Six

My view as I sat down to start this blog entry last night –

The new monitors arrived early.  I am now running six screens, three 4K and 3 FHD.  Windows and some applications do not handle mixed high resolution displays all that well, so it takes a bit of tweaking to get things to work nicely.

If it is of interest to anyone, I set the 4K screens with 125% scaling, use the NVIDIA Control Panel to align them, DisplayFusion to manage having different backgrounds on some of the screens, Desksoft’s WindowManager to automatically move and resize certain applications, and BarRaider’s Stream Deck Window Mover to manually move and resize certain applications.

I also updated the TV in my study – from the old 32” FHD to a 43” 4K, along with an upgrade to 4K Blu-Ray and a small but effective Bose Soundbar.  The result was better than expected.  I have enjoyed watching the last couple Cricket Tests on it.

A substantial amount of research and patience went these upgrades – comparing, measuring, selecting stands, watching prices, and waiting for sales.  Strangely I have COVID to thank for the upgrades, and the substantial savings made last year on expenses like petrol, tolls, entertainment, and travel.

To juxtapose that story, my mother just came out of the hospital today.  She got a fever, but her doctor refused to see her until she had a COVID test.  By the time that was done and came back negative a few days later her infection had turned into Sepsis.  I do not make light of the impact COVID has.

The new screen setup is a very pleasant and productive place to sit, particularly for running multiple EVE clients.

I noticed this difference between my Omega Accounts:

And the Alpha Account I keep:

It looks like you cannot use a client theme with an Alpha Account.  I would have thought making that limitation would have taken more effort than it was worth.

I really do not have anything to report regards EVE.  I am still logging in most days, but not for long and I am not doing anything of note.  It lets me occasionally have some mindless downtime, and sometimes that is all it needs to do.

Hiatus

I am still not sure what the final impact is for systems that fall to the Triglavians. When I last looked, the only systems which have fallen either bordered Low Sec or were dead end systems. I suspect the fear of major trade routes being broken were unwarranted. (Not that I would take what I have said as gospel – I have not been paying close attention.)

I am still not doing much in game. Mostly I just log into my character selection screens, do the daily bonus/es, then log out without entering the hanger.

I have had a look at the new Vorton Projector weaponry.

 

The new EDENCOM ship hull prices were OK, but many of the skillbooks were unavailable and modules and especially ammo were ridiculously expensive. I set up a Skybreaker frigate – but found it relatively pointless solo. A Stormbringer cruiser might have been more interesting, but I was literally unable to fit one yet.

I still have a bunch of stuff to sell off, but I lost interest in playing the market games.  I will get back to it at some point.

CCP have released a training boost bundle for sale.

https://secure.eveonline.com/packs/details/?pack=training-boost-bundle

I mention it as in the not so distant past this would have been something players would have been up in arms over. A pay to win sellout that would have filled the forums with spite and anger. I glanced around for some drama and tears, but mostly I just saw people pointing out it was overpriced.

Currently I am getting my gaming fix by playing Minecraft.

..

Outside of the game, we have just entered a second COVID19 lockdown where I live in Australia. Do not be concerned – Australia has a heavy suppression, maybe eradication approach to COVID19. While I accept the reasoning behind this disappointing turn of events, I have found myself frustrated by the inability of most Australians to do math.

In Australia, our COVID19 testing coverage has been like the US. About 11.6% of the population has been covered, compared to 12.3% in the US.

As of today, 0.037% of people tested here have come back positive. In the US it is 1%. You are 27 times more likely to have a positive COVID19 result in America than you are in Australia.

Because the US has around 13 times the population of Australia, it means for each person testing positive for COVID19 here, there have been 350 positive cases in the US.

In the US around 413 people per million have died from COVID19. In Australia it is 4 people per million.

It might seem like it – but I am not actually judging who has done it better or worse. History will decide that, and it will not just be about death rates. What I am doing is putting context around our situation.

Australia is isolating itself from the world, Australian States are isolating from each other, and COVID19 hotspots are isolated even further. The country is waiting on the assumption a workable vaccine will at some point become available.

So – what was the point of the math and discussions on context? In Australia there is widespread fear, panic, and anger. People are quick to turn on each other and cast aside their morals. I cannot fathom if you stop and think for yourself, why you would behave in that way.

Where I live, around 1 in 30,000 are known to have active COVID19. If I limit going out, pay attention to social distancing and hygiene, my risk of exposure is tiny. This is not a complaint about the most recent lock down – the situation in the US shows what can happen if the virus gets a foothold in a population. But it is not something I need to currently be bat-shit scared about.

So far this year in Australia 9,359 people have been diagnosed with COVID19, and 106 have died. Over 400 people have died on the roads, 30,000 people have attempted suicide, more than 1,500 committed suicide, and some 75,000 people would have been diagnosed with Cancer (if we had not all stopped going to the doctors).

(It is funny, but my least liked subject at Uni – Data Analytics, was probably the most useful in real life.)

Now I should be happy with the lock down in the sense it should mean more gaming.  Unfortunately it has had the opposite effect.  Trying to keep my wife and two children from killing each other while maintaining some sort of order and neatness has been more than a full time job.

 

 

 

Not again

This weekend CCP had yet another one of those Log in for Skill Point Giveaways. It went for just 3 days, but Alpha Pilots could earn 75,000 skill points, and Omega Pilots 250,000. These giveaways have been so frequent that they have lost their allure. I think I heard there is another Undock for Skill Point event soon.

I last used all my Unallocated Skill Points on my Main Pilot Elmis back in August last year. In the 5 months since that pool has returned to 2.3M Skill Points. All those points were given to me by CCP for minimal effort on my behalf. I could have gained even more Points, but I lost interest and did not maximise the rewards for the Undock events.

Elmis gains 150,000 skill points for each Large Skill Injector he uses. It would take the ingestion of 15+ injectors to gain the equivalent Skill Points that CCP has gifted. That would have cost 12+B ISK.

My main Alt has 3.2M Unallocated Skill Points. These would have accumulated through CCP Gifts since January last year – 12 months. He gains 300,000 skill points per Large Injector. His Pool is worth 10+ injectors, a value of 8+B ISK.

My Alpha Alt Pilot has 800K Unallocated Skill Points. I did not bother logging her in every day and rarely undocked. She also purchased a number of Skill ranks using the Pool. That meant with a little more effort she could have had well over 1M Unallocated Skill Points over the last year. She gains 400,000 skill points per Large Injector. The remaining unallocated points are worth 2 injectors, or 1.6B ISK in value.

If you add the various training accelerators also gifted by CCP in the last year, you are talking about 10’s of Billions of ISK in skill point value given across my three accounts.

Reading back on my related posts over the last year, I can see from my tone that I don’t want to be complaining about getting free stuff, but these giveaways have me worried. They cheapened one of the more important aspects of EVE, skill point progression, and makes CCP seem desperate and lacking in new ideas.

…

I purchased some PLEX on the weekend and donated them to the PLEX FOR GOOD charity drive. This time the donations are headed towards Australia to help with the Bushfire recovery. That was the first proper direct donation I’ve made for that cause. Up until now its been coin and tip donations and buying at sausage sizzles and what not.

The bushfire related donations have been a bit of a quandary for me.

Some have been sent to the services, often made up by large numbers of volunteers, who are fighting the fires. This has been for equipment and supplies. That is admirable, but part of the reason they have equipment issues is that the Governments had cut funding over the years. Maybe more effort should have been focused on ensuring the Governments funded them appropriately in the first place and will do so moving forward. We shouldn’t have a need to crowdfund our country fire-fighting capacity in the middle of fighting bushfires.

Lots of money have gone to Wildlife related services. Also, admirable – except many of these organisations are or directly support very militant left-wing ideology, activists and politicians. I know a couple whose stated goals is for everyone to become vegan and for all animals to have the same rights as humans. One wants Farmers charged with murder if they killed a cow for example. I am being completely serious. There are plenty of on the ground wildlife sanctuaries and hospitals burnt out or struggling to cope, doing a great job, whose city-based head offices have provided very little support from the millions in donations they are receiving.

Similarly, there are well known large charitable organisations reaping in Millions in donations who point towards the fine print on their web pages about how much they keep for administrative purposes, and how they were thinking of keeping some of the funding in their bank accounts for future needs.

Next you have some victims of the fires complaining that they are not getting the money they feel they are entitled too. There were a series of people reported on in the media who lost everything saying this. They lived in bush fire prone areas but had no insurance. They were angry they would probably not get enough money to rebuild and refurnish. Maybe I am just too harsh of mind, as lots of people subsequently donated money and services directly to these people.

I try to focus on how lovely humanity can be in helping, and that most of the people being supported are deserving, but I am reminded daily in the news that there are lots of people and organisations in effect profiting from this catastrophe.

I am personally fine, as is my family. I could technically be impacted by Bushfire Ember attacks where I live, but the risk is very low. I have however lived in, gone to school around, and especially fished, hunted and holidayed in many of the areas impacted by fires.  I recognise small communities and townships in most of the emergency alerts sent out.  Plus of course there is no getting away from the at times horrendous smoke pollution. My Father, with asbestos damaged lungs and other health issues, has been confined indoors for much of the last couple months. It is a mind blogging area of bush and forest that has been burnt out, and it is still on going.

…

Those Value Pack’s CCP have been offering for years are about to be replaced, including that $5 for 1M Skill point thing. I wonder what the new ones will be like.  I expect more skins to be included.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q4mrom/last-call-for-current-value-pack-offers

CCP have offered those packs on sale once or twice a year, which can make them very good value.

…

Last of all on this unexpectedly long post – I replaced my gaming laptop yesterday. The MSI laptop I had was still able to run everything I needed it to comfortably, but it had a few issues.

One issue was that MSI has been very poor in providing any updated software, drivers or firmware. Basically, next to nothing was made available from a month or so after the laptop was released. I don’t know if that was just worse for my laptop, or if it is a common thing with MSI. In recent months this has meant I was not able to apply various important Window updates because of hardware incompatibility issues.

Another problem was an introduced hardware fault. Last year I was at a friend’s place for a Roleplaying night (a Shadowrun campaign). He unplugged my Laptop charger without asking and moved it to a new socket on a power board to make room for his oddly shaped tablet charger. He careless and with little attention managed to awkwardly wriggle my lead in a half connected / half not state, causing an electrical buzzing noise, a pop, and smoke to come out of my laptop. It turned out he had fried the soldered connection between the charging port and battery, meaning I have only been able to run off power since. He has been a friend for a couple decades and is a reasonable bloke – but he just shrugged and didn’t give the slightest shit. It was my problem. Just the sort of mindset I find more and more common.

It can be fixed but came with risk and a price. It wasn’t something I had the skill to do, so it ended up being better living with a working laptop plugged in, than one that might never start again. Through no fault of its own, the laptop has since irritated me.

The new laptop is one of the ASUS Republic of Gamer models. We will see how that goes.

Distractions

I was reading Wilhelm Arcturus’ post on his Games of the Decade and was triggered to go look at some of his recommendations.

https://tagn.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/my-games-of-the-decade-a-look-back-from-2019/

This led me to pulling out a plastic box of all my old favourite games that had stopped working years ago, but which I could not bring myself to throw away.

This led me to installing the Steam Client on my PC and logging into my old 2004 Steam Account.

This led me to spend $70.

With the Steam sales on there were a bunch of my old favourite games available for between $2.50 and $8.00. I picked up:

Total Annihilation
Star Wars Galactic Battleground
Blitzkrieg 1, 2 and 3

I also grabbed a couple newer titles:

Defense Grid – The Awakening
Factorio

The old games have held up well but were not quite playable. Whatever Steam has done to wrap them up to run on Modern PCs doesn’t quite handle multiple screens / mixed resolution / 4K / notifications all that well. I resorted to trying to run them on the Laptop I use for study and work, but then had some issues with sound. I’ll have to keep at them.

The tower defense game is fun, and I will get many hours of entertainment out of, but Factorio is going to be a very big distraction.

Nothing to report in EVE. I collected all the Christmas Gifts, including the final 500K SP on my two subscribed accounts. There was also an interesting Dev Blog post from Team Talos, outlining their changes since they came into being, and some of what is coming up in the future.  Worth a read.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q30yr2/seasons-greetings-from-team-talos

Philip Hue Review

For many years I have had a Bose 5.1 speaker system in my Study, connected via a Yamaha AV Receiver to my PC, PVR, DVD Player, PlayStation 3 and a wall mounted TV. It was part of my vision of the dream Study. Over time however it has got less and less use.

A few months ago, we upgraded to a 4K main TV and added a soundbar with sub. The results were better than expected, and it became apparent that I wouldn’t be watching movies in my Study anymore. Consequently, I ended up removing the speakers, Receiver, my PlayStation, and copious meters of cabling.

I was happy with having a less cluttered Study.

I regularly peruse the Battlestations Subreddit on Reddit, enjoying seeing how people configure their computer set ups.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlestations/

(If my wife knew she might prefer I looked at something more risqué. It would be cheaper.)

With newfound desk space, I thought I might try some of the room mood / RGB lighting that is popular on the subreddit. After investigations on function, price and availability of the various options, I settled on trying the Philips Hue “Smart lights”.

https://www.meethue.com/

I ended up with a Hue Bridge controller, two light bars, one coloured globe and a wireless dimmer switch.

The tldr summary is I found it easy enough to setup and surprisingly impactful in influencing the ambience in my study.

In more detail.

I thought the Philips Hue range was for the most part extraordinarily overpriced. I understand there needs to be a margin for the research and development that went into them, but the products felt much cheaper than their asking price, and I expect would cost only a tiny fraction of that to manufacture.

There were cheaper start-up kits, but these were focused on the American Market and use primarily screw in bulbs where in Australia bayonet sockets are far more common.

(They might have been shoplifted regularly, as in most shops they were not on the shelves and you had to ask for them at the counter.)

The various components connected quickly and reliably to the Bridge controller / hub and could be found and configured in the Smartphone app or the PC Sync Software.

Updates seems to be pushed regularly to the various components. This process often seems to freeze, but when you exit and come back into the application, the updates have usually been applied.

As I have found with most lighting related software, the configuration of the lights seemed a little more awkward than it needed to be. You add your lights and configure them to rooms and zones. You then had separate concepts of entertainment areas and scenes to configure, plus automation routines and timers available. It meant there were lots of ways you could use them – but at the cost of being somewhat unnecessarily complicated.

Even so, I thought the product line was more mature than I had been expecting.

I found it wasn’t a good idea to use the coloured bulb in the main light socket in my room. It was too easy to get out of sync with the other lights, particularly any time my wife walked into the study and thought it was too dark. I ended up purchasing a new lamp for my desk for that bulb.

The dimmer switch can be programmed with several scenes you can cycle through and was the much better way on a day to day basis to turn the system on and off than using your phone.

You could set up environment options – where the lights react to either music or video. Aside seemingly being a bit behind the action, it didn’t do much for me except get annoying.

I had an unexpected issue of note. Because the Light Bars angle cross-ways instead of straight down, they really show up dust! Things still look dusty almost immediately after diligently cleaning around them.

I must admit that I have enjoyed using them more than expected. I like having a few go-to ambient scenes to use. For example, I particularly like the red scene when I am playing EVE. It adds- an undefinable – something.

The system can also incorporate additional home automation systems and options, which is part of the reason I went down this path in the first place.

I would say – ignoring price – it has exceeded my expectations.

(Interestingly Bunnings have halved the price of lots of the range – after I had finished my purchases. That is indicative of there being huge mark ups.)

There is a little bit of EVE stuff coming – but it is waiting for the conclusion of things in game before I speak about it.

Warm Wishes

I don’t tend to remark on the major holidays here on this blog.  I don’t know why.

I found Christmas a magical time when I was growing up.  My parents did not have a lot of spare money, so the only time you got new things was on your birthday and at Christmas.  Mum would always give us a stocking, half filled with the stationary for the next years schooling, we would get a couple presents, and we would have a big roast meal with pudding and extra sweets on the table.

I’ve tried to re-create some of that special feeling for my kids – but I don’t think I’ve managed to.  They have and are given so much stuff that really, presents don’t have anywhere near as much meaning, and they are constantly going out for tea or to parties, so a Christmas meal is just one more.  Still – we have adjusted and adapted over the years into our own routine to try and get it right.

My daughter is 9 and rather shrewd, and had remarked this year on the school playground chatter about what really goes on at Christmas.  You can only shrug and remark that Santa only comes to those who believe.  She decided to ignore the other kids this year and let herself get excited, but it may have been the last opportunity for me to have succeeded in creating a similar magical time for her.

This is our Tree on Christmas EVE as my wife watched the Carols with the kids.  It is more than 20 years old and still looks a treat.  It is a reminder that sometimes spending a bit more money for quality can save you in the long run.

My wife volunteered herself and our Son (13) and Daughter to help out at their church for their Christmas Lunch.  She hoped to remind them Christmas wasn’t just all about presents.  They helped usher and feed 180 odd people who were suffering hard times or finding themselves alone.  I don’t involve myself with church, so I had some quiet time and got to play EVE and blog about it on Christmas Day.

Afterwards the four of us sat down together to eat an early Christmas Tea.  Instead of the roast, we have cold meats and salads, followed by pudding.  It is more in line with the temperatures and what the kids prefer.

Temperature plays a big part in Christmas here.  Today it got to 39.8 degrees Celsius.  We were meant to be visiting my parents – but for days they have had and will continue to have similar temperatures, and they don’t have air-conditioning in the rooms we are meant to sleep in.  We will have to wait for the weather to turn.  My wife and I combat the heat as best we can – such as tonight we had milkshakes.  (We’ll ignore the fact the house is air-conditioned and quite comfortable.)

In whatever way and conditions you go through this festive time of year, I hope you manage to find your own magic.

Warmest wishes,

EveHermit

A new record maybe

(Version 2 of this post)

It has been over five weeks since I had posted – possibly an inauspicious new record. I hadn’t noticed.

I’m still logging into EVE once a week or so but doing little other than playing the skin collecting game. I have on several occasions really wanted – needed – to be able to do some mindless mining. The reality is however you need to pay attention when mining now, and that defeats the purpose of using it to relax.

I noticed that someone has picked up the EVEMon project and moved it off the old API. I haven’t tried it – but it is available here if anyone wants to give it a go:

(Edit.. changed link from current version on GitHub to the EVE Forum post that gets updated to the latest version as it is released:)

https://forums.eveonline.com/t/evemon-4-0-7-beta-esi-edition/75953

I am sporadically playing World of Warships. I tend to play a ship until I win its first battle of the day – which gives an XP bonus, then move onto the next ship. A consequence of that is I tend to end up with a large collection of ship lines all at the same Tier. At the moment that tier is VIII. I have been stuck at this point for a very long time – generally only around half way to Tier IX. To make matters worse – I find myself in Tier X matches more often than not, and even when I play at my very best, I have very little impact on the finally result.

I am only getting to Dungeon and Dragon’s Online once a month or less. I am meant to have Wednesday Night off to play, but my wife scheduled an activity for my Daughter on that evening.

Most of my gaming now is a session or two a day of Hay Day and SimCity on the iPad.

The main reason for this lack of free time is that I spend the vast majority of my days and evenings as a taxi service for my two kids.

EVE – even if I could find something new and interesting to do – just can’t get a look in.

Hunting Partner

My father has given up on Duck Hunting and has not been out the last couple seasons. While his hunting retirement relates to health issues, it occurred without an announcement. I had to piece things together from his rude disinterest and disparaging comments when I discussed going hunting with him.

It has had an impact on our relationship. My father is a selfish cantankerous man with anxiety issues and a penchant for insular views that he rudely pushes. He has greatly influenced the person I am today – through a long list of actions and behaviours of his that I’ve sworn never to mimic. Hunting was the way we stayed connected. I put up with him more than I might naturally be inclined, and he wasn’t quite as abrasive around me. Without hunting I am sure I would have had an estranged relationship with him from my teenage years.

I have been hurt by the change in him – but as I think I might have already mentioned – someone did offer the explanation that he might be grieving over the loss of his hunting. Others suggest his increase hostility and more erratic behaviour might be the beginnings of dementia.

Now, after 35 odd years of almost always hunting with my father, I am having to hunt on my own.

Hunting on your own is a lot harder. Two people can scout more locations, keep each other motivated, keep each other alert on the long drives, share resources, work together in the field, discuss the decisions that must be made, and see the highs and lows and be part of each other’s stories. Two people is also a lot safer.

Hunting solo you need to be better prepared, more aware of your limitations, keep yourself motivated, and understand those special moments – a brilliant Sunrise, and beautiful double taken over decoys, won’t ever be truly shared.

…

Yes, there is an obvious EVE analogy in there. I’m clearing out some recent half-finished posts from my blog notes that I figure I won’t ever finish, but there seemed enough of this one to post anyway.

Turning ugly

This WordPress site was created back in January 2011. In August 2012 I spent $60 to remove ads and allow some custom changes to the theme for 12 months. I spent the same in 2013 and 2014. In 2015 the cost went up to $78 a year to achieve the same thing. I paid that, then again in 2016 and 2017. This year WordPress has moved to site plans. To remove ads and keep the same customisation choices will now cost $120.

I can’t justify spending that much for my own vanity – just to have things looking a little neater.

I’ll see what I can do – but if you are one of the few regular visitors here, I apologise that things are likely to shortly turn ugly.

My internet access woes continue. It has been two weeks today. I received a FTTC Network Connection Device for the house. It is meant to connect over my old Copper phone line to and power a FTTdp device in the phone pit down the street. The connection behind the FTTdp is Fibre. Unfortunately, the NCD hasn’t been able to establish an initial connection. Someone is scheduled to come and look at the issue today. Meanwhile we still have no phone, and unreliable and very slow Internet.

I did risk undocking the other day and managed to get to Jita. Hazard a guess as to what I was doing? Yes, that’s right – picking up a few ship skins.

Preparation

A few weeks ago, I went duck hunting. It was a 12-hour effort to pack, drive, hunt, drive and unpack. I went mid-week – which is not ideal if you want other hunters to be around to push up a few birds. I went out at the wrong time of day – starting around lunch when birds are not likely to be moving and coming back in before sunset, where there is a window of opportunity of catching birds moving to roost. I went out in the wrong weather – a clear windless day, which reduces the chances of birds moving. Last of all I just walked the relatively open swamp I was hunting – out in the open with minimal chance of success. I had everything stacked against me – and was rewarded with an empty bag.

As I wearily got back to my car the Warden of the private hunting property I was on drove by and tactfully pointed out I was doing it all wrong. I agreed – but said I had a very small window of opportunity to get out of the city, and a bad hunt was better than no hunt at all. He remarked that I might have had more luck if I hadn’t come in so early. I agreed – but said I had to be home to take one of my children to an activity. I then said what I was really doing was scouting for a future hunt, watching the flight paths the birds took, working out where I would setup. I recounted what I had observed, and he was able to confirm what I had thought and gave additional information about where other hunters often went, adjacent wetlands that birds travelled between, and the different behaviour of some of the common species on the swamp.

A couple days ago, I went duck hunting. It was a 12-hour effort to pack, drive, hunt, drive and unpack. I had planned to go earlier but the weather was too calm, so I delayed the trip. This delay also increased the chance other hunters would be about. I was on the road at 3:30am to ensure I arrived and was setup well before sunset. Instead of finding some random spot, I waded straight to the location I wanted to hunt in the dark, under the intersection of two flight paths I had earlier observed. I put out a small set of decoys. At this point in the season birds were weary of landing in anything but larger decoy spreads, so this small grouping was more about confidence and explaining my calls. As the sun rose the wind picked up noticeably and other hunters started to shoot. In very tricky conditions I had an enjoyable and successful hunt and came home with a good feed.

When you hunt solo like I have been the last couple of years you can sometimes stumble into a very successful hunt by chance, but mostly, it requires a lot of preparation and effort to have some semblance of success.

This playing EVE analogy was brought to you by the wild duck stew I will be eating tonight.

Your own way

“They found old 99 knocking on the front door, trying to get back into Atmore..”

Before the age of around 12, music did not really play much of a part in my upbringing. While my father had a strong preference for us kids to spend our days outside, I think the dearth of music related more to my parent’s lack of spare money. It wasn’t really until the first year of high school that popular music hit my radar. It was around the same time I became a lot more aware of the concept of conforming to the norm and trying to fit in.

My early exposure to music came from commercial radio, what other kids listened to during lunch at school, and of course the now iconic Australian music TV show, Rage. I was destined to have very mainstream tastes until my Mum pulled out a very old record player and let me listen to her collection of LPs. It turned out Music had been a big part of her life growing up, especially when she was working and single.

I listened to the likes of The Carpenters, John Denver, Kenny Rodgers, Dr Hook, Elvis, ABBA, The Beatles, Neil Diamond – music that at the time was very uncool. I consumed their full albums, and in amongst a lot of stuff I didn’t think much of, I got an appreciation of what a truly classic song can be, found B side gems, and realised I was going to miss out on a whole lot of good music if I just followed what everyone else listened to. It was my first – easily hid – move to being an individual.

I’m not talking about being an individual by rebelling against conformity. That just ends up being a sort of conformism in its self. I’m talking about making choices and decisions on what you like truly for yourself – even if that is what everyone else likes, or if it is as obscure as all hell.

I am proud of my digital music collection. It currently has a bit over 4,000 songs in it, carefully gathered over the last 20 odd years. It is made up of only songs I love and can listen to over and over again – usually just a couple from each album. It is a very eclectic mix divided across 13 genres, current to more than 90 years old, from very popular to completely uncool. It doesn’t matter what I click on – I know I will enjoy listening to it. It wouldn’t be there otherwise. It is more than just a source of entertainment, but a partial reflection of what makes me, me.

On the weekend, I spent half a day searching for music on YouTube. One of the Yachting videos I was watching used Christopher Cross’s award-winning song, Sailing, as part of its background music. I had forgotten just how brilliant that song was, so I went off to find the best version I could to add to my music library. YouTube suggestions lead me further down the path of classics from the 70 and 80, by artists including Lionel Richie, Billy Ocean, Roger Hodgson, David Gilmour, and in the end, Dr Hook.

One of the B sides I loved in my youth was by Dr Hook. It talked about the stories a boy and his brother heard from their prison guard grandfather. The final stanza or two was about one prisoner who was transferred to a different jail, broke out, and was found knocking on the door of their old Jail asking to be let back in. It had always struck a chord with me, and I had looked for the song a number of times over the years without luck. (I couldn’t remember enough details to identify it). It was also not on the various Best of Compilations I had purchased, hoping to find it that way.

At the end of my music hunting on the weekend I stumbled across it. It was called Atmore – but I think it is actually meant to be called 99 and me.

If you want to know why I play EVE the way I do – my own way – this song was one of the very first reasons.

This idle thought was brought to you by

The Nosy Gamer –

http://nosygamer.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/winter-is-coming.html
http://nosygamer.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/eve-online-lifeblood-surprise-expansion.html

And Wilhelm Arcturus

https://tagn.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/meaningful-progression-in-new-eden-pve/

Who got me thinking once again about how the game of EVE can be for the Solo Empire Player, and where it might be heading, if anywhere.

Opened Eyes

(One of the Non-EVE Posts I mentioned earlier.)

My son regularly tries to access Reddit. He is 12.

He has two iPads (one for school, one for home), an Xbox One S, and a Windows Gaming Desktop. On each I have set up restrictions around age, applications and store purchases, given him non-administration accounts, locked him into child friendly DNS, use Norton and Windows Family software and what not. I also keep a semi regular eye on what he is doing, reviewing his logs and history.

I must annoy him no end when I refuse to allow him to install lots of games his friends do – generally based on if they are too realistically gory or violent, or with concepts that are just too dark.

What I have done won’t protect him fully, but it helps, and it is why I’m aware of his interest in Reddit.

He loves gaming and wants to be a game developer after school. His wayward web searches have always been aboveboard, hunting down game and development tips and reviews and bug fixes. When blocked he knows just to move on and try the next link.

Some of my son’s peers have far more restricted access to the internet. One has an extremely technically minded father who has rewritten their modem’s firmware with all sorts of parental controls over access, times, length, sites visited and what not. A handful are simply not allowed to access the internet at all without their parent sitting with them.

The majority however – the vast, vast majority, have minimal or no restrictions or monitoring on their Internet use. In some cases, they have even circumvented the rudimentary controls that their non-technical parents had tried to implement, or have their older siblings do it for them.

I’m sure there are lots of healthy and useful areas in Reddit, but it really isn’t a platform I want my son to be familiar with at his age. The mind truly boggles at just what the majority of kids must be accessing on their devices, and from such a young age. My god that could mess up the minds of so many kids.

While I make an above average effort to protect my son, I don’t go to the extremes I am technically able to. I use it more as an opportunity to explain why some of the sites are blocked, and he uses it as a debating point on when or why he should have access. I hope the fact that it is something we openly communicate about helps him when he visits friends or sleeps over, and doesn’t have the same sorts of restrictions or protections in place.

Time Flies out the door

Aside a couple sessions working on T3 fittings, I’ve spent very little time playing EVE over the last few weeks. I have been reading about the current and approaching wars, but it all tends to come across as the same old story, just a different day. The style of propaganda probably doesn’t help much there. I think the August release is arriving today. I looked at the patch notes but not much stood out. There is a new event starting called Lucky Clash, a new Standings UI, and some updates to the map and scanning interfaces I’ll have to look at. One nice change is that scan results no longer clear on session changes.

I have been playing a bit of World of Warships, and try to fit in a couple battles each day. I actually feel like I am playing ok – not brilliantly, but regularly being in the top 3 or 4 experience earners in my team. This is not however reflected in my stats. My win rate for the last 3 months is sitting at around 40% from 215+ battles. I know it shouldn’t matter, but it does. It doesn’t make it a particularly satisfying game.

I am sailing a lot of Tier VII and VIII Cruisers at the moment, and often find myself bottom tier up against Tier IX and X ships. The Battleships just chew through you – the majority of your strikes just shatter, but every time one of their shells land, boom, 30 to 40% of your hits are gone. It only takes one or two salvos and you are out of the game. I say the same thing over and over – but it pretty much sums up my experience.

Recently I resorted to running a few Tier III/IV matches, up against a generally lower level of player. I am finding I am normally effective, sometimes enough to carry a match. It was a confidence boost I needed. The above battle was particularly memorable with the Murmansk captain well and truly outclassing everyone. I am pretty sure he came out with around half his hit points still. I did a lot of spotting and had many torpedo hits in that game – being untimely robbed of several kills. I cemented the win by soloing a Battleship parked in one of the Capture points, and then choosing not to engage the Murmansk and focus on ensuring a strategic point win. I have seen a lot of games lost by players focused just on drawing blood. It is an easily exploited tactic used in EVE.

I am still doing a DDO Session every week or so with friends. They use the one night I join them to do loot runs, primarily in EPIC level quests. They all have characters with many reincarnations and highly optimised set ups and equipment. They run these quests solo, and in groups they move mindlessly at breakneck speeds. There is no such thing as stopping to smell the roses. Often, I spend the entire session running to catch up, struggling to even just target opponents before they are swiftly killed by the others. It doesn’t tend to be fun. I had to put aside all but one of my highest-level characters as they just fell too far behind. I am down to just using my original Cleric now, and while I often pull my weight in the kill count, it is just a handful of crowd control tactics used over and over and over again. I just don’t have the time – or the inclination – to spend the months required to partially catch up. The reality is I should stop playing.

Speaking of stopping, I’ve pretty much stopped playing all my iPad games – with just the occasional glance at them with weeks or months between. Interesting how none of them have really been able to hold my interest like EVE had.

All told my gaming time has dropped by more than 50% over the last year. I should have a bit of spare time on my hands, maybe to tackle something new. Real life however energetically vacuums any of that time up. Mostly it sees me taxiing kids around to their silly number of activities and events. I am struggling a bit with the lack of escapist downtime.

I have written various more personal blog entries that I never posted. I might throw one or two of them up for the other middle-aged gamers with kids to nodded their heads at and mumble yep.

Proof Reading

While I make an effort with my writing here on the blog, I am not a natural wordsmith.

I have a very large document on my PC (290 pages / 72,510 words as of a minute ago) that contains all my blog notes.  There are post ideas, game play notes, rule change notes, and a very large number of draft posts, most of which won’t ever see the light of day.

I will often draft and redraft a post multiple times across a couple of days.  If it reaches a solid enough state I make an effort to finish it off.  When I am finally happy enough with it I will read it out aloud (or more often quietly under my breath) to try and pick up any last mistakes.  I will then cut and paste the entry into WordPress, where I will add any media, ensure the links are configured, and do one more read.  When happy with all that I will hit publish, then immediately read the uploaded post.  After, I remove the post from my document, and finally do one last check read when the post happens into my RSS Reader.

I don’t do this because I love to read what I write.  In part I take care because obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes distract from whatever message you are trying to convey.  In part it is because I take a bit of pride in my work.  In part it relates to those Anxieties I mentioned in my last post, not wanting to embarrass myself too much I guess.

Despite my care, I can not tell you how often I find obvious mistakes after I have published a post!  Tonight one of them was using the term peripherals instead of peripheries in the last post.

Some days however, I will see an obvious mistake after I have published a post and think – fuck it – the mistake stays.

I am not sure how many mistakes will be in this post – it went straight into WordPress.  To amuse myself I won’t correct any after I hit publish.

(Also, I won’t post any more today.. not sure what came over me.)

Maybe closer to the truth

I’ve sprained the posterior cruciate ligament in my knee. The damage was done while digging out Rose and Black Berry bushes on a steeply sloped garden last Friday. It is only mild, but warranted a visit to the doctor this morning.

While in the waiting room I read the news on my phone. At one point the harsh chorus of noise in the place got too distracting so I looked up. The ladies at the reception were talking, there was a TV on, a young child was watching an episode of Fireman Sam on an iPad at full volume, a bloke in his 20’s was watching what sounded like some comedy segment on his phone at noticeable volume, a grandfather was watching or listening to some Italian show on his phone, and the lady next to me was watching some Arabic video on her phone, tutting at the difficulty of hearing it, and repeatedly turning up the volume.

It was a perfect snapshot of the state of courtesy in our world.

I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as this 10 years ago. Maybe our youth with save us?

My kids attend Karate lessons once a week after school. The Instructors provide plenty of balls for them to play with between when school finishes and the class begins at 4pm. A bunch of kids have taken to kicking the balls against the walls immediately above where the parents sit. Invariably a miskicked ball will clock a parent or two in the face or knock a phone out of a hand each week. At best the child might give the parent an inane smile, but more often they just stare blankly then walk off. Two minutes later they are back doing it again.

The other night my wife and I heard strange rolling noises on our roof. I went outside and found two neighbouring kids under 12, standing in front of our house with a tennis racket. There were stones laying on the ground around the front of the house. When I asked them if they were hitting stones on to our roof I got blank stares and “no we didn’t” replies. I suggested stones seemed to be flying around by themselves, so they had better go home before they got hurt.

Every week I come across a dozen little moments like this. I’m starting to think EVE might not be quite the dystopian environment I thought it was. It might be a little too accurately representing the direction society is heading.

WoWS – Numbers

In a recent World of Warships battle I found myself on the wrong side of the numbers game. My spawn location dictated what capture point I moved towards in my battleship, and I was joined by only three others, a Destroyer, a Cruiser and another Battleship. The remaining eight ships in our fleet went to another capture point. As our enemy showed themselves it became apparent our squad of four would be up against eight, and our squad of eight would be up against four. This sort of split is common, as is my ability to be on the wrong side of the numbers. I resigned myself to an unpleasant early demise.

I didn’t pay much thought to the rest of the fleet, instead concentrating on my closest allies as we began a fairly hectic battle. Our enemy kept passing behind large islands which afforded us cover from their shells and meant our return fire tended to be more focused on those fewer ships in the open. When I took a breath and looked up from my gun sights, our squad had captured the point with the loss of the Destroyer and Cruiser, sunk six of the enemy, and forced the remaining two into retreat.

I had a momentary thought that the battle was in the bag when I stopped to wonder at the status bar across the top of the screen. Our second squad of eight was down to one, having only sunk one ship in return. Our three remaining ships – two badly damaged, were spread out. The enemies five ships were all together, steaming through the capture points, and focusing fire.

I still had my unpleasant demise, it just took longer than expected.

If not on the wrong side of the numbers, I keep finding my Tier VI and VII Cruisers are ending up bottom tier in most of their battles, up against Tier VIII and IX. In one battle my poor La Galissonniere landed 50 main shell hits with her 152mm guns, and did a grand total of just over 500 points damage. Yes – I changed targets, where I was aiming, and shell type, but everything shattered or bounced against the primarily Tier IX opponents. The ship was put out of its misery by just two shell strikes, taking off 90% of its hit points.

In another battle I was impressed to see half our fleet were in the same division and obviously knew each other. They then proceeded to yolo troll the chat channel, shoot each other down to 1/2 health, then suicided themselves into the enemy.

I am still intrigued by the game, but the reoccurring theme over and over is just how random the battles seem to work out. I am just as likely to come out of a battle with a win when I am ineffective and sunk within minutes, as I am to lose a battle when I play a (rare) faultless game and do everything right.  I assume it plays a little nicer if you are top tier.

Collecting

Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) Middle Earth Role Playing game (MERP) was the very first commercial desktop RPG I played. It was licensed through Tolkien Enterprises and was based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I absolutely loved the campaign and adventure modules, and found most to be of high quality.

That was back more than 30 years ago – in my early years of High School. I hadn’t yet started earning money and my Dad hated the idea of the game, so unfortunately I was never able to buy many of the books.

We moved on to ICE’s Rolemaster and Terry Amthor’s Shadow World / Loremaster environment – another setting I loved. I was able to purchase most of these books over time, but the MERP gear was rarely available.

By the time I had gone through Uni, started my career and set up house with my now wife, ICE was headed into bankruptcy, had lost its Tolkien license and there were no more new books released.

I did buy all the Forgotten Realm Setting books for D&D 3.0 and 3.5 versions when they came out. I’ve rarely played games using them, but loved the format and quality of the books. They are easily good enough just to read for reading sake, and sit on my bookcase in great condition. I still regretted however not being able to collect the MERP books.

For the last five odd years I have taken to looking for the MERP books on Ebay. I have now picked up some 40 of the 100 odd products released, most in as new condition. I’ve paid less than $10 for some, more than $60 for others, but mostly between $20 and $40. I’ve seen some books go for more than $100, although they often get relisted again soon after as the more successful auctions don’t seem to go through reliably. It amazes me that you can receive in the mail a book that is 30 odd years old, yet in as new condition.

In the last year or so however nothing new seems to be put up for auction – aside the same old over priced items relisted month after month after month. There are more options overseas, but I’ve tended to stick to the Australian site. I take the approach that if I get lucky, all good – if not, never mind.

Part of the Collection

My history of role playing games certainly plays a big part in why I’ve liked and spent so long in EVE.  My experience with collecting MERP books also probably explains why I have purchased most of the books and what not related to EVE when they are released.

Unhappy

When I first started out in the online world some 25 years ago, it was with dial up bulletin board systems. By today’s standards they were archaic – 2 or 3 dial up lines, 50 to 100 regular users, maybe some simple online games, file downloads, chat boards and news feeds, all wrapped up in an artistically challenged ASCII interface.

Smarter people than I saw them as the vanguard of something much bigger, what would become the ever evolving Internet. They could see the disruption across commercial, social, political and illegal spectrums. I on the other side saw them as a great way to improve on who I was – learn new things and ideas, become less prejudiced, refine and improve on my knowledge and opinions. It was a hermit’s version of travelling the world without having to leave your house.

The harbinger of my online writing – my blogging here, were long debates written on BBS forums. I shudder to think at the number of words I’ve written down over the years. New and age old topics, current events and history, anything and everything you could think of and more you couldn’t have. I would just as often play devil’s advocate on a topic – not to be argumentative, but to challenge my own views and writing skills.

I remember one particular person I spared with often over many topics. In hindsight he would have had Oppositional Defiant Disorder and / or have been on the Autism Spectrum. He was clearly unhinged. You could however – with appropriate dexterity, reason with him. In fact – you could reason with just about every person you debated with. It was ok to agree to disagree, you would still come away with a better understanding of the opposite view, it was ok to change your mind or adjust your view in part, or have your view cemented even stronger.

I became a better person for those years.

On Facebook I have a very diverse array of connections. Family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances, smart and not so smart, wealthy and poor, young and old, wise and foolish, politically far left and far right, from yoga masters, teachers, company directors, spinsters, bachelors, married and polyamorous, religious and atheist, gay, straight, various different skin colours and so on. My news feed should be a melting pot of different opinions and ideas and experiences which I should be able to learn and grow from. Except it is not.

Almost everyone surrounds themselves with people having similar views and go to town on supporting and reinforcing each other, while hating on anyone who disagrees. In fact, over the years they are getting more and more hostile at people who are not just changing their minds to agree with them. There is no focus on becoming a better or more knowledgeable person, instead it is sprint to becoming more insular.

Every couple of weeks, maybe nostalgic for the good old days, I will pick one out of the hundreds of blatantly toxic memes I see, and call the poster out on it. I’ll check the facts, or ask if they really think the message is right or appropriate. They will either attack me for questioning their opinion, or admit it isn’t important that it is factually wrong, because in the greater scheme it supports their view, which is correct.

I called out one particular meme on the weekend as blatantly rewriting a historical event to support a view – and asked why lie when there are more current and appropriate examples which would have done a much better job. One of the posters friends took umbrage to my opinion, and said because I was a White Male Christian I lived a life of privilege, so my opinion would be disregarded. I pointed out that I was not a Christian, and what did that colour of my skin and sex have to do with the validity of accepting demonstrable lies. Her response was that she was entitled to her opinion.  (Where as I was not.)

In context she was sexist, a racist complaining about racism, an anti-Christian complaining about Islamophobia. She was completely oblivious to the fact and irony that she was a closed minded bigot – exactly what she thought she was championing against. She had a number of people click like on her comments, supporting her.

This is now the norm. I rarely seem valuable debate any more online. You have people demanding tolerance with intolerance, education with ignorance, peace with hostility. Something seems seriously wrong with the society around me.

Over the last year there has been a real hostility across the EVE related media I follow – large echo chambers, vile attacks on others, a failure to listen to or consider other people’s views. It has died down a bit of late, but that seems more a result of less people bothering to offer up a dissenting opinion than any healing or resolution. I went to remark on it multiple times, but never finished a post.

I don’t really think it is an EVE problem. The western, democratic, capitalist society I am familiar with seems really unhappy within itself at the moment.

Corsair K95 RGB keyboard mini-review

I’ve used a Logitech 710+ keyboard for almost 3 years. It is mechanical with Cherry MX Brown switches and has 6 programmable keys along its left edge, which I used day to day for things such as closing windows or moving forward and backwards between browser tabs, and options such as select all for in EVE. It is probably the longest I have ever used a keyboard, but it was starting to show its age with a glitch here and there and a couple loose keys.

I recently looked around for a replacement, but Logitech did not offer anything exactly the same and neither did the myriad of other brands. I ended up getting a Corsair K95 RGB keyboard – also with Cheery MX Brown switches but with 18 programmable keys along its left edge.

The K95 is a very solid weighty keyboard which doesn’t flex or readily move in normal use. The lack of flex was its first negative. I use a 15 year old desk with a return. There is a very slight height variation between them – a fraction of a millimeter. I could straddle the Logitech keyboard across this, but the stiffer Corsair rocks slightly when used in the same position.

A little surprisingly, the Corsair keyboard fits within the same footprint of the Logitech, so does not use extra desk space. It fits 2 extra columns of keys into that footprint, which makes it feel a little squishy in comparison to the Logitech. I am still not used to this after two weeks, so my typing accuracy still suffers, and my hands are more likely to ache after a long day of typing.

I do like the design of how the keys sit on the back plate. It makes it much easier to clean away crumbs and what not. Having said that, the matt surface on the keys tends to show up your finger prints more.

The keys themselves are louder and feel heavier than the Logitech, but some of that might just be due to the age of the older keyboard.

While I did not need 18 programmable keys, I figured I would set them up like the old Razer Nostromo Game Pad I still used for Dungeon and Dragons Online. While it certainly works functionally, its smaller size means my hand tends to get cramped and sore after an hour of gaming.

I’ve used programmable keyboards for years now, and am very comfortable with the Logitech, Steelseries and Razor software. While the Corsair Gaming software covers everything I would expect, I have not found it as straight forward to use. It was very odd that there was not a default solid-lighting effect, you had to create one. While I like the option of saving the profiles to the keyboard, the way you do this should be more obvious.  The setup of Macros / Assignments wasn’t as nice.  There were also odd colour assignment issues. If I assigned a colour to the predefined key combinations – All keys, Arrow Keys, G-Keys or WASD, and then assigned the same colour to a single key – it would not appear the same. In the photo above you can see All keys were assigned red. The WASD keys were then assigned the same red colour individually – yet were clearly a different colour.

Now despite this all I don’t regret the purchase. (Probably lucky given its price.) There seemed to be few other options. I also know some of my issues relate to my age and I suspect a level of RSI in my hands from 20 years of excessive technology use. I know some might view the macro keys as a gimmick, but when you get the right combinations setup and the finger memory to use them automatically, they can really work well. I’ve used keys besides each other for such things as All Drones Engage, or All Drones Return to Bay. I might move forward and backwards through targets, or have two keys to resize the Probe Scan Size and Refresh the Probe Scan results. Some would also think the keyboard colour adjustment is even more of a gimmick. Some comes down to appearance – being able to match your mouse and keyboard colours for example, but if set up right, I find it useful to have different layouts for different games, with important keys highlighted in a different colour than the rest of the layout.

So all told, you can configure the keyboard in lots of useful ways, but it requires a bit more effort than it should.

No EVE for a week

I spent a long weekend being a tourist in Sydney with my wife – celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary.

This is us back on our wedding day.

I had more hair but less of me back then.

There was a lot about our wedding that set the foundation and direction of our marriage.

Aside small but appreciated contributions from our parents, we saved and paid for the wedding ourselves. We organised and agreed to everything together. We carefully picked just 60 odd guests we were really happy to have attend. We ignored trends and went for a more timeless look. Uncommonly amongst our friends we had a morning wedding with a lunch time reception, with a pianist and then string quartet playing in the background. While this was our preference, it also allowed us to use a beautiful old Reception Centre that might otherwise been out of our budget.

Despite spending less than half that of many of our friends, I believe we had one of the nicest weddings, and seemed to end up being one of the happiest with our day. We still look back at it very fondly – it was a fantastic start to our now 20 years of married life.

I remember at the time a couple family members quietly alluded to us being somewhat selfish by not following more of their suggestions. I guess the admirable trait of independence could look like that.