The Travels of Black Claw

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

You can follow Alexia Morgan now instead of me

I'm no longer doing the journey around the galaxy, but my sister, Alexia Morgan, has agreed to take it up on my behalf. You can follow her new blog here:

Touring New Eden

I think she's doing a much better job at it than I ever was, so if you enjoyed what I was doing, make sure you follow her to enjoy what she's doing instead!

This blog is going on hiatus as I take a break. Alexia will be your focus from now on.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Around New Eden - Day 21

Region: Great Wildlands

I'm still in R-ESG0, but I got this lovely photo of a nice blue planet...

You can probably tell the system was empty at the time, allowing me the luxury of decloaking.

Can you see me waving from the window?

Anyway, while it was nice and quiet I took the opportunity to jump to the next system after making necessary gate bookmarks.

Do you like the new titling I'm using for each system I'm passing through? I got the idea yesterday, and have been playing around with it a little. I think I'm going to have to make the post backgrounds black though, so that they fit in better.

What do you think of it?

When I go to a new system I like exploring the different planets looking for a nice photo opportunity. When I find one, I stop exploring that system, make some bookmarks, and then move on to the next system.

Here's the photo that stopped me from continuing to explore in this system...

Moving right along....

Of course, when I jump into a new system, I look for interesting celestial objects in the overview, but if there's none around, then I move on to the planets.

Can anyone tell me why the red planets are the most photogenic? I love them...

See you tomorrow!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Is it possible?

As I travel the galaxy, one system at a time, I've been thinking about something.

I've been wondering if it's possible to travel the entire galaxy without dying, or even losing a ship.

What do you think?

One of my strengths is avoiding ambushes and gate camps. In fact, I'd say I'm a bit of a master at it, and I've had the experiences to prove it. (It's also why I started OUCH back in 2009, because I was so good at nullsec / lowsec travel and avoiding combat that I ended up teaching others how to do the same.)

But wouldn't that be exciting? Travelling the galaxy, going through over 60 regions and over 5,000 systems, and avoiding death the entire way?

That might be something to write about...

I might write another 'tips' article soon, on how to travel safely. I'm sure I've written about it before, if not here, then maybe in OUCH's original training material, but I'll do it again anyway. There's always someone new that'll find value in it.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Around New Eden - Day 20

Region: Great Wildlands

I was sitting in N-DQ0D all day today, waiting for the 20 or so pilots to go somewhere else. Eventually they did, probably a couple hours before downtime, and I continued on my way.

P1T-LP

Since it was completely empty in here, and I hadn't seen any for quite a while, I decided to take out some aggression on one of the battleship rats in here, to continue my quest to slowly reduce my security status.

You can see me just to the bottom right there, in the background, engaging in a vicious shootout with the rat. I'd already taken out its support ships, a bunch of frigates, and it was desperately fighting for its life.

But it lost. *chuckle*

I checked the loot in the wreckage, and then remembered why I shouldn't even waste my time.

I moved on to the next system...

Since downtime was coming, I decided to camp here in R-ESG0 for the night. But first I made a gate bookmark before logging out. Here's a photo of me making another gate bookmark.

Well, you can't actually see me, 'cause I'm cloaked. Have you ever seen a Tech 3 cruiser making gate bookmarks in nullsec space? Hell no, because they're always cloaked!

Well, maybe not always... but if you do see one, good luck killing it. The idiot probably deserves it!

Anyway, see you next time.

Using Disqus for comments

I've just integrated Disqus into this blog as the comment tool. It'll allow a lot more options for commenting, including authorised sign-ins from other social media sites like Facebook and G+, for those that care.

If you notice that your comments are missing from past posts, don't worry - Disqus is importing all pasts comments, but it'll take up to 24 hours.

Please enjoy :)

Eve blogger and player profiles

A long time ago I used to do a very popular feature where I would interview other Eve bloggers or players and publish it on this blog.

I'm going to start doing that again.

More information coming soon.

Updates on the Eve Online forum

I used to have a presence on the Eve Online forums where I'd document my travels for all those who were interested, but who didn't want to follow this blog. I've just set it up again so I can continue doing this for the Eve forum users.

Eve Online Forum - My Eve - Exploring the Galaxy

I think you can subscribe to it if you want to, so that you can get notifications of updates there. There will be different updates there than what you'll see on this blog.

Black Claw is back on Twitter

You can follow me here.

twitter.com/Black_Claw

Say hi and let me know you're out there.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Around New Eden - Day 19

Region: Great Wildlands

The last 'day' that I spent travelling and documenting my explorations around New Eden was back in November, 2011. Gee, it's been a while.

So I've spent some time today to re-familiarise myself with my travels so far. I've marked off the visited systems on some region maps, and I've printed out my planned path around New Eden.

I've even made sure that I continue where I left off.

N-DQ0D

Average system, a reasonably amount of activity (there were a few people travelling through at most times).

And now I'm going to go get some sleep.

It's nice to be back on the exploration trail! See you next time.

Roll call for active Eve Bloggers

Back in the prime of www.evebloggers.com, I had a list of over 600 blogs. I'm wondering how many active Eve bloggers there are right now.

I'm curious to know. If you're an active Eve blogger, please just say hi and include a link to your blog. I'd love to check it out.

I'm also considering how I can be of assistance to the Eve blogging community again, since it was such a large part of my activities in the past. I think it'd be pretty cool to make it part of my activities again.

What does the community need? How can I help?

Please comment below.

ROLL CALL

Oh, it's Black Claw again

Since my last post back in April I've had a lot of things happen in my life. I got back into Eve back then but then, but quickly got back out again. It just wasn't the right time for me to come back and hang around.

I'm coming back again now. Will it be the right time this time, or will I again come and go quicker than you can say "Hey, where's Black Claw gone?"

I don't know. All I can do is give it a try again and see if I hang around for longer than a day.

The exploration of the galaxy will continue.

So what's changed in New Eden since I was last here?

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Where did Black Claw go?

Back in January I wrote about how I was 'untethering' from all these things in my life, clearing out 'stuff' and making things simple again. I wanted to try new things and felt that Eve was, in some way, preventing me from doing them by taking up my time. I handed over OUCH to my senior staff. I quit OUCH and moved on, back into my old corp Scorpion's Sting. I gave up www.evebloggers.com to someone else.

It felt great to let go of everything!

I stopped playing. I did the other things and certainly enjoyed them, but recently I've been feeling a pull to get back into Eve. I'd been playing it since the beginning of 2006, and I think there's traces of Eve in my blood or something. It flows within me, and it calls to me. It calls!

After four or five months without it, I'm feeling like it's a good thing to get back into it. It was slowly rising in me over the past couple of weeks, and my post 11 days ago was a somewhat cryptic message about these feelings stirring within me. "My blood is moving. It's like.... I'm coming back to life or something." And I felt that Eve was calling me, like a flame and I was the moth. "Is there a light? Surely there's gotta be a light."

But I wasn't entirely sure at the time I wrote that. I just wanted to write it, and see how I felt about it. But since writing it, the urge to come back has grown.

Today I actually became active again. I created a new thread on the Eve forums, and I reactivated my G+ page.

Honestly? I think I needed the break, but now I'm back. And it feels good to be back into it.

It's nice to have no responsibilities and no 'administration'. It's nice to feel all fresh about it again. I went through my eve mail and deleted close to 100 pages of mail - all of it, gone. I didn't read any of it, and I kept nothing. Everything that I've done before no longer applies. It's a new start.

I'll be continuing my travels, documenting every single system in the entire galaxy, and I look forward to seeing some of you around New Eden. Some of you I'll be dodging! But I'll enjoy all of it.

The adventure continues

I've gone through some recuperation for being in stasis for so long. It did some damage to my eyes, apparently, but they're all better now.

I forgot how to use some of the ship controls. Would you believe that? But after a few minutes I was able to get back into it all.

I've spent some time today getting things back in order. I've been re-working my page on Google+ and becoming sociable again on it. I've also started a new thread on the Eve Forums because someone had locked my old thread. Maybe it was because I hadn't updated it in a few months, I don't know.

I also checked out the map and past blog posts to work out where the hell I was, where I'd been, and where I'm going.

The adventure continues!

I'm going to be hanging out in my in-game channel when I'm online: Black's Travels

It would be great if you could join me there and say hi.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Am I alive?

Something's moving. I can feel it stirring.

What's going on?

My blood is moving. It's like... I'm coming back to life or something.

Darkness. That's all I can see.

Is there a light? Surely there's gotta be a light.

Where am I? Wait... Who am I?

Oh... I remember. Black Claw. That's what they called me.

What happened? Why can't I see?

Friday, January 06, 2012

So long, and thanks for all the fish

For quite a few years now I've been playing Eve. I think I'm coming up on my 6th anniversary... I've been actively blogging for pretty much all that time - excluding a few months where I played WoW, and then another few months when I was playing LOTRO... oh, and just recently while playing Skyrim....

Anyway, the recent break with Skyrim was a symptom of something else that's going on in my life. I'm 'untethering' from a lot of things that are not providing me with any value or helping me grow personally and professionally. This included 'stuff' and 'activities'. I was getting rid of all the crap in the garage that I hadn't looked at in years. I was throwing out old books that were no longer relevant since I have Kindle on the iPad. I was disconnecting from people that were frustrating me. I was avoiding those activities that were just tedious, and slowly disconnecting from them too.

One day after Xmas I woke up and realised that Eve Online was tedious. I was playing it because I'd 'always been playing it'. It was part of my life in a 'coming home from work and relaxing in front of Eve' kind of way. You know, like most people relax with TV or a newspaper. Except it was still 'work'. I still had to 'do stuff'. I realised it was no longer enjoyable or bringing me value.

On top of this change for me was the dissatisfaction with how CCP managed their staff. Once the people that I valued were fired, my free 'media accounts' were reverted to paid accounts and I had to start paying for my time again, even though I had fan sites that (once) allowed me free access. I contacted CCP and they apologised for the error, advising this 'is now fixed'. Except it wasn't. They were polite and helpful when I followed it up, saying it was fixed. Except it still wasn't. Then they didn't reply to my queries, and a petition I raised about it was closed without resolution. And I'm still now paying for accounts that are supposed to be free because I run fan sites.

So I'm over it. Not just because of that, but because it's just another element of changes in the priorities within my life.

Eve Bloggers is shutting down

Also, as a result of these changes, and the newfound lack of appreciation from CCP, I'm closing the Eve Bloggers Portal. That's right, www.evebloggers.com is shutting down.

The domain fees are due for renewal at the beginning of February, and I'm not going to renew it. As the most extensive listing of all of Eve's blogs for the past 3 years, it's always been the most under-appreciated and ignored. And I'm over that too.

What's happening with Black Claw?

I'll continue Black Claw's account and have the character as my occasional 'I might log in and have another few jumps around the galaxy this month' type of game, continuing to record my progress in this blog.

I have no illusions that this is a long-term certainty. I might just give it all up completely over the next few months.

It's been fun. :)

Monday, November 28, 2011

I've been to Skyrim

If you're wondering where I've been, I've been to Skyrim. It's a fictional land in a single-player computer roleplaying game. Very enjoyable. So enjoyable, in fact, that I've decided I need to get a Windows PC that I'll design and build specifically to play the game. And to operate as a media centre for my TV. Which means I'll be using the 46" LCD TV as my monitor... At least the PC will be less than AU$1,000.

I've been playing Skyrim on a virtual desktop running Windows 7 on my 27" iMac with 8Gb of RAM (4Mb dedicated to the virtual desktop). It runs fast enough and smooth enough (it's the same virtual desktop I play Eve with - would you believe the Windows client runs faster and more trouble-free in a virtual desktop on a Mac than the Mac client does natively? Crazy but true!), but I want the pretty graphics that a dedicated PC will allow. And I need a good, dedicated media centre to play downloaded movies, etc. So the decision was easy.

However, I've decided that until the PC is built, I'll stop playing Skyrim and return to my travels around New Eden, and then try to balance Eve and Skyrim so that neither suffers.

I expect that it might take a while before I actually get tired of Skyrim. The game is so large, with so many different possibilities within it, that you can play on and on, or repeatedly, and still experience new and exciting things. The graphics are amazing, even down low-ish on a virtual desktop. So amazing, that I think I might even blog as my Skyrim character and post 'photos' (screenshots) of my adventures around Skyrim.

But anyway, my Eve travels will continue, don't worry about that. :)

Please DONATE to help me travel around New Eden

Sunday, November 27, 2011

EON Magazine sale - 50% off

I receive EON Magazine for free, in exchange for promoting them on this blog and on evebloggers.com. Please enjoy their latest promotion:

Our friends at EON have a Massive 50% off Blowout Sale to celebrate Thanksgiving & Black Friday

They've cut the price of EVERYTHING!

So you can buy an EON subscription at HALF PRICE, an EVE Survival Pack at HALF PRICE or a full Poster Bundle at HALF PRICE. You can even buy the complete collection of every copy of EON ever produced for HALF PRICE (they were already at half price for the bundle deal, so that makes them all a gargantuan 75% off if you buy the Complete Collection). Yep, that's right - everything from EON is half price. They've never done a deal this good before...

You must apply Coupon Code EONBF50 at checkout to get the discount. Oh, and the deal won't last long apparently, so you'd best be quick if you want to bag a bargain.

Click here to go straight to the store - http://store.eveonline.com/EON-Magazine-C7.aspx

Friday, November 11, 2011

Around New Eden - Day 18

REGION: GREAT WILDLANDS

I did a little bit of ratting before heading back to SL-YBS, ratting along the way. My #tweetfleet friend, @EVE_Rhavas, suggested I go back there and check out planet 1 for one of the best views in the galaxy. So I thought I better do what he suggested, since that's the kind of thing I'm travelling around and documenting!

SL-YBS

Silly me! I completely forgot that this system was one of the 'shattered planets' that I talked about here. How exciting! So naturally I took a few photos...

Very cool...

L1S-G1

So after doing a bit of ratting around some asteroid belts, I headed back to L1S-G1 to do some more ratting before moving on to further uncharted areas.

Interestingly, I found this fighter ship or frigate, of a design that I'd never seen before. Have any of you seen this? Can you tell me something about it?

OPI4-E

For some reason I had a safe spot in this system. I thought I'd never been here before, but after checking the map I saw it was only 3 jumps from Molden Heath, my old stomping grounds from some time ago. I realised that I must have been down this way sometime while wandering around being a pirate. Gee, that would have been maybe 3 or 4 years ago. Ah, memories....

What a pretty photo this is.

9SNK-O

Bored by this system. Can you tell by the photo.

B-VIP9

I'd received a tip from Kaisi13 to watch out for this system, because there were lots of warp bubbles and gate camps. I'm not afraid of such things, but I was thankful for the tip so I could be careful, but I was hoping to take photos of some bubbles or camps. When I got here, however, it was completely empty of people and bubbles. So I took a photo of the gate to Egbinger instead.

I thought about jumping into Molden Heath, but changed my mind - I'll be in there soon enough as I travel through the regions. So I headed back along my route to continue on.

6WT-BE

Another boring system, but I quite enjoyed how this gate looked against the backdrop of the nearby planet...

SL-YBS

I know I've been here twice before now, but I decided to have another look at the shattered planet, and wow! I found something that I hadn't seen mentioned before.

The debris around the planet seemed to have actually been orbiting it. This stuff was moving! While I was there watching, the debris was slowly moving away from me. I tried MWD'ing after it, but it was actually faster than my measly ~1000m/s. I decided to take a few photos from the same angle to show how they moved over a reasonably short period of time.

I decloaked for the photos only when I was alone in the system, and stayed cloaked while waiting for the debris to move on.

I'm a bit amazed that I've been to this system three times now and found something awesome each time.

I looked for some battleship rats to kill, but couldn't find any by themselves - if there were any in this system, they all flew in pairs. I didn't want to risk doing anything stupid, so I went to bed instead.

It's been quite an interesting day. See you next time!

Please DONATE to help me travel around New Eden

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Around New Eden - Day 17

REGION: GREAT WILDLANDS

E02-IK

I woke up in the station and saw that there were about a dozen people in local, but with only about 4 in the station with me, so after waiting about 10 minutes I decided to undock and make a station exit bookmark. Luckily there wasn't anyone outside, so I quickly activated the MWD and got out of range of the station and activated the cloak, and then meandered out to 200km so I could make a station exit bookmark.

This is me making a bookmark...

M-MD3B

I did the same thing here as well. With another dozen people in local, I went to a station, waited until I saw someone undock so I could make sure where the exit was, and then made a bookmark before docking and swapping out my warp core stabilisers for some DPS mods. This was the last system with a station before I went into the badlands up north, where there wouldn't be any stations for light years around.

Hopefully that would mean it would be quiet with no one around, allowing me to get some decent ratting in before I moved on.

This is me, cloaked, in orbit around a planet before I head on to the next system.

NIH-02

I entered this system and found myself alone - a good sign! But spinning slowly in space was poor zz bomba's corpse...

Now, considering that my attempts to return corpses to their owners in the past were met with rejection, I left it where it was, a forlorn and temporary monument to a recent battle that zz bomba had unfortunately lost.

Since it was empty, I warped to an asteroid belt to see what I could see, and found a rat battlecruiser and battleship sitting there. I was about to move towards them and engage, when someone entered the system. Grrr! I cloaked and warped to my tactical bookmark and saw it was a Hurricane pilot, sitting there off the gate.

I waited until he warped off and left the system, and then I warped back to the asteroid belt to finish it. Unfortunately, that same pilot came back and forth through this system a couple of times, meaning that I was only able to destroy the battlecruiser before I got skittish and moved on to a system that had less traffic. At least the battlecruiser would help improve my security status, even if it was just a little bit.

As I go, I'll keep a record of my sec status, so I can keep track of improvements. At this stage, it's -9.27.

SL-YBS

So I entered this system and was able to engage this battleship rat and two of his rat Dramiel escorts. The drones made short work of them while I focused on the battleship, and then they joined in on the battleship onslaught.

The damn thing kept on getting away from me, so I had to pulse the MWD every now and again to keep it in range of my weapons, but eventually I succeeded. Yay! My first battleship destroyed in the Proteus.

The crew had to have a party, of course.

When everyone settled down again and the alcohol had been cleaned up, I realised there was a 'Natural Phenomenon' showing on the overview. Naturally I warped to it and had a look.

"The depths of space are home to all kinds of cosmic anomalies, from concentrations of electromagnetic disturbance to dense clouds of rare gas. These types of areas are valued for the scientific knowledge they could impart. Though they are often dangerous, these phenomena are also the subject of frequent research expeditions."

Upon arriving, there was some kind of 'coral rock formation' surrounded by a gas cloud and some shattered asteroids that were exposing their internal crystal formations. Quite pretty...

The crew were itching to be moving on. They just didn't see the beauty in front of them. I'll have to work on that.

Speaking of the crew, I'll talk about them in another post coming soon.

UNJ-GX

I was making a bookmark in here when someone came in and activated a cyno field. I warped to it and watched, waiting to see what might turn up. I sat there for close to 10 minutes but nothing came through. Maybe they changed their mind?

Eventually the cyno dropped, the guy in the Thrasher warped off, and I was left there alone.

I moved on.

L1S-G1

In this out-of-the-way system was another pilot, and an Abandoned Ship Wreck.

"After thousands of years among the stars, the space lanes of New Eden have become littered with countless abandoned ships. The twisted and gnarled hulls of these empty vessels float silently, offering up no explanation as to their lonely fate."

It seemed the abandoned ship wrecks were all the same - an ancient shuttle smashed up against an asteroid like a ship against a reef.

I'd seen it before, so I didn't hang around to take any more photos.

I decided to sign off for the night. I was happy that my security status was at -9.21. I'll do some more soon. Maybe for long enough to get it down to -8....

See you next time!

Please DONATE to help me travel around New Eden

All the Eve Online Pages on Google+

This is a definitive list of all the current Eve Online pages on Google+.

Last updated: 29 April 2012

1. If you have added a new page to Google+, or want to let me know of a new page, please add a link to it in the comments section below and I will add it to this list.

2. Please link to this list on your Google+ pages, as well as any blogs you might have. Share the love!

With a profile page (active?):

Inactive or without a profile page:

I will also regularly review this for activity and delete those that are inactive after a period of six months.