Friday Night Video - Malukah strikes again!

This lady goes for hearts, not knees. And her archery skills are pretty damn strong !!!

Enjoy!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - New Year Edition

To end the year, here's the band from my home town with a tune about the place that started it all for them. Groovy used to practice above a sinister-looking doughnut shop, where according to the song (and probably in reality... I've seen the place!) the doughnuts were fluorescent, and where the choice was wide but the taste was... disturbing!

On the gaming front, I've been on a massive Skyrim binge but I should log back into EVE a bit over the weekend. I still have to find a justification for my staying subscribed. In any case this blog will remain alive even if I decide to go, and even if I do I doubt it would be permanent. Something about EVE's uniqueness and whatnot.

To you all, I wish a very happy 2012 !!!

o7

Christmas Skyrim pictorial, redux

Blogger.com being a complete bitch when you want to add pictures, let's redo this post with the pics I wanted.

Redguard... Minmatar... it's all the same to me!

Having a pretty quiet Christmas time, I was able to put some time into Skyrim and had a blast. Now at level 25, this version of Cozmik can now craft "flawless" armor and weapons, improve enchanted items, and lay pretty powerful enchantments on stuff. And yet these skills pale in comparison to my heavy armor and one-handed weapons skills. See those two Elven blades on the rack? I made better version of 'em because those were only "exquisite". So now with my tough Orcish armor my dragon-fragging tactic is to wait for 'em to land, run up to their snouts, and double-swing like a madman. I come out of those encounters with about 80% health, while the dragon is very very dead. Here's a few more screenies for your viewing pleasure:

My new neighborhood, the city of Markarth

Welcome to my humble abode, Vlindrel Hall!

My home's enchantment lab. On the left are my retired Palpatine and Sauron swords

The master's bedroom. Hey what's in that case on the left?

Spawned it for decoration purposes only. When I DO get a pair of swords though.... >:)

Showing this dragon who the fuck is boss. As I said, I've had tougher challenges :)

Deep beneath Markarth, the coolest dungeon ever, Nchuand-Zel!

And finally, Coz doing what he does best, ruining someone's day. Helmet removed to look more badass :))

And that's it! Merry Christmas to all, party hard, fly harder, and fuk 'em up !!!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - Christmas 2011 Edition

Holy Night the way it's supposed to be sung. FYI, the guy doing the opera voice is the same as the one doing the Black Metal voice, my hometown's Marc Vaillancourt.

Have a heavy little Christmas ya'll !!!

o7

The Great White North

I know the current blog banter is about reviewing the Crucible expansion but I'm sorry, I don't feel like reviewing yet again a game out of which I like only a very small percentage; at least this small percentage is the most unique gaming experience in all of gaming, all genres mixed. But how about reviewing a game which I absolutely love and in which I've been spending a lot of time lately, bordering on too much! If you guessed "Skyrim" by the title of this post, well you guess right. 

Last week was when I finally got my copy of what is now known as 2011's Game of the Year, and as soon as I had past the opening bits I had seen hundreds of times on YouTube I was in for a treat. I knew all about being a prisoner, the decapitation, the dragon showing up and ultimately saving my ass, and getting safe by following one of the two main factions' soldiers (I followed the Stormcloak dude by the way). I didn't even feel too lost because I have played tons of Morrowind in the past, and even though I skipped Oblivion I felt right at home in this new Elder Scrolls setting. But nothing could have prepared me for how beautiful and vibrant Skyrim is, even on my ageing machine at pretty much the lowest setting. I was ready to live with textures being out of focus and less than realistic water and lighting effects, but sometimes when I'm out in the wild or discovering a new town or dungeon I just stop and look around completely mesmerized! 

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I started a Redguard character I named Cozmiken Arrfimm whose main tactic is basically all offense. My specialties are heavy armor, one-handed weapons (dual-wielding), decent archery for those pesky flying lizards (Skyrim dragons are a lot less annoying than the cliff racers of Morrowind... fuck these lizard-birds to the deepest corner of Hell!), smithing and enchanting to make the stuff I use über, and a bit of alchemy and magic just because it's damn useful sometimes. Anyone who has seen me play basically any game would know that I'm not exactly the greatest at sneaking around and worse at any sort of thievery, but the new lockpicking mechanism is really fun, if a bit tricky on higher level locks, but on those at least you get rewarded for trying which is all good. So my fighting tactic most of the time: make sure the bad guys notice me and come to "do me in", funnel them into a tight corridor, FUS-RO-DAH them in the face and into each other, and then start swinging like the good ol' Frenzy Barb of Diablo II fame as the bad guys are trying to pick themselves up, which makes for some pretty hilarious visuals. Sometimes I have to adjust my technique depending on who and/or what I have to fight, but for most plain minions this tactic is devastating. 

But wait... did you just read about Cozmik having smithing and enchanting skills? For pretty much the first time in all the RPG's I've played, yes! The crafting mechanics are really simple and intuitive so I just couldn't pass it up. Plus, with my guy going for the best offense possible I also have to make sure my armor is up to snuff because I don't carry a shield around. Because your skills get better by actually doing stuff it didn't take long before I was able to either build or improve everything up to Elven equipment. The same goes with enchantment and the mechanic couldn't be simpler: find and enchanted item even if it's not something you want, actually even more so if it's not something you would use, disenchant it at an enchanting table, and boom, you can now enchant an item that is more to your liking, and the better the skills the stronger the enchantment. 

The fun stuff I'm using these days: Wolf armor, gauntlets and boots from my werewolf brothers (yeah, not catching diseases is awesome!), all improved to "superior". The armor has a conjuration magic bonus to allow a lowly Minmatar grunt like me - and by the way, I think of Coz/Skyrim and Coz/EVE as one and the same :) - to conjure the magical buddies called Atronachs. Quite useful those. The gauntlets gives a damage bonus to bows, and my boots have yet to be enchanted but I'll most probably put a fire resist bonus there. I was just waiting for my skills to make the enchantment better. My helmet is something I found in a dungeon near the town of Windhelm. It was worn by a particularly tough draugr boss (think "zombie") but my fight was rewarded with a 50 armor rating, cold resist horned helm of Awesome! It will get even better when I finally unlock the smithing perk for improving enchanted items. 

On the offensive side, my main tools are two Skyforge Steel Swords bumped up to "superior" imbued respectively with fire and lightning damage. When you enchant items you can give them new names so I called my swords Sauron's Fire and Palpatine's Lightning :) A lot of monsters in Skyrim are resistant to cold (gee I wonder why!) so my "EM/Thermal" setup can get pretty nasty. For dragons and other long-range baddies I now have an Elven bow ("superior" of course) with a lightning bonus, which I call The Shocker. I now use Dwarven arrows exclusively and these things HURT! Add a little zap to them and they're even tastier.

Now, my shouts and other dragon related stuff. When I met the first dragon I had to kill I quickly noticed that my trademark "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" tactic was not conducive to a long life, but at least the following random ones get easier and easier. I'm at level 18 now and I can almost stand in the middle of the thing's fire or frost breath and say "What the fuck is your problem, bitch?", but even now dragons are always exciting when you see one. On the third or fourth one I got some unexpected help from two mammoths who messed one up really bad; I just sent a few arrows and then looted the beast as fast as possible to make sure I didn't receive any pachyderm love. And a bit earlier this week I told myself it would be a good idea to spent some gold on caravan runs to unlock all the main towns. And on two of those towns some dim-witted dragons thought it would be a good idea to freak out the neighborhood. In the town of Morthal, I helped kill the beast, but in the town of Falkreath the guards popped fuses as soon as I shot an arrow and killed me in record time. When I reloaded the game I decided to just stay out of the dragon's sight and sure enough, the guards brought it down and all I had to do was to suck its soul dry. Yeah, Skyrim is full of funny little moments like that! So far though I have way more dragon souls than I have power words. I did mention FUS-RO-DAH so yes, I unlocked those three from the main quest, as well as the WULD sprint. By questing and/or exploring on the side I found the YOL fire breath shout (amazing against cold-loving beasties) and the LIZ ice form shout, which is the "I freeze you solid" shout. This one is brand new so I haven't tried it yet. And I have 6 spare dragon souls to unlock other words. Things are looking good :)

So now after one week of playing Skyrim it still feels like I'm only starting the game because there is so much stuff I can do. One of the highlights was buying my little house in Whiterun, but I find that it's missing the one piece of furniture I use the most, the enchanting table. Oh, with the house I did also have an "housecarl", but I managed to have poor Lydia killed when I was fighting some particularly nasty mages and vampires. Oh well, maybe I should finish the Companions quests and hook up with steaming hot Aela! But there are other much nicer houses to be bought. One I have set my sights on is on the other side of the map in the old Dwemer ruins of Markarth. This town is all eye-candy by the way; I don't think I've ever seen levels as nice as the ones located in ancient Dwemer ruins. But beware, those are usually full of nasty twisted elves called Falmer, and I have the feeling that there might be some of those humongous looking Dwemer mech/bot/thingies ready to smash you into little pieces! Yeah, fun !!!

So there you go, a short (!) account of my adventures in the Great White North of Tamriel. And the fun is just starting!

o7

Dead brain is dead

So much for Fail Mail posting today... I really, I mean REALLY need this holiday!

Fly hard, kill stuff, etc.

o7

Flight of a Thousand Rifters: Cozmik's AAR

I know my blog post for this is late but oh well... blame Real Life and Skyrim! Last saturday was one of those special occasions that underline the fact that EVE Online is truly unique in the gaming world. Let's summarize the event quickly: capsuleer Marlona Sky had a Moros dreadnought parked in a station. The ship was collecting an insane amount of dust and he decided to sent it to the slaughterhouse in a very special way: Get as many frigates and destroyers on the killmail as possible! And it was done in a very intelligent fashion too: Marlona waited for his constellation to come under the control of Sansha Kuvakei and his hordes of cyber-zombie minions, making it impossible for assclowns like Goonswarm, Pandemic Legion, Test Alliance Please Ignore, and other fat entities toting supercap blobs to crash the party. The fight was also to happen right in the docking ring of the station so anyone firing on anyone who isn't an outlaw was going to get corrected by the station sentries. So plainly, the perfect setting for vast amounts of fun!

I logged in just over an hour before the start of the event, clone-jumped to my PvP base to get into my Mobile HQ Orca, and headed towards Gallente space. I made a stop in Dodixie to pick up a stack of Thrashers with 2 flavors fo fits: one long-range Tremor with a SeBo, and one shorter ranged but harder-hitting with RF EMP and a point; I wanted some Quake S but apparently Dodixie was all out, and flying the fat ship I didn't want to make extra detours. When everything was purchased I set sail for Vlillirier (I can pronounce it... can you?) where the fun was about to happen. No I didn't fly the fat bitch into Low-sec; I stopped in Orvolle where I wanted to set my medical clone anyway.

One of the things I really love about events like this is that there are always new people for whom it's their first experience of The PvP, of Low-sec, or seeing a capital ship. As I was idling in the event channel I tried to help some newer guys as best I could. Another thing that was funny was reading the people freaking out when they found out there were the obscene amount of Sansha rats on the gate. I think some people even died trying to take the rats down. Yeah, incursion Sanshas can be a pain in the ass! But the clocked ticked away and it was finally time to warp to the moon 13 station and kill a sieged dreadnought! And pop it did after 10 minutes of sustained fire, faster than everyone was expecting; apparently Marlona had managed to burn out his repair tank... OOOPS! The final tally was 153 pilots on the killmail and a hair over 200 people in Local. But with the Moros dead the event was far from over... in fact the fun was just starting :)

Seconds after Marlona's pod was squished people started a massive brawl. Those that had come in ships that could tank sentries started popping straggling frigs and destroyers. but with so many people being non-outlaws, as soon as someone turned red the ship was melted in record time, no matter the size. Some people warped to the system's asteroid belts only to die to waiting True Power rats, but most ships strated hopping planets looking for any kill opportunity, which is what I did for the next hour of so. The highlights of my PvP afternoon included participating in the killing of a ridiculously fail-fit SniggWaffe Hurricane with me popping its capsule (tomorrow's Wednesday of Fail for sure; it's Xmas time so I'll treat myself!), and a little 2v1 I had with 2 Coercers versus the wannabe-Vaga Stabber I had brought with me. That was fun! I pointed one of the ships and tore it up pretty fast, but the other stuck around because 2 lazor-fit destroyers versus a tiny shield tank meant they had a fighting chance. Unfortunately I killed the first one really quick and applied my point to the second one in time to score the double kill. My victory dance didn't last long though because I got attacked seconds after :)

The only down side of my afternoon was getting podded twice. With so many people flying fast locking ships this was worse that I thought it would be, even if I had planned on it. And at 13 million ISK per clone upgrade thanks to my 56m skill points I had to cut my little op short because I didn't want to be financially ruined. But all in all it was a good tally for a solo pilot: including the Moros and a n00bship that landed at a planet I was parked in, I killed 9 ships and 2 pods, and got 3 final blows, for the loss of 2 Thrashers and one Stabber. So my usually very quiet killboard suddenly looked all Christmas-y (or SCV-ish for drum corps fans) in its red and green :)

Yep, events like this one make EVE Online worth playing for me; the chaos created by cramming 200+ small ships was some of the most fun I've had in the game all year. I hear that Marlona wants to do it again so obviously I'll be keeping an eye on any future events. And the idea to hold it in incursion space? Simple brilliance! Thank you Marlona for making me believe in EVE again, and congratulations to all the winners!

Fly ganky!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/12/16

I'm a huge Zeppelin fan. Hell I even consider John "Bonzo" Bonham to be one of my drum teachers! And I also love Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails. Miz the two together and you have this awesome rendition of Zep's Immigrant Song. Plus the "dragon tattoo" movie looks pretty good, I'll definitely have to check it out!

Enjoy!

o7

So many fronts!

This week is turning out to be interesting in all sorts of ways. When I logged in EVE last monday I noticed that not only did CCP had Christmas presents for us, but I also noticed that my wallet was quite a bit fatter than it was the day before. A quick check of the journal showed me that my corpmate si Gong, who had asked me the day before how much ISK I had to get to buy and fit a new Sleipnir, had dumped 150 million in my wallet and ordered me to go shopping. It didn't take much more to convince me and some time later after a trip to Jita where the Slippy was cheapest I was flying in Stinkfoot II :)) I know I use it for carebearing but it did feel nice to be in my favorite cash cow again.

The fun and loud part of the week was yesterday when my buddy Letrange and I went to Montreal's Foufounes Électriques (Electric Buttcheeks XD) to be treated by the Devin Townsend Project with some extremely powerful yet tasteful British Columbia Nerd Metal. The Fouf's is a pretty small venue so the band was really connecting with the crowd, and Devin's humor and showmanship is simply unparalelled. The next time they come to town I hope I won't be as flat-broke as I was yesterday so I can get myself the coolest rock memorabilia ever: the Ziltoid The Omniscient hand puppet! Good job HevyDevy and co. and can't wait for the next show!

And the fun is going on today as not only is it finally my pay day (after the most horrendous 2 weeks ever) but it's also the day where Cozmik's capsule will crash-land on the northern part of the continent of Tamriel. Yes indeed, right after work I'm picking up my copy of TES: Skyrim and try (most probably in vain) to not go to bed too late. The character I want to play will be a Redguard so I'll try my best to match Cozmik's Minmatar Brutor looks. Let's hope the game lets me! I've also thought of a nordic spin on Cozmik's name: in Skyrim he will be known as Cozmiken Arrfimm ("fimm" is icelandic for "five" by the way). The "R" in Cozmik R5 stands for "red" but the icelandic word for red is a bit too complicated to my taste so I went with the pronounciation only. Anyway, questing starts tonight so here's to hoping I don't get an arrow in the knee :))

But does the fun stop there? No-sireee Bob! Tomorrow is my work's Christmas lunch, and because we finish at Noon it should be quite epic. On the menu for me: lamb chops and most probably a St-Emilion red wine. Yeah, it'll rock! But wait, there's more! On Saturday at 1900 evetime will be Marlona Sky's "Flight of a Thousand Rifters", an event where frigs and destroyers are invited to try and take down Intigo, Marlona's Moros dreadnaught. The event being at 1400 Montreal time, I should have no problems making it before... an impromptu EVE meet to end 2011 !!!

So yes, I may not be in game much these days but after the crazy 2 weeks Life is finally throwing all sorts of cool stuff at me.

EOH Poker!

As you may have noticed, Kirith Kodachi is not the only canuck to advertise this fine service to the EVE community. I haven't yet experienced it myself but because I want to know the product which I now advertise I will most probably give it a shot on Sunday to relax after all the fun stuff that's been happening. So by all means, go clickety-click the Rifter banner and tell 'em Cozmik sent you!

Fly fun everyone !!!

o7

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/12/14

Sick days. They have the advantage of giving a lot of relaxation time except for a small detail: you take sick days because you feel like shit. And what better day to feel like shit? Wednesday of course. I do hope my legs and back feel better tonight because I am NOT missing my Devin Townsend concert! Anywho... welcome to the return installment of the Wednesdays of Fail! This week's entry comes from Afandi of Paradise Delivery. The kill happened in Hi-sec so it was the result of a wardec, a duel, a can-flip... I don't know which because I don't have that detail. Maybe Afandi can give a small AAR in the comments. In any case, his Myrmidon was locked in battle with this Curse, and the Myrm prevailed to reveal this:

[Curse, Jhaelen's Curse]
Armor EM Hardener II
Emergency Damage Control I
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Medium Inefficient Armor Repair Unit

Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I
Cap Recharger II
Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners
ECM - White Noise Generator II
ECM - Phase Inverter II

Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium Diminishing Power System Drain I
Medium Diminishing Power System Drain I
Drone Link Augmentor I

Hammerhead II x5
Warrior II x10

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14415228

Mmm... at first I didn't think there was that much fail about this Curse. The high slots are boasting the best-named cap-sucking equipement, it's not dual tanked... oh but what do I see there? A mix of expensive and uber cheap modules? Come on, this is a recon... splurge a bit! And then there are the T2 ECM modules. WTF is this, a Rook?! The tracking disruptors are both pricey and effective but I'm not sure if two are required. But the big one: no rigs? Seriously? In this day and age where a rig isn't the price of an entire ship anymore?! Dude !!! This is where this Curse failed, trying a little too hard to do a little too much.

Mr. Afandi, for your glorious victory over this interestingly fit Curse you will be receiving 177,633 ISK for the Drone Link Augmentor I. My reason for this is that I've never seen this module fitted on a Curse.

Do you have a funny killmail you would like to share with the community? If so, please evemail the killboard or BattleClinic link to Cozmik R5 in-game, or send it via regular e-mail at r3dfiv3@hotmail.com

Just as WDA and Ga'len have done in the past, the sender of a killmail that has been posted on the blog will receive a small ISK prize, the value of a random module fitted on the ship; dream on if you think I'll pay for Faction, Complex or Officer mods!

Keep your eyes open for Fail, and rid New Eden of these atrocities!

o7

The calm after the storm

Holy shit that was a stupidly crazy two weeks I just spent there, and it's not an experience I want to repeat any time soon, if ever. I don't want to bore people too much with the details of Real Life and my crazy ex/kids relationship, but I want to explain myself for this reason: I want to explain myself because I want to get it out of my system. I need to open the valves and let some steam out. Blogs are made to let one pour his thoughts out right? Right.

So the last weekend of November I was starting my parental duty weekend but this time I would be keeping my boys for the entire week because my ex was having her bathroom completely redone, making her house uninhabitable; when one cannot shower or take a dump, you can't live there. This was supposed to last only the week until December 2nd. My appartment being pretty small I have to couch-surf when the boys are over, and with the weather turning crappy it's easy to start stepping on each other's toes. I realise I will have to move out at some point but not before both guys are in school. But to come back on the subject just before the first weekend of December my ex told me that the work wasn't finished yet and I'd have to keep my boys until at least Wednesday (last Wednesday, the 7th) but I would have a short break in the weekend. Well and good but that makes for a weekend that flies extremely fast. Murphy being the complete bitch he is Wednesday became Thursday and my boys had only one night back at home when they had to come back to my place this past weekend for the "normal" parental weekend. Now this weekend is over, I'm slightly sick of my boys, my boys are slightly sick of me, and everybody needs a goddamn break!

With Christmas falling right on the weekend where I usually have the boys, this time they will spend a longer time with their mom and her family, which is all good because my own family is all over the place, from Arizona to Thailand. This will give me time to recuperate and pick up to mess left by two weeks of having the boys uprooted and transplanted in too small a pot. So in order for the next couple of weeks: back to gaming in a very selfish fashion. This may or may not be in EVE Online because lately I've been feeling out of touch with Internet Spaceships. I have told my few corpmates that I may leave my own little corp and go where there's a bit more action, but at the same time I feel that moving stuff around halfway across the cluster will cause the exact same thing that happened last April, I'll get sick of EVE's tedious bullshit. I'm actually waiting to see if our little Montreal corp project gets off the ground; if it does, good. If it doesn't it may be the Swan Song. Anyway, I have to find a way to make EVE fun again to justify paying for it.

But other interests require my attention: I haven't played a serious deathmatch in a while so I should pay my QLive clanmates a visit and brush off some rust. Yes, I will suck badly! Another thing I haven't done in too long is some sim piloting, either flight, racing or battlemechs. Piloting is very relaxing to me, almost as much as drumming. Another time-killer I'm into is RPG gaming; hell I don't even have the aversion to elves that a lot of people seem to have, though I don't usually play one! While I do play some Dungeons & Dragons Online and Hellgate Global, I mentioned last week that I'd be getting Skyrim this week, and I will. Thanks to the magic of the Internets I have a copy of the 660 page Prima guide to Skyrim and I already have an idea of how I'll build my character: Redguard dual-wielder of sharp and pointy objects, worshipper of the Tasmanian Devil :) I haven't been to Tamriel since Morrowind but from what I hear I'm in for a treat. It did win the Game of the Year award so I don't see how I can lose!

But apart from gaming something will start to take more and more of my time. My next summer vacation will be a bicycle tour and many preparations are needed, starting with the completion of my bike setup, the equipment I need to carry, the itinerary I will take, the mileage I want to achieve, the little things I may forget, etc. The past couple weeks' experience have pointed me towards what will probably be my first important purchase: sleeping accomodations. And what better place to test it than in my own living room! My plan is to leave my place for two full weeks, during which time I may or may not sleep indoors. Not being a millionaire my first bike tour will be a loop starting and finishing at my place, but with two weeks of travel time I have to decide where this loop will take me. My only criteria: this will not be a race. I'm taking the trip to enjoy myself and see my part of the world, not to execute feats of performance. I do plan to do the trip in September so I'll have all spring and summer to warm up. This is my first big bike trip and I want it to be a good experience even if it's hard.

But the main common denominator with all those things: everything in here is something I absolutely love, and nothing is a rush. No I won't try to do everything at the same time. I know I'm a huge dreamer and want to do so much stuff that I usually have to drop three quarters of what I want to do. Oh well, I can't help it! At least now I have time to take a breather. Yes I know it sounds selfish, and that I don't love my kids. But at least I'm man enough to say that I'm not a perfect father. I must stop here before I turn this into a lengthy philosophical post.

Fly happy; that's the only thing I can say

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/12/09

Yes I have to bug you one more time with Maestro HevyDevy and with good reason. Next Wednesday at 7PM my buddy Letrange and I will go to Montreal's Foufounes Electriques to see and hear the Devin Townsend Project. It should be quite the show!

On the EVE front: finally got a bit of EVE done yesterday! I did a bit of exploration and found a Radar and a Magnetometric site, and then paid a visit to the hellhole known as Jita where I found that the Large Neutrons were the cheapest (!) at 7m ISK so I bought a full set for my upcoming Talos. But in my tiredness I sort of left 'em in the hangar in Jita 4-4 because I wanted to take a good look at this without being hassled:

All banged up!

Yes, this is the result of the bashing you can see in my header (excerpt from this video) Now the big question: should I change my header to reflect the change to the monument or do I leave my header as is to remind CCP that the player base will get angry if pushed?

... More stuff to be written cuz now I gotta leave my place XD

Aight back from work, but completely lost my train of thought. I'm a fail-blogger lately! Call it the pre-holidays syndrome, plus my brain is trying to go 20000 directions at once. And I have an ex to throw me curve balls (flaming ones of course). Oh well... I guess that's why there are first-person shooters :))

Fly hard and kill 'em all!

o7

Wednesday of Fail hiatus

Sorry guys, there won't be a Fail Mail post this week. Real Life is being a complete bitch and she needs a serious whipping.

For once, fly safe.

o7

FUS RO DAH!

Yes, the new internet meme/unrelenting force shout explains perfectly what's been going on in Real Life over the past week and a half, and unfortunately it has absolutely nothing to do with playing Skyrim; more on that later. Because of increased parental duties due to my ex renovating the bathroom of her house, thus making it pretty uninhabitable, my boys have been staying with me in my small appartment. When I have them over every other weekend I couch-surf for 3 nights as they take over my bed, but this time I had to couch-surf for a week, with a little break over the weekend, and again this week hopefully for one last night tonight. Oh and I will have 'em this coming weekend too as we'll be back on the regular duty schedule. All it does nothing to help my already strainded relations with the ex. Oh well, normality should return soon™.

In the short play time that I did get I went on a small gang PvP roam with a fleet consisting of a Vexor, Moa, Crow and my Firetail. Many jumps happened uneventfully, but for half the roam our Moa pilot's experience was marred by his computer's inhability to see his sound card, and the EVE client simply refused to let him on comms. Not fun that. So halfway on the roam we lost our Moa, both because of the comm situation and RL stuff. And we finally got some action at the very end. Our Crow pilot found a Maller and a Navitas in a belt and we decided to tackle the Maller even under the disapproval of Havegun, our Vexor pilot and FC. Soon after we had engaged a Talos arrived on the scene so we quickly switched targets, but a few seconds later a few Against All Authorities guys arrrived in a timely manner and proceeded to fuck us up. We died gloriously and fun was had. Note to Havegun: dude, stop protecting your immense sec status! Being too picky about targets means that too often we don't get any action, or when we do the bad guys are the wrong ones to engage. I also got a bit more action later as I was flying a Stabber from Gallente space to Heimatar the long way through Low-sec (and met Kirith Kodachi in Local on the way!) but my trip went South when I met a wall of BC's supported by a remote sensor-boosting Lachesis. Usually I'm fast enough to fly through gate camps, but not this one as the Lachesis jumped in with me and had me locked and tackled in record time. I did try to take him down with me but the wall of BC popped me too fast. It was still funny though and I gave props to the Lach pilot :)

But as the title implies, I'm starting to have my mind wander into non-Internet-Spaceship related territory. Yes Crucible is good but there's still so much about EVE that to me is just meh. Ever since it came out last month I've been reading and hearing the rave reviews about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and being also a fan of fantasy settings these are not falling on deaf ears. I never do the "ZOMG I'm gonna pre-purchase this game 2 years in advance!" thing for a few reasons: my money is tight, I prefer to let other people find bugs and problems, and by all that is good and mighty I hate following masses. The perfect example of this is that it took me quite a while to get into the Harry Potter series. But for Skyrim, it is now clear that the masses were right; the game met and even exceeded all expectations and is a resounding success. And when I found out from one Carole Pivarnik (does that name ring a bell? It should...) that Skyrim is playable on a slightly aged machine I told myself that maybe I should really look into it. I even started to prepare myself to re-install Morrowind as I waited for the occasion to get the newer game. And then Malukah happened.

An obscene amount of people talk about getting arrows to the knees, but as a gamer, fantasy buff, musician, and hell even as a human male, I took arrows to the heart and soul! I had seen Mintchip's hilarious gameplay videos, and also some great Machinima vids, but Malukah managed to do with one heart-melting tear-extracting song what even Bethesda's own gameplay and cinematic trailers couldn't do. I gotta play Skyrim. Now. No... yesterday! So it's pretty ironic that at about the same time that my EVE subscription comes to renewal I will be joining the masses of Fantasy RPG gamers and diving into a lush universe full of wonder and dangers, and bandits and werewolves and dragons. Oh my! Malukah, thank you for giving me the final push to get me started in Skyrim, and also for the sweet sweet music you gave us. I for one hope you will give us many more tunes, be they covers or originals. The Thu'um is strong in you :)

Fly like huge fire-breathing winged reptilians

o7

Sunday's Electric Lunch Hour - Frank Zappa Special Edition

RIP Frank

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/12/02

So it's a bit on the early side. I couldn't care less because this week felt like it was never-ending. I'll spare you the details. This Sunday will mark the 18th anniversary of the death of Frank Vincent Zappa, one of the greatest, weirdest, most prolific music composer to have ever graced God's Green Earth. Therefore it's only fitting that I post one of his greatest piece of work. No need for fancy visuals here, just close your eyes and let the music take you to places you never thought possible.

Frank Zappa
1940-1993

Best use of duct tape ever

King of Vert

Here she is, in all her glory. Ain't it awesome to have friends with BPOs and 8 large AC's stashed away for just this occasion? Now to find a way to put all this to the test... Oh, and she should be joined by her other Tier 3 sisters soon >:)

Fly large

o7