Flight Of A Thousand Rifters - Sunday! Sunday Sunday

This is an event you do not want to miss, its your chance to head into lowsec in a cheap frigate and get involved in killing a Supercarrier, there's over 22billion isk in prizes available. This sunday is also the day we want everyone logged onto Eve Online to try and set a new record for most players on the cluster, the actual 10th anniversary of Eve is on monday and there will be at least one free gift for every player with an active account so this weekend is a good time to be on. Full details of the epic frigate battle are Here and Here I really hope to see you there, I'll probably be handing out random prizes on the day to subscribers. Of course discussion of this was front an center in this weeks podcast, you wan watch the video enhanced version here: An audio only version is also available if you just like to listen to dudes discussing the hot events in Eve Online a Rafflecopter giveaway

Burn Jita II Was a Resounding Success

Thousands of ships, billions of ISK in damage, the residents of Nullsec turned the center of the Eve Universe into a warzone. Hi-sec traders used to the virtual wall street found themselves in an an environment more like Syria or Afghanistan. Despite a plethora of warnings not to visit Jita freighters continued to make the trip, even having to make extra effort to get through the highly congested gate network. As a celebration I'm doing a raffle of Eve specific prizes, over 2 Billion isk worth of prizes. a Rafflecopter giveaway Please note that one of the ways you can increase your odds of winning is by PVP'ing in Eve, kill other ships and submit a killmail, you can do this once a day for an extra edge.

What A Month It's Been

Things have been incredibly hectic, but I reached a minor milestone (at least in base 10) when I passed 50,000 subscribers on youtube. Frankly I find this amazing but It's nice to know people like what I do. On the other had I started to self censor a bit and decided that maybe not everyone wants to listen to me and Marlona Sky talking for an hour about Eve Online and how he's going to let people kill him in a supercarrier as part of a competition to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the game. So if you're a subscriber and really did want to know about this then make some noise, I think we might start a regular Eve Online podcast type thing because there's always so much going on. Anyway, the reusable space program proceeds, I've got an interplanetary rocket design which I think you might like, but that didn't make it into this episode. What did make the episode what a horrendous mistake on my part where I left infinite fuel enabled from a previous 'muck around' so I flew one of the landing operations without noticing that I wasn't burning up fuel. Very embarrassing when you consider that all this messing around on the Mun is about giving myself a good fuel supply.... To celebrate the 50k and apologize for my infinitie fuel gaffe I'm running my biggest giveaway yet - 5 winners this time! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Reusing the Reusable Giveaway

In last weeks giveaway Ab E. won the prize and picked a copy of 'The Polynomial' which is an abstract 3d shooter that is driven by the music you feed into it, no plot, no story, no background, just pretty lights and the best music you can find in your collection. In light of the number of entries, Chris S also was awarded a PLEX (30 days of game time) in Eve Online - congratulations. Anyway, continuing the tradition, there's another giveaway, this time I want Wernher von Kerman to be recognized for his contributions to the space program (despite his dark past) - as before, there might be extra bonuses for particularly witty entries. a Rafflecopter giveaway

Russian Meteor Was The Loudest Recorded Infrasound Signal

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization maintains a network of sensors around the world designed to detect and locate nuclear tests that might violate the treaty, and, as it turns out these are pretty good at detecting and analyzing the energy released by all sorts of large energetic events, like quarry explosions, volcanic eruptions and of course large meteor events.

Well it should come as no surprise that the Russian meteor event made quite an impact on this network even if it didn't make a huge impact on the ground. The infrasound signal recorded by the CTBTO network was the loudest it's ever recorded in the decade or so since it became operational. And while that's cool, the best part is that they've generated a version of the sound which is pitched up to make it audible to our limited human auditory faculties and you can listen to this signal on youtube.

The signal was powerful enough to be detected 15,000km away at stations in the Antarctic, and using multiple stations they put the time of the event at 03:22 GMT on 15 February 2013.

10 Episodes Of Reusable Space Program means Free Games!

And I don't mean free stuff like free rocks falling from the sky, because Russia has had its fill of those.

Good god I've managed to get 10 episodes into a series of Kerbal Space Program videos only having managed to irretrievably lose 4 rocket parts in the thousands that have gone into space. To celebrate such frugality I've got another raffle wherein I'm going to give out one (or more!) games from my Steam Gift collection, or even PLEX for Eve Online players.

I say 'or more' because the more entrants I get the more prizes will be added, so don't be dissuaded when you see thousands of entries, that'll just mean more winners.

As before, I'm letting Rafflecopter handle the entries to make sure everything is above board and there's no favouritism involved in selecting the winners.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Lunar Flight Multiplayer - Coming This Month!

Sean Edwards - AKA Shovsoft pointed me at a video of the new multiplayer feature which he's developing for Lunar Flight. I hope we get LEM jousting as an event soon :)

Deep Impact Sends Back Movie Of Comet ISON

Yes Deep Impact is still doing its thing, flying around the solar system and with its main mission over long ago the mission managers used its onboard cameras to make this very nice movie of comet ISON. Comet ISON is still a long way out but is pretty darn bright for a comet at this distance, so it's not unreasonable to think that this comet will be putting on a spectacular show when it gets closer to the sun by the end of the year. Of course, it might just fizzle out, it's happened in the past to other predicted 'great comets'

Know Thine Enemy

This flu is really kicking my arse right now, I thought I was getting better, but now I feel worse after 3 days. Sometimes I'm able to code, other times I'm barely able to lie still with documentaries playing in my ear. But hey, on the bright side I have, thanks to Wikipedia, learned huge abouts about the science behind the flu virus, I mean I'm sure it's the simplified 'lies to children' version of things, but in theory I can follow up with some of the actual references when I have time. Even just seeing some of the words used makes me aware that there's this huge body of science where I'm way out of my depth. I mean I learned biology up to the same level as a first year university student, but then I encounter paragraphs like this...

Influenza viruses bind through hemagglutinin onto sialic acid sugars on the surfaces of epithelial cells, typically in the nose, throat, and lungs of mammals, and intestines of birds (Stage 1 in infection figure). After the hemagglutinin is cleaved by a protease, the cell imports the virus by endocytosis.

I end up on extended wikisurfing excursions to make sure I understand each an every term. Wikipedia is great. Shame it isn't providing me with much in ammunition in my fight against the current crop of invaders.

New Blog Space for Space Games and General Scientific Babble

I decided to switch from an Eve Online only blog to a more general one which covers 'What I think is cool'. Obviously my youtube channel is where most of my traffic is, but I think sometimes I need a place to post other related content. So, here we are, time to start writing eh?

Anyway, yesterday Strike Suit Zero was released, and I confess that I had been largely unaware of its existence until I saw the game on gog.com. I was sold instantly on the trailer and despite coming down with the flu I played it for an hour or so last night and the videos are being uploaded... slowly. The game does not disappoint, although people are apparently complaining about a few rough corners. It's available on GOG and Steam for 20% off until the end of January and if you want an action oriented space shooter then this is for you, if you instead enjoy playing something like Orbiter then this might not be the best fit.

Ahh here's one of the videos now:

Anyway I still have a pile of games I need to giveaway, so, I thought I'd try using this raffle widget to make sure it's all above board. This is primarily targeted at my subscribers so subscribers and followers get more entries into the raffle. a Rafflecopter giveaway