Posts Tagged ‘Edmonton’
Merry Christmas!
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
New Year’s News
First off, Happy New Year to everyone. I hope that you were able to ring in 2008 in a way that was both safe and enjoyable for you and your friends or family; I spent it with my wife and her two sisters at the big New Year’s bash in Edmonton’s downtown core.
Here, I’ll share a photo:
 |
||
Anyhow, I said I wouldn’t be posting again until the new year, and this has happened. In the interim, a few things worth reporting on have taken place in the Ultima community. Dino’s Ultima Page has tracked a number of these, so let’s get down to those updates first:
Forgotten World
The Forgotten World team report that their world editor is progressing ‘fairly’ — rendering is essentially done, and they are almost ready to begin work on UI design. That’s a promising development for this in-engine remake of Ultima 9
To that end, they need someone to join the project to help out with that aspect of development. So, O reader, if you happen to be:
- an experienced user of world building software
- willing to help us design the user interface of our world editor
- interested in the Ultima series and in creating maps for the game
- patient, communicative and team-oriented
- experienced with programming (perhaps even with wxWidgets) as a plus
…then perhaps, just perhaps, you should drop the Forgotten World team a note and let them know you’d be interested.
Forgotten World was also evidently featured in a German game magazine, “PC Action“, recently.
Lost Sosaria
I have added a dozen new screenshots to the Lost Sosaria website, showcasing the mountain areas I’ve been working on recently. Hopefully, these will be the last screenshots released using the current version of the mountain tileset for the project; a new version is slated to be released shortly after the next update to Neverwinter Nights.
Ultima IX: Redemption
Spyder has posted a number of screenshots of Moonglow in the relevant developer’s diary (you have to be a registered user of the Titans of Ether forums to see them), including one of an Observatory and one of what might be a blacksmith’s shop.
Also, Direhaggis left a comment on the Redemption entry here at the site, imparting the following information:
The progress has been quite good. I think our 3D artist and the new writers helped to re-stimulate us all, as well as the main plot coming to a close in the next 3-6 months.
Management decided that a demo would slow down production. Originally, we thought of isolating New Magincia and allowing the Avatar to solve the quest there. As it is, we want to try to get the game out by the end of 2008.
Good to know!
Ultima V: Lazarus
The German version of Ultima V: Lazarus has been released. I have updated the project entry here at Aiera with the new files.
Ultima 5 for TI Calculators
Ranman puts his development progress at 94% now, and notes that several new features have been implemented since last we checked in with him:
- the Lord Blackthorn cut scene
- Stargazing with the telescope
- Quit and Save, with game resumption
- the Shrine of Spirituality
- food consumption and food obtaining, starvation
- Skiff and Frigate navigation, sea combat
Ultima: Iris
Build 1648 of the 3D client for has been released. A copy is available for download from the project entry here at Aiera.
Additionally, I noticed that the following updates had also taken place on other remake project sites.
Pentagram
There’s no news from this Ultima 8 remake, but I did notice that a new version of the Windows snapshot had been uploaded on January 1st. This can now be downloaded from the project entry here at Aiera.
Project Britannia
Three core files for this project — britannia_art.dsres, britannia_logic.dsres, and pb_laz_comp_layer.dsres — have all been updated. Changes are as follows.
britannia_art.dsres
- 2 new lutes have been added
- More journal labels have been added — untested
- Two chest icons were brightened a bit
- A new trail ration texture was added
britannia_logic.dsres
- bookshelf animation reverted to a previous version
- minor bug-fixes to the sleeping system
- updated lute screen names
- updates to the journal UI
- a function was modified to allow NPCs to ignore locked doors
- …and at least 40 other changes
pb_laz_comp_layer.dsres
- minor change, just synching the compatibility layer with the latest updates in other areas of Project Britannia
The latest versions of these files are available for download through the project entry here at Aiera.
Ultima VII Mod
Matt Johnston informs us that he has done a bit more work on his Exult total conversion:
the outdoor areas of the main map are mostly done; I’ve done a bit with usecode, including one NPC who sells some mostly useless things; sewers and theives guild areas under the south-western city demonstrate use of newly implemented support of Z coords in intermap teleports.
While not complete yet by any means, Matt assures us that he continues his work on this project. As he periodically uploads new content to the site (without announcement of this fact, however), I have updated the copy of the project available for download through the project entry here at Aiera.
Serpent Isle for NWN2
Jaesun gives notice that the project is ON HOLD — it appears that the state Jaesun lives in suffered some catastrophic flooding recently. While he lost nothing project-wise, he did lose his vehicle, and was physically unable to enter the building for a few days as well.
In the meantime, he will be assisting with the Realms of Ultima project, a project he feels is “very important” for the Ultima community.
Which brings me to…
Realms of Ultima
What Project Britannia is doing for Ultima using the Dungeon Siege engine, Realms of Ultima is doing for Ultima using the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine. This is an exciting looking project indeed; NWN2 has a gorgeous engine, and Jaesun’s efforts above would seem to demonstrate that it’s possible to build very quickly with the engine.
A screenshot gallery has been posted online, with several amazing visuals. I have also added a project entry here at Aiera. There are even a few downloads for the project (although these primarily appear to be components of the whole, rather than early snapshots of the entire project).
Update: Ultima 7 Wizard
A user reported difficulties getting the Ultima 7 Wizard to run on their system, so I have updated the entry here at Aiera with the latest version (1.9) of the program, as well as a technical document. Source code (Borland Pascal) is included with this version.
Tags: Aiera, Dino's Ultima Page, Dungeon Siege, Edmonton, Forgotten World, Lord Blackthorn, Lost Sosaria, Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, PC Action, Pentagram, Project Britannia, Realms of Ultima, Serpent Isle, Shrine of Spirituality, The Elder Scrolls, Titans of Ether, Ultima, Ultima 5, Ultima 7, Ultima 7 Wizard, Ultima 8, Ultima 9, Ultima Online, Ultima V: Lazarus, Ultima: Iris
Grace and I landed safely at Edmonton International Airport later in the evening last Friday (the 2nd of November), ending off our ten-day honeymoon in Greece tired and more than a little glad to be back in North America, but still in awe of what was, for the most part, an enjoyable adventure abroad. Although it started out feeling more like a trip than a honeymoon, we slowed our pace down a bit and just enjoyed each others’ company for a few days…and it was great. I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful wife as she.
It was nice to just get away from all the hectic tedium of the wedding and post-wedding frenzy, and to be equally sure it was nice to just get away from the apartment for a day or ten. I had only moved my things over to Grace’s a couple of days prior to the wedding itself, and hadn’t had time to unpack much. Add that to a considerable load of gifts* and it makes for one very messy, box-filled apartment indeed.
And really, I don’t think we could have picked a better place to escape to than the town on Crete that we ended up in. Hania is not exactly a “small town”, with a population somewhere between 57,000 and 70,000 depending on which source you consult, but the architecture has strong Venetian influences, and in the “off season” it has a slow, relaxed pace to it that we just drank in for all the days we were there.
So before we get to the news that’s happened in the last couple of weeks, let me just say that it’s great to finally be married to a girl whom I have loved so much for so many years now. I’m grateful that we had a blast in Greece and that we were able to travel in safety…but that gratitude cannot compare to the joy and praise that I feel in my heart at finally being able to see here there on the next pillow when I wake up in the morning.
Back from the Jamboree
And what an experience it was!
By some miracle, I managed to keep meticulous notes about each and every day of the experience, and so in the coming few days I’ll be converting my scribbled notes into full articles and posting them at Ubi, and at the wedding website. For the moment, it will have to suffice when I say that on the whole, this was one of the most amazing experiences, and one of the most incredible journeys, I have ever had or undertaken.
And I’ve got 1726 photos to show for it. Now, admittedly, I won’t be keeping all of those…but still, that number ought to give the reader a decent idea as to the magnitude of the Jamboree. Failing that, there are a few statistics attached to the Jamboree’s Wikipedia entry that may prove enlightening.
I also made many good friends, and I would even venture to say that in working with the people of ICCS — the International Catholic Conference of Scouting — defined for me at long last just what my Scouting career means to me, and demonstrated just how I want to conduct myself as a Scout, and what I want to work toward as a member of that world-wide organization.
I made a number of new friends, met some incredible people, tasted great English bitters and IPAs, attended Mass and Taize prayer with what was, for me, a heightened frequency, and worked with between 50 and 100 kids a day doing little things to help them learn (or learn more) about the Catholic faith. And in the off hours, I had some memorable times with some or all of the members of the 59th Rover Crew that were in attendance at the Jamboree.
I have to say, though, that the best part of the Jamboree was coming through the doors out of the customs area at the Edmonton International Airport and seeing Grace there. I had missed her so much during the trip, and seeing her smiling face across the arrivals area was the first breath of fresh air for this man when he finally made it home again.
Home. It’s strange, but over the course of the last three weeks, the very meaning of that word seems to have changed so much for me. Home is not, for me, the place where I’m currently living, the place I rest my head at the end of the day, or the place where my family is. Seeing Grace again, I knew at once that the sneaking suspicion of a feeling I’d been having all Jamboree was true: home is where she is. Home is with her.
And so, O Reader, on that note I will leave, and will tell you only that you ought to keep checking back — I’ve got the feeling that the next update to Aiera will be fairly substantial. There’s one new project I already am aware of, for example.