Wistrel's Diary

[Wistrel]

Diary Popularity Statistics

I really like the diaries here but I know some have annoyed me cause they seemed to be full of the kind of mindless real life drivel and angst I'd rather see confined to sites such as Live Journal. If you're not going to talk about PE or things related to PE why have a diary here? Well maybe its just me but it feels like a waste of everybodys time. Anyhow one thing I always wanted to know was an answer to the question, "Who's diary is the best?" I knew number of posts wasn't an indication and nor too was views but a combination? surely that would give an indication of how many views on average a post by each author receives and therefore, those that cause a literal "mouse click stampede", ever time they put hands to keyboard, should stand out hopefully as being the best. Of course there are various factors to consider, a persons popularity in game and on the boards will obviously have a huge influence as well as occurrances such as a, "main board linked entry" or public exposure. Still, having said this, the results remain interesting so, just for fun, I thought I'd stick them up. What we have here is the views/posts score of each person who appears on the front page when diarys are ordered by number of views. I accept this is ruling out some extremely high quality diarys writers who simply havn't been frequent enough with their posts yet however, for the regulars, this is how it pans out...

Average views per post of the "most read" diarys as of 12/12/2006

It's interesting to see that the most popular here is Kygons skill chart (is this a diary?) followed by the infamous Donald which personally I would say would be a very accurate reflection of the quality of his work and then it is nice to see that an awfull lot of people still care about what Nea has to say I recon I'm going to have to check out Maniacs diary to see what all the fuss is about and then of course we have Skam and, rather amusingly, Svetlana who I believe does not even post here these days. Good to see viagra, ultima and lykke doing well whos diarys I have heard are very good and finally of couse, me riding in in 10th position. hmm... I feel a "main board linked entry" coming on...

[Wistrel]

Eve online? Eve online is a goooood drug, it blocks out reality

No sorry but this isn't about Eve online at all, that is just the title. Why? Well the other day I was in the pub and someone had a phone out that was GPRS connected to some sort of forums called 4chan and not4chan I think. It seemed the forum covered all kinda of crazy topics that are unusual to talk about including drugs. I was reading through the titles in the drugs one and it listed all of the usual suspects and at the bottom, rather amusingly I found eve online listed too. Hence the response in the title upon my query to one of the guys who knew what the forum was about

Funny though cause it occurred to me later that PE can be just as bad. (I don't really know about eve by the way, I've seen it but as far as I can see its like a pretty multiplayer "Elite" so doesn't really appeal) Certainly for me and many others I believe PE is all about escapism but more recently I've discovered it can also be a welcome brain switch. ie to turn your brain most definitely OFF for a while. Its sad but in the stressfull world in which we live these days maybe people seek to do this and PE is the perfect no brainer. Think about it, there are very few activities in PE that, in their most basic form cause you engage your brain. (yes I know thinking CAN be beneficial sometimes)

For example, I'm in the middle of a "hunt". I say "hunt" in quotes cause this isn't the usual hunt that people do, it's a "Wistrel Chianti so slow she'll bore your socks off special". In short what I'm doing is wondering around in the twilight surrounding Jason center happilly playing with the snables and daikibas that can be found there. My "technique" is to walk casually up to a friendly looking mobs scan him (or her ) till she moves too much (which is green text galore btw for those who've never done it) then hit the concentrate button and sweat it till it finally comes to say hello. After that I hit it with a few rounds from my low amped opala till it walks away then I sweat it again till it comes back and finish it off. To finish I take a slow walk to the next one while looking for fruit and begin the whole process again. Dull? yes. Repetative yes? A pleasant way to kill two hours? Most definitely!

The crazy thing is that, not only am I profiting (I believe) from this tedious endeavour but, thanks to the whole ammo in loot thing we have these days, I've only got through 300 of my 1000 allocated rounds of ammo! I stopped at two hours cause I told myself no more but it makes me wonder... just HOW long can a 10ped hunt of this manner actually last? I guess, just for fun I may stick with it for the next bunch of logins and report back. You never know, maybe I'll even global!

Wistrel

[Wistrel]

"You know, between his howling and your blasting everything in
sight, it's a wonder the whole field doesn't know we're here!"

Was something I felt compelled to mention to my soc mate DD as she aided me today on one of my "quests". To explain, a "quest" for me is where I set myself a random task and just do it. This can be anything at all really and given my relatively green status still on Calypso that covers most things.

Todays little task was to reach the so called "abandoned building" SE of Echidna which I had found on my previously mentioned dogeared old map. Along the way I have to admit I got pretty distracted by all the little mobs to be found near by and discovered, much to my amusement, that I can take down young exas and Diaks with just a 101 opala before they get anywhere near me. To be honest even some of the more mature ones don't stick around long if I start by hitting them at max range before deciding that theres an interesting blade of grass they suddenly feel compelled to investigate while I'm busy toasting their bums! (There's AI, it seems, and then there's MAAI )

Having finally got to the place where x marked the spot I have to admit I found myself somewhat lost in a sea of Feffs and Berrys none of which looking anything like an abandoned building....

Anyhow... upon my revival (cough cough) I ran into DD who offereed to help me find it. We set off in our usual way only vaguely hampered my somewhat absent minded detour into a certain toxic zone... Upon our eventual arrival, theres me "going SHHHHHHH don't let them know we're here" and DD shouting "WHAT??? BLAM BLAM BLAM - I DIDN'T CATCH THAT!?! BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!" You see she really DID have a VERY large gun today which she revealed in a somewhat Arnie esk, "OK lets blast our way through!" followed by a brief rummage in Hammer space to reveal something that was probably bigger than me!

Still, our success in finding our destined haven was no better for it but DD, never detered, carried on, our searching getting farther and farther away from the place the building should have been found. Eventually we found ourself back in pleasant lands again, the memory, of the ugly feffs left far behind. Here we discovered a pleasant gorge, cut in the cliffs and populated by a small selection of Fugas so decided to undertake a little, "yogic flying" in order to get a better view

For the most part, this was the end of our adventure but I was still purturbed by the fact that I was yet to find this elusive building. At this point I asked the friendly bunch on IRC and somone kindly pointed our a tourist guide which would give me the coordinates I needed. You know what? 2 TP jumps later and a bit of friendly Feff persuasion and I can now confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that the bloody building doesn't exist!

Huh! So much for Travel Guides.... Do Lonely Planet do a Calypso edition?

[Wistrel]

Un-Named ("a" part)

The girl half crawled, half dragged herself towards the empty shop container. Loosely attached to what remained of her lower left leg was a mangled lump of plastic, metal and alloy so crushed that it was barely recognisable as the shin guard it once was and, like the rest of her armour, trying to identify its type or make would have presented a futile task. As well as a severely knarled left leg she was also suffering from a lethal gash in her side, the protection of a broken harness having done little to prevent the final critical blow before the unexpected detonation of the decoy charge which had miraculously saved her life. She couldn’t believe she was in this situation yet again, mining in ‘trax land… considered, not so much ‘fool hardy’ but more ‘sheer suicide’ by all save for the most skilled and experienced in the field and even then, the risks were accepted as dangerously high. Three years on Calypso, three years, and not once had she even been within spitting distance of an ore extractor so what then? What had possessed her to blow everything she had left on an extractor, detectonator and as many seismic bombs as she could afford then head out into some of the wildest country on the planet in the hopes of…? striking it rich???

She collapsed momentarily against the ground and stared off through the long grass towards the setting sun, its cool blades pleasant against her cheek but doing little to offset the pain from her side or slowly numbing left leg. Three years. Had it really been that long? Three years since her first faltering steps off the space ship that had brought her to this new and unforgiving world and, since that time, life had just felt like one mistake after another each time the stakes just growing larger and the falls prompting more and more reckless behaviour which had brought her now to this, an endeavour, verging on the suicidal. Suicide? Ha! Maybe she did want to die, but dying was of course impossible or rather, she mentally corrected herself, dying with any consequence was. It was a lie though. Her own stubbornness told her that much. Despite herself she didn’t want to die at all as death without consequence was still death and, beyond death, she feared failure more than anything which was why she’d do anything, anything at all, even crawling on her belly through scrubland for five miles just to stay alive. She wanted to live.

Raising her head again she saw the shop container was not far now and, grunting against the pain, in one final effort she covered the remaining ground, dragged herself up the incline and fell gasping to the grilled metal floor. “Pathetic!”, came a voice from above. She was not alone!

“Absolutely pathetic. Did you really think you could march out into the toxic zone, build yourself a drill tower and have a picnic while you wait to get rich???” It was a woman, black armour clad sporting a powerful looking hand gun and jet black hair shocked with streaks of white. “Heh, if it hadn’t been for that Atrax, I swear I’d have finished you off mysel… HEY! Are you listening?”, she yelled delivering a brutal kick that elicited a sharp cry of pain from the girl. The woman dropped to her knees grabbing the girl by the throat and squeezing, the pistol held menacingly against her temple. “Listen you stupid little bitch, my family invested a hell of a lot of money in gear so I could work this territory. They didn’t invest it for shits like you, with more luck than sense, to waltz in and take what’s mine. Now here’s what’s gonna happen. You may have made it this far and for that, I grant you, I’m impressed but now I’m gonna take that little compression unit of yours and send you hell back to the nearest RT where you belong!”. The girl whimpered, trying to bite back the tears. She’d gambled everything on this last attempt for survival and now she was about to loose it all. The pain was becoming unbearable and she just didn’t care anymore. She closed her eyes, wishing it would all go away and that she was back at her camp east of Tethys when the ear splitting shot rang out, echoing round the container with deafening finality.

The girl opened her eyes, squinting against the light as a dull sound came signalling her aggressors demise and, across her vision, a silhouetted man extended his hand speaking softly, “Hello Wistrel”.

END (of this part)

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Well... its been a long time coming as I think I started this possibly over a year ago but hey, thats life. I always said I'd only ever do stuff like this for myself but I did get several nice comments about the last one so apologies that this isn't as good or very long again but hey, I enjoyed writing it so thats all that counts really.

The good news (well I think so) is that I have already written the next part (funnilly enough I finished it before this part ) and I'll be putting it up once I've finished copying it cause I use that old biro technology to write stories and that means some typing The bad news is, I guess, that I've only done 2 parts. I don't know if I'll ever do more but certainly I'd call this something of a middle of a story... and I have a fairly good idea of whats gonna happen immediately after the next part and then some ideas of what happens much later and then much farther down the track (MUCH farther) is where "Girl" would fit in.

When, or if, any of this will ever get written of course is anyones guess and also, some rather "unusual" experiences in game this week have given me a fairly strong idea for a story thats completely unrelated and would be based half in the real world and half in the game (yes I'm getting inspiration from "Another Birth"). Still all this is purely speculation and I really do wish I had the ability to write stuff quicker.... or with a definite plan... or with some ordered coherancy... ... but I don't.

I'll try and get the next part up some time this or next week.

Wistrel

[Wistrel]

Un-Named (the next part)

He didn’t know her, but the name ‘Sterling and Moss’ displayed on his cognitive visual interface (CVI) was enough to tell him that, despite her battered appearance, this was a girl to be reckoned with. The agne (derogative term for those settlers with clearly more money than brains or experience) had betrayed her veteran facade by failing to recognise or notice her society but Nozzy was not one to make such an elementary mistake. She raised her head to regard him through a single eye, the other too bruised and swollen as to allow for focus, doubt evident on her face despite her injuries. Taking the initiative he grabbed her hand and jerked her sharply to a sitting position eliciting a sharp cry pain. Frowning, Nozzy reached for his aid pack but she shook her head pulling back producing instead a broken pack and raising a shaky hand to point at the closest repair terminal. She made to move again but he placed a hand on her shoulder. “No”, he said activating his own pack “this one’s on the house”. Despite a somewhat resentful glare he continued about the business of patching her up but aside from a token effort to resist his machinations there was little she could do in protest.

The extent of the injuries turned out to be massive. Through repairing severed tendons, tissue and cartilage loss not least of these an almost total blood transfusion, it took Nozzy nearly all of his skill, not to mention a good deal of time, to get the girl back on her feet. None of which was helped, of course, by her repeated struggles towards the end of the operation. By the time he had finished he was exhausted and sat back wiping the sweat from his brow. He didn’t want to think about the heavy cost this girl had no doubt brought upon him but hoped, despite her somewhat ungrateful façade, she might at least on some level appreciate all that he had done for her. Casting his gaze back towards the floor of the shop container he saw, with some surprise, that she had already gone. Looking up sharply he spotted her limping towards a vacant trade terminal on the opposite side of the room and, letting out a dispassionate sigh, got to his feet and made to follow.

“Hey Wistrel!” She turned to face him with the air of someone who is barely tolerating another’s presence. Anger flushed his features but then he remembered himself. They’d all been in her situation, every damn colonist on Calypso, beaten, battered, penniless, down on their luck and hating everything. “Look”, he began hesitantly as she continued to glower at him, “this may not be what you want to hear right now as I can see you’re low on luck but you can at least hear me out yes?” Her expression remained fixed so he continued. “Tomorrow, 8 o’clock some of us are leaving Calypso.” A slight flicker of her eyes indicated he’d caught her attention. “There’s a mining installation, on an asteroid, three orbits from here. Seems some ‘Mr Big’ from the home worlds is running the show there, new colonists, hunting domes, retail, nightlife the whole shebang…” He broke off, chuckling at her sceptical expression. “Heh yeh and they saaay you can make your fortune” he added with mock sarcasm echoing the words of some of the early Calypso propaganda. “Well, fortune or not, for one thing, it sure aint here. We’ve found a guy who can waive immigration and trafficking control so we’re flying for juice and maintenance fees only…” He paused. “I can get you on for fifteen Wistrel. No, don’t say anything now just think about it, a new start. If you’re interested and you can get the cash together in time, be there ten mins before take off.” Regarding her now, her face was the picture of sheer derision but he saw through it. Aping a defeated shrug he turned and made for the container door. “Hey!” came a shout from behind. He paused. “You didn’t tell me where this spaceship of yours is docked”. “Camp Echidna, third hangar north of the settlement oh… and Wistrel”, he said turning back to her, “keep it to yourself ok?”

He left her standing next to the trade terminal as he headed out into the twilight, a private smile subtly visible on his lips.

END (of another part)

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Dum dum dahhhhh! Hmmm well not much of a cliff hangar to be honest but it felt like a good spot to break. Will she go, or won’t she? What is Nozzy up to, if anything? Sadly time probably won’t tell, at least any time soon, as I said before, I have a pretty good idea what happens next but it’s unlikely to be continued for ages. So… some stuff of note (and I appreciate I’m rambling more to myself than anyone else now so feel free to skip on to the next diary entry) I always saw Wistrel as something of a changeable character, not all at once of course but, as expected, over time stuff goes on and that makes a difference. Here, you can see, she’s being a bit of a bitch but hopefully I managed to convey in the last part why this is and, if nothing else, she’s certainly having a bad day. I’d like to give a brief thanks to Kira and Epic for their inspirational stories while I’m at it. Of particular note the bit in Kira’s that deals with her friend’s suicide really put a knot in my stomach. Luckily, I’m still less than half way through Epic’s one! = D

On a final note, a pretty cool thread can be found here.

Wistrel

[Wistrel]

Thats just wrong

There's something terribly wrong about watching The Thirteenth Floor and then logging onto Entropia.... Seriously, this kinda stuff really makes you think about where on Earth (or should that be cyberspace?) we are going. I spose it could only be more wrong and/or scary to attend a film marathon made up of the Matrix, 13th Floor and Avalon THEN logging on!

PS along a similar line is having Opera Web Browser read (you just press "v") this out to you. Hearing a computer talking about advances in voice simulation sent a chill down my spine

[Wistrel]

I'll just go away somewhere and slowly loose my mind

Lyrics from Candy by Magnetic Fields (its not on repeat or anything ,-)

[Wistrel]

Gone

As usual it was dark and gloomy in the Belk Bar and, equally as usual, more or less empty save for the bar staff and one man sat at a table near the back his face hidden in shadow beneath a wide brimmed hat. As the woman who had just entered approached, the man looked up and addressed her with a grin proffering one of two beverages on the table before him. “Evening DD, care for a drink?” She grimaced at him, “Juice? Again? Aren’t they ever going to get anything decent in?” “Seems unlikely” he replied pulling over a chair “I’ve been involuntarily stone cold sober for 5 years now. Somehow, the thought of obtaining a ‘proper drink’ seems more like a joke than a desire to me these days...” He added, with a smirk, “How’s the ‘gun running’ coming along?” Rolling her eyes she sat down next to him. “Hilarious Az, some of us are still trying to earn a living y’know? We can’t all just sit around in holes watching the world go by”. “My my, how the tables have turned.”, Az chuckled, leaning back in his chair and gesturing toward the bar staff. “If its rep you’re concerned about you needn’t worry about those two”, he added with a wink, “especially the blonde”. Glancing up in exasperation DD ignored her former boss’ crudeness and asked instead, “Where’s Wistrel?” “Gone”, he replied simply. “What! Already? Heck, I’m not even late”. “No, not gone ‘just now’ gone”, he corrected, “’Gone’ gone”. “What do you mean, ‘gone’ gone? Gone where?” DD asked with exasperation. “Who knows?” replied Az leaning back and yawning “beats me what’s in that girls head, I just tend to roll with the punches these days and let her get on with it”. “Jeese Az, you might have stopped her! Did she say when she was coming back?!?” “Nope.” he replied with disinterest. “Just showed up yesterday looking as spaced out as always but this time wearing some kinda crazy ass armour that made her look like a robot. She announced she was heading off for a while then vanished. Didn’t really give me time to ask where although something tells me, knowing our little Wisty, she wouldn’t have said even if I had…. Heh knowing her actually, I doubt she even knew herself”.

DD leaned back and crushed the empty juice can in frustration. “Dammit! She’s ALWAYS doing this” Az cocked an eyebrow. “Fairs fair DD now that’s hardly true, it’s only the… “, he closed an eye while mentally counting on first one, then two hands. “Ah…”, he added with acceptance, “fair enough”. She glared at him. “Great! Just brilliant! So what am I gonna do if vehicles show up? Or the nutrio trade kicks off again? Or, heaven forbid, people actually want to go to space??? I need her Az. I can’t be expected to do everything by myself and no... don’t suggest the new kids. You know darn well they’re about as trustworthy as a Molisk and probably twice as stupi…” She stopped as her partner reached out and placed a hand firmly on her shoulder. “Trust me.”, he began, “When we really need her, I know that she’ll be back and, until that time, I know also that you’ll do just fine.” He finished, favouring her with a rakish grin before finishing his drink and leaning back. DD slumped in her chair defeated. It was the very last thing she needed right now but somehow somewhere, she knew in her heart that he was right.

[Wistrel]

Coming Soon...

The critical experiment had, as is typical with most scientific breakthroughs, been entirely unrelated. Observations of a rapid rate of climate change had led to much concern regarding potential damage to the planet’s ecosystem and, as a result, tests were underway to determine the cause and effects that this may have. The trial in question was a relatively mundane simulation of the resilience of Calypso’s wildlife to increased heat and, as expected, results were indicating a likely extinction of life on the planet where plants died and creatures collapsed from heat exhaustion or exposure. It was as the experiment drew to a close however, that the unexpected happened, an explosion that ripped through the walls of the test dome killing and injuring many scientists and animals which seemingly, should have been impossible. Initially it was thought that terrorist factions were to blame but the truth, it transpired, turned out to be far stranger and of the utmost significance.

If you want to know the truth, download the April edition of The Calypso Post. Coming soon to a website round about here

[Wistrel]

Wistrel is ill

PS Not photoshopped - a straight screen shot (but it took some effort)