After picking up a cheap blueprint (a DRMed copy of course) I am now an arms manufacturer and dealer in EVE Online.

I read that making money from selling self-manufactured items was difficult without Production Efficiency skill of 5 and I’m managing with 3. Although I’m not buying all the raw materials though. I buy the Tritanium which I needs loads of and mine the Nocxium myself. I think if I had to pay for the Nocxium then I’d be screwed…

And remember to get your free 14 day EVE Online trial.

Considering the attention that Digital Rights Management is getting these days I found it funny that DRM is actually present within EVE Online.

To build things in EVE you use blueprints. There are originals which can make any number of items and copies which are licensed and only make a certain amount. Certain blueprints are very rare and this way the players controlling them can keep them rare.

Apparently Craig Charles was filmed smocking crack in a taxi. The most annoying aspect is the tabloids used headlines referring to him as a Coronation Street star.

Surely some clever Red Dwarf pun wouldn’t have been that difficult to come up with.

Since I joined the EVE Online affiliate scheme I figured I’d create one of my mini-themes for EVE. It has to be my favourite so far :D

The important part of the theme is the flash banner (it only appears on the actual post pages). Clicking this takes you to a free 14 day trial so you can try EVE out. Warning, it can become addictive very quickly!

EVE, EVE Online, MMORPG

I recently asked a football loving friend what would happen if the teams were tied at the end of the group stages. I mean completely tied (i.e. if there were no goals for instance). He didn’t know. Well unfrtounately the answer is that acomittee draws lots to decide who goes through.

Well in an interesting twist if England beat Sweden 2-0 and Trinidad & Tobago beat Paraguay 1-0, then lots will be drawn to decide which of Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago go though. Group B after such a result would be:

Team	Pts	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
England	9	3	3	0	0	5	0	+5
Sweden	4	3	1	1	1	1	2	-1
Trinidad and Tobago	4	3	1	1	1	1	2	-1
Paraguay	0	3	0	0	3	0	3	-3

If each of the teams in those matches scores the same number of goals in excess of those numbers the same result occurs (e.g. England 4-2 Sweden, Trinidad & Tobago 3-2 Paraguay.

I knew it would happen eventually. Once I got an income it was only going to be a matter of time before I found a massively multiplayer online game to play.

EVE Online is such a game. It’s in space, has a single persistent universe (i.e. all players are in the same world - no sharding), has a completely player run economy, has the record for most number of simultaneous players (over 25,000) and is tremendously fun. And now I have an income, the monthly fee of 14.99€ is looking very affordable.

And now could be the best time to join. The a big update is coming over the next year (starting at the end of the month and ending in 2007) called “Kali”. The big part (which won’t be added until towards the end of the updating) is factional warfare. As with most of these games you choose a race for your character to be in. Generally the race itself doesn’t make that much of a difference. There are role-playing elements that are different (different style of missions (think quests) for example) but other than your base attributes it’s not a big factor. If the factional warfare system is done well that could all change.

Anyway, go play now.

EVE, online games, MMORPG, MMOPG

Since I got MCE working I’ve been watching TV on a one day delay - that way I don’t have to actually remember when things are on. One such show was ECW One Night Stand, which has definitely been the best “WWE” pay-per-view* in a long time. And 90% of the reason was the fans who just never shut up. The funniest example was the Cena/RVD match. After a whole match of the fans tearing Cena apart, he manages a good move that I haven’t seen him do before. The crowds response? “You still suck”.

For a complete review check out Online Onslaught.

Greg Egan is a “hard sci-fi” author. Hard sci-fi is a vague term referring to science fiction with a strong founding in complicated, plausible (if not real) science. He released a few really good novels that deal with several recurring themes including people living entirely as software (and the interactions between such people and those with bodies) some of the issues surrounding duplicating people if they exist as software and some exotic possibilities for life (some not even based on the idea of particle interaction).

That last part is mainly what is expressed in Schild’s Ladder - life existing based on the myriad of possible interactions between different quantum theories that are found to exist in what is originally thought to be a super-stable vacuum. Sounds confusing (and in points it is) but for anyone interested in technical mind bending sci-fi, it’s a must read.

Then go read Diaspora, another book of his following similar themes.

Sky+ and Multiroom were installed this morning and everything works great :)

First I have to say the actual installation was done well and the engineer guy wasn’t even phased by the idea of connecting up to a computer instead of a TV. He did point out that they don’t supply an S-Video cable (which came with the TV card).

Anyway MCE is talking to my Sky box fine. The only niggle is that the IR transmitter is a little in the way (it’s picky about placement - get it wrong and it doesn’t always change channel). There may be a solution though. You can buy a cable that connects from the IR unit (the box that contains the IR receiver and that the IR blaster is connected to) directly to the Sky box. This works in exactly the same way as Sky’s own remote IR receiver. The device was actually originally created to allow TiVo boxes to control Sky boxes.

PACELink - rf2Link

My TV tuner arrived yesterday :)

Installation and Setup

Installation was straightforward - after putting the card in just pop the CD in and let Windows detect it as normal. It didn’t even have to restart (which is good because it installed drivers for about 6 different devices (audio tuner, digital TV tuner, analogue TV tuner, MPEG encoder etc.).

Then on to the MCE setup. Lots of questions, most of which had the correct default value so lots of clicking “yes”. The only sticking point is it asks you which transmitter you want to pick up if you choose to use the digital (Freeview) tuner. The first one I selected resulted it bad picture quality and a bunch of missing channels. I went through the setup again and chose a different one (I had a choice of three) and got much better results.

I say much better. Unfortunately a couple of the channels I especially wanted were still unwatchable, specifically abc1 and ft n. This isn’t really a problem with the card - the TV aerial going into my room goes through a large portion of the house first so signal strength and quality is an issue.

I decided not to bother trying to fix it since we’re about to order Sky+ with multiroom which will eliminate the problem.

Electronic Program Guide

It’s really cool at recording stuff :P The only other DVR system I’ve used is Sky+’s and I have to say MCE is a lot better. The best feature is it smartly looks for alternative showings in case of clashes. Which is cool since most programs are repeated at odd times on other channels (ITV and ITV2, Sky One and Sky Two etc.). It can also be set torecord new episodes only or new episodes and reruns.

Missing features

The most notable missing feature is the ability to properly handle two tuners. All the documentation says it will happily use two tuners allowing you to view one program while recording another or record two things at once. You can even get a TV card with two analogue tuners on board (Hauppauge PVR 500). Unfortunately for it to work both tuners need to have the same channel lineup. Which is a shame. If they sort out that ludicrous limitation (other PVR software I’ve seen doesn’t have that problem) then I’ll get a second TV tuner and have on connected to Sky and one connected to Freeview giving me an overlap on about 30 channels.

Missing review

Te one big thing that I haven’t been able to test is the IR blaster. The card comes with a cool box that transmits infrared signals to control set top boxes (like Sky). Once I get Sky I’ll let you know how it goes…