How to get into the EVE Blog Pack...

If I didn't track the hits to the EVE Blog Pack, and instead I measured its success based on the numbers of requests I get in comments, in tweets or emails, it would still come up as one of my most visited posts. And that in of itself is a measure of the quality, diversity and consistency of the content that the Pack members provide to the EVE Community. And we must thank them for it!

But that high measure of quality demands very high standards. I long ago recognized that need and wrote about it back when I wrote about "The Few, the Proud, the EVE Blog Pack Members!". And so, I've always tried removing outdated blogs, either at the request of their owners, or by their inactivity.

This is such a time. Currently the Pack has 4 openings, though I might have a few more free spots if some blogs are not updated shortly (see the list below). Blogs that haven't seen a post in 4 weeks, risk being removed at any given time from the pack. That's just the nature of things. Additionally, I like to ask from time to time if you know of any blogs that should be part of the pack. With the hundreds of EVE Blogs out there, it's now virtually impossible for me to catch all the best. That's why I need your input. So below, you'll also find a list of blogs I'm considering. Should yours be in there? Please leave a comment to let me know.

Might get REMOVED from the Pack:

• EVE Online Wormholes <-- Off the hook due to recent post!
• Diary of a Bored Spaceman
• The Planet Risk Show <-- Off the hook due to recent post!
• The Captain's Log <-- Off the hook due to recent post!

Might get ADDED to the Pack:

• TooNu
• Tiger Ears
• EVE HUB
• Cogito Ergo Yarr
• Diary of a Garbageman
• Depths Unknown
• Scrap Metal & Faction Ammo
• Scram Web
• Yours? Please provide suggestion below in the comments!

So "How do you get into the EVE Blog Pack"? Here's what Pack members need to do!

[The original post can be found here]

The Privilege of Membership, comes with Responsibilities

As the popularity of the Pack grew, more and more bloggers wanted in. But as my initial goal was to foster both quality and quantity, I couldn't simply accept everyone. There are tons of great EVE blogs out there, all of whom deserve to get noticed. Which is why I've got the EVE Player Blogroll where I list every player's blog as quickly as I get requests. But for the Pack, I wanted to create this sense of belonging to an elite group of bloggers.

So I've decided to limit the members to 51 blogs for now - with a few conditions though.

Being part of the Pack comes with its responsibilities and obligations. The first and foremost is to blog regularly. Ideally a few times a week, at the very least once. And that is a no easy feat, believe me. Real Life often gets in the way - as it should since remember people, this is just a game - and missing a week is not uncommon. But going beyond the 3 week mark puts a Pack member in a situation of potentially being removed from the Pack.

Taking it One Step further

Now, along with the regular blogging and commenting, I want to ask a bit more of the Pack Members. This is what will make the Blog Pack different from my Players Blogroll.

Here's a list of To Dos that all members should strive to accomplish as part of their duties.

• Blog regularly about EVE Online, a few times a week preferably.
• Comment on Pack members blogs.
• Make a post about the EVE Blog Pack (if you haven't done so yet). Make sure to link to it!
• OPTIONAL: Add other's blog to your Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon and/or Technorati accounts.
• OPTIONAL: Digg posts that you find useful or interesting.
• When writing a post, try to link to each other posts, bringing the community even closer together.
• Have a blogroll listing all the Blog Pack members.

Doing all, or some, of these action items will add value to our individual blogs, and will bring the Pack to a whole new level.

Remember, we're each individually responsible for the success of the Blog Pack. It's up to us to decide what we do with it!

Microsoft .NET vs Java - trailer [Video]

Though I'm neither a Java Fanboy, nor a Microsoft Basher, the following video is too simply hilarious and too well made not to share with you all! Enjoy!

Long Live Geeks!

The ever expanding EVE Blogosphere! - Part 8

With the six new blogs below and the last two updates, I've just added a total of 33 new blogs to the EVE Player Blogroll! Though I'd need to do a bit of a clean-up to weed out the inactive or dead links (anyone willing to take on the project?), that's still quite a lot of EVE Blogs! Welcome to all these new bloggers!

1. Destination: Cruel World
2. EVE SOB
3. EvilFree's EVE Online Blog
4. Fang (The)
5. Into The Pink
6. Lost in New Eden

By the way, you still have a few days left to participate in the latest EVE Blog Banter!

Friday Video: The Extreme Gamer Road Trip - EH-450 HD Epson Projector

As I start working on continuing my basement home reno project in the next few months, maybe I should get the EPSON EH-TW450 projector instead of an HD LCD television. Sure looks like a lot of fun to have a 300" HD projection of Mass Effect 2 or Gears of War 3!

The above promotional video is a follow-up to this earlier gig!

EVE Blog Banter #18: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has your gaming style evolved through the years or months since you've started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance - say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!

Six years! Six wonderful long years in which I've had the opportunity to fly with 7 different corporations, one of which I was the CEO of a one-man corp! I've flown with capsuleers from Coreli, TAKAGI, and a few others, but the one corporation which has had the greatest impact on my life amongst the star was Phoenix Propulsion Labs. PPL was my home for 4 years in all. During that time, I met with some amazing folks, some of whom I had the privileged to meet face to face in Las Vegas.

I say "was" my home, because I've recently moved to Chaosstorm Corporation. During the last 6 years I've pretty much been a carebear, and have had very few PvP encounters. And when it happened I was always on the receiving end. Six years has been enough, and recently I've found myself wanting to jump into a side of EVE I've never dared explore; one that some of you are only to well familiar with. It was time this carebear grew some fangs! And that burning desire has been with me for quite sometime actually, though I had never made the move.

Why then did I decide to become a member of Chaosstorm then, and why now? You, back in 2004 EVE was such a small MMO, practically unknown to the world, even more so here in my home town of Montreal. But over the last few years, more and more folks from this part of the world started playing, and getting together for EVE Player Meets. SUch fine folks as the members of Chaosstorm. Folks such as Letrange and Cozmik R5.

And so late last week, I joined a corporation that defines itself as specialized in wormhole space exploration and exploitation, currently recruiting all forms of combat pilots, who must be mentaly prepared for PvP combat. After 6 years of mining, hauling and missioning, this carebear is ready to take a bite out of a few of you!

And so there you have it. It's kind of pretty amazing that having played a game for so long, I'm still on the verge of discovering a completely unknown side of a universe I've been exploring. In all this time I had the opportunity to achieve great things, discovers some new friends, and dream of becoming so much more.

The first two thousand days have been amazing. Here's to the next thousands!



Participants:

1. CrazyKinux's Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
2. StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
3. A Carebear's Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
4. The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
5. A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
6. Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
7. The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
8. Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
9. I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
10. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
11. EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
12. Roc's Ramblings: Things Change
13. Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
14. EVE On Real Life: Haven't you grown up yet?
15. The Fang: The path of the ninja
16. EVEOGANDA: Whoops Apocalypse!
17. EVE SOB: Learning to swim
18. The Life of a Dead Jester: My Time with EVE
19. Personal Files, Ciarente Roth: Personal Diary 18.6.112
20. Learning to Fly: Change is Good
21. Depths Unknown: Falling With Style
22. Morphisat’s Blog: Jack of all trades 
23. Sarnelbinora's Blog: Thoughts of EVE
24. Confessions of a Closet Carebear: It's the yellow box, stupid...
25. Adventures in Mission Running: My path amongst the stars
26. When 11 Ninjas isn't enough: First days in the North (continued)
27. Lost in New Eden: My EVE Life So Far
28. Life in my Hole: How My EVE Experience Has Evolved
29. The Lathspell of Mithrandir: EVE-olution
30. Chocolate Heaven: Recurring Themes
31. Diary of a Pod Pilot: The many sides of me
32. eve's parity bit: Me; the perpetual student
33. Mike Azariah: When you look into the Past, the Past looks into you
    
34. Nestor the Chronicled: The Path Continues

[Delicious Tag: eveblogbanter18]

EVE Online Alliance Tournament VIII Teaser [VIDEO]

As I get ready to publish the latest EVE Blog Banter, here's a little something to keep you entertained and on the edge for this week-end's Alliance Tournament! Enjoy this great little teaser!

The ever expanding EVE Blogosphere! - Part 7

Despite my sporadic presence during last month, I did try to keep track of the new blogs and comments about new blogs that I received. The list below should contain all the ones received since my last Blogroll update. If not, please drop me a comment and I'll be sure to add yours as soon as possible.

The blogs below as well as the ones from the last update will get added to the EVE Blogroll shortly.

Welcome to all these new EVE Bloggers!

1. Depths Unknown
2. Drew Jerac's Log
3. Dwarf In W-Space (A)
4. Easley Thames
5. EVE on Real Life
6. Fiddler's Edge
7. Gun Turret Diplomacy
8.  I am ... Micheal Malone
9. Journeys of a Baroque Pilot
10. Life in my Hole
11. Life of a Dead Jester (The)
12. Lost In Space
13. POS Life
14. OMG! You're a Chick?!
15. One Unit of Prop Comic
16. Ore, Pirates, and Pods
17. Touching the Heavens - Crorono
18. Travels of The Ronin
19. Yosagi Yojimbo

Fly Safe!

E3 2010: Unboxing the new Xbox 360 [GameSpot Video]

I WANT ONE! Maybe I can convince the wife to get one for the basement... your argument are welcome!

The Winners of the Women of EVE Contest are finally in!

In all these years running Banters and Contests, I have never seen such an overwhelming response and turn out. As such, narrowing down to just 10 entries proved to be far more difficult then I had originally expected. For the last few days, I have been starring at list of about 20 entries, unable to eliminate an entry and get the list down to the 10 winners. But it had to be done. I'll admit that the top 10 entries were randomly listed below; I just couldn't pick the best out of those 10 best entries. It's currently Tuesday 1:22AM (though I'm posting this on Monday!), my brain is shutting itself down, as I'm way past my bedtime!

So without further ado, here are the 10 winners of the "Women of EVE" Contest. Congratulations to all participants, and to these 10 bloggers in particular!

1. The Ghost Report: Eve Blog Banter: The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
2. “Prove It”: Women In EvE
3. Blog Banter #17 – Women in Eve
4. The Ladies of New Eden (An Analysis on How Men are not from Mars, & Women are not from Venus)
5. Cloaked and Watching You: The Ladies of New Eden
6. Space Broker: Gal-Ristas!
7. Tech 2 stilettos
8. It's a woman's world (they just don't know it yet!)
9. Ladies of New Eden
10. Lady Vengeance, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pew-Pew

And here is a reminder of the prizes you guys have just won!

• 1st Place: $75 in EVE Store merchandise [and 100 million ISKs]
• 2nd Place: $50 in EVE Store merchandise [and 100 million ISKs]
• 3rd, 4th & 5th Place: $25 in EVE Store merchandise each [and 100 million ISKs each]
• [Additional prizes for 6th to 10th place: 100 million ISKs each]

I'll drop a comment on each of the winners post later today and ask either update their entry mentioning their win (and their email address and character names), or doing so in a new post on their blog.

Other entries worth reading:

• Why I don’t play Eve Online
• Where Are All The Wenches
• Sweet Little Bad Girl: Eve vs Women
• Space Boobies Are Bad, m'kay?
• Getting more Eves in Eve Online
• Flashfresh - The Pirate.: Women? In MY SPACESHIP? Is she from Mars as well?
• mikeazariah » Blog Archive » The X-Factor

I wish I could have had the announcement sooner that today, but RL got in the way!

Fly safe all!

Friday Video: CCP is inspired by Iceland [VIDEO]

CCP was founded in the summer of 1997 with the goal of becoming a leading massively multiplayer game company. With the launch of EVE Online in May 2003, CCP has established itself as one of the leading companies in the field, winning numerous awards and receiving critical acclaim worldwide.

EVE Speedlinking for Thursday June 10th, 2010

Here's the latest links that got my attention recently. Note that some of them will be added to the Guides page.

• Non-aggressive play style (Ecliptic Rift)
• Episode 17 (The Planet Risk Show Podcast)
• Blogging and Operational Security - A discussion (On blogging)
• Upgrades (Kirith Kodachi on Sleipnir and Wolf setups)
• Project Rifter #1 (Nash Kadavr)
• Placement of POS Defenses (potshot's excellent post)
• Why all but 330k people should hate EVE (Hardcore Casual)
• An update on OUCH and its nullsec survival training (Travels of Black Claw)
• Planet Play (Winterblink)
• Lego Halo: The Ringworld (Hawty McBloggy)
• We Need More Women in Indie Games (Border House)
• Wench with a Wrench: New Beginnings (seems I'm not alone in seeking change)
• CSM Processes « Herschel Yamamoto for CSM (on the CSM)
  
  
• TIGAER-DESIGN.COM_.v5 » Archive » Phoenix Rising
• Phoenix Rising: Hadley's Hope - Camera Mapping With Vue on Vimeo

On Massively:

• EVE Online's planets are open for business 
• EVE Evolved: What not to expect from EVE Online 
• EVE Evolved: Ratting, part 1: Strategies 
• EVE Evolved: Ratting, part 2: Flying safe!

Endings Are Also The Beginnings of Something New...

Or so the Semisonic song goes. And that's exactly what's about to happen to Treenara. Rest asssured I'm not leaving EVE. My recent sporadic presence in the EVE universe, whether in-game or out, is the results of RL pressure, both personal and professional. As such, I've had to make some hard decisions, set my priorities and put in place a new plan of action.

When you're as busy both in you personal, professional and virtual life, you've got to plan things, ahead of time, or else you fall short of accomplishing anything. The last month or so is proof enough. I'm now using Google Calendar, Google Docs, an alarm clock and a towel to make sure that doesn't happen again! 42 FTW!

As such, I've made the decision to leave Phoenix Labs, a corporation I've been for the most part of my EVE career. Not an easy decision. The change comes at a time where I'm looking for something different, and carebearing isn't it. And so, I've decided to join Letrange, Cozmik R5 and the rest of the boys at ChaosStorm Corporation. This carebear is going to grow some fangs! That's all I'll say about the change for now. But expect a lot more on this in future posts.

In other matters, I'm still working on choosing the winners of the Women of EVE Contest, despite what the naysayers will tell you. Expect the winners to be announced on Monday the 14th. Or else, I'll donate my body to The Blood Raiders Covenant. There, happy!

I'm also working on a bunch of other side projects such as 2 book reviews, the next blog banter, a Speedlink mega-post, cleaning up the Blogroll and adding new blogs - yes I got your requests! - adding to the Blog Pack & much, much more. All in good time!

These are certainly not your father's drones...

OK, so these are no Gallente drones, nor are they from any other races, but you've got to admit they're damn nimble and cool. Just imagine an airship with a few dozen of there!

Oh, and about this blog, my postings and my EVE Online game play.... well, prepare to be shocked!