Eve Online - First time podded

So I'm mining in a Vexor out in 0.4 sec space, with 4 Infiltrator 1 drones, one 150mm railgun and 3 mining lasers. I'm grabbing some Jaspet, because I need nocxium.

Anyway, two pilots marked in yellow fly up, warp scramble me, destroy my cruiser in about 10 seconds, then demand 5 million ISK or they'll pod me.

Um... There are several problems with this proposition. I've just lost 5 million in equipment, and my clone costs 65k to replace. Now they want me to pay them 5 million to avoid replacing my cheap clone?!? Even if I DID want to avoid being podded, how do I know they won't kill me after I give them the money? I think given what I was doing out there (mining with cheap-ass drones for cover) that it was clear that I wasn't worth much. Had they demanded, say 500k BEFORE blowing up my cruiser, maybe they would have gotten something from me.

I dunno, some people just don't think things through. This reminds me of an excellent article by an economist about the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. This is an excellent read; I highly recommend it. They gained nothing for themselves, and cost me a lot. At least it's not the most irritating form of BHS, which is when people cost me a lot AND hurt themselves in the process. And if you're curious, their names are "wide" and "Spyre."

Heheh, and BHS is also the initials of the high school I went to.

Capcom Classics Collection PS2

Just got the CCC, and was very excited to play 1942, 1943 and Commando again, with an actual stick instead of the lousy D-pads.

Well, guess what. The diagonals on the stick are so small (about 5 degrees) that it's very hard to get them to work in the heat of battle.

>:(

I'm so horribly disappointed. I either have to make my thumb hurt like hell using the Dpad, or fork out $80 for an X-Arcade stick.

What the hell were Digital Eclipse thinking? Did anyone even playtest these games with the analog stick? DE got it right on the Midway Collection with Gauntlet and Smash TV on it, so why not with this one?

My apologies for being another customer griping at the programmers and testers, but I program PSP games for Ubisoft, and feel (at least a little) justified.

;)

Fluke - Wobbler

Wow. This is a track from a 1995 electronica album called OTO by Fluke. It's 8 minutes and 47 seconds.

Through the whole thing, there's a vung-vung-vung-vung-vung-vung-vung-vung on the eighth-note steps of the track; it sits on the same chord for the whole time, and never misses a beat. This bit modulates slowly, which gives a strange sort of impetus to the feel of the music.

On top, we get many layers of drums, synth, and different vocals. The combined excellence of all this is impossible to put into words. Which didn't stop this guy from trying:

"Oh, btw: Imagine you have five minutes left before your favourite music download service closes down, what song do you download? Wobbler, by Fluke."

EVE Online: The adventure begins

Well, I started playing EVE about 3 weeks ago. Finally, a MMOG that's fun. Well, for me anyway. It's extremely slow-moving, but there's something about it that's awesome. I played World of Warcraft for about six months, but it didn't grab me like this. I liked it, and thought it was a well designed game. But EVE has sucked me in because its social structures seem to be more complete.

One nice thing is that it doesn't require LOADS of playtime to make progress. When you train a skill, it just costs some money to get the skill, then realtime to learn it. For example, it took me 2 days to learn Science IV. But you don't have to be logged on for your character to learn. You can choose Science IV, and log off for two days, come back, and it's learned. Several other activities work the same way, such as research, manufacturing and selling. You can earn more money by playing more often, but the skills are fundamentally limited by how long you've had your account. This means that if I play about 10 hours a week, I can have the same skills as someone who plays 40 hours a week.

I'm in it to mine, manufacture, and run a corporation. Blacksteel Mining and Manufacturing has 8 members now. Whenever they complete missions or get bounties, the corp gets a percentage. Eventually, BM2 will rent office space so we have a central place to put assets for members to access. We will have a set of communal blueprints our members can use to manufacture things wit. When our income is high enough, we'll be able to build our own space station, and stake our claim out in low-security space.

Currently, I pilot a small mining frigate. A fighter pilot from the corp will escort me to a medium-security asteroid belt (where better ore is found), and I gather minerals while they stop pirates from bothering me. I then go get a cargo ship to haul the ore back, I manufacture ammunition to sell to other players, then I give a cut to the fighter pilot and the corp fund.

Lots of fun organizing this. Well, I figure I will write more about EVE in the future, is it is incredibly deep. Just last week there was a financial scandal where a player ran a fake IPO for his corp and absconded with 25 billion credits. If I have any regular readers out there, don't worry: I still play other games, and will continue to post reviews.