Color schemes

Spent the weekend at the coast, reading nautical fiction and eating fish and chips. Lucked into a garage sale at the Rogue Brewery, where I picked up a pair of cases for a song.

I must remember this for future holiday weekends. There have been a few changes since I was last there--the brewery is now covered a bit so you can't see the brewers going about their business from the bar. Which is fine, as I'm pretty sure I would be annoyed as hell if somebody sat above my floor watching me hack at Web pages.

Also painting the living room this week, at least with sample colors from Devine.

Devine colors are interesting in that they're designed for the Pacific Northwest climate. In the winter grey, they really pop. Our exterior is done in the same colors and it really does stand out during the perennial rains. Still not sure which colors for the walls but we really want this one color called Devine Merlot for an accent wall. Now just what does it accent?

One of my friends has been borrowing comic trades lately. This next round includes Spiral Bound. If only the summer camp I went to was as awesome as the ones these kids go to.

This is what happens when you kiss a stranger in the Alps, Donny

One of the things that intrigues me about EVE is the metagame. Not only are pretend spaceships being built and destroyed, but real people are creating alternative characters to infiltrate pretend corporations.

The latest scandal goes beyond that, where it has come to light that one of the pre-eminent groups, Band of Brothers, has had help from developers. In June 2006, he created many Tech II blueprints (recipes for making equipment) and gave them to the corporation, where he also had a character.

In World of WarCraft terms, this would be like somebody spawning epic equipment and giving it to his guild, only moreso. Those blueprints are a license to print money. Plus, as an added bonus, the guy who figured all this out had all of his paying accounts terminated.

Meanwhile, because of various factions, the entire EVE world is at war right now. I cannot help but wonder what this news has done, whether it's the Archduke Franz Ferdinand incident that leads to the Somme, but this weekend has been lagtastic in fleet battles as corporation fleets march to war.

I really hope CCP gets their act together on this--they've bungled the investigation and their handling of the facts. They may be distracted by their recent merger with White Wolf (I'd expect to see an announcement about a new World of Darkness MMORPG any day now). Still, these shenanigans predate any negotiations between the two companies.

Coming down with a cold this weekend and I have a major release at work on Thursday. I'm going to continue to try more frequent updates, though.

Pretend internet spaceships are the best

So I was all fired up in January to resume a regularly MWF blogging schedule, and then life happened.

Let's try this again.

I totally missed everything Super Bowl related this year, as I was helping a friend build shelving units. Then we drank tiki drinks and had nachos, so I think I ended up the winner.

The new year is also about the time I start playing MMORPGs, at least for a while. Last year it was Maple Story, which is full of 12-year-olds. This year, it's EVE Online, which is all about SERIOUS BUSINESS involving fake internet spaceships. OK, the people who call it serious business are probably 12 years old as well.

Mostly it's an excuse to run around going pew pew at each other in a giant game of tag, only it's on a global scale because there is one single server that handles all players. Given how awful the lag is during some of the fleet battles I've been in, I really don't know how good of an idea this has turned out to be, though. Anything more than about 40 spaceships fighting turns the whole thing into a slideshow.

(Of course, each spaceship is flying, shooting multiple weapons, running special equipment, sending drones to kill each other, dropping warp bubbles, etc., so there are hundreds of variables to keep track of in any engagement.)

Valentine's Day is approaching. Have you kept the economy going, citizen?