All Your Ore Are Belongs To Us!

I finally got my hands on a Retriever. In the foreground; a giant secure container, a necessary tool for efficient solo mining in .7 and below. In the background; a Hulk, the überminer.

Gine is at work and I’m playing. Too bad I have support and a very bad gut feeling I have to head for the data center tonight. I have no idea why.

Warp Speed.

It’s been a slow weekend. Gine worked Saturday and most of my time was devoted to, surprise, surprise, EVE Online. I’m still bouncing around solo in high security space, but have moved down to .7 where I have to deal with the odd rat. Right now I have two Hammerhead drones doing the dirty work for me and I’m considering moving to .6 space because surviving in .7 isn’t much of a challenge. It is of course possible that .6 is too dangerous for a scared care bear like myself.

I also went out and bought a Retriever. There will be another few days before I can actually fly it, but I found one at a reasonable price only a few jumps away, so I decided to buckle up in the Badger Mark II and fly over to transport it back home.

Yes, all that was just gibberish to all of you except one of my regular readers (yes, I take the liberty to actually think I do have regular readers), so let’s talk about the complete opposite of sitting in front of a computer playing a game. Continue reading "Warp Speed."

Jumping.

I’ve been playing around with EVE Online for a while now and I have to admit I’m still enjoying it. That’s good since I’ve already paid for a month of gameplay. The OS X client had some serious stability issues when I started playing, but it was patched before Christmas and it’s working much better now. There’s still the odd crash, but getting back online only takes minute and I’ve still not experience any loss of ISK (the in-game currency), disappearing ore or any other annoyances caused by the client crashing.

What do annoy me, however, are pirates. Pirates are players who move into high security systems with well-armed ships and steal other player’s cans while they are jetcan mining. If someone steals, or “flips” your can, you’re allowed to attack the pirate for 15 minutes without the police force, CONCORD, in the system interfering. Neither will it affect your security status, which is important to keep on the positive side to be get access to high security systems later.

What the pirate really wants is not the ore in your jetcan, what he wants is that you either try to steal back the content of your can or that you open fire on him. If you do either, he is allowed to blow you to pieces without CONCORD caring about and he will get a kill. This usually only works on new players who do not know the rules of the game. I walked into that trap once, but never again.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

If you’re playing EVE Online yourself, log in and have a look for Jacob Goods. MacWorld has an article about EVE you might find interesting.

Jingle Bells.

Yes, it’s Christmas Eve, people. If you haven’t bought your Christmas gifts yet, you’re seriously running out of time! Personally, I bought all of them in early December.

The last few days I’ve mainly been doing three things; sleeping, working and playing EVE Online. The game is challenging but without a too steep learning curve and it feels very rewarding every time you learn a new skill or when you finally get enough money for that Badger. The social aspect of EVE is also very appealing and most of the people playing it is behaving and helpful. Of course you find the occasional troll or encounter a rat who nicks the content of your jetcan while your mining.

When I eventually get a large enough ship and is capable of actually hitting stuff when firing, I’ll of course hunt them down and kill them all, so it’s all good. Continue reading "Jingle Bells."

Water of Life.

Yesterday night me and Gine went to Terje and Inger’s annual stick meat Christmas dinner. Good food, good company and good drinks. Akvavit is what Norwegians traditionally drink with their Christmas meals, it’s served at room temperature but it still burns in your throat. Neither does it take long before you realize you’ve had enough for the evening. I recommend drinking about twice the volume of water as Akvavit as it seems it prevents you from being sick the next day. At least it works very well for me.

We got back home at around two in the morning and I might accidently have stayed up playing EVE Online until half past six or so. I’m really not sure what time it was when I finally got to bed nor what kind of missions I completed, if any, but at least I have proven that it’s possible to fly a large space ship without smashing it into anything while drunk. Continue reading "Water of Life."