I’m a groomsman for my friend Tiago, who is getting married this weekend in Ingonish, Nova Scotia. Which means I’ll be spending most of the day on a plane between Edmonton and Halifax, or on the road between Halifax and Ingonish. Which, I’m told, is a five hour drive.

So…I won’t be near a computer all day, and I’ll be shutting off my iPhone from right now onward, so that the darn thing has at least a but of battery power left by the time I need it to provide me with some driving tunes.

Oh, and Monday is a holiday for me, do I’ll probably see you all again come Tuesday. (Expect a triple update!)

Call me picky, but if I’m going to be a fan of a band, I tend to make it a general requirement that they be at least as good in a live performance as they are on their album(s). Granted, there’s some flexibility built in to such a policy — obviously, in a live performance, the occasional missed note can’t be smoothed over with auto-tuning, and guitar riffs can’t be redone if a off chord is played here and there. Human beings being imperfect, it’s understood that one will occasionally hear such missteps in a live performance.

But given that understanding, there’s still an expectation that the band will perform to a certain level. And Flyleaf delivered handily in that regard.

I’ve been to only a few concerts in my life: Matthew Good (twice, once when he was still touring with the Matthew Good Band and once when he had gone solo), The Tragically Hip (twice), LiVE, Rebecca St. James, the Newsboys, the Dixie Chicks, and now Flyleaf. And in general, I’ve been lucky…most of the groups listed above did pretty well in concert, with one notable exception.

Of all the concerts listed above, two were held at Telus Field (the baseball stadium in Edmonton), and both times the band I went there to see hailed from Texas. The Dixie Chicks hail, I believe, from Lubbock, whereas Flyleaf hails from Belton. But the difference in quality between the concerts was pretty striking.

When I saw the Dixie Chicks perform, the band itself did well; the music behind the vocals was excellent. But Natalie Maines was having an off day, I guess…she was often off-key (and compensated by singing louder when she was — ugh!), often off the beat, and just generally failed to impress. Which is a pity, because the rest of the band (as noted) turned in a fine performance. That was the one concert I’ve been to which didn’t impress, and did quite a lot of damage to my appreciation of the Dixie Chicks as a musical act, especially because most of their songs don’t exactly feature challenging tonal progressions.

Conversely, Flyleaf turned in an all-around great show. What few off-key notes Lacey Mosley sang weren’t nearly as offensive as Maines’ missteps, in no small part because Flyleaf’s songs tend to feature somewhat more complex tonal progressions, not to mention a fair bit of minor key work. And their cover of How He Loves has basically ruined all other versions of that song for me, for how much power and drive they added to it. And of course, the band was just on fire; Sameer Bhattacharya‘s guitar work was particularly impressive.

Also, their closing piece — a cover of How He Loves Us — has forever ruined other, slower and/or more acoustic renditions of that song for me.

Why didn’t anyone tell me?

Okay, let me just clarify. I could probably do without some of the emo baggage that the various Flyleaf fan blogs are veritably infested with, but Memento Mori hasn’t left the CD player of my car* since the Dragoness gave it to me for my birthday a few months back. I first came across them back in November of last year, during (of all things) an NFL highlights montage on some sports channel. (Go figure.)

And the timing is eerily perfect. I have to head to New Jersey for a week to do some work at a client site, but I’ll be arriving back in Edmonton on the evening of the 27th. The concert is the following day. And it’s only $10 to get in!

I’m really, really tempted.

* Except, of course, when I’ve been driving Dragonlet #1 around; she insists on Taylor Swift or Carrie Underwood. But when it’s just me? Yeah…

In Edmonton, the coming weekend is a long weekend, which means I will be offline (or, at least, away from the site) until Tuesday. As such, I will be using that time to test a new template for the site that I’ve slowly been polishing up. Come Friday afternoon, Aiera will look quite a bit different.

Now, let me reiterate that this is only going to be a test. I will be deploying a new template (‘Milano’, by this guy) in place of the current one (‘Aspire’, by these guys); no site content will be changed or removed. And come Tuesday (or possibly late Monday) I’ll put the ‘Aspire’ theme back in place while I review comments that I hope — and I’m stating this now to get your attention — visitors will leave.

Truth be told, I’m not 100% satisfied with the ‘Millano’ theme, though it has a few nice features (such as a jQuery-driven rotating featured content pane, dropdown menus, and other stuff) that are the primary focus of my test. ‘Milano’ likely won’t be the actual new theme I select for Aiera, but I want to see how people react to different interface elements that the new theme, whatever it ends up looking like, will probably feature.

So come back on Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday, and leave your thoughts!

Framing context: a couple of weeks ago, my wife picked up a new toy for our daughter…a toy cash register. It’s a pretty neat little setup actually: it came with a few groceries and a pressure-sensitive scanner deck that beeps when you it something on it, and the register itself is also a calculator. It also came with a toy bank card, and there’s a little slot on the register that plays a beeping melody when you swipe the bank card through it.

So…this morning, as I’m leaving for work, Grace asks me to leave my debit card with her, just in case she decides to take in — and take our daughter to — some of the festivities happening in downtown Edmonton today.

Just after I do so, my daughter — who is, mind you, 21 months old — runs up and starts pointing at my wallet, saying:

“Yeah? Ella? Yeah?”

That’s her way of asking for things, you see; she wants a card from daddy’s wallet too, because Mommy got one. So I give her one of my points/membership cards from one of the national department store chains. Ella takes the card, grins, and makes a bee-line for her toy cash register. I arrive in the living room a minute later, to find her merrily swiping the card, laughing at the beeps.

I…worry I’m sending the wrong message here.

So I missed updating a download yesterday. I’ve since made such a change (Marzo’s Serpent Isle Fixes is now downloadable again), but I’ll have to make two tomorrow in order to get back on track.

In my defense, let me just point you toward the harrowing tale of my journey from Edmonton to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Apologies to those I promised would see an update come Monday. I’ll get to your project tomorrow.

Back when I was still actively working on Lost Sosaria, I wrestled with various “morality” systems that I might want to work in to the game…the default karma approach that had featured in precious Ultima games didn’t particularly appeal to me. Taking a hint from BioWare, even without having played Knights of the Old Republic I devised a system of virtue and anti-virtue scores, based on the seven cardinal and theological virtues of the Catholic faith. What I came up with was a bit more than just a multiplication of KOTOR‘s morality system (which is still just basically karma). Indeed, it was rather more like the system in Mass Effect…but with fourteen counters instead of just two. Moreover, I devised a system whereby the Guardian — or, rather, those who server or were enslaved by him — gained power if the player racked up high anti-virtue scores.

Not that I intended for there to be overt Catholicism in Lost Sosaria, mind you. But it seemed quite reasonable to use a system of virtues in the mod that could in various ways be related to the Britannian virtues without actually using the Britannian virtues. (See also: Serpent Isle.) at the same time, I wanted to experiment with just how extensible, beyond the boundaries of the practice of the Christian faith, the virtues really were.

And so faith, hope, love, temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude were to be the virtues of the land of New Sosaria.

Obviously, I never got to experiment with my idea that much, owing to the fact that I had to set the project aside to meet the demands that a new and growing family placed on my already-limited free time. However, I held on to the idea, and thought about how I might adapt it to another story or game plot idea I had a while ago. That idea was much more sci-fi in nature, and wouldn’t have been related to Ultima at all…and would have pitted the player against two different categories of enemies: corporeal opponents who were either willing servants or slaves of some evil entity, and supernatural foes that grew in power as the player racked up the tallies of the anti-virtues. Worse still, the acquired bonuses were permanent; there were no corresponding reductions in enemy power for high virtue scores, nor did the player himself gain any combat bonus against his foes.

I shelved parts of that idea after I realized that it would make enemies in the game almost impossible to defeat by the end, except in very small groups. But I also realized that in a way, that was probably the point. Which is to say: if there is any supernatural effect caused by human wrongdoing, we are — or would/will be — powerless against it.

We are very amazing creatures, fearfully and wonderfully made…but we are also very limited creatures. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying Mass Effect so much: though a Reaper is still a corporeal foe that can be individually defeated with much struggle and effort, the Reapers as a collective are beyond both the ability of mankind (or turiankind, or hanarkind, or what have you) to understand or defeat.

Despite living in Edmonton, and despite knowing a few people at BioWare, I don’t have any inside details on how Mass Effect 3 will play out…but I suspect that any lasting victory over the Reapers in that game will not come about by way of force of arms. Especially not after seeing both how high the cost of defeating one Reaper was in Mass Effect, and then seeing how many Reapers there actually were at the very end of Mass Effect 2. Against such a multitude, none could prevail…not by force.

If there is to be a victory for the Council races in Mass Effect 3, it will come about by some unexpected means, which will likely require great sacrifice.

It is this ability for — and inclination toward — sacrifice that really sets man apart from other creatures. Not that other creatures will not lay down their life on behalf of kith and kin; many animals (man included) do just that. But where man is unique is, I think, in his willingness to risk life and limb on behalf of complete strangers, in ways and for reasons that go far beyond notions of altruism or “reciprocal” altruism. In like manner, man is unique in his ability to forgive wrongs done against him — any other animal would opt not to stick its nose where it hurt once before. But we humans are willing to forgive one another, even if we disadvantage ourselves and risk further or repeated abuses by so doing.

Easter is concerned with such concepts as these, as are the philosophical disciplines which concern themselves with the concept of natural law. That said, obviously not all of you who read this site are wont to observe Easter in a religious or particularly philosophical way.

So…if it is the good reader’s way to make such reflectionsas these inside of a church on this day or those that immediately follow it, well and good. If not, perhaps the good reader could nevertheless be encouraged to reflect upon the inclinations toward sacrifice and forgiveness which would seem to be a part of the fabric which makes up a human being. And perhaps we might all reflect on those things we have done, recently or some time ago, which we might one day like to be forgiven for.

And regardless, thanks for indulging a young Dragon his annual Easter reflection. Have a great weekend, hopefully in the company of family and friends.

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.

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.

Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in /nfs/c03/h03/mnt/55109/domains/ultimaaiera.com/html/wp-content/plugins/EmbeddedTagThing.php on line 72