So remember that thing about redesigning my site this month? Check that one off the to-do list. Once I got going it was pretty hard to stop. I changed the design a bit because I’ve decided to release this theme (eventually) and thought there were a couple things that would make it less appealing for other users. The biggest one being putting the “logo” in the sidebar.php file to line it up with the post title. I think most people would expect to find that code in the header.php file, so I bumped it up and added a line.
Anyway… it’s not done, but it’s close enough that I was ready to give it a whirl. I’ll be ironing out the kinks over the next few weeks, so if you find anything strange be sure to let me know.
I have a confession to make: this blog template is basically out of the box and has been so for more than a year. Most people probably don’t really care, but it’s been nagging at me lately; here I am, a self-proclaimed “designer/producer” and I’m using a slightly modified template for my own website. It’s not even modified enough to justify removing the original author’s information from the bottom of the page…
Well, that changes this month.
I was up late last night flying internet spaceships and working on a new design for autumnrayne.net:
I’ll probably continue to tweak, poke, and prod at it over the next few days, but I’m hoping to start rolling it out by the weekend. If you care to share your thoughts (the two people that will read this…) you know where to put them. After this it looks like my big project will be redesigning Biscuits & Such as she’s already made a couple of comps in Photoshop for me…
I don’t want to rehash all the details of the war so far. There’s a good, non-biased article on the fight here. One of the arguments that came up immediately following the battle of D-GTMI was that –A- and Ushra’khan were guilty of “metagaming.”
The prefix “Meta” stems from the Greek μετά which means “after”, “beyond”, “with”, “adjacent”, “self”. It’s used in “…English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.” (From Wikipedia )
Web programmers are familiar with meta tags in the head of webpages. The information in these tags is known as “metadata” which describes the content, author, etc. of the data in the body which is displayed by the browser. Metadata is “Data about Data.” In a more abstract concept “meta” can be used to describe something that is related to a larger concept, but not in a concrete way. I really enjoy wikipedia’s example of “meta-answer”: “A meta-answer is not a real answer but a reply, such as: ‘this is not a good question’, ‘I suggest you ask your professor’”
What then, is “Metagaming?”
According to our research above, metagaming would be “gaming about gaming” or “game beyond game.” I think the former works best for the situation at hand here. Metagaming in roleplaying games seems to be all about using knowledge that your character wouldn’t necessarily have access to in order to gain an advantage. This could apply to something as benign as understanding the mathematical relationship between agility and critical hit percentages in World of Warcraft.
In the D-GMTI situation CVA’s accusation of metagaming refers to the enemy gaining access to their voice communications which resulted in access to a password to their player-owned station (POS) allowing –a- and U’K to ram ships (“bumping”) out of the force field and into a vulnerable position.
There are a couple points of view on the matter:
- Because voice communication is offered within Eve it is considered “in game” and thus not “metagaming.” If CVA had been using Eve Voice instead of Ventrilo/Team Speak it would have been as simple as getting a spy into their fleet and joining the communications network. This is not much different than what presumably happened.
- Similar to argument 1, but rooted in the idea that voice communication is an integral part of any group activity within Eve is thus “in game” even when not provided by the code of the game itself. (Despite their being an identical function in the code of the game)
- Because there is no way for your character to “hack” the voice channel themselves without the use of a second character/account allied with the target alliance (a spy) the act of infiltrating communications is beyond game. (I suppose you could social engineer yourself an invite to the fleet, but that would probably be pretty short-lived.)
- Spying on voice communications ruins the “purity” of the engagement and and defeats the goals of the battle/game which are presumably to win through skill at contest. (we could get into a great discussion of “playing to win” here if you want…)
What do you think?
The siege of 9UY continued this weekend with the infrastructure hub coming out of it’s first reinforcement timer Friday Morning. I couldn’t make the Op, but from what I heard CVA didn’t put up a fight. I did manage to make the Call to Arms on Saturday for the Station’s first reinforced timer. Same thing as before, CVA was a total no-show except for a 7-10 man stealth bomber fleet that managed to kill… nothing. (AFAIK)
The view coming into the U’K POS is pretty. I had been living in 9UY for the last couple days, so it was nice to finally get a home base of sorts.
A dread getting in place a few days before the timers were up. First Minmatar dread I’d seen.
The CAP/BS fleet forming up on the -A- POS. I proved my inexperience by broadcasting for armor reps while I was a) cloaked and b) still inside the POS’ shield.
The station in 9UY goes boom. 10 minutes of shooting and not a single scrap of resistance from CVA… Starting to wonder if they’re going to bother to show up for the final reinforced time on Monday night. The more tactical decision (at least in my opinion) would be to put up your strongest resistance for the first timer… We only had 400 or so in system, with only 200 of those in Caps, Super Caps, or Sniper BSes. I anticipate double those numbers on Monday as it will be the final blow to turn the system over to -A- sovereignty. We’ll see. I’m hoping to make the fight, but it all depends on how things go with work, and whether or not this tree screws up our power:
I arrived in 9UY and did like I normally do, warped to the sun to start to create some bookmarks. (I suppose I’m going to have to change my tactics now that I’ve announced that, huh?) Thought this was a nice artsy-fartsy shot with the reinforcement timer in the background and the foreground looking like it was on fire…
I caught up with a bunch of Against All Authorities and Ushra’khan pilots on a gate. Our corp’s ex-ceo was among them. Somehow I’d managed to forget to exclude people in my corp from my “reds” tab… He woulda just bombed me if I locked him, I’m sure.
After warping into an enemy fleet we took the last hostile as a pet. He had the entire fleet’s disruptors on him and he even got some repair drones to keep anyone from accidentally popping him. Note that I still haven’t managed to remove Maestro from my overview…
another shot of our pet…
More to come as the campaign continues. The I-hub should exit reinforced on Friday morning, and the station will follow on Saturday afternoon. Should be a great weekend.
