The Travels of Black Claw

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. :)

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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!

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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!

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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.

OUCH is on Google+

In line with my previous post about the Eve Bloggers portal and Black Claw's blog having their own pages on G+, I just did the same with OUCH.

OUCH on Google+

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Black Claw and Eve Bloggers on Google+

I've been enjoying Google+ (G+) ever since it came out, back in June I think. I've enjoyed the interaction with other Eve Online players and bloggers on there, sharing interesting articles and having interesting discussions.

But just yesterday G+ introduced Pages, allowing anyone to create Pages for their business, organisation or... well, whatever really! I immediately created a page for the Eve Bloggers Portal, and shared it out on G+ and Twitter. My intention with it was to use it to share interesting Eve-related content for players and Eve bloggers.

Eve Bloggers Page on Google+

Today I created a page for Black Claw and this blog, and decided that the Eve Bloggers Page would provide updates on new Eve blogs, while Black Claw's Page will share my blog posts and other Eve content.

Black Claw's Page on Google+

Add them to your circles if you're on Google+

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