Games through the eyes of an occasional gamer. This is not my full blog. To see that, check out my site: http://www.shawngray.ca

• 19Jun 07

  Eve Online - Xanteeous Corporation

  [snipped from my full blog]

  We've (Kristy and I) both been playing a fair bit of Eve Online lately. I know I've been playing a lot more than Kristy has. When I'm the only one home, that's what I tend to do. My character, Rintaran, is now around 3 million skill points. He's turning out to be a well-built combat unit. Yesterday, when I got in from work, I had over 7 million credits. I then went out and spent it all to aquire a horde more skill books. Many of the new skills I picked up would improve my missile usage, shields, or drones. Some of them will allow me to utilize new equipment, basically the few items that I currently can't use (Rigs, Target-painters, Electronic warfare, etc). By the time I stopped running missions, I was back up over 2 million credits. This is not my first bankrupting run of skill purchases, which may explain why I'm getting up there in skills. It also may explain why I'm still just running missions in a mere cruiser when I could have already picked up and equiped a battlecruiser or better. I've managed to max-out my Engineering, and am most of the way toward maxing out my Gunnery skill.

  The corporation that I own, Xanteeous, now has an account with over 2 million credits thanks to my mission running and some of the equipment sales that I have decided to put toward the corporation. Currently, the only members of the corporation are Kristy and myself. I'm hoping that some of our friends may join the game and enter Xanteeous. That's one of the reasons why I've trained up Ethnic Relations a bit (thereby allowing non-Minmatar characters to join the corp). I'm still working toward our long-term goal of building a starbase, but that's a ways off and we'll need crew to defend it. I think we may have to start actually advertising the corporation and trying to pick up additional members. We can't have just the two of us and expect to rise to any sort of power.

  Today Eve Online is releasing their Revelations II upgrade, so it's down until about 10:00pm EST tonight. This upgrade brings a lot of excellent changes. For one, a gang can now get credit for completing a mission, as opposed to the person who picked up the mission. Basically, before you could go in on a mission, and although your gang members would gain some credits for the individual kills, only the person with the actual mission could gain the mission rewards and loyalty points from the agents. Starting tomorrow, those profits can be split among everyone in the gang. Although I generally don't require help in my missions, it would be nice to be able to bring Kristy, or any future corp members with me. Similarly, I wouldn't mind providing assistance to other people's missions, since I'll now gain the benefit of the rewards. Additionally, the loyalty points will no longer be restricted to the individual agent, but the corporation that the agent works for, and you can view a catalog of loyalty point rewards, so you don't have to take that crappy back of 100 heavy widowmaker missiles, when you don't have anything that can launch them or the skill for it. These are some nice updates that I think will make things a lot more interesting. They've also built up the starbase aspect and added a handful of skills (including heat management). A few of them I'm going to have to pick up as soon as I can. Depending on their pricing, that may be tomorrow. If anyone reading this currently plays Eve and is interested in joining my corp, just send me an in-game message.

  • Posted Jun 19, 2007 1:43 pm PT
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• 30Apr 07

  Electronic Regulation

  Right, so I neglected to post anything concerning this yesterday and was politely reminded by an article that showed up today on canada.com. This past year, the web has begun to float with staged and unstaged videos of students fighting on school property. These videos were recorded on cell-phones or with portable cameras. The cameras have not been allowed on school property for a while, but things have just become harsher for the current generation of tech-heads.
  
  Here's the canada.com article. You'll notice that it's talking about high schools, mostly in the United States, banning IPods and other devices. This trend is hardly unique to our American neighbours. A couple weeks ago, my home board, District School Board Ontario North East, passed a resolution to handle this same problem (read the policy here). Essentially, the new policy forbids the presence of cellphones and mp3 players (in student possessi from school property during regular school hours (roughly 8:00am - 4:00pm). Previously, students were merely restricted to using their cell phones and mp3 players outside the school building, not that it really stopped too many of the grade 7 & 8 students at the school I'm currently finishing my placement at.
  
  I'm split on this policy. On the one hand, I agree that while on school property, students should not have any need or use for a cellphone. The video recording capabilities of cell phones causes a great deal of trouble and is a safety and privacy concern. The audio recording abilities of new mp3 players is definitely problematic for cla$$room management as well. These are the aspects that the people who put forth the resolutions for the bans keep pumping out, and they are generally convincing when put to the test.
  
  But, as a bit of a tech-head myself, this causes its own set of problems. At the bottom of the article on canada.com, it speaks about one place that actively gave its students Ipods for use in school to attend to specific lectures. This possibility is definitely something that could be a great asset to any school, especially as it actively plugs students in to both electronics and education simultaneously. According to reports from Duke, incidents of cheating has continued to decline, even with the addition of these potentially harmful devices. On top of that, I know that I've found some use for these devices as a part of my teaching. I use my cell-phone as a quick camera that students can then take photos from and use for a part of their biographies. Recording an audio or video clip can be a useful exercise and a part the media literacy curriculum (a part of the language arts curriculum). Having several of these cell cameras and audio recorders, on hand at school would be very beneficial and would help students to connect to the curriculum that must be addressed.
  
  Thankfully, DSBONE's new policy only bans them from student use and display. I think, as a part of a cla$$ project, within the individual cla$$room for the duration of the project, it may be possible to get around the policy. However, if that is not the case, then it would mean that the teacher would be the sole individual in the cla$$room allowed to use any recording device. This, in effect, limits student involvement with technology, cutting them off from film and audio projects. Students would still be able to participate in the editing and acting process, but they could not be behind the camera or controlling the actual recording. Although this ensures that the equipment should remain safe and in proper functioning order, the limited student interactivity with the technology is something of a draw back and makes addressing some of the aspects of the media literacy curriculum more difficult.
  
  On top of this, there is the potential trouble that could occur during student trips to school and home from school. Although the distance isn't particularly far, many parents and students like to have cell phones on them "just in case" during those travel situations. With the use and sight of cell phones banned completely, students cannot even turn it off and tuck it away as they enter school property. Which works as another drawback. And finally, if I were to bring up the effect that bans generally have, that is, that when something is banned, illegal usage skyrockets (ie. prohibition and weed), I think we're likely to see the more staged fights recorded, especially where cell phones and mp3 players are banned.
  
  As I said, it's something of a divided issue and I can understand both the board's concern and that of parents/students/tech-profs.
  • Posted Apr 30, 2007 2:47 pm PT
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• 29Apr 07

  A second to breathe? What???

  Well, I've been up here in Timmins for three weeks now. Shortly before I left, I began playing Stalker and was really enjoying the game. Unfortunately, my laptop can't run it particularly well, and I keep getting bugs on Kristy's computer when I try to run it there. As a result, I've been almost devoid of gamage the entire time I've been here. One evening I read an interesting article and ended up downloading a demo of a game called 'Speare. 'Speare is a space-based shoot'm up game. As you go through the levels, you try to put back together the lines from Shakespeare's plays. You earn bonuses from a number of historical clues and such. The game, although relatively simple seems to hold some promise and according to the test data, has revitalized the interest of some students in the aged playwright. If they expand the game, and create similar products for other areas, this may provide some of the instant gratification that students seem to require these days. It looks like a potentially useful teaching tool, and I'll be watching to see where it goes in the future.
  
  Today I picked up a new mp3 player. My previous one, a 512 MB IPod Shuffle, has not been the greatest as of late. The song selection is too limited and I've grown quite bored of it as a result of repeating the same songs too often. I often don't have time to just update what I have on there, especially through the onerous iTunes. So today, I picked up a 6 GB RCA Lyra. This thing has massive storage, now holding all of the music that I currently have on my system with plenty of space for more if I wanted to throw it on there. With the space that it has, I'll be able to use it as an external storage unit as well, which is another major benefit. The catch: it's not a flash drive but an actual hard drive. This makes it much more susceptable to shock damage, not that I'm particularly rough with my electronics. I could have saved the money and used it as a part of my upgrade package for my computer, but I really needed a new toy right about now.
  • Posted Apr 29, 2007 6:49 pm PT
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