Tag Archives: EVE Online

My Apps for 2010

My Android Phone
My Android Phone

Last year a lot of cool stuff was released for Android, with a great mix of awesome ideas and great executions for mobile. But as a user, the real test is what ended up on your home screen and which apps you use practically every day.

My Must Haves

The home screen of my phone (Samsung Galaxy S) only has nine icons: three folders and five apps, and the Power Control widget. I left four spaces on the right hand side empty because I have a bad habit of holding the phone there and accidentally opening whatever is there. The apps that made the cut are:

As well as these five there is another I consider a must have, Remote Notifier. It runs on both your phone and your computer, and displays alerts from your phone on your desktop using your WiFi. If, like me, you leave your phone on silent on the other side of the house, a message popping up everytime someone calls or texts or when your phone is running low on power is very useful.

The Useful

There are a couple of other apps that, while I don’t use them daily, are still very handy to have. These are the ones I keep in folders – that extra click to access them isn’t a big deal like it would be with my email.

  • Dropbox
    • Simplifies moving files around in general, and especially for mobile. The app lets you access your own online storage from your phone, through a browser or any computer where it is installed and you can either upload, download or share.
  • Evernote
    • What the name says – you make notes. But you can do with with images, text, audio and files. Then you tag and organise them for access from anywhere, and any machine.
  • Google Reader/FeedSquares
    • I still have not made up my mind on which is the better RSS reader. The Google one seems to perform better, but I love the navigation in Feedsquares.
  • WordPress
    • Write blog post drafts and publish from your phone. Very, very handy.
  • Winamp
    • A very good music player, and it syncs via WiFi with your computer, so you can update your music and playlists.
  • Aura
    • It’s an EVE Online thing. If you want to keep an eye on your assets, market orders and skill queue, it’s great. If none of this means anything to you, don’t worry about it.
  • ThinkFree Office
    • I am sure it does a lot of cool stuff, but mostly I use it for reading PDFs, usually after downloading them from my Dropbox account, and before tagging the interesting ones for Evernote. It does this very well, and fast.
  • Daily Briefing
    • It is synced to my Google Calendar and is a Samsung app that came with the phone.

I, like most smartphone users, have a lot of other apps installed on my phone. Some of them are kind of meh, and others I have not used enough to have an opinion yet. The ones listed above are the stand-outs for me.

TL;DR

If you have an Android phone, this stuff is pretty cool. Check it out.

What are the ones that you love?

Yarr like a Pirate in EVE Online

Yarr like a Pirate in EVE Online
Yarr like a Pirate in EVE Online

To celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I decided to stop being a carebear for the day, and engage in some EVE Online frigate PVP in low sec. I had my ship and fitting selected, and was ready to explore space.

My frigates were in another system. So after I set my pod onto autopilot, I went AFK for a while. When I came back I had reached my destination in Korsiki and there were two frigate wrecks next to my pod. I was still in high security space, so whoever decided to take pot-shots at me whilst I was AFK was really bored. And persistent.

Kestral Fitting
Kestral Fitting

Curious, I started to talk to them, and once I mentioned I was aiming to indulge in some frigate PVP, they challenged me to a one-on-one.

As a rule, rifle scope shooting at another player in high sec will lead to a swift and deadly response from the NPC security forces, but there are exceptions. If a player steals from a cargo container or wreck, the owner has the right to fire on them. Once the owner has been fired on, the thief can respond in kind. This game mechanic is also often used to initiate combat in high sec, people who play this game also love My CS:GO Boosting services.

We dropped cans, and started. Since we were both in frigates, me in a Kestrel and the other in a Merlin, it was looking close right until I managed to jam them long enough to inflict more damage than they could recover from, or inflict on me.

1 – 0

It was a great start to the day, and I set off to Tama, a high traffic low sec system. There is always PVP in Tama, thanks to its proximity to the Caldari base for Faction Warfare PVP. I was not wrong, there were a lot of pilots in dangerous ships lurking in Tama, but nothing that a lone Kestrel would have a chance of damaging.

After jumping around the system, avoiding the dangerous ships and trying to find something closer to my level, I docked in the only station in the system. After a short break I undocked. Into a waiting gang. Of hostile ships. Fortunately I had bookmarked a point directly in front of the station I could warp to in case this happened. So had they. They quickly hobbled my ship to stop me from getting away, and promptly blew my ship out from under me.

1 – 1

The mistake I made was to hesitate on warping a second time. The moral of the story is if you need to run don’t stop running. But I forgot this, so now I am in a cargo ship shopping for more ships. I managed to find 26 Kestrels cheap, so I bought them. Hopefully I won’t run out any time soon.

I needed to find new hunting grounds, so I headed down to Aurohunen in my new, recently fitted frigate. Apart from a small gate camp, there was not a lot happening, until I saw a Destroyer in one of my scans. He was flying through the asteroid belts of the system. A Cormorant should usually be on even footing or have an advantage over what I was in, proving the pilot knew how to get the best from the ship. He didn’t.

Taking an educated guess at where he was, I warped in and managed to take him completely by surprise. He was locked and his warp drive disabled before he had a chance to escape. Once his shields and armour were shredded he opened a conversation asking for mercy. I stopped firing and chose to give a different kind of piracy a go, so I demanded a ransom. Unfortunately the pilot was on a trial account and had only been playing for a few days. He had no real money and nothing good in his cargo hold. In the end I just let him go and wound up having a long conversation, filling in the gaps in his knowledge that the tutorial left.

1(2) – 1

I continued on my way through low sec space, and apart from being chased around the belts for a little while in Dantumi by a cruiser and creating a few new safe spots to warp to, not a lot happened. At least until I got to Passari.

There were two different cargo ships on the scanner, and they seemed to be moving among the planets. So I went there to look for them.

A recent addition to EVE is planetary interaction. Simply, players can now build structures on planets to produce trade goods. These trade goods can be collected at the Customs Office in orbit around the planet. In low sec, this creates a predictable location where you can expect to find cargo ships.

This is where I found the Bestower. It had no escorts, and it did not last long.

2(3) – 1

 

Trouble at the Custom Office

 

I looted the wreck and in the excitement of a good, classically piratical kill, promptly forgot a few important facts and warped into range of the security guns near a space station. They opened fire. Because my criminal timer had not yet expired from destroying the Bestower, I was fair game, and I lost my ship and some of what it carried but I am still waiting my rematch at fortniteable.

2(3) – 2

Fortunately there was enough left on the wreck that I was still able to profit from the act of piracy.

First Annual International Talk Like A Pirate Day Tally:

Lost Ship only.
225,000 ISK*
225,000 ISK*

Destroyed Ship only.
285,000 ISK*
(841,640 ISK*)
497,750 ISK*

Loot Cargo Salvaged.
842,367 ISK

* Based on ‘base value’, which due to the economics of EVE may or may not be accurate.