danielcolomb.com » Eve Online

I have my computer back!

Dan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:42:06 +0000

So at work they’re distributing a new baseline for all the computers. My machine got it about 2 weeks ago. The updates were pretty simple, upgrade from Office 2003 to 2007, IE 6 to 8, Security Updates etc etc. Last week at some point my computer died, it would start up and as soon as the windows loading screen would appear I would get a BSOD and the computer would reboot. That was on a tuesday. Wednesday, Desktop Support comes and picks my computer up to try and recover the machine. I don’t have a computer for the rest of the week.

Over the weekend I didn’t do much, played Eve on Friday and Saturday morning, then ran some errands and in the afternoon drove down to Nashville to see a show. The show was alright, the venue could have been better, but the bands made up for the fact that there was no drinking, smoking, moshing, crowd surfing, cursing or any other fun activities that one usually partakes in while at a show. Rcktwn is the fail. On sunday we drive back and once i get home I play some more Eve

On the topic of Eve, i figure i’ll give an update of the goings on of Krandor delMarniol. Krandor’s left Legion of Black Mesa because many of the members have left or stopped playing. Krandor has found a new home with some old friends in UKM (United Kingdom Mayhem) who have many more active players than Legion of Black Mesa did. So far things are pretty good, besides the whole Circle-of-Two getting reset by Northern Coalition thing. While things are pretty turbulent up there UKM has decided to pull it’s industrial assets out of 0.0 and try to find a good empire home for them. After that is done, I think i’ll take Krandor back out to 0.0 to help in the effort to keep our home constellation.

OK, back to real life. This week starts and i still don’t have a computer. I don’t get it back until Wednesday (a whole week later). So I took some half-days and went home early, did laundry, ran some errands, etc.

Now it’s Thursday and I have my computer back up and running (though still not completely updated). It’s good to be able to get back to work

Alliance Changes

Dan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:57:18 +0000

I haven’t made an Eve post in a while. No worries, I’m still very loyal to CCP and their very awesome game.

My corp, Legion of Black Mesa, has — since the last time I posted — left Capital Storm and has joined up with United Freemen Alliance. Many of us have moved out to 0.0 to help with the effort to claim sov, as well as make iskies Things are going a bit slower than I had hoped. Many of our players don’t really seem to be making the move out to Geminate as quickly as I personally would like them to. On top of that, people that used to be blue to us are now red, and have been pewpewing it up in our space. This makes me uncomfortable, because i don’t like shooting at friends.

On the plus side though, we’re planning on putting a tower up soon, and hopefully we’ll be able to start doing small scale corp mining ops out there. Some of that ore is really nice.

Eve Apps

Carnes and I have been working on some webapps to help pilots with their carebearing.

Exploration

Personally I like Carnes’ tool the best, the exploration tool. It can be found here. It’s IGB only, so you’ll have to check it out in game. Basically it helps keep track of what systems have been scanned, what was found in them, and if those things have been cleared or not. This should help people save probes, so they don’t scan out a system that someone else has already cleared out. The only downside to this is that the IGB is extremely slow. But i guess if you’re waiting three minutes for a scan, the IGB’s slowness isn’t that big of a deal.

Mining Shares

I wrote a quick mining share calculator, here. Basically you choose your region, update the prices for it (it’s a manual input right now — I use the average prices for each mineral for the day; from the market history tab). Once that’s done you can put in the mineral yields from each mineral type, choose how many shares you want, check if there’s going to be a corporate share added (for corp ops, or whatever), and click calculate. The results will be shown as an ISK amount and how many of each mineral. I’m still working on getting it to work in the IGB, but it’s a bit more complicated than I thought.

grumble grumble Mondays

Dan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:46:14 +0000

Mondays are the worst. You’ve just gotten into the cycle of getting relaxing sleep when you have to break it just so you can go to work and make money so you have a nice bed to sleep in. Personally, I’m just glad coffee was discovered. Otherwise I’d be fired and homeless… my fuse is pretty short in the mornings, especially before I’ve had my wake-up juice.

Anyway, the weekend was typical. Friday started with early morning wake-up (around 10am ) which was followed by a trip over to my parents house so i could do laundry. We still don’t have a washer and dryer due to unexpected expenses last weekend as well as employment issues with my housemate. So, leeching off the parents will continue We decided to do a fun project, Skittles Vodka. I did some shopping for groceries and skittles. We were close to cannibalism, i think. While i was out, i got some mason jars as well as some precious vodka. Sean and I then watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture and sorted out skittles. Once the skittles were sorted, we added them to the mason jars and then topped them off with vodka. The process takes about a day, so we put them up and began to wait. That night i ended up going to a friends’ place, enjoyed many delicious beverages, and partook in multiple games of beer-pong.

Saturday was pretty much a day of sleeping in, reading books, and playing Eve. We also checked on our skittles booze. It was pretty neat looking. All the skittles had dissolved and the sugar syrup had separated and formed a foamy layer on top of the infused vodka. The green flavor is my favorite at the moment.

Sunday was more of the same, getting wonderful sleep, making awesome breakfast, discovering that the water kettle had self-destructed. Good Times. Good thing Sean had an extra kettle, otherwise how would we get our tea!? We watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (KHAAAAAAAN!!) and prepared delicious stew. Then instead of eating said stew we went to my parent’s house and ate dinner there. omnomnomnoms!

And now it’s Monday. The worst day of the week. I can’t wait till this week is over.. I have vacation all next week

Break Time :)

Dan — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:20:42 +0000

Another weekend at the new house. I’m really starting to get used to this. I guess i’ll get started with some things that have been a while coming. I finally uploaded those pictures of the house. Everything is still in half-moved in status, so please excuse the mess Click Here For Pictures!. I’ll take pictures of the outside and garage later. They’re not really that exciting anyway.

Today was saturday. I guess technically it still is, but it’s more than halfway over already . I played some Eve this morning; we went to Geminate and killed people. Fun stuff. My Rail Deimos actually worked! I think our ratio ended up being 7-0. No losses is always good

I found out on thursday that my grandfather passed away. To be honest, i’m not really that torn up about it. I hadn’t seen him in years, and we hadn’t really had quality time in much longer than that. He’d also been quite sick for the last year or so, so his passing wasn’t unexpected. It’s much worse for my father. He flew out today to attend the funeral on Monday. The whole ordeal made me think about what i’ll be feeling and going through when my dad does eventually pass — yes, our parents aren’t immortal and will eventually die. Really i don’t want to think about stuff like that. but in actuality i think it’s better that i do this now instead of later — or keep putting it off until it’s too late. I guess this way i’m somewhat prepared for it.

Work has been ok. Right now we’re pretty much on autopilot. Go in in the morning, do our processing and data retrieval, run any reports that are needed, and then surf the internet till it’s time to go home. It’s pretty cake right now. I’m just waiting for the motivation to hit to start on a new big project.

Zero Punctuation may be shallow

Dan — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:52:49 +0000

I’ve been watching Zero Punctuation for a while and I’ve always found it amusing and at times insightful. But this week, i’m not too sure. He reviewed Eve Online, a game that i’ve been playing for almost 3 years. Now, what he says is very true, there are some awefully boring things that go on. But as you watch you’ll see that he didn’t do any of the things that make the game so fun!

1) Joining a player owned corp is part of the game, staying in an NPC corp really isn’t all that exciting. You don’t have the same kind of togetherness and common goal to achieve.

2) He may have tried pvp, but with only two weeks there’s no way you’ve learned all that you need to know. Then on top of that, to solo PvP, you really need a lot of experience and skill points (could be optional). He could have had a good time PvPing in a group, if he would have tried.

3) He didn’t find his niche, he just jumped in and tried to play. That’s not going to work with Eve, you have to learn what you’re good at and then attempt to build your character around that. And by “what you’re good at” i mean personally, not your character. If you can’t handle the stress of PvP, then you shouldn’t be a PvPer. If you hate mining, then you shouldn’t be a miner, etc etc.

4) I don’t wear a shoe on my head

I guess what i’m really saying is that though i love to laugh at Zero puncutation’s reviews, i’m starting to wonder if i should take them seriously at all? I mean, i kind of figured he’d always pick out the bad parts of games and then exaggerate on them. But maybe with Eve he didn’t even attempt to find what draws people to the game? And if he did that with Eve, are all his game reviews like that?

Or maybe we are all the nerds who are what nerds are to nerds like nerds are to normal people.

Eve Online Killboard Setup

Dan — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:07:03 +0000

Since the eve-dev website is down, and currently residing over at eve-id.net. And i saw a search string pop up in my blog stats dealing with how to create a killboard. I thought i’d put together a quick howto on how to set up your very own eve killboard. Note to anyone who wants to admin their own killboard: The original creator of the killboard no longer works on it, but a community of enthusiasts still maintain and update the killboard system. It’s a community effort to add new features and fix bugs, so there’s no one person incharge of anything (as of 20 March 09 anyway).

First here are some things you’ll need.
1) A host – some place on the web which is willing to let you have some space to put the killboard and the database that goes along with it.
2) A mySQL database backend (preferably at the same place as the host)
3) A schema on said database where the tables needed for the killboard to go.
4) PHP – your host must support PHP (PHP 5 is the most current as of this writing).

Ok, so lets get started!

First things first, you’ll want to make sure you have permissions to create new schemas on your database. What i usually do is create a user just for that one schema and then give it everything but grant privileges. If you have no idea what i’m talking about, i’d say to take a look here. That should get you started on your way to using mySQL and learning how to administer it.

You’ll need to log into your mysql console (if you have remote access to your host). From a terminal window in linux, or command prompt in windows, you’ll issue this command

#/> mysql -u root -p
you’ll be prompted for your root password. enter it and press enter.

Typically, once you’re logged into the mysql console you’ll issue these commands like so:

mysql > CREATE DATABASE killboard;
mysql > GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP ON killboard.* TO ‘user’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;

The schema name for the killboard in this example is ‘killboard’. Notice that i’ve used ‘user’ for the username and ‘password’ for the password for the user. You’ll want to change this to something else, unless of course you don’t mind leaving your stuff insecure. Also, it’s a good idea to leave the host as localhost, since that’s typically where the killboard and database will reside, there on the local machine. This will also keep anyone from using your login credentials from a remote system if they do happen to get your information.

If you don’t have remote access, you may have a cpanel or somesuch that you can log into. You’ll want to create your new database and user with that. Making sure the new user has permissions for the new database.

Once you have your schema set up (there should be no tables in it yet). You’re ready to get the files needed and upload them to your server space. You can get the latest version of the killboard here. If that doesn’t work (as they may have gotten a new host), you can always google for ‘Eve Dev Killboard’. That should get you good results.

After you’ve downloaded the full install (not an update, unless of course you’re updating your killboard, in which case why are you reading this, since you should already know what to do) you’ll want to untar the package, this can be easily done with WinRAR (for windows and my personal favorite) or using tar -zxvf (in linux). After the extraction is complete, you’re ready to upload the files to your host.

Before you commence with the uplaod, think about where you want to put your killboard. Will it be the first page everyone sees? or do you want to put it in another directory? Personally i like having everything in it’s own directory, so for sake of arguement we’ll use /kb (meaning the address will look like http://some.host.com/kb).

You’ve created your directory and uploaded all the files there, you’ll browse to http://your.host.com/kb/install. From there you’ll have on screen instructions, which should be easy enough to follow. You’ll need to know the schema name, username, and password for your database connection, and your Eve Corporation or Alliance name. Other than that it’s very automated and easy to use.

If you do have trouble and need assistance, you can head over to eve-id.net(or whatever site they’re at now, if that one is no longer valid) and go to the forums. Pretty much if you’re having an issue, someone else has already had it and there’s a solution there.

Once everything is complete, make sure to delete the install directory and follow all the other security suggestions the installer gives you. Now you’re ready to start posting those kills! Good job!

Example Killboard (actually my corps’):Legion of Black Mesa’s Killboard
For the new Apocrypha updates check out this pack someone put together: Full Package Download [Current Ver: 1.6 Apoc 1.1 Content]

A good hint: Keep an eye on the EDK Forums; mods, updates, and new features are being added all the time!

For you WordPress pod pilot bloggers: Killboard plugin for WordPress. Looks like a neat feature to add.

EDITS:

-I thought i should show an example of that the killboard should look like after it’s finished.
-I added in some more detailed instructions for the database creation. Sorry to those that read this before and didn’t get what i was talking about. I tend to be a bit vague sometimes.
-Thanks to the comment by Dave I’ve updated the permissions needed by the user to include UPDATE. It would be silly not to be able to update a record
-Added links to the EDK Forums, especially to the Apocrypha release pack.
-Added link to Zaine’s wordpress killboard widget plugin.

Yay for long weekends!

Dan — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:17:47 +0000

So my weekend started normal with Friday off. And like normal, i really didn’t do much besides mow the lawn and take my brother to work. I did play some Eve and tried to make some isk for my upcoming carrier. Results were.. well.. mixed. I did make a nice chunk of change, but that went right down the toilet as i bought the Logistics skill and an Oneiros. Then on top of that i sent some more isk over to Deszra, who is building my carrier. So, that put me under 150 million isk. Which, for me, is very low.

On Saturday I slept in and after waking up started reading a book i’d been meaning to start a long time ago, Ringworld’s Children. I read a few chapters and then was drawn back to my computer to play more Eve. I log in to discover that there are red gangs all over Wicked Creek, instead of risking my ship and implants i jump back to Empire space to help with our newly started war effort against Goodfellas (which as of this writing isn’t going too well, efficiency-wise). So i decided to go and make isk the old fashioned way, by running missions and hitting up complexes. Then company came over, and i had to go prep the grill. We cooked and man was it delicious! I grill some whiting fillets and my dad grilled up a pork tenderloin and some brats. Mom made potato salad and tiramisu. Nick made his famous bruchetta, and Andrew kinda chilled out

mmmm, just thinking about it is making me hungry again.

So, today is monday, the last day of this glorious 4 day weekend. I hopped on eve for about an hour this morning, and then spent the rest of the time browsing the internet looking for neat things to do, or inspriation for what new features i could add to any of the websites i work on.

And here’s to me chillin’ for the rest of the day. Ah relaxation, how i love it