What do you guys do in the game?

by In Games, MMO Tagged , , , Leave a comment

The /r/eve subreddit gets a lot of these questions, more so in the past few weeks than I’ve seen in the past. Maybe because I just browse it more often these days, who knows.

But there’s always people wondering if EVE is still viable a game to play, is it fun? Is there much to do? How do I start playing this game?

I answer them from time to time, tell them that they need to figure out if they want to PvE or PvP or do both. Do they want to kill NPCs, do they want to do industry (or crafting as they know it in other games). If they want to PvP do they want to do it solo, do they want to do it in a big alliance where they’ll be a number for a long time until they can make themselves more known.

Do it in a small group but probably not getting the big blingy kills?

All questions that a person needs to ask themselves when going into EVE online. In many MMOs really, it all boils down to “What do you want to do with your time in the game”

I myself realised a long, long time ago that I liked being in wormhole space. All because of the things that have happened to me in wormhole space. And mostly because of me joining a corporation back in 2016 that invited me to an expenses paid trip to Prague the day after I joined them and me just going “why not”

That corporation no longer exists in the way it did but I made some really good friends there. One of which poked me months ago to join the current corporation I’m in.

What do I do in EVE though? I like to think of myself as someone who mostly PvPs and just trades to make himself ISK to pay for said PvP.

And I do need the ISK because I tend to lose expensive things.

I do sometimes escape in cheap stuff

Less than 12 hours ago I lost a Loki and pod that cost me around 2.5b. For those of you that don’t know the abbreviation that is billion. 2 500 000 000 isk, which equals exactly one month of gametime.

It was a painful loss for about 30 mins, where I was wondering why I was so damn stupid to go into that hole. But in the end, it’s what I enjoy doing, and the battle itself was quite fun.

What happened you ask?

Well, this all started when we found a few prospects huffing gas in a neighbouring wormhole, we were setting up a gank. Me in my sabre, the two other guys in a sabre and a proteus themselves.

Unfortunately, before we were even able to set up the gank correctly a few of our targets decided to go back home and saw us.

We still tried to go for it but the prospects escaped. The guys that saw us came back in 3 other ships, Gnosis, Deimos and Proteus. We had them bubbled and I figured that I should quickly reship in a ship that could easily tank them and then some.

They did get my sabre killed but I was able to go reship.

So I came back in a Loki. At this point their 3 people fleet turned into a 6 or 7 people fleet.

But whatever, I could probably tank this, let’s go!

And tank them I did. Although it was close for a while.

We were fighting on our home connection at zero. Meaning that if anyone was about to die they could easily jump in the wormhole and quickly try to make it out.

Which basically happened to all the guys that we were fighting except one unlucky Legion who I think was polarized.

But we were happy, we killed one of theirs. They were now in our home hole and we were on the connection they needed to get back. A little Mexican standoff.

This took a bit too long to our liking so what do we do? We go back into home and start pretending to roll the connection. This is what you do when you put a bunch of mass through a wormhole in order to make it collapse.

All of this, from when we saw the prospects to us doing this was about 40 minutes. Plenty of time for people to get pinged. Unfortunately for us, my corporation had nobody else online, and it turns out that theirs had a few more people online.

The guys went onto the connection about 2 minutes after I jumped back home with my Loki, my two Corp buddies went after them. I heard them go “oh shit that’s a bit more than before” but didn’t really think much of it. If they were in cruisers I’d be able to tank them for a bit longer and we might be able to at least kill one of them.

Some of them were not in cruisers.

I died at zero on the wormhole back home and got podded too. Why? Well, one was because they brought a big bad Paladin to kill us, and two, because I was polarized for about 20 more seconds when my ship died, and 10 more seconds when my pod died.

Polarisation happens when you go through a wormhole, if you were to go back through the same hole, you won’t be able to use it a second time to go back to where you come from for about 4 minutes. It’s a little countdown timer that was made to make things a bit more interesting in wormholes. And some groups know how to use it well, others do not. Especially when it’s late and they are on a pvp rush.

I died, ended up in Jita, and am currently waiting for a few buy orders to be filled for a new Loki and pod.

It’s a good thing I can easily afford these things, it would hurt a lot more if I couldn’t.

But I can’t imagine myself doing anything other than wormholes anymore. Every other space is just too boring.

Safety is relative, but in wormholes you have no idea who else is watching.

My very first ransom

by In Games, MMO Tagged , , Leave a comment

Every time I write here, it’s because I want to tell a story. I want to entertain my reader(s) with the words I put down. I like to think that most of the time I succeed in doing so. Mostly because 99% of the time I feel like I’m the only one reading my own blog and it does entertain me somewhat!

And sometimes I want to show you pretty things

Despite the fact that I’ve been playing EVE Online for more than a decade, I have never ransomed anyone. Until a couple of days ago that is.

I shall now regale you with what happened.

It was a Tuesday like most Tuesdays, working from home and reading up on the news and discord. One of my corporation buddies found a reinforced POCO and decided that he wanted to be there for when the new owners of the system would turn up and bash it.

What he had failed to say was that it would take about 9 more hours, meaning that today we wouldn’t be using our static C3 much. Luckily, we had a random pop up and were able to use that for some other content.

It turned around midnight eve time and the poco came out of reinforcement. We had not seen anyone yet but suddenly someone logged onto the POS and then another and another.

The first thing they did was scan our hole down.

We were ready in Leshaks but the moment we saw the scanner we decided to quickly dock and log of our leshak pilots. I had a sabre cloaked on the hole, waiting in case they would decide to roll it.

And they did in fact decide to roll it. 2 praxi and an onyx came to the hole. Little did they know that we were watching them.

Seeing that at the time I was only in a sabre and my buddy was with his eyes on their side, I was only able to catch one praxis.

We killed it with the Leshaks that had logged back on and then just stayed on the hole for a little bit, only to then decide “Hey, let’s see if we can have them fight us, let’s go shoot the pos”

While doing this I kept the hole bubbled seeing that I also wanted to catch the praxis and onyx. Another one of my Corp mates then decided “I’m going to see if we can get him to pay to stop us”

At this point we thought that the pos might not have any strontium in it. Meaning that if we would get through the shield, it would not even get reinforced and we could just grab everything in there.

But we’re nice people at heart and offered him a ransom. He had a Kronos floating around in the POS so we told him that if he gave it to us we would stop shooting.

I did not think he would, but he told us that he was ok with that, he just needed the Onyx back in the hole because that pilot was the one able to fly the Kronos.

Just like you dear reader, at this point most of us thought “No way, he just wants to try and roll us out”

But no, once I released the Onyx pilot and let him warp, he went into the Kronos, flew it back to our home entrance and went out of it. Only for me to get in it and it up.

Now to sell or fit it

We stopped shooting the tower and went our merry way, One marauder richer. A badly fit one, but still.

The POS was more than likely not stronted at all, but I don’t mind, we could have left with a lot more loot, but we left with a marauder and someone new in wormhole space, who can now bat phone us if he needs help.

If we come across him somewhere we will still kill him, but if he needs help, we will be there for him.

That’s the wormhole life. We don’t really do politics, we just shoot each other, but we will be there for the friendly people that need help.

I’m enjoying my time in the C4 quite a bit, and I’m certain more good stories will come.

There’s content everywhere, we just have to find it.

Stay tuned o7

I have a problem

by In Games, MMO Tagged , , Leave a comment

I have a bit of a gambling addiction. Luckily it’s not one that is using my real life money, but I am addicted to the EvE Online Hypernet.

For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s basically a raffle lottery. You buy a few tickets and you have a chance that your ticket gets the win. Usually it’s for certain ships or modules and such. The owner of the ship/module puts it up for x amount of tickets, 8/16/32/../512. Each ticket costing the amount that the owner puts the total price up for. And then you just wait until every ticket gets sold and see if you won.

With the hypernet, the owner usually buys 50% of their own tickets and then sells off the rest. The reason behind this is math. Or at least so I’ve been told. Supposedly if you buy half of your own tickets, 80% of the time you will win your own prize back and you’re making a bit of money on top of it.

I’ve actually tried it a couple of times and sure enough I won my prize back a few times, but I’ve not done it often enough to get to that 80% mark.

The reason why I’m so addicted to the Hypernet is because I’ve been EXTREMELY lucky.

I was able to have my wealth go up by about 20bn just doing raffles. I’ve won myself a few marshals, a dread and some small stuff I just put back on the market.

I lose a bunch, but I am all the way up there in ISK positivity that I just can’t stop myself from being “Just one more”

It’s bad, I know, but at least it’s not with actual real-life money.

As I’ve said before though, I’m having a good time in EVE again, all thanks to the C4 corporation I joined. Wormhole life is good.

I’ve also joined a few Thera operations but I still feel more like an F1 monkey when I join them. Which again, isn’t a bad thing. It’s just not what I like about EVE. It’s good if you want to just relax a bit and not pay too much attention though, perfect for those times.

Eve is still as pretty as ever, so here’s a few screenshots I’ve made over the past couple of weeks

Anyhow, it’s New Year’s Eve! Tomorrow it will be 2023. Time is truly flying.

I hope you all have a good one, and make yourselves some resolutions that you won’t stick by, and a couple you will.

Stay tuned o7

EVE Online Activity is picking up!

by In Games, MMO Tagged , , Leave a comment

I’ve been rather active again on EVE the past couple of weeks, 14 days to be exact. Why’s that? Well I joined a new corporation with a few of my characters.

The past couple of years I’ve been part of a group of wormholers called “Dead Terrorists”, who when I joined them were living in a C2 with a Null/C5 static.

That was almost 2 years ago. Since then we’ve moved into Thera for both logistical reasons and to get more content on fleet nights.

The one thing I had a slight problem with, in my own time in EVE, is that I only seemed to be logging in for fleet nights. I never did log on any other day despite paying for three accounts.

The reason behind this is because I don’t really like doing things on my own. I’ve always enjoyed the social aspect of EVE and doing things solo is just not really my thing. I could always go out of the nullsec and find some content like that or join one of the many, many NPSI groups. But I want to fly with buddies, not alone.

And then CCP suddenly gives 7 days of Omega to people. For those of you reading who don’t know what that is, Omega is just EVE’s paid subscription. You can be an Alpha in the game which allows you to fly a limited amount of ships and train yourself up to about 5 million SP, after that you can’t really do more training until you pay.
Couple this with some amazing Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals

But the fact that CCP gave people the option to activate their accounts again for free during a certain time period has brought a lot of people back to the game. Couple this with some amazing Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and you have a lot of people suddenly resubbing.

Including a couple of friends I used to fly with. One of which joined a wormhole corporation that lives in a C4 with a C3/C5 static. He poked me and told me to come fly with him on one of my alts and I did.

Within the week I had been on EVE more than I had in the past 6 months all together and I was also having a lot of fun. At which point I decided that I also wanted to move my main here.

But I still wanted to fly with my buddies in DT. Luckily both groups understood what I wanted to do and there was no issue for me to switch around a bit and now I have my two high SP characters in the C4 and my “dread alt” in Thera. He’s only got 80m sp but I used to use him for Naglfar ratting in C5, which is why he’s called the dread alt.

I’m flying ships I haven’t flown before, I’m free flying more than I’m used to and I’m even making some ISK on the side by doing marauder ratting.

Got myself a Naglfar and a pretty skin
Don’t worry, this is perfectly safe

There’s a ton of content down the chain and all in all. Life in EVE right now, is pretty damn good.

Let’s hope that there’s more of this to come.

But when I see what the future holds for the game, I am seeing a ripple of sun through the clouds that have been hanging over it in the past years.

CCP is stepping up their game and taking a turn for the best.

Stay tuned o7
E’dyn

Live soon! I love my new hobby

by In Bees Tagged , , , , Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to make this post ages ago, and a lot of it was already written up, but time has a way of creeping up on you. And I forgot about it.

As we are approaching winter, I have done the last bits of preparation for my hive. I’ve fed them a bunch of sugar fondant, made sure that they’re nicely packed etc and had a last inspection to make sure that the queen was still around and there were enough bees about to go into the winter.

In the next few months, I will only open the hive once or twice to give them a mite treatment. Something which is very important for the future of bees. More on this some other time, or maybe in this same post, who knows! I sure don’t…

Ok no that’s a lie, I totally know, I’m not doing it right now.

The girls did a good job, the past few weeks were hotter than they usually are and that gave them more time to bring in more pollen and some nectar, things they will need in order to make it through the winter.

Look at all that honey!

They will bunch up together in a ball, keeping the hive and each other warm and go from frame to frame, feeding on their stores.

And then in spring, it’s time for them to work again! And for me too, since I have decided to add at the very least two extra hives in my little apiary!

Not only that, we’re currently fully preparing to make something extra happen. Mostly because I want it, but also because if it does work, others will be able to enjoy my Boobees too.

What is it that I’m doing you ask? Well as you know in my previous blog post I have a site, one that I still have to translate to Dutch, but beside the fact that people will be able to buy Boobee honey. You’ll also be able to check them out.

I’ll be setting up a stream that will keep an eye on the entrance of the hive.

A trench is being prepared as we speak for power and ethernet!

The main reason for this is because I just enjoy watching them do their thing, going in and out of the hive carrying their pollen and other things is just a very relaxing endeavor.

At the hive itself I have setup two benches on which myself and my family go to sit and just watch the bees from time to time.

With the fact that I sit behind my computer screen a lot I also decided to make it possible for me to watch my Boobees from afar. So soon(ish) there will be live.boobees.be to enjoy.

Something that I’m sure will have people surf to it and them wondering why there’s bees instead of something else. But I kinda look forward to those reactions too. Because deep down, I’m a troll and as an eve player, harvesting salt is a thing we do too.

I don’t think there will be much activity on them during winter, but once spring starts, things should become very interesting.

That is, if the hive survives winter. We will know in a couple of months.

But with all this honey they have, it should be fine!

Stay tuned o7

Bees, myself and winter preparations

by In MMO Tagged , , , Leave a comment

Did you know that when creating honey, bees actually regulate the temperature and humidity in their hive to a certain point so that it’s just perfect for the honey. And that this is one of the reasons why honey can be preserved for basically forever?

If someone told me 10 years ago that I would become a beekeeper I would have smiled and gone “Sure, whatever you say”

But here I am, owning a hive with plans on getting a few more in spring. I never suspected that I’d enjoy it so much, that it would be so relaxing to just watch the girls do their job, coming and going from the hive. And seeing the transformation inside of the hive.

It’s one of the reasons why I’m looking into setting up a live stream on the landing board. Not because I’m thinking “Oh people will want to watch this and maybe sponsor the stream!” No, it’s purely because I want to watch it happen, I want to be able to look at one of my screens and watch the bees go back and forth.

Another added extra to that would be that IF something were to be happening to them, I can see it happen and act accordingly.

I even made a site for these girls, something that’s still a work in progress, but I own a brand name of sorts now. If you’re curious, feel free to go and have a look at the BooBees. Yes, I called them Boo Bees. Partly because I just think the name is funny and technically it’s also true that all the honey you eat, has been made by bees long gone.
The site isn’t quite where it needs to be just yet. I’m still testing things and making it better. I’ll also do a dutch part since, you know.. I live in Belgium and most people here talk Dutch as their main language, they know English, but not that well. I also absolutely love our logo.

Ghost bees! Boo Bees!
There’s even a few jars! But most are already gone

Right now, Winter is coming. And this means that the girls are getting towards their last days of getting ready for it.
This means getting their stores of honey up and preparing winter bees.

Normally most of the worker bees only last for a couple of weeks, the only bee inside the hive that last for longer is the Queen, who can live up to 2 years, longer even in some cases. That is if she’s doing an ok job and the hive doesn’t decide that it’s time for a new Queen. Something I might talk about some other time.

But when winter is around the corner, the queen starts laying a different kind of worker. Namely the winter bee. They live for a couple of months and their job is to make sure the hive stays a nice temperature during the winter and that the queen survives too.

The queen, busy doing her job of laying more workers. The frame in question has honey on top, the queen is the one with the yellow dot.

Us beekeepers use this time to feed them if they need it, and make sure to get mite treatment done, since the varroa mite is one of the most important things that we need to handle in our hives.

In my case, they had their varroa treatment around the end of July, so that means I’ll only have to have a look at it in December.
But what I am doing now is feeding the girls, and boy are they hungry. When I got the hive, they were using about 6 or 7 frames, I had hoped that in the past two months they would have grown to use a bit more but alas, that did not happen.

In an inspection a couple of weeks ago I had also noticed that only one frame out of the ones they were using was filled with honey, which is not good when winter is almost there. So what did I do? I started feeding them. I gave them a bunch of sugar syrup and the other day I gave them 2.5kg of sugar fondant.

“Why are we here? Weren’t we just in a jar?”
“I think the human had to take the jar so he put us here at the entrance, so considerate”
Exactly what I did, replaced their empty syrup bowl with fondant

I had hoped that the syrup would be enough and that maybe they wouldn’t want the fondant since they had enough in store, but I was wrong, they’re taking it in too.

One bite at a time

Seeing that the girls know best what they might need, I’m just letting them have it all and in a couple of weeks I’ll take the hive apart one last time. At that point I’ll change the current cover board with one that has no hole in it and add some news paper to the top to make sure it’s nicely isolated.

And then it’s mostly hoping that they make it through the winter because there won’t be much I can do to help more.

“What’s the human doing this time?”

I like this new hobby I have though, it’s definitely different than what I usually do (gaming) and it’s good for the bees! And let’s be honest, bees are awesome.

Even those among you that might be allergic to them realise that without them, we’d be properly fucked, since without bees to pollinate things, we’d have a lot less food going around.

That reminds me, I wonder if I’m allergic. I have yet to be stung by one in the past few months. I remember having been stung years and years ago when I was a kid. And despite there not being anything wrong at that time, people’s physiology changes as they grow older, so who knows I might react very different to it than when I was a child.

But there’s only one way to find out, and I’m hoping that me getting stung won’t happen for a long time.

Stay tune o7

post

The joys of travel

by In Travel Tagged , , , , Leave a comment

Once again it has been a while since I’ve written anything, but I have the perfect excuse! I’ve not thought about writing in a bit.

Why you ask? Well, that’s easy, I’ve been busy. Not just with my new hobby or my gaming, but I’ve been traveling.

The past two years I have spent about 50% of my time in the UK, because my girlfriend lives there and it’s just easier for me to go there and work from home than for her to come over here since she works at a pharmacy and I just need a laptop to do my job.

So since half of August-ish I have been spending my time over there again.

Going there usually starts with me taking a trip with the Eurotunnel, which is nice. I drive over to Calais, get on the train, get off in Folkestone and continue my journey. It costs a bit but that’s mostly because I take the Flexiplus tickets which give me the option to come whenever I want and just get on the next train.

Normally that is, this time around I did a bit of a fuckup and had to take a train later. Although I wouldn’t really call it a fuckup and more of a miscommunication, with customs…

Usually at border control, you show your passport, they have a quick look, you drive forward, the customs officers sometimes flag you to do a quick check and you carry on. This time around there were no customs officers at my lane, so I just went straight for the flexiplus lounge, went to the toilet, got my drinks etc etc and carried on to the train which was leaving in approximately 10 minutes.

While getting into the lane towards the train someone came walking towards me, flagging me down. He told me that I was unable to take the next train and to follow the car in front of me. A car, that had suddenly blocked my passage and I had not even noticed.

As it turns out, the customs agents had waved to me, thought I saw them and ignored them, and that I was trying to get to the UK with some contraband.

Cue me following the car, getting pulled aside in a hangar, answering a bunch of questions and emptying my trunk.

Obviously, there was nothing of note that I took with me because I don’t do illegal stuff (except for speeding from time to time)
But here was another new somewhat funny thing that happened to me.

During my times in UK me and my girlfriend decided that we wanted to go to Scotland again. We did it last year in September and absolutely loved it. Seeing that we both had a week off coming up we decided to do it again, but unlike last time, this time we’d do some camping. The nice thing about Scotland is that wild camping is permitted. You basically rock up somewhere, pitch a tent, sleep, and go on about your business.

I’m not that much of a fan of using a tent BUT I thought that maybe we could just sleep in the car. So I bought an inflatable matrass, tested it in the boot of the car et voila, we had a place to sleep!

Inflatable matrass for the trunk
70£ for this thing was not too shabby a purchase

Getting to Scotland from my girlfriend’s place took us about 6 hours and a bit. We came to Loch Lomond near nightfall and were able to take a few pictures of the Loch before carrying on to the highlands.

Loch Lomond after dusk, amazing despite the dark

I absolutely hate driving at night so at some point when it was quite dark, we decided that we had driven enough and it was time to make camp. I parked somewhere next to the road and we got to setting up the bed.

Waking up to a stunning view of the mountain ranges was amazing and made me smile wide. It was an awesome experience.

The view from my car window after waking up
Once we got out of the car we noticed how stunning everything was

In the days after that we parked the car in a bunch of random spots whenever we were tired. We did Glencoe, Skye and a part of the NC500 before heading home again.

Perfect place to spend the night after a long day of driving on Skye

I absolutely love Scotland, it’s one of the places that I wouldn’t mind living in. Just get myself a house near a Loch in the highlands and enjoy life. The only issue would probably be shopping. I don’t think we understand how easy it is for us in this day and age with how we have multiple big grocery stores in a 10 mile radius. While driving around the less populated parts of Scotland I realised that we are pampered in that aspect. Although I obviously have no idea if things like Amazon take more than a day or if it’s next day delivery there too. In the end I’m sure there’s plenty of other ways to do your thing.

Wouldn’t mind living here

Having the inflatable bed in the car was nice too, but next time we go, I’m definitely renting a campervan.

The people driving in them and the motorhomes just made me jealous, so much more room to sleep, so much more things they can take with them.

I get why people enjoy the vanlife so much. Unfortunately, I don’t really have the budget to get myself a van like that. So I’ll just have to make do renting one.

It will definitely come in handy when we go to Norway.  

Next blog I shall be talking about the bees again.

Stay tuned 

The things I do right now

by In Bees, Games Leave a comment

It’s been almost a month since last I wrote something here.

Mostly because I don’t have much to say but I am also currently working on a few projects, one of which I’m hoping to get finished by the end of this month, or at least by half of October. And obviously it has something to do with the bees!

Next week I’m going to be in Scotland for a couple of days, see the sights, do the NC500, Skye and whatnot. I absolutely love the place. It’s so damn pretty there.

I have not traveled that much of the world just yet and I have places like Iceland and Norway on my bucket list. But if someone were to ask me right now “Where would you live if you had the money to buy your dream house” I would say in the highlands in Scotland.

I’d get myself a nice house near one of the many, many Lochs and just be content.

But alas, I don’t have infinite money so I still have to work. But one can dream.

Gaming wise it’s a bit of a “meh”

I’m currently playing Lost Ark, doing EvE online once or twice a week during fleets and joined the new season of Diablo 3 to have something to do.

I’m quite excited about my bee thing though. Just have to get some more hardware.

For those of you who would like to follow what little I’ve already posted about them and to have a tip of the veil lifted. Go check out Instagram.

Stay tuned!

The little hornet that shouldn’t

by In Bees Tagged , , Leave a comment

Did you know that wasps are basically drug addicts? Their young secrete something that’s quite like sugar for the protein that their workers provide them. Protein that was gotten by going after caterpillars or aphids and whatnot. But by the end of the summer there’s no more larvae to give protein to, no larvae mean no more sugar.

And by then they’re addicted to it, so they’ll be coming for yours. It’s why at this time they’re not that much of a nuisance yet, but they will be.
At least if they’re just wasps. Hornets are a whole other story, especially the ones known as Asian hornet.

I’m not sure if you, my dear reader, have an issue with these little fuckers, but here in Belgium it’s gotten so big that they are making the news. These things are an invasive species that arrived here a few years ago and are rapidly expanding. Which is a bad thing for the bees, since they’re one of the main targets of this hornet. And that’s not a good thing since our bees are not used to this predator, they don’t have the experience their Asian cousins have with it, so they don’t stand a chance. I had one hover around my hive the other day, did not enjoy seeing that.

Luckily there are a lot of volunteers trying to find the nests to exterminate them. But there’s almost no stopping. The reason for this is because an Asian hornet makes a primary nest, usually somewhere low to the ground. And once they have enough workers they start on the secondary. A secondary nest can spawn 50 to 500 new queen, who each will make their own nests, and so on and so on.

As you can see, that’s not great.
Now, if you were to tell me a few years ago that in the future I would be part of a beekeeping association and be hunting for these hornet nests I’d just find it amusing; “Me a beekeeper? Hah”

Marking an Asian hornet

And yet here we are, a few weeks into my new hobby and I have to admit that it is a new passion of mine. Who knew that I could enjoy the whole beekeeping process so much. I sure didn’t.

I normally am more of a winter than spring/summer man, but now I just can’t wait for spring. Because that would mean more bees.

And I’m already preparing, I have a lot of plans concerning these little ones, and I’ll be doing my utmost best to help them survive.

And right now, that’s by finding ways to get rid of the Asian hornet. The problem with finding them is that it can take a bit. “Why not just poison the fuck out of them” you ask yourself. Well, I would, but there’s a bio diversity too, if I poison these hornets, I will also be poisoning a bunch of wasps and European hornets, and they are quite important too. Despite us seeing them as pests, they are still an important part of nature, they too are pollinators. Their drug addiction is just annoying by the end of august and beginning of September 😉

In order to find and capture Asian hornets you make a jar add some dry white wine, some beer, some wasp attracting fluid, some sugar, stir add a piece of a mop and boom. You hang it up and wait for them to come. They will fill themselves with the delicious liquid that is almost irresistible for them, go to the nest to deposit it, and come back.
So what we do, is we mark them, see how long it takes for them to come back and then we know how close or far the nest is.

The Asian hornet can fly about 40km/h, meaning that’s roughly 600 meter per minute. So if he’s back within a minute, you know the nest is about 300 meters from you as the bird flies.

We had a jar that had 40 seconds, at that point you start searching the trees, or hopefully can follow the flight path. Unfortunately there were houses around.

European hornets

Luckily though, someone found the nest that we were searching for under the roof tiles. This would be a primary one, a secondary is usually high up in the trees and is quite huge.

But this nest is not the one that’s near my hive, no this one was near my buddy’s hive. Mine has yet to be found.

We’ll see what can be done.

Stay tuned o7

The joys of planetary interaction

by In Games, MMO Tagged , , , Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I basically only log on to EvE for fleets on a Tuesday and Sunday, I do still play the game. Kind of.

PvP can be expensive, so you need to have somewhat of an income. In the past I used to generate said income by doing market trading, buy low sell even lower. Well, no, I am supposed to sell high but because of how the market works, from time to time you’ll be selling at a loss.

Implants were always good to me though, I was able to station trade them quite well in Jita without having to update my orders all the time and still make a few billion in profit a week.

But I don’t have the patience to play the market games anymore, so nowadays my income comes from the wormhole I live in.
And I’m not talking about how I used to go into C5’s with dreads and murdered the hell out of drifters.

No, it’s all about PI baby. Without PI I’d have no income, I would still be able to coast by for a couple of years but as is the case with money in general, so it is with ISK. I really, really don’t like seeing my wallet go down.

Extracting the liquid gold

My PI brings in a few billion ISK per month, across 3 accounts. And that’s plenty of ISK, seeing that I don’t lose that many ships. I have a bunch of high-priced ships all over the galaxy but the ones I use in the fights we do are quite cheap and yet fun to fly.

Past few weeks we’ve been using Claymores and I’ve been flying links. I trained for them AGES ago but never used them, so it’s nice to do something I actually have skills for.

Come at me

I do miss flying the more blingy stuff, but this way it gives an easier time for all of those who can’t quite afford it. It’s nice.

I still have about 4 months left before all my accounts expire, I’m not sure if I’ll keep three accounts up, but for now, they’ll be paying for themselves by way of extracting the precious goods from planets.

For those of you who want to try out the wormhole life, feel free to come and say hi. We don’t bite unless you want us to.

Stay tuned o7