Articulated Sky

Earlier today, Tony over at EVE’s Weekend Warrior posted an article containing a great selection of must have WordPress plugins. If you haven’t read it yet and you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, you should definitely go and check it out!

The reason I’m telling you this is that I recently installed a plugin called Lightbox 2. This plugin allows images to be shown in a separate box, but still on the original page. I seem to be butchering the plugin by trying to describe its job when I can just show it to you. Click the image below and providing that your browser supports javascript (as all modern browsers should), you should see it appear on top of the page in its own little box.

The only problem with it seems to be that as it is among the last things to load with the page, if someone clicks an image before the page fully loads (as I tend to do) it will open on a page of its own as it normally would. But unfortunately it’s very unlikely that I can change that as as far as I know, that’s the way javascript works in being the last object to load.

And our audience says…

So, the results are in on the newest poll. This time around we had a total of 17 votes (at the time of this posting) spread across three possible answers.

1. Actively look for a corporation – 8 votes – 47%
2. Go solo – 6 votes – 35%
3. Join a corporation but let them come to me – 3 votes – 18%

To be honest, despite the results of this poll being pretty clear, I’m still not entirely sure what to do. While I got some good corp offers from Wensley and Jeneral Jane, I’m still feeling the pull of a solo life. I have a feeling it may take me while to regain my confidence in whether a corp can stay active or not.

Exploring the space lanes

Earlier a reader (and fellow EVE blogger), Kirith Kodachi, contacted me to have a new blog header and forum signature made. Unfortunately the plans for the signature fell through because of unforseen circumstances but the plans for the header were still on. You can see the header below along with a screenshot of the header in action on Kirith Kodachi’s blog.

I’ll post a full post on this set of graphics once the signature plans come back up.

Just under a week ago, I mentioned that I would be posting a header I created for the new gaming based blogging site, GameScribe, which is currently in closed beta. Turns out I was wrong about it being just EVE Online based, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting.

In case word hasn’t reached your ears yet, GameScribe is a new project started by the EVE player you may know as Serious Sally or Malnor Zerchan (or maybe just Anthony). At the risk of greatly stuffing up a description of GameScribe, here’s a short description from Anthony’s GameScribe blog.

Well, what is GameScribe you might ask? Think of it as Wordpress.com for Gamers. The idea is that I will provide gamers with blog themes and plugins that help them really have real gamer blogs… Not cookie cutter blog templates that anyone can make a blog in, but game specific templates. This theme, for example is one of the themes I’ve put together for EVE Online players. But I have also made some for WOW, and Jumpgate Evolution. Even more are coming (Black Prophecy, SWTOR, STO, SGW, the list goes on).

Anyway, long story short, Anthony came to me earlier last week asking me whether I wanted to be a part of the GameScribe design team. Of course I accepted and he got me working right away on a header for an upcoming theme he would be creating. That header (which I am actually quite proud of), you can see below. It was created almost entirely from scratch, the only thing that I did not create was the Astartes, they came from two different screenshots.

Click image to see full size

As part of the Gamescribe design team, I’ve managed to get hold of a few invites (three to be exact) to give away in my next contest. And luckily for you guys, you only have to wait around five seconds for the new contest!

…

…

…

Wasn’t that a quick five seconds?

This time around, your task is to write a piece of fan fiction on a given theme. The rules, along with the theme are as follows;

Rules:

• Your fan fiction entry must be based around the theme, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way”. Apart from including that theme into your story, you have complete and total freedom.
• There is no upper or lower limit on words.
• As of this posting, you have two weeks (16th May) to write and post your best EVE Online Fan Fiction!
• As I expect these fan fictions to be quite long (at least the size of an average blog post), you must post them on your blog and link back to this post. If you do not have a blog (all the more reason to enter this contest!), you must email the story to me using the contest entry form below.
  

cforms contact form by delicious:days

So, what will you get if you enter this contest and win?

First Prize: A Gamescribe invite + 50 million ISK
Second Prize: A GameScribe invite + 25 million ISK
Third Prize: A GameScribe invite + 10 million ISK

You know what to do, get those entries posted!

I’m starting to think that I may be cursed when it comes to corporations.

The Galactic Inquisition, my previous corp, seemed like it was on it’s last legs the day I joined but I was assured that it was a temporary glitch in corp activity and that I should stick around to see the corp at it’s best; and for around a month, I was convinced that it was only temporary. We went on a couple 0.0 ops (although they amounted to giant wastes of time) and I had some nice chats with the other members.
Unfortunately, during this time, the CEO had been coming online less and less and despite a corp mail promising that he would be online a lot more. He even promised 100 million ISK and a Battleship to every corp member if he went back on his promise. Needless to say, no one got the 100 mil and Battleship each and the corp mail was deleted from the corp inbox a week later.

A week later, I logged in to find that the corp had joined the Dark Matter Consortium alliance which seemed kind of pointless for a corporation that I seemed to be the only active member of. Over the next week or so, there was talk of the corporation moving to the Alliance HQ in hopes of encouraging the corp members to become active again but unfortunately, I could see that it was not happening.
Because I could see that joining the alliance was nothing more than a desperate attempt that was failing, I moved back to Notoras and just watched the corporation slowly go under.

A week later, I had a change of heart and decided to stick with the corp and see how it all goes. Unfortunately, I logged in to find that I was no longer a member of The Galactic Inquisition (I assume all but the CEO and his alts were kicked) and they had left the Dark Matter Consortium. So here I am, sitting in Old Man Star, without a corporation and without a decent ship to fly.

Having the last three corporations I’ve joined go under no more than a couple months after I’ve joined has knocked my confidence in the ability of the average, everyday corporation to stay active member-wise and corp op-wise.
I may end up going solo for a while, which shouldn’t be too much of a problem as I tend to prefer solo PvP anyway.

While I have a think on my plan of attack, I’ve set up a poll so you can let me know what you think. And as always, leave a comment and let me know what your opinion is on the situation.

Next time, I’ll have a header to post that will be featured among others on a new EVE Online blogging platform which is going into beta very soon!

Fly safe.

So, the poll results are in!

We had a total of 12 votes for this poll and a strangely uniform set of results. This time around, I asked you which ship I should pilot as my new pirate ship and as I expected, people seem to be pretty split about it.
And so, the results are…

• Thorax – 3 votes – 25%
• Brutix – 2 votes – 17%
• Drake – 2 votes – 17%
• Myrmidon – 2 votes – 17%
• Other – 3 votes – 25%
  • Deimos – 1 vote
  • Nightmare – 1 vote
  • Ibis – 1 vote

To tell you the truth, I bought a Thorax not long after I started this poll as I missed flying in what some people call the flying dildo of EVE.

I’ve already got a fit in mind for it but unfortunately, I’m about a week or two from actually being able to fit the majority of it so I’ll post it up once I’ve managed to fit it and test it out in actual combat. In the mean time though, don’t worry, I’ll still be my usual active self.

Anyway, in other news. Those of you who are following me on Twitter will have been able to get sneak peeks at a little change to the site I’d been thinking about doing. Although, that said, only EVE Warrior of EVE’s Weekend Warrior replied when I asked for input so I assume that most of you lot didn’t see it.
For those of you that haven’t seen it, or did see it but may have been confused, here’s a little explanation.

In the near future, I’m looking at creating an online portfolio for a place to show off my best photography, graphics and general design work. By this time, the portfolio site and this blog will have a front page giving the reader a choice of whether they want to go to the portfolio or this blog. Now, on the portfolio site, this will be an easy job. All I would need to do is have the choices page be the index page and the main be www.sitename.com/home or something like that. The blog on the other hand is a little bit more difficult.

This blog already exists and as such, there are pages and posts on the web that are linking to posts here. I cannot move the blog to www.articulatedsky.com/blog as that will break every link that points here and kill a lot of my referral traffic*. The work around that I have devised for this is to have all traffic going to www.articulatedsky.com, automatically diverted (via the Page Links To plugin) to the location of the page to create a fake front page. The blog link on this page will seem like it’s taking you to the normal blog front page but if you looked at the address bar, it will actually have taken you to page 1 of the post list which in fact looks near enough identical to the default front page (the only difference being the title saying “Articulated Sky | Part 1″.

*However, if you know of a way to do this without breaking every link, you’d save me a lot of trouble. Contact me if you can help.

Update:
I forgot to mention, while I will definitely be having this front page on my portfolio site, the front page for the blog is only possibly happening (depending on your feedback).

Anyway, those are my plans. As on Twitter, I’m looking for your opinions on this and if any of you are suitably web savvy, your opinions on any other ways to solve my problem.

EVE hasn’t been kind to me lately. After losing my old Brutix (the USS Short Lived) just over a month ago, I took out my new replacement Brutix (The USS Shorter Lived) in Old Man Star last night. Unfortunately for me, it lived up to its name.

It was near the end of a boring night of “warp to Old Man Star V… scan asteroid belts… warp to Old Man Star VI… etc.” when I scanned down a Drake named “Salvage” in one of the asteroid belts. Initially I thought nothing of it and warped off to the next planet. On my next couple rounds of the system, I noticed that the Drake still hadn’t moved which I thought was odd.
On my next round I saw that the Drake was still there, so decided to warp in and have a look. Despite initially thinking it was a trap, I was put at ease by the fact that the Drake was surrounded by salvaged wrecks of the local Sansha rats. Thinking that the Drake fitted for mainly salvaging and was AFK, I started closing in to my optimum range, getting ready to target so as to tackle the Drake and catch him off guard. But to my surprise, he targeted me first. “Maybe he’s just come back and is fighting back out of panic”, I thought. Turns out I was wrong.

Little did I know that this Drake pilot was smarter than I had previously anticipated and I had flown into his carefully laid trap.

[ 2009.04.07 18:27:10 ] (notify) Kendrak Memonic [CVS](Drake) has started trying to warp scramble you!
[ 2009.04.07 18:27:15 ] (combat) Caldari Navy Terror Assault Missile belonging to Kendrak Memonic hits you, doing 949.3 damage.

Seconds later, I came to realise that there was nothing I could do. My blaster rounds and drones’ rounds were merely bouncing off the shields and my Brutix was bound for the great shipyard in the sky.

Now that my Brutix has taken the form of dust and metal chunks, I need a replacement ship. Just for a bit of variation, I’ll let you guys help me make the decision. For the ships I can fly, take a look at my in EvE ships page.

Do you think I should be flying a frigate or cruiser? Or should I be staying with a battlecruiser? Should I even try a battleship? If you have a suggestion, post away!

Update:

Slap me silly and call me admiral, I forgot to add the new poll!