Two more wallpapers for iPhone and iPod users. Due to the high contrast of apple screens, images look a tad brighter on monitors.
When setting above wallpaper, move it down a few pixels to fit right below the status bar. That way the clock won't cover the planet when you unlock.
This baby will stay on my front screen for a long time to come. More Tengu wallpapers with different subsystem layouts will be available in the near future.
July was as languid as the weather though I doubt capsuleers ever experience seasonal changes in our pods. The corporation that hired me turned out to be a more of a loose social gathering than a group put together for a purpose. The folks in Australia proved to be formidable conversationalists and were around when I was online thanks to the proximity in time zone. All save one or two, devoted their effort to running missions. Since it is more profitable to solo missions in high security space we only saw each other when someone requested assistance.
Rather than wait for a corp ops I decided to organize one myself. I gathered those online for a new challenge. An epic arc seemed like the perfect choice to break the dull routine. It piqued everyone’s interest and soon there were five pilots in my fleet. We warped to the Impetus beacon in Dodixie; however our grand adventure ended before it even began, as none of us had the standing to access the agent. For my lack of preparation and stupidity, I paid everyone a few million ISK to compensate for their lost time.
Returning to my hangar, I hopped into my Imicus which had two Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade rigs, geared for probing. Within an hour of roaming, I discovered my first wormhole entrance in Sharuveil, a low sec system in Gallente sovereignty. When I mentioned my finding in the corp channel I received hesitant replies. Solarius, a regular at our public channel, asked to be invited when I told him it was a class 3 wormhole. Soon he was clearing each anomaly in his shiny Paladin, flawlessly making his move like a chess grandmaster would, knowing exactly where to be after each trigger. I remained cloaked at a safe distance cheering at him. When we got out, he generously shared a portion of the loot which turned out to be quite sizable. At the time the prospect of WH hunting felt far more lucrative than repetitive missions.
Later on I tried to reenact the short but intense WH operation. One corp mate brought his Drake, the other a Hurricane, and I my Dominix. It soon became clear that the three of us combined could not match the graceful performance of one man. In fact we were barely able to clear one site. The Drake pilot told me he had to refit heavy missile launchers because his HAM Drake was constantly webbed. Meanwhile our Hurricane pilot was caught up fitting his ship as he couldn’t really decide how he wanted to tank his ship. I wasn’t any brighter using my drones for DPS. By the time I lost my third drone, the Drake returned only to leave again shortly to pick up an AB. In hindsight, it could have been disastrous had another pilot entered and jumped on us. After this incident my WH exploration came to a halt. I had to find a new platform, be it missiles or lasers.
My miner alt, who I logged into once a day for PI, was ready to pilot a Hulk, but due to poor timing his new found ability coincided with Hulkageddon 3. So instead for two days I took out my Imicus to probe down Hulks that were mining in gravimetric sites and those bold enough to brave asteroid belts, subsequently delivering intel to those hungry for miners’ blood. Watching suicide gankers explode in front of my eyes was worth waiting for however it quickly bored me.
In the closing days of July, the corp withered and waned due to lack of leadership. The CEO had left to try out another game leaving his employees in the dark. None of us were delegated any roles to utilize the POS that had been anchored weeks ago. It was only natural that no one knew which direction the corp was headed. The disillusioned scattered away and finding myself alone in the channel became more frequent. I tendered my resignation.
My next stunt was the trade hub marathon. Only it wasn’t margin trading that I was involved in. I jumped around Jita, Amarr, Dodixie and Rens spamming the local channel with a linked ad that led to my thread in the character bazaar. On the ninth day, I bought a Caldari pilot with 14 million SP.
I had briefly considered the Rattlesnake as Dax Jr's next ship before delaying cross training in order to allow his Gallente skills to mature. Since he can comfortably handle level 4 missions, he's taking time off to train learning skills to 5/4 which is nearing completion. Unless asked to fly assault ships, Dax will most likely continue building on drone skills.
David Vendetta is a combat pilot with virtually no wasted points. Previous owners have kept him pure Caldari. For unknown reasons he's never seen combat despite his capability to field a wide array of PvP ships. Currently he's on a two-week Tengu plan, which will be followed by Falcon/ECM skills.
I no longer intend to keep my third toon. He is to be sold in the coming months.
Once again I am looking for a corp to join. If you're familiar with WH corps, please let me know. Thanks.
A mission runner’s “you reap what you sow” would roughly translate to “you loot what you wreck.” By June I managed to hoard 824 items in two solar systems. When I opened my hangar or assets tab lag was noticeable, getting worse after each mission. Thalis Malu, who was listening to my predicament, uttered the one line that changed everything forever. [insert image of light bulb here] [playback sound effect of angel choir]
[ 2010.06.04 ] Thalis Malu > I keep all my items in station cans
Following his instruction I opened the market interface to find several station containers for sale at 10,000 ISK in Ignebaener. Shortly thereafter I moved back to Auvergne where even more items where sprawled about. But I had to pay over tens times the price for one because systems near trading hubs have inflated tags on them. I bought fourteen and began sorting them:
A station container has 1,000,000 m3 capacity so unless you're a hardcore miner space won't be an issue. Note that they were designed for corporate hangars, to serve as audit log secure containers. This means every time an item is moved the transaction will be logged. The initial setting will lock down anything dropped into them for security reasons. To use these cans with ease, a pilot needs to tweak the configuration.
Right clicking on a station container will bring up a contextual menu like above. Choose configure container and check on 'unlocked.' I doubt people will need passwords for personal hangars but it's never a bad idea to set one for expensive deadspace modules. Rest assured, even in the worst case you'll get hacked but those Chelms' will be safe.
Dominion patch enabled players to view the contents of station cans in their assets tab but search isn't available yet. You will have to open each container to move items into them, which I think could be improved if one could drop items directly on the icons. This could get annoying when you have over a dozen to manage. I think fourteen is a bit excessive because it requires so much clicking.
June had been a rollercoaster ride in many aspects of the game and real life. Suffice to say that I’ve been overwhelmed by reading which, at this stage, takes priority over writing. In-game Dax became the archetypal carebear devoting most of his time grinding missions, salvaging wrecks, and sometimes snooping around markets for a better deal. My browser’s default website has been replaced to EVE-survival’s MissionReports from EVE Gate, which further attests to my carebear status. The discovery of new channels, namely eve-bloggers where fan meets celebrity, was a pleasant surprise. HelpMyMission channel is as entertaining as it is helpful so if you’re running missions and need a hand or want a whacky bunch of humorists to cure your boredom, drop by.
Joining a player run corporation was a big step forward in Dax Jr.’s online life that also took away a good chunk of my attention away from posting. When I finally decided to move out of the NPC corp, numerous personnel officers and sometimes CEOs offered to take me in. However it soon became clear that due to time zone issues, I’d be online alone if I were to join these wonderful corps. That was when I met admiral darkhammer, the CEO of Dark Forge Enterprise, formerly Dark Forge Enterprises. He promised me plenty of kangaroos(Aussies) and the like(Kiwis). Wormhole exploration or null sec access wasn’t immediately available but instead the corp would start from the bottom up.
In the first week my alt tagged along others to mine in a gravimetric site while Dax Jr. participated in level 4 mission fleets. Membership ebbed and flowed but darkhammer dismissed it as a natural process. I was more concerned about the lack of communication and inactivity as a group. The frigate tournament dissolved quietly when people enlisted in the ladder left the corp, leaving me as the victor to claim an Imperial Slicer. New players who joined as miners turned into born-again mission runners when they found out that they could make more money by running missions. Mining ops came to a halt. Questions were raised as some grew impatient of the direction things were going. No one, save a few who were involved in setting up a POS, knew what was going on. It so happens that a few days prior to this inquisition darkhammer bought the service of a player with high faction standing to anchor the POS. Everyone realized then that two leaders were solely responsible for financing this project. The delegation of roles or building corp infrastructure had been put off until after the corp had transitioned to a new entity that owns a POS. It finally happened this week and it’s only the beginning. We will need to acquire blueprints, fuels, various modules for our structure, and more importantly new talent to help the corp grow. Had I joined a mature corp, I would never have known this process firsthand.
Dax Jr. traveled to Minmatar space last month to claim modules bought off contracts. Other than that movement was limited to mission objective systems.
My initial plan was to finish primary skills but the queue took twists and turns to suit my needs because Dax Jr. is the only playable character. Mechanic V just got completed and by tomorrow he will train Thermodynamics. I am still debating on when I should finish the rank 1 learning skills which were left off at IV. I find piloting the Dominix to be boring and am considering cross training Caldari. Dax is expected to suffer from my whims for a few more months before he finally settles on a long term plan.
The industry alt will be able to fly Hulks by Monday. Perfect timing for Hulkageddon III. This one will have to stay docked during the entire event and work on other skills until the coast is clear.
Then there’s the third alt. My obsession for learning skills lead me to create him. He’s going straight for 5/4 learning with a full set of +4 implants in his brain. I still have another month before I set a career path, but he’s most likely to fly Amarr combat ships.
Real life is expected to get even busier in July but I will try to post more often, as things are picking up speed in EVE. If you are interested in joining our corp, please contact me or leave a message and I’ll get back to you.
The latest version of iClone is available. At the time of writing, iClone is the only app that utilizes full API in a comprehensive, albeit slightly slow, flow. Core functionality remains much the same from the previous versions, however, the map is the perhaps the defining feature of this update. It's fair to say that this update isn't a mere face-lift, as I'll note my impressions below.
The front page has changed for the better, and the refresh button has been placed adequately near the bottom. No more rummaging into menus to hit that. It took me 1 minute 50 seconds for the update to complete after manually executing refresh under the following conditions: a) home WiFi network, b) one account, full API, c) character had access to corp wallet. Not bad considering the massive amounts of data it is updating since the user has room to access other functions while the app continues to feed new information.
The crown jewel of iClone v1.3.0 is no doubt the map. I am quite sure every EVE player who owns an iPhone or iPod will appreciate this huge upgrade. I find myself exploring the grand universe when I'm offline, imagining where I'll be in the near future. Furthermore it eliminates the frustration one faces when trying to use dotlan EVE maps on the tiny safari browser.
Station services are displayed when a system is selected. Follow the arrow to see even more information about the system.
Some of you might notice that v1.3.0 has asteroid belts and ice belts mixed up. The developer seems aware of this. Having the statistics available is also a plus. As you can see on the screenshot, I'm carebearing in high sec so we don't see much PvP in this sector.
I haven't tested the item database extensively enough to comment on improvements at this point. Few items were prone to crash the app in the past, which the developer claims is now fixed. The database itself is cleaned up so I'm adding another point to that. Descriptions still need to be taken care of, such as 'br' tags showing up, on Dominix Navy Issue. Please help the developer by posting your findings on his forum or twitter.
The assets menu is not displaying modules correctly. Even though I've placed most of my items in Station Containers, they are shown in multiple tabs, which is hard to keep track of. I am confident this will be addressed in the next version.
Overall, this is a powerful application to have in one's pocket for any avid EVE fan. The size has been slightly increased to 253.1MB. Stability has improved as I have not experienced any shutdowns. I would like for the character sheet UI to get a revamp as I still find Capsuleer to be more appealing to check on my skills queue.
