Consider this blog renamed!

And voilà, it is done. I think the title shows that I still have some interest in space-related stuff but that I like a broader palette of subjects. And I'd like to thank the thousand or so crazies bashing the hell out of the Burn Eden monument; I wonder if the alliance that won this monument and placed it there ever imagined something like this could have happened... probably not :) I've used this header to signify that my EVE adventure is pretty much over. I will probably change it at some point, but for the time being this is it because I want to show my support to those of you who still like EVE as a concept, despite all the stuff that's been happening since Incarna arrived, and all the shenanigans CCP was up to. I will watch closely as the CSM flies to Reykjavik to ask CCP in person "Dudes, WHAT THE FUCK ?!?!". Interesting times, Hilmar said... yeah!

On other fronts, I'm happily doing the vacation dance right now! Yep, I took the week off for some bike riding, a bit of gaming, and most importantly the Montreal International Jazz Festival. The kick-off was last Saturday with Robert Plant and Band of Joy; I was supposed to see Paco De Lucia that evening but things got tight and I couldn't have a baby-sitter as I had my boys. But on Sunday night I opened my 2011 festival with Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos (Marc Ribot and the False Cubans XD). The first thing we noticed just before my buddy and I entered the concert hall was a sign saying "There will be no intermission". Coolness! And we got treated to 2 hours of what I'd call Power Salsa, which was absolutely amazing. Three encores later, the sign we saw earlier was clear to me: intermissions are for pussies !!! And of course before and after this show we mingled with the crowd outdoors and drank in the festival atmosphere, complete with beer and the legendary MJF hot-dogs :)

Yesterday I had my first "I am a vegetable" day of my vacation so I didn't do much during the day but surf them interwebs, but the evening was beautiful and windless so I did a nice 30km round-trip on my bike. From my place in LaSalle I went to the St.Lawrence river, followed it to Lachine and then up to Dorval airport where I saw my first Airbus A380... goddamn this thing is huge !!! I'm more and more anxious to do my little trip later this summer. Yesterday's ride could be considered a night ride, so because I had gotten up pretty early in the morning I was tired when I got home, but at least it wasn't from physical exhaustion. So with better preparations, a good night's sleep and a healthy breakfast, I should have no trouble going up north.

And now, on to enjoy the rest of my vacation. In the plans today: a bit of Hellgate single-player (btw, Hellgate Global will go open beta on June 30th), probably a ride to the Jazz Fest, and paying Letrange a visit later tonight.

Life is good :))

o7

Burning Eden, part deux

iRabble at work... thx for the term Let :D

First of all, I will not go into the numerous reasons why just over a month ago I parked my Internet Spaceships for an indefinite amount of time. The links to my past blog posts are right there on the right ---->

So for the first time in 3.5 years I experienced an EVE expansion as an outsider. I had a rough idea of what would be new in Incarna but as of now I still haven't even seen it. So last week during Patch Day I paid a visit to the EVE-O forums... and already the uproar was starting. This was shortly followed by a post on Letrange's blog with a very short text: "15$ for a pixel skirt?!?! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL !!!". Because I know Letrange personally and also know he's usually a lot more eloquent than that, I immediately phoned him up for a "WTF?!", and that's when I learned about the 70$ monocle. I almost pissed myself laughing !!! Seriously, if you're one of those crazy rich fucks I love to hate, who have to buy every single toy they can lay their hands on just because you can, go ahead and blow your money, I couldn't care less. But this was the very tip of the iceberg.

First in my book were the reports of CCP's specialty: breaking what already works. Please stop hoping that someday they will learn something from past experiences, they never will. It's simple, when CCP patches EVE, something breaks. It's inevitable, like death and taxes. This time it wasn't just the game acting up though: reports of GPU meltdown were heard, especially from ATI card owners. Note to gamers: when a game is optimized for one brand of video cards, in this case nVidia, expect the other brand to work at an inferior level. But if the game also fried good nVidia cards, then CCP is simply full of fail.

But the most important thing that turned the masses into a lynch mob was CCP's laughable attempt at public relations. Citing designer jeans to justify the high-priced pixel goods only made CCP Zulu look stupid and disconnected from reality, but it's not as bad as avoiding critical questions the players had, mostly regarding the vague possibility of RMT for non-vanity items, the dreaded Pay2Win syndrome. The lack of respect and communication sent the mob into a frenzy, and that's when the trade hubs got blobbed by protesters. And to spill just a bit more fuel into an already raging fire, the message carried by Hilmar Petursson's internal mail that got leaked a few hours after the mayhem started fanned the flames to heights I've never even imagined possible for a video game. A. Fucking. VIDEO GAME !!!!!

So being the outsider and not able to participate directly in either a constructive solution or pointless demonstration I followed the events on Twitter (this was the first time I actually found Twitter useful), the EVE Radio special hosted by DJ Funky Bacon and the EVE-O forums where all hell was breaking loose; it's pretty much already loose when all is cool so this weekend was just over the top. At some point I was just happy I had pulled the plug before all this crazy shit started, and felt sorry for my friends who are still playing. And all of a sudden my Hate-Love relationship which caused my own retirement turned from 95%-5% to 99%-1%. Yeah, the chances of me getting back into EVE are very slim indeed. So my position in the various debates I was seeing was that of someone who had already made his peace; even though Tranquility will most probably be up forever and the CCP devs will die rich, to me EVE is dead, or if not dead then in a serious near-unrecoverable coma. I didn't encourage people to do like me and quit, but I didn't defend CCP's stupid PR skills either. Shit like this weekend's does not get my money. Period.

Of course on Sunday CCP Zulu promised a blog "with 100% more love" to the players. When I saw that I simply couldn't believe how thick-skulled vikings could be. I tweeted directly to him "How about a blog with 100% more answers?", not that I expected an answer. CCP, you guys need to hire PR people pronto. If you don't it will be just like with your wrecking ball expansions, you'll have learned nothing.

And to the rioting players, for the love of Frank Zappa, LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP !!! You guys get this angry about a pixel life in a pixel universe?! If you start hating EVE then do like me and unsub, and/or just don't log in. Want to play a game where the devs care? Play something smaller scaled. "But EVE is epic!" you say. EVE is what the players make of it, and this weekend it was anything BUT epic. Surprising yes, and as the videos showed spectacular to look at, but riots of any kind aren't epic. I should know, I'm a Montreal Canadiens fan!

Fly, or don't. You decide.

o7

PS: The next time I will cover something about EVE Online will have to be something positive or I simply will not cover it. There are many other things in life that are better.

Burning Eden

EVE Online is in turmoil, and weirdly enough it's never looked so damn good! I'll follow this post with my view on this crazy weekend when my brain cells are actually working... getting late here :)

Fly safe... if you're still flying.

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - St-Jean-Baptiste Edition

Bonne St-Jean tout l'monde !!!!

:))

Blog redesign soon

Let's face it: "Diary of a Space Jockey" doesn't fit the bill anymore. I started blogging just to keep a record of my EVE Online career, and over time I've added little bits and pieces that have absolutely nothing to do about EVE, something that very few EVE bloggers do. Pushing myself to write about a game I loved inspired me to write about things I love even more, until eventually I noticed that I was more interested in writing about real life stuff than I was about EVE. And then I started noticing that I didn't like the game I was supposed to blog about as much as I did when I started. At this point, EVE Online is the very last thing I feel like blogging about because so many other subjects interest me. Therefore, a redesign will be in order soon to reflect this.

"But what will the readers think?" one might ask. That's an interesting question. When I started blogging I did it purely for myself; my buddy Letrange had a blog when he got me to play EVE and I just said why not. I was already an active forum participant on other sites, mostly Quake, flight sim and race sim related, and when I noticed that a lot of EVE players liked to keep a record of their activities I told myself "when in Rome..." even if I knew only a single person in all of New Eden. It was a great surprise to see players start following me and commenting on my posts. But since then a lot of the bloggers that were around when I started have completely stopped writing (as my "blogs I read" list shows), and my loss of interest for the game means I'm not reading other EVE blogs. On the flip-side I read drumming blogs, cycling blogs, and other gaming blogs. So when I start the redesign will my reader base follow me? Maybe, maybe not. But as I did when I started playing Internet Spaceships, and without any disrespect to the readers who have followed me, I write about things I'm passionate about. If people start following my passions then it's icing on the cake!

So what do I call a blog that talks about cycling, music, motorsports, FPS games, RPG games, Sci-Fi, science, and basically anything I feel like writing about on any particular day? With my current bike trip plans I did think about "Diary of a Madman" but I wouldn't want to offend any Ozzy fans, least of all Ozzy himself! Also, what should I use as a header? It's kind of hard to pin down, which is why my Cynabal is still there. I have zero Photoshop skills so one thing is sure, the next header won't be a work of art! I'm sure I'll come up with something that's not too gaudy :)

But even if I don't play the game anymore, I may keep just a little bit of EVE content if only for one reason: EVE is an awesome source of drama bombs! Yesterday's arrival of Incarna and the shit-storm that followed is a prime example. I may even keep my EVEnews24 gadget on the right, maybe down a few notches. I may not like the game anymore but it's still the one that got me writing, so might as well give it a little bit of respect. Only a little bit. I feel sorry for anyone I know whose EVE experience has been diminished because of Incarna due to the new bugs, the ressource hogging problems, or the mind-numblingly expensive vanity items. It is now clear that CCP will never listen to their player base, and they sure as fuck will never learn.


So whatever you do, may it be fly, ride, play or anything else, do it because you love it.

o7