Updates: New Year Edition

As this is going to be my first blog post for the year of 2026 I figured I would keep it short and simple and share some updates and stuff.

As my last post was at the end of December there has been quite a bit happening.

LINUX

First and foremost I got curious about trying Debian Sid (the "unstable" development branch) and I had played around with it for a few days. It was a nice change of the pace to see the new packages and what not, but I decided I should just stick with Debian stable and went back to using that. I figured if I needed new certain packages I can just use backports, which would mainly be the kernel, mesa and firmware.

EVE ONLINE

There has been a lot of things happening in our space since my last post and we have had a lot of brawling, small gang and full on fleet PVP. We've had hostile groups reinforce our structures and one of the most recent ones resulted in an epic battle of mixed subcap and capital responses, with our structure fully repairing during the middle of it all (OP SUCCESS).

https://br.evetools.org/br/695872b3439ce20012dab34c

There is the battle report for that fight over our Azbel which fully repaired.

It's been rough at times dealing with lots of hostiles and hot droppers around our space constantly messing with us, but through it all I have been having so much fun. So much more than when Horde was controlling TKE (still sad to see Horde being no more though).

Other than that I have been working on getting my skills up and have started to train into Blackbird to be my non-frigate PVP orientated ship.

I also got gifted one month of Omega from someone within my corp so thank you to them. I also have an additional month ready to go when I need it as I am just about nearing the 5,000,000 SP softcap for Alpha clones (which will then require me to then use skill injectors/run Omega as Alpha's cannot naturally train past 5mil SP). I do have nearly 2,000,000 SP unallocated stocked up for when I need it. The daily goals for getting 10k SP and also the retroactive login rewards really pushed me to a lot of unallocated SP.

Also did win a Rattlesnake for something I can't remember, but I ended up getting it hauled down to Jita 4-4 and selling it on public contract for 870 million ISK which puts me in a position to be able to PLEX another month of Omega should I also need it besides the $20 I have ready to use (CCPLS STEAM SALE WHEN).

ALBION ONLINE

Aside of New Eden, I've been doing my usual dipping into the Royal Continent of Albion Online as my side game for when I am ratting, mining, waiting for stuff to happen in EVE or just generally relaxing (I really enjoy the gathering and faction warfare stuff).

I did get myself 7 days of premium and got myself a personal island which I have been using daily to do crop farming and in turn doing cooking making soups to increase my levels so I can eventually start farming higher tier crops and cook higher tier foods. I am still in process of just doing carrots at the moment but will maybe soon start doing higher tier when I exhaust my carrot seeds.

I'm still also doing crafting of plate helmets (Fort Sterling bonus) and have gotten to the point now where I can craft T7 helmets.

I've gotten T6 ore unlocked, as well as T5 stone and fiber. I want to get to all T6 for stone and fiber which both are close and probably need another few weeks depending on how active I am gathering.

Outside of gathering and crafting, I have been having an absolute blast in faction warfare. I've been getting a ton of faction points through gathering and also helping my faction (Fort Sterling) take provinces and objectives, which in turn I have been buying faction chests and using the tomes to level up my Blight staff set. I am currently running 4.2 blight staff set with roughly 70/120 spec on each piece. I definitely need to start getting into higher tier to not only do more damage when I am out solo gathering and killing mobs, but to boost my healing and survivability during faction fights.

I may eventually take some time at night to do some lethal zone content either through black zone or red zone faction warfare via bandit assault. I definitely have to get my spec up more and get higher tier gear though to reach a decent IP for that content, but I am perfectly content being in yellow zone and doing what I am doing now.

REAL LIFE

Outside of my internet life, real life hasn't really been much going on. I got myself some rum and a few bottles of wine in December and got fairly drunk on New Year's Eve (I was hitting the rum and cokes pretty hard that night with 50/50 mix).

I've still got this damn lingering cough now and then from when I was really sick at Thanksgiving and I just can't seem to get it to go away.

Other than that everything has been peachy and I've been just going day to day trying to make it through all the insanity.

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Farewell 2025

 As I stated in one of my previous posts I had plans to make one final blog post for 2025 and this is going to be it.

This will be my final blog post for the year and I won't resume until sometime early January 2026.

I just wanted to take some time to say thank you.

Thank you to everyone at Debian and the linux community for helping me finally break away from Windows.

Thank you to all my visitors and readers of my blog.

Thank you to CCP Games for everything you do with EVE Online. I know you've had your ups and downs, but at the end of the day I am grateful to you for providing me a universe to help me escape my real life troubles.

Thank you to the EVE Online community for being the best gaming community around.

Thank you to Zigam for not quitting EVE and starting your own corporation and alliance. I have never had so much fun as I have since I started anew in your corporation.

Thank you to SLOW for providing us a place to live within your space and helping Zigam get his corporation and alliance setup with sovereignty upgrades allowing the rest of us to happily mine, rat and do industry.

Thank you to SBI Interactive for providing a nice secondary home in Albion Online where I can do stuff while ratting or mining in EVE Online, as well as giving me a place to relax after fleet PVP. Fort Sterling still #1 by the way.

And the best for last I want to thank my dog for being there for me over the past 10 years. You are the best and most goodest boy and you mean the absolute world to me. I know you don't have many years left to live and I want to make your final years to be the best ever.

I think that is about it. It's been a hell of a year and managed to survive it. As much as this is my final post of 2025, I also want to give notice that I won't really be around much on social media outside of like Twitch and Youtube. You will still be able to find me in both EVE Online and Albion Online during this time too at my usual times.

Thank you all for stopping by. I'll see you all in 2026. Take care and fly safe. o7

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Albion Online: The Perfect Side Game

I first started playing Albion Online a few years ago as an alternative to a time when CCP Games was pushing out some pretty bad updates and there was a lot of people that sought refuge in Albion considering it was essentially a less complex medieval swords and magic style EVE Online, sharing a lot of the same mechanics and player driven market.

I've recently been playing again as a way to help relax after doing small gang/fleet PVP in EVE or while I am out ratting or mining. I really enjoy the gathering and crafting in Albion and it's quite soothing and relaxing to me. There was also a new faction warfare update recently too, so I do a bit of that now and then as well.

I got myself a $30 Steam wallet card the other day and I ended up spending $5 to get 7 days of premium in Albion, which means I unlock a player island which I can also work on and relax and do some crop farming on top of the other bonuses to gathering and crafting (via focus) I get now. I mainly just wanted to get the personal island without having to spend money on a full month of premium or having to pay an absurd amount of silver (it's about 34,000,000 silver right now for 1 month premium on the Americas server).

All in all I've been having a blast playing Albion as a side game and it's nice to multitask it when I am ratting or mining in EVE Online.

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It’s Been Over a Month Already

Time sure does absolutely fly by.

It seems like it was the other day that I had come back to EVE Online after getting the itch again, seeing Pandemic Horde failscading (and eventually coming to an end), watching Zigam (MrUnluckie on Twitch) quit the game and then the next day start up his own corporation and soon after an alliance.

I decided to check my own character info in game earlier today and to my surprise the corporation started 1 month and 7 days ago (as of this blog post), making it a total of 37 days since the creation.

Honestly I don't really know what I would be doing if all these series of events never happened. I was going through some really rough times a few months before Horde failscaded and I just deleted everything and just lurking around watching Youtube and Twitch without having to worry about anything and just keep to myself.

I would have most likely just kept to myself then. It's when Zigam got his corporation going I decided it was time for a fresh start and joined up with his corporation and it's been quite a difference experience from being in a massive nullsec alliance like Pandemic Horde and now being in a small scale alliance, but it has been fun.

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Clear Skies

 I first learned about Clear Skies a few years after I started playing EVE Online and ended up watching it and really enjoyed it. A few years ago someone remastered them in 4K as best as it could be done as the original videos were already dated.

I had rewatched the 3 part series about 2 weeks ago and then TheMadRambo, an EVE Online Twitch streamer, decided to do a stream watching them as he had never watched Clear Skies before. So I stuck around and watched along with him and after finishing all 3 movies he stated he really enjoyed them as well.

As a brief on what Clear Skies is, it's a machinima using both the Source and EVE Online engines that follows the ship and crew of the Minmatar Tempest class battleship named Clear Skies with the crew being John Rourke, Solomon Burke and Charlie Fodder as the primary crew.

This is a great series for people to watch who have never seen it as well as those who haven't watched it in sometime.

Here are the links for the three different movies:

CLEAR SKIES 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_y_g9a5qMQ

CLEAR SKIES 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1SDWhjhcnU

CLEAR SKIES 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IblNnRMT5Pw

There is a Clear Skies 4 in the works and in 2020 the primary person behind the series stated that it would no longer be using the Source engine. I'm patiently waiting for the 4th movie to come out and it will be interesting to see the animation and art style direction being used.

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The End of Pandemic Horde

 It's been quite a few weeks since the Pandemic Horde failscade and I've been having a blast starting fresh and new in a small alliance which helped retake part of The Kalevala Expanse.

However it seems today that Horde had a town hall and it was decided that the entire alliance was fully disbanding and merging into The Initiative.

I first heard about it while watching Zigam on Twitch and then went to the EVE subreddit and lo and behold the very first result was "Horde is disbanding".

This made me instantly sad as most everyone I had known there was pretty cool and nice and they never deserved to get shafted this hard by the leadership.

A final ping went out about an hour ago (from this post) from the new Horde "leader" that was to take the reigns of Horde, but decided to ping out the full closure of the alliance and the merger into Initiative:

Full size version here: https://i.redd.it/5zqly29jtm6g1.png

This is extremely saddening, but I wish the best of luck to all the nice people I had met in Horde over the years and I hope that Horde leadership doesn't infect INIT.

Farewell Horde, thank you for giving me a place to call home when I first started playing back in 2016 and over the years after that. o7

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Things Are Getting Spicy: Round Two

 So two days ago we had a hostile group come right into our home system and drop a Minokawa right in our front yard which I went over in my other post "Things Are Getting Spicy". We brawled with that group and eventually won and defending our home, with our CEO doing a drive by doomsday on the hostile FAX literally deleting it from the game.

Last night the same hostile group showed up with a lot more friends and they attempted to drop a structure in our home. We quickly responded to this and we hot dropped right on top of them next to their structure and a multi-hour and multi-system brawl broke out:

https://br.evetools.org/br/69360f17439ce20012da7b36

Hostiles had another Minokawa on the field, being the same pilot as just the day before in our first home defense. The enemy mainly consisted of Widows and Hurricane Fleet Issues with various support ships. The small gang of Golems was a separate entity that showed up and started long range popping us off while we were trying to fight the HFI fleet.

We had just destroyed almost all the Widows and the Minokawa as the HFI fleet showed up in system and warped to us. The Golems showed up not too long after that.

We eventually managed to destroy the hostile structure while fighting the HFI fleet and they eventually started retreating. We figured we would get out as well, after doing some looting and salvaging of the field.

It wasn't too long after our fight ended that someone found out that the Golems that were third partying us got absolutely turbo dunked in another fight:

https://warbeacon.net/br/related/30005096/202512080100/

We were all laughing at this and both us and SLOW went our separate ways back to our home systems and stand down with objectives completed and a op success.

Then to top off the night we ended up getting a nice juicy snack in the form of a Pandemic Horde Athanor not too long after all this happened:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/131791670/

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Things Are Getting Spicy

We've had our fair share of hostiles roaming into our home space as well as various hot droppers coming through and logging off across various systems.

Last night though things got really spicy.

One of the hot droppers that comes around our space ended up coming with a full on fleet consisting of quite a few Widows with other subcap ships.

Things got spicy when that hostile group dropped a capital ship right in our front yard to our Fortizar. They dropped a Minokawa because they were struggling with our subcap response fleet.

We ended up brawling, losing ships and coming back. Our CEO, Zigam, eventually got tired of them having a FAX (Force Auxiliary) on grid and his response was to bring his Ragnarok into play and landed next to the hostile Minokawa and doomsdayed it into oblivion then took off.

Here is the battle report for that fight we had last night:

https://br.evetools.org/related/30002870/202512062300

Good fight to all.

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Debian: Absolute Perfection for Me

 I've been a Windows user since the 3.x days all the way up to Windows 11 and I appreciate what Windows does for the everyday user (apart from all the crap they have been cramming into Windows 11 lately).

My first venture into Linux was Ubuntu 8.04 back near the end of April 2008 and I thought it was pretty cool and definitely a different experience compared to Windows.

I never fully committed to Linux at the time though and had always kept a dual boot setup. After the years I switched from Ubuntu to Linux Mint and also thought Mint was really nice because it provided a more Windows style workflow.

Alongside Linux I kept my Windows updated and eventually found myself with just solely using Windows having sort of interest dropping out from Linux. This all started to change again as Windows 11 became more and more of a hassle and problematic.

Eventually the updates to Windows 11 started causing so much issues I eventually decided to fully switch to Linux and this time instead of Ubuntu or Linux Mint I opted to go all the way to the source with Debian.

I wiped my entire NVME out and installed Debian 12 (Debian 13 was not available at the time and was the Testing branch) and it was like a breathe of fresh air. Debian was perfection for me. Everything was so fast and responsive. It stayed out of my way and never bothered me. My overall CPU, GPU and RAM usage was so much better and battery life was just almost on par with Windows.

And then along came the Debian 13 release and I thought Debian 12 was nice. Debian 13 blew my mind with how much more snappy and responsive everything felt, due to the newer GNOME version as well as newer kernel and firmware.

It was during this time that I decided to never, ever go back to Windows. Debian is now my home.

So now I watch streamers running Windows 11 and just having constant problems and I want to say something about trying Linux instead, but I know it is isn't for everyone and I doubt most of the streamers I watch would take the time to try and learn it (and also the fact that OBS is a bit wonky on Linux and I don't know how things like WINE or Proton would handle people multi-boxing in say EVE Online).

Anyway I am satisfied with Debian and very happy with it and while I do appreciate what Ubuntu and Linux Mint have done and do for the overall community, I felt like Debian fits my workflow and philosophy more.

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Slimming Down: Multiple Account Edition

 If there is one thing about EVE, it's the fact that it has been designed from the ground up to encourage multiple accounts (and by extension multi-boxing as well).

I got sucked into that tunnel and I found myself with 3 different accounts on my launcher each time. My first one being my primary main nullsec character, the second being an industry focused alt and my third one was a highsec alt (for when nullsec got a bit too spicy and I just wanted to relax).

This was of course setting myself up for failure as my game time is sporadic and random throughout the day. I eventually started to fall behind on keeping up with my 2 alt accounts.

I figured it was time to slim down and I decided to drop both my industry and highsec accounts from my launcher and I plan to focus primarily on my main character, which is of course Carah Baxter.

This comes at a time when holidays are creeping up and as I mentioned in my post Rough Seas Ahead there is a possible incoming invasion into Dronelands (most likely being The Kalevala Expanse where I live since it is the closest to the freeport in LXQ2-T) by multiple hostile groups consisting of Red Alliance and their friends/pets from Providence.

It also makes more sense since we have to be combat ready and all hands on deck should an invasion into our home begin. I got a lot of modules shipped up to our home and multi-fitted a bunch of cheap T1 tackle frigates to use for our standing fleet, roams and future strat ops. It's nice having a jump clone down to the Paragon structure in Jita to be able to do shopping and then self destruct back to our home (after destroying and redoing the jump clone in Paragon since I am alpha and we are only allowed one jump clone).

After everything calms down and the new year comes into play I may get back into having multiple accounts, most likely getting my highsec account back into play moreso than my industry account.

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