Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2010/09/17

Back to metal, in no uncertain ways. Forget about headphones, this one is for listening on speakers as loud as possible. If your speakers break up, break apart or blow up, it means you were in tune with the essence of Slayer. If not, you either have a very good sound system or you're a wuss. If someone complains that it's too loud, it's because that someone is too old.

Enjoy the Slaytanicity of Slayer

\m/ >_< \m/

EVE Front: the numbers are slowly climbing in MAPU corp. This will be a quiet weekend because of parental duties but the first scheduled ops will be starting. I may not make the first op, but the second is my thing so it would take something dire to keep me from it.

Fly deadly

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2010/09/10

Yep, it's once again time for the up-beat break that will annoy the crap out of your boss, cubicle neighbour, mom, or all of the above. This week I branch off from the metal theme to the absolutely wonderful universe of maestro Frank Zappa. A little background on the Black Page: the tune was originally composed as a drum solo to challenge Zappa's then drummer, Terry Bozzio. He then came up with the melody that was played along with the drum solo. As Zappa himself said a lot of people couldn't approach the song's "statistical density in its basic form", so he gave the tune a lot more swing and turned it into the Black Page Part II, The Easy Teenage New York Version. In the 80's Zappa added some reggae elements, culminating in the 1988 version I've posted here. Another anecdote about the Black Page involves drummer Vinnie Colaiuta shortly after he joined Zappa's band. During a session, Vinnie played the solo and did something most regular drummers can't even think about: without missing a beat, Vinnie pushed his glasses on his nose, grabbed a piece of sushi, and kept playing the near-impossible tune. Terry Bozzio, who was present at the session, apparently walked out in disbelief! After this video is done I encourage you to watch the original Black Page as played by Terry.

On the EVE front: after half a week and a petition, AMC leadership has now passed from Letrange to Cathrianne, and ChaosStorm is now out of the alliance, though it is set so blue it's almost black! So what does the future hold for us? Well, if we want to stay an alliance one thing is certain: we have to recruit. AMC has a strong industrial background and can basically build anything, even capitals if push comes to shove. It should be noted that though there is a lot of emphasis on industry and mining, especially in the colonized W-space systems, carebear activities can turn into The PvP in the blink of an eye. All of our pilots have learned the hard way that crying and whining about a ship death is just not acceptable. Not only that, but most of our essentially carebear pilots can turn into bloody-thirsty hunters if the occasion presents itself. But AMC is not all carebear.

We at MAPU are PvP minded; we do have some non-PvP activities in order to stay afloat in decent ships and mods, but since most of us have access to L4 agents, or W-space sites if we ask nicely enough, ISK is not really an issue. We also do some exploration sites in dangerous space, because there's nothing like flying dangerous :) For now there are only a few of us that are active, but we hope to get some more pilots to start fielding bigger gangs. We are currently stationed in Gerbold, on the eastern side of Heimatar, with easy access to three Null-sec regions: Etherium Reach, Great Wildlands and Geminate. For solo PvP or small gang action we have clones in the Everyshore region where we have access to many Low-sec hot spots, and not too far away from Null-sec Syndicate. We are not looking for pilots with a specific amount of Skill Points, or that fly specific ship types. We are looking for pilots from pure n00bs who want to learn the ways of the PvP to veterans who are active but want to play casually. If you are looking for clockwork ops or military rule, MAPU is not the corp for you. If you are in another corp but know of people who are starting out in EVE and would be too young SP-wise for your outfit, by all means send them our way! For more information or an interview convo, contact Unzer, Havegun Willtravel or myself, Cozmik R5, in-game.

So that's pretty much it for now. The weekend is about to start, and about damn time too !!!

Fly hard

o7

Edit: as of this morning, Cozmik has achieved Heavy Assault Cruiser V. I can now field the Perfect Vaga... ok not quite perfect but all gunnery, navigation and ship related skills are now maxed :)

First op in MAPU

As you may have noticed in the upper right-hand corner, it now says that Cozmik R5 is now a member of Mobile Alcohol Processing Units, a corp headed by a few Montreal region based players, and more Montreal players will be on the way soon, and a recruitment campaign will be worked on so we can form a true PvP corp. Our goal is very simple: we like to blow shit up, or get our shit blown up in at least a valiant attempt, and we don't want to bog ourselves down with Sov bullshit. For now we have a Hi-sec HQ sitting very close to three Null-sec regions as well as a lot of Low-sec areas. I'm still a bit keen on giving away the specifics because 1- our recruitment plan hasn't been formed yet, 2- there are possibilities of a move to "that crazy place called Curse", and 3- I'm not a director yet. No I'm not begging, kicking and screaming "plz plz plz make me a director NOW!!!111". If the MAPU brass wants to give me the roles, I'll do the job to the best of my habilities; after all, in LCSC I was an Alliance level director, and doing a bit of diplo work is actually kinda fun. But anyway, all in good time.

So yesterday after logging on I get together with corpmate Havegun Willtravel for a bit of Low-sec The PvP; Gun was already in the Sinq-Laison region so I joined him there. Flying relatively cheap T2-fit T1 cruisers, we have no qualms about throwing caution to the four winds and getting into David vs Goliath type fights. We start with the Mya-Gerper constellation in Everyshore, which is an old hunting ground for AMC. We didn't stay long because the dinky dead-end constellation is completely empty. So we start moving towards the Sinq-Laison Low-sec areas, and don't have to travel too far to see some action. And who better to give some The PvP than our very well known CSM chairlady, Mynxee! Of course, fighting 2 Hurricanes with a Vexor and a Stabber is kind of suicidal, but that stops us about as much as ambient air stops a speeding bullet. So as we land we primary Mynxee's buddy, Dame Death, who is already a -10 outlaw (Mynxee isn't, yet). This probably didn't help us because the 2 'Canes were differently fit; Mynxee's was AC fit, Dame's was arty fit. When I landed on the grid I had no problems sticking close to Dame and started doing a good number on the 'Canes huge shield buffer, but she was slowly pulling away from Gun who noticed this too late. So his weapons were starting to have less and less effect; he had been doing a good job tanking Mynxee but when Dame's 720s got into optimal it was all over. Knowing I was on my way down I overloaded the top rack in a vain attempt to break thru Dame's shields, which I barely managed to do but too little too late. If Gun had noticed the Cane trying to get some distance and stuck to it, things might have gone differently. But still, as 2v2 fights go this was a fun one, even if we bit off more than we could chew.

We then reshipped to what Havegun had available in stations nearby, which was a Myrmidon and a Rifter, but the only ships we saw worth fighting was another Myrm (who had just made mince-meat of a noobish Hurricane), and semi-large gate camps. Gun not wanting to lose this particular Myrm, we got back to Hi-sec and I had to call it a night. Gun was lucky enough to find a good 1v1 frig fight that he won just before I logged off.

So now the ice is broken. Too bad I started my MAPU stint with a loss, but as Havegun told me, with all the success we've had before - say like when I rejoined AMC and we killed a Phobos and a Dominix, with my Claw doing top damage on the Domi - this didn't really count. Next time out we should have a couple more pilots with us, and if all goes well we will soon be having what I love the most about EVE: a good skirmish fleet. Damn I have missed this!

Fly with the dagger in your teeth

o7