So I joined up with GMSEC about a week ago, after hearing promises of riches and more ore than anyone could ever mine. I figured, sure the loot will be nice, but could the mining really be as good as they say?

Well lets take a look at what 400 million isk looks like floating in space…and strangely I think I now know where tiberium comes from!

This weekend steam has a sale going on and one of the better items is Mount and Blade for only 5 bucks.

I strongly recommend if you havent gotten a copy that you pick it up now!

Click here for the discount!

Cause this might happen, damn you internet flamers!

I have been creating board games and such since I was about 12 and have always wanted to make my own pc game… but for whatever reason just havent gotten around to doing it yet.

This video is like visual motivation.

I’ll be honest, the whole idea of exclusives annoys me. If I am a game developer I want every person out there playing my game on any system I can get it to…and Im rather sure that Sony is the devil, or at least one of his minor demons.

So I have yet to purchase a PS3, there have been a few games that have made me get close to buying it, but nothing so far has grabbed me by my hair and screamed “PLAY ME!” yet.

Well this trailer may have finally convinced me. Its a different type of play style, and you definitely need to know your controller well, but I like the way it functions. Its like being a main star in a movie. Check it out.

It looks like everything worked correctly. All blog posts should now be cross posted to PHPBB and easily commented on there. If you experience any bugs or what not please let me know.

Well I just fired up some PHPBB forums to add a little spice to the site. Im working on integrating the posts with the forums, but might be a few more bugs as I tweak them. When all is said and done, hopefully people will be able to post on the forums and argue there =)

So its no secret to those who know me that Im a bit of an arrogant prick that kind of likes to run my own thing. Its not that I dont “play well with others” its simply that after running my own guilds for the better part of a decade its just hard for me not to reach up into someones setup slap them and ask WTF ARE YOU DOING!? That being said none of my friends like playing eve with me. So I can try and build up a guild solo…which is hard, or I can join a guild, learn the more advanced ropes to pvp, 0.0, and sovereignty and later if I feel the need make my own corp…hopefully with lots of friends, contacts and allies.

So after flipping through the forums I decided to give GMSEC a shot. They seemed like cool people, werent too big, and seemed to have a very laid back fun attitude.

So the first night I join a wardec is going live from some empire corp, and the PvP wing has moved to empire to play. I joined up in the frigate gang and went roaming. Sadly our targets, who wardeced us I might add, seem to enjoy the confines of stations and safespots more than they do fighting us. So sadly we had no encounters… but I did get some nice screen shots of some scenery and a Legion… its almost worth cross training amar for this bad boy.

I ended up the evening by contracting my BS’s to the logistics group for movement out to 0.0, and then moved my Cov-ops pilot out to their space.

I have very little experience out in 0.0, but with a cov ops ship its rather hard to get popped…or so I thought. I had already gone through 6 low sec systems and 3 0.0 systems, and was beginning to think this was going to be a breeze. I saw a few folks but no gate camps and no real hostiles.

Sadly when I hit Jorund I was already rather zoned out listening to the folks in vent. There were 4 people in local but no one at the gate. So I clicked the next gate, clicked warp to zero and taped the cloak button. What I didnt realize was there was another stealth ship out there waiting, watching, hunting. The second I popped up on the over view the hic dropped a bubble and MWD’d to my location. I of course didnt realize till he was already inside of 5k. I tried to dodge him, but at that range it was to close and he broke my cloak. I fired up my AB, aimed for the edge of the bubble and hoped that I could get out of the bubble range before my little ship was toast. Needless to say I didnt make it, my pod however did.

I had to head back to jita to get another Helios, and this time through I played it ultra paranoid. Kicked the AB in after every jump, made sure to do a 90 degree turn after recloaking and always pre scanned the gates. Thankfully I made it on the second trip… shaking just a bit from the adrenaline rush that took a bit of time to fade.

I think thats the one thing that eve does better than anyone else, not only does it capture the “OH SHIT!” moments it drives them home with a feeling that literally reaches out through the monitor and shakes you. I just wish more MMO’s could capture that feeling.

Oh well, here’s hoping tomorrow the WT’s show some balls, and hopefully I can get some more 0.0 experience this week to boot!

I recently found this blog article out there about the new google chrome beta.

Apparently you can now sync your bookmarks for the chrome browser on any pc anywhere. So if you are like me and pretty much book mark everything, you now never have to get ticked off cause you left the link on your other pc.

Anyways take a look at the post, and stop losing pages!

So I was hoping around on some eve related websites and found this little gem.

I gotta say stories like this are definitely the true heart of eve, and why it draws me like no other game, click read more for the entire story.

“Alternate thread title: When The Python Cartel has too much time on their hands, this is what they do.

Roughly 2 weeks ago, maybe 2 and a half weeks ago, our esteemed CEO, Spectre3353, was flying his new Curse around in Egghelende. Nothing out of the ordinary, until one of the local fellow pirates, Ken Plante of Eternal Perseverance, got in to a smacking match with our beloved CEO.

While I’m not sure, the odds are high that Spectre started it, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that someone besmirched the good name of Spectre! This could not stand!

So, being the bored little lemmings that we are, the directors got together and circlejerked. The plan? Kill Ken Plante (who will henceforth be referred to as “Kenny”) and his Proteus.

Ken Plante is notorious in Egghelende for probing out missioners in the system, which itself is known for high mission traffic. He’s also notorious amongst our band of lemmings for being things the forum would censor if I said them, but that’s another topic. We decided that if we were going to kill him, we would use this to our advantage.

One of our esteemed sub-directors, Andrea Skye (who dresses up as a girl), has exactly what we needed: an unaffiliated mission alt. NPC corp, 5.0 sec status, and flies a Raven. This would be the lure.

The plan was concocted over the course of roughly 7-10 days, because us lemmings aren’t very smart and we have very few brain cells. The plan: Use the mission alt to get a mission in Egghelende. The Raven was fitted with an armor tank, a full rack of heavy neuts, medium neut, and a few nos (don’t ask). The med slots: Tracking disruptors, webs, points, I think he had an injector or two but I really wasn’t paying attention… basically, the perfect bait ship.

To ensure the trap went well, we had the Raven accompanied by an in-corp Rapier, who would sit roughly 20km away from the Raven cloaked. This also explains the aforementioned tracking disruptors; in the event the Proteus had buddies, specifically a Harbinger or Hurricane, the TD’s would buy the Rapier and the main fleet more time to arrive.

We had the trap planned; all we needed now, was DPS out the whazoo. For that, that’s where the rest of the corp came in. A call went out on our forums, where we arrange all our ops ahead of time: “Everybody get your ass in BS’s. If you can’t afford a BS, bring a BC. If you can’t bring a BC, stay home. No T2 frigs, no cruisers, no nano, just BS and BC.”

Because loose lips sink ships, and lemmings have very loose lips accompanied by very few brain cells, we kept the intent of the op secret. All anyone besides the directors knew was “Get your ass in BS’s and meet at 01:00. Super important op, all hands needed.”

Apparently, keeping lemmings in the dark gets EXTREMELY good results. I’m shocked how many people showed up, and even more shocked at how many were in BS’s. At the fleets peak, we had our Rapier, a Curse, a Falcon (another alt)… I think we had one BC, and the fleet peaked at 17 (15 Python, 2 alts). Everyone else was in a BS. For us, that’s a new record (we’re small, shut up ). And nobody knew what we were doing until the trap was sprung.

Op day. The fleet was formed. We went to a staging area 2 jumps away from Egghelende. Our bait and Rapier were put in position. We waited.

It didn’t take long for probes to come out. Soon, our bait called out: “Harbinger on scan!” We ****ed and made our way to the Egg gate. “Harbinger landed, he’s tackled the Raven.” At this point, I revealed the nature of this op to the fleet; it was met with much joy and enthusiasm.

… But it wasn’t Kenny. It was a corpmate of his, Jyren’s Rage. After he attempted to ransom our bait Raven, and after some discussion on our part, we decided to have the Raven neut the Harby and try to escape; fortunately, this was a success, and we didn’t have to play our hand prematurely.

Roughly 1 hour in, we decided that Kenny was… afk. But we waited… and waited…

During this time, other members of Eternal Perseverence probed out our little Raven, including a pair of Command

2 hours in. “Damnation on scan! Named ‘7 Deadly Sins’” And the Damnation was none other than Kenny’s beloved alt who runs links. That was followed shortly by “Helios undocking, Helios dropping probes…”

Not long after: “Proteus undocking… Proteus warped, to the mission!”

By now, we had already gotten the fleet on the gate to Egghelende. We waited eagerly for what seemed like forever, and then: “Proteus landed, 17km away… he’s pointed me, he’s approaching.”

“Everyone jump in, now! Warp yourselves to the Raven if you don’t catch the fleet warp. Primary target is Ken Plante.” I had to repeat the primary several times since, lets face it, lemmings have extremely short memory spans. They’re like furry goldfish.

As we warped, I confirmed with the Rapier that he had his webs on the Proteus, and indeed he did. The trap was sprung, there was no escape.

The entire time we were planning, one thing kept coming up, and that was how he was tanked. Was it an active tank? Was it a passive tank? So we planned for both contigencies; in the op announcement, I mandated that as many ships as possible fit heavy \ medium neuts, and fit for gank. We had a huge blob, yes, but we wanted to make damn sure that Kenny had zero chance of survival. We only had one shot, and we’d look stupid(er) (than normal) if we failed.

The blob landed, the moment of truth had arrived, python panties were being soiled with anticipation…

And with what was almost an anti-climactic ending, the Proteus absolutely MELTED. Some of our ships didn’t even get on the killmail. I guess you could ask, “You had a huge BS blob, what did you expect?” And, well, we just expected slightly more than that, I guess.

But, all that said, the joy was great. Two weeks of planning, two hours of waiting, all for that moment, to see his Proteus explode. If you want to say “You spent two weeks of planning just to kill one Proteus? Why is this forum worthy? You guys suck!” Well, this is The Python Cartel. Really, what do you expect?

All in all, something we don’t get to normally do: an assassination. We waited, we schemed, we had our orgies, and all because of a little bit of smack, and because we really don’t have much better to do.

And a funny little kicker: today is Ken Plante’s characters birthday. We didn’t know this until after we had docked up and spent half an hour stroking eachothers private areas. The laughter on Ventrilo when someone pointed it out was immense though.

And, for anyone wondering, the loot gods smiled on us today: almost 300m worth of loot, which will be going to the corp wallet to beef up our corp insurance program. YAY!

That’s your installment of “The Python Cartel thinks it did good for once!” Tune in next week for an exciting new tale of how we dropped our carriers on poor, unsuspecting BANTAMS!

A tl;dr for the lazy: we plotted for 2 weeks to blob a Proteus, and we think we’re cool now. “ Ships. Neither succeeded in tackling our bait. We didn’t care about them, we wanted Kenny.