Earthquakes

Well that was cool. I'm sitting at my computer looking at some stuff and feel this tiny ground tremor. I thought it was a small earthquake until three secs later when we got a good jolt. Always fun, earthquakes. Especially the thought of "THE GROUND SHOULD NOT DO THAT!" turns out it was a 4.8 only about 20km NW of us.

http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3165869g-shaking.html

So that's what happend to the Macroers

Another DevBlog from CCP came out today and it answers one of the biggest questions I've been hearing recently. What happend to the macroers? A little back story for those that don't know. A couple of months ago the systems that were infested with macroers suddenly emptied and no atter the number of threads and questions aimed at CCP no answer was forthcoming. Which lead to much guessing. Eventually the consensus seemed to land on they were banned. Now we know for sure. On June 22nd during DT CCP banned 6200 accounts of RMT's and their macroers. There are some interesting graphs in the DevBlog covering both an example system Ingunn and the server load.

It's nice to see that CCP is willing to take on this issue even when it means they're going to be seeing less income.

I Can Has Flu Vaccine?

Well today I let myself be fooled by big pharma and government and got the Flu vaccine for this year. It's the first time I've got a Flu vaccine and to be honest it was less work than even doing a blood donation. The needle was smaller that's for certain.

Now I know that it isn't going to protect me from Swine Flu which to be honest no one was expecting so how could they have made a vaccine for it. But it will protect me from the expected three major flu strains expected for this year. Also the NZ government had made this year's Flu vaccine free to everyone as opposed to the at risk groups.

Big Media Getting Tech Right for Once

I was just browsing through the New Zealand Herald's website and on the front page at the top is a link to a story, with a big picture, about web browsers. Not only that but they actually included Opera as well as the usual four suspects. The story contained a fair look at each browser and got everything factually correct as far as I could tell. So tie this up with some terminology the less tech savvy of us could understand and props to the New Zealand Herald for doing a decent tech article.

A Killmail for a Point

One of the things I feel isn't made clear enough to new players is that you don't have to be able to fly big T2 fitted battleships or fancy T2 ships to be useful within in gang or fleet. One of the roles that new players are often suggested to do is that of a throw-away tackle. A simple T1 frigate with a speed mod and a point. Even the newest of players can fill within a day or two and it can change a battle within a few minutes if done even half decently.

To exemplify this I present my alt, Treya Trewtis, who for the past few weeks has been training her learning skills up like any good alt. After completing these I sent her to learn useful skills until we got word of a POS defense op. In response I quickly grabbed the Propulsion Jamming and Afterburner skills and trained them to level 1. I then purchased an Incursus and fit three mods: an Afterburner, Web and Disruptor.

The next day we're on our op when the Goons come to play even if they weren't the ones to reinforce our POS. Next thing I know my main is blasting away while I send my alt straight at the Goons tackling anything that got called primary. A couple of minutes later I'm running off in my Pod to pick up a new Incursus and my name is on 5 battleship kills. I had survived long enough that in fact a Thanatos had been able to lock me up and start shooting at me. Lossmail. Take a good look at that fit. Three mods, no guns (I never did launch the drone) and I was instrumental in getting five kills.

Now for the one caveat. This was a POS op so I didn't have to worry about gate guns but even then a cheap, throwaway tackle is great for holding a ship until the heavy tackles and battleships can lock and point the target up. And if you're lucky enough you may even escape.

So to the newer Eve players I want to show that even with three skills, Propulsion Jamming level 1, Afterburner level 1 and your racial Frigate skill, in my case to level 4, you can play an integral part of a combat op. So don't feel left out if all you have is a frig. Bring it along and be prepared to lose it for a kill. You never know, it may be you that actually got it by holding the target down.