Pata-flafla

To anyone who is not a drummer this title will probably sound like my brain has lost its connection to my mouth, or that I'm trying to imitate the sound of someone falling down a few flights of stairs. It is neither. The Pata-flafla is one of the 40 basic rudiments every good drummer should know, or at least know of. Translated in a sticking pattern (with flams looking like so: r-L,the little letter being the grace note and the big letter the main one, L for left and R for right) a couple bars of Pata-flafla played in basic 4/4 and the main notes being 16ths should look like this:

l-R L R r-L, l-R L R r-L...

Yeah, trickier than it looks especially when trying to play it fast. As with all drum rudiments, start slow and learn to play it clean and comfortably and gradually speed up. And yeah, use a metronome. And why am I all psyched about talking drum shop on this fine Halloween day? If you've been reading my blog you may have heard me talk about getting together with some drum corps drum line people and having a total blast. Enough that for my Friday music video I just HAD to post more drum corps love. And yesterday I got some great news from the Wishmaster drum line: there is rumor that another show is in the works, and this time I want in. And because I want to get on snare line, I have to practice my ass off like I haven't done in a very long time. So far I'm looking at 1 to 2 hours a day with the fat snare sticks, my practice pad and an Android metronome app, more as I get closer to an eventual audition. Not especially exciting in and of itself but the ultimate goal sure is. And if I can't make it on this particular line-up I'll just offer my services as a roadie; God knows I can changes drum heads and carry gear! Here's to hoping I can make an impression and land myself a spot anywhere on that drum line :)

And on to the EVE front now. Last week I've had one of those "what the fuck was I thinking" moments. Now that my buddy si Gong has some decent BC skills I thought we could tackle the epic arc mission I had left hanging for about a year: The Cost of Preservation, 2nd mission from the Brutor Tribe L4 epic agent dude. The mission is pretty simple: kill this one guy, loot the guy and GTFO. Killing the guy isn't too much trouble, but the stuff that spawns when you start shooting... yeah. So si Gong and I warp in and I start approaching Mr Target. He's in a rather tanky cruiser but together we managed to kill him, but as soon as he died all hell broke lose. The new spawn had 4-5 frigs that point and web on sight, and I was literally fucked. because we couldn't kill 'em fast enough. I asked si Gong if he was pointed and with the negative answer, GTFO. So the cost of preservation was one unit of nicely fit Sleipnir. I was later told that another of the Montreal crew, ex-capsuleer Suletsap III, had lost a faction-fit Navythron to one of those epic arc missions... I'm guessing that this is what CCP would call an ISK sink XD. So because my Slippy was nicely fit (5 faction modules) and because I treated myself so nicely before taking my summer break (Absolution and Cynabal). I couldn't replace it right away. But I don't care. I did get a Maelstrom but after flying a command ship for so long a battleship feels like shit. So much for L4's until I can get a replacement Sleipnir, and to Hell with that so-called epic bullshit.

Not that I'm very interested in missions anyway. When my subscription renewal arrives I will not only get my 3 months but will also buy a GTC or two and dump 'em on the market. Grinding sucks too much in this game. I'd rather grind my drum skills, and if I do get that drum line gig, it's drums I'll be playing, not MMO's. We will see what the future holds...

Fly it hard even if it's not cheap

o7

Caldari disappointment: Harpy

Yesterday I thought that maybe I should put my newly learned Caldari Frigate V skill to good use and get myself a new ship. I have enough good interceptors so I skipped those, and as the much awaited for Rocket Fix hasn't happened yet I decided to wait for the Hawk and instead got a Harpy. Big disappointment. I was thinking that with my good Hybrid skills this thing would be mean ship, but it looks like I was wrong. When I asked my buddy Unzer, who is an almost pure Caldari 80m skill point pilot if he had a good fit for the Harpy his answer was short and to the point: "Don't fly one. That's my only good fit.". Okaaaay... I turned on EFT to see what all that was about before I started buying guns and modules for my intended "Blarpy", and it didn't take long to see that Unzer was right. This ship is power grid challenged, has only 2 low slots, too many mids (unless you like to have a sig radius the size of a dump truck), and as all Caldari ships it's slow. A Jaguar has the same number of mid slots but at least it can boogie. And as a blaster platform, a Taranis will do everything better, faster and do more damage. I had paid only 11m ISK for the ship so I made someone happy and sold it directly on the market at 8.5m. I guess I'll wait to see the Rocket Fix and get better missile skills before I try another Caldari boat.

But I was still in a shopping frenzy mood... it shows I've done a few too many L4 missions! So I said "fuck it!" and bought my 5th Loki subsystem, and all the remaining modules for the ship. Some will come straight out of my current mission Sleipnir so I didn't have too much stuff to buy, but the 5th subsystem was also the most expensive one, the Adaptive Shielding. So now all I need is the actual hull and my Hellbringer will be brought back to life. Because I don't freak out over ninja salvagers* the way some other mission runners do (it's quite hilarious in Local sometimes!) I shouldn't be in a position to lose it as easily or fast as the first Loki, but although the ship has some faction goodies, it will not have anything crazy like Officer or meta 10 deadspace complex mods. It may sound weird to be anxious to get a PvE ship but I'm even more anxious to fit a PvP Sleipnir. I'm gonna have to do some EFT warfare as well as some Sisi testing before I have a finalized fit; I don't exactly have the ISK flow to lose multiple command ships in a short time :)

So this being Wednesday it's time to start the weekend plans. In order to be closer to any potential The PvP I will clone-jump out of the mission hub and use any spare time doing exploration. Another corpmate told me yesterday that a couple of good sites could net me the ISK needed to get my Loki hull, but I must admit that my luck in exploration isn't exactly stellar. I think it might be time to up the danger levels a bit and explore that crazy place called Low-sec. According to my corpmate Havegun it's been much too quiet for PvP lately so who knows, I may get lucky for once. I need to put some mileage on my Rapier anyway :)

So that's about it for now. I hope the weekend is a good one filled with interesting stories to tell. Things have been very quiet so some kick-starting may be required. I'll make sure I have my steel-toe shoes on >:)

Fly deadly

o7

*: Hey don't get me wrong, I actually love ninja salvagers! I usually have a PvP ship on hand so if they wanna play, I'll play. My best 1v1 came about because someone had stolen my stuff, so please, steal my stuff some more !!! >:)