnostic/atheist/secular: Hopefully you are able to enjoy a safe and happy Christmastime with friends and family, resisting the trappings of materialism that are so prevalent at this time of year, and may you be safe in any travels you are making during this time. May your heart and mind remain unclosed to the meaning that so many attach to this season.

Tags: Christmas

Okay, it’s been a while since the last update, and I trust that those Readers who are likewise recently married, or who were once recently married, can understand the heady intensity of the first few months post-wedding. Especially when there are “thank you” cards and Christmas cards to send out all at once!

Especially because some of my family members are getting a bit impatient over the arrival date of their “thank you”. We’ll leave the discussion about the lack of humility inherent in such a stance for another time, and possibly another place.

At any rate, it’s time for what will likely be Aiera’s last posting prior to Christmas, so enough is enough — let’s get to the news.

Ultima V: Lazarus

Toltec Dragon dropped me a line to let me know that a German translation of this Dungeon Siege-based remake of Ultima 5 is expected to be released very soon. So all you German Ultima fans out there keep watch; this exceptional remake of one of the best Ultima titles is about to arrive in your native language.

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ultima 5 seems to be generating all the good buzz lately. Ranman let us know in a comments thread that development on his port of Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator platform is at 93.7% (probably closer to 94% now) completion.

And he’s managed to shrink the size of the game engine a bit as well, thanks to some compiler optimizations.

Lost Sosaria

My own Ultima project, Lost Sosaria now has a discussion forum. Come on by and drop us a line!

(and yes, O Reader, I’m looking at forum solutions for Aiera as well)

Exult 3D

Sam Matthews has been quiet on the status of his project for a while. However, Gunnar brings news in the Exult forums that this project to create a 3D engine out of the original Ultima 7 engine has progressed somewhat since the last time we saw it here on Aiera.

He includes links to a “slightly more official” patch than is currently available on Aiera. I have updated the project entry here with the new material. Please note that the new releases appear to require Exult 1.4 to run.

Pentagram

The Pentagram team bring news that work is progressing despite the lack of site updates. Specifically, they have implemented correct combat music, improved the Avatar’s attack speed, fixed some issues with rendering, falling and throwing, and improved the main menu to include support for direct loading of savegames.

Quite the busy few months it’s been!

They have also released new Windows and Mac snapshots, both of which can be downloaded through the project entry here at Aiera.

Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

I spoke with Marzo and Wizardry Dragon, and they both confirmed to me that while development is definitely low-key, work is continuing on The Feudal Lands, a sidequel to Ultima 7 set in the old Sosarian continent called the Lands of the Feudal Lords.

Project Britannia

The britannia_logic.dsres and britannia_art.dsres core files for this Ultima spinoff/remake engine system have been updated. Changes are as follows:

britannia_art.dsres – the Lazarus ‘Mario mesh’ has been added, as well as more graphics for the Journal system. A new Spartan helmet has also been added, as have some textures and icons for various equipment associated with Chuckles the Jester.

britannia_logic.dsres – party banters have been updated to allow for a lone Avatar, and an issue with non-breaking breakable objects has been corrected. Rain moods have been tuned, and some UI changes have also been made, among many other things.

Serpent Isle for NWN2

Although development on this promising-looking project seems to have slowed ever so slightly, developer Jaesun has nevertheless managed to finish the Moonshade Catacombs, and has uploaded some sample music (note: ALPHA version, very rough) for your enjoyment, O Reader.

Adventure Creation Kit

Chris Hopkins dropped me a note to let me know that his top-down 2D game creation tool has just been updated to version 2.3. This neat little utility is an MS-DOS program that can be run both under DOSBox or in Windows proper (although DOSBox is required for sound), and allows for the creation of RPG-type games in the graphical spirit of Ultima 4 or Uitlma 5.

The updated version can be downloaded through the project entry here at Aiera.

Forgotten World

Hawkwind dropped me a note to let me know that the Forgotten World team have released another screenshot of their re-working of the Ultima 9 engine. About a month ago, they switched to using the OGRE engine for graphics, and true to their claim that it would speed development along they are now able to present us with a screenshot of Britain from the air.

Click on over and have a look, O Reader — it is impressive, to say the least. So impressive, in fact, that I decided to use it as the project image for its entry here at Aiera.

Also, the reader may note that I have added Amazon content to the sidebar. This is intended to be a mostly passive way that any users who a) feel they would like to support the effort made here at Aiera, and b) do some of their shopping through Amazon.com, can ‘donate’ to Aiera. Any purchases made through the links here will garner a small revenue percentage for your humble administrator.

Finally, I have overhauled the tagging system on Aiera, so it should be a lot more stable. Instead of creating links directly to Technorati topics, though, they link to a list of all other similarly-tagged articles on the site here. This is mostly a convenience feature for users looking to quickly browse a particular topic.

A ‘tag cloud’ can be found most of the way down the sidebar, with text colour and size of each tag listed there determined by the number of times is has appeared.

Tags: Adventure Creation Kit, Aiera, Avatar, Christmas, DOSBox, Exult, Exult 3D, Forgotten World, Lands of the Feudal Lords, Lost Sosaria, Mac, Moonshade, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, OGRE, Pentagram, Project Britannia, Serpent Isle, Sosaria, Texas Instruments, Ultima, Ultima 5, Ultima 7, Ultima 8, Ultima 9, Ultima V: Lazarus, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands, Windows