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.

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?

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.  :)

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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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

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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