I Am Keith Neilson » General

Things are a little broken atm…

Mandrill — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:42:21 +0000

The ad rotation script is messing with my layout. Normal service will resume once I figure out why.

Any offers of assistance greatly appreciated.

M out

I have moved to a new host.

Mandrill — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:59:47 +0000

You shouldn’t notice any difference, apart from a couple of tiny things like the lack of a favicon and a capital A on the am in the site title, but if any bugs crop up I’d be grateful if you could let me know.

For anyone who is interested in these things I have moved my hosting to Lonetrek which is run and maintained by one of our own. I’m paying ISK for my hosting . If I had a billion I would have got the Jovian package (for a year) but as it is I only had 200 million spare so had to go for the Tech III package for now. I’ll be transferring my domain registration over in the future at some point but for now its still registered with my old hosts and pointing at Lonetrek’s nameservers.

I had a few glitches getting the blog set up on the new server, Filezilla kept cutting the ends off of the php files that make WordPress work. I think I got them all sorted but as I said if any glaring php syntax errors (mostly unexpected $end errors) let me know in the comments and I’ll get them sorted. Please include the full text of the error so I can find the file causing it.

I would say normal service should resumse shortly but as it is it doesn’t seem to have been interrupted at all.

M out

I'm Back

Mandrill — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:48:04 +0000

Sooner than I thought was possible I am back in action. After a day of hellish PC drama and hair-pulling (Computers will drive me to baldness I swear) a I have a replacement GFX card and am back in business.

M out

Graphics Card Dying

Mandrill — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:20:43 +0000

Sad news when I woke up this morning, My graphics card is dying and I reckon I’ve got about an hour of use out of it.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to afford a new one so you may have to go without me for a while.

Essential site maintenance

Mandrill — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:20:08 +0000

It may be that I am Keith Neilson will be unavailable for a bit this afternoon as I’m performing some fairly routine maintenance and spring cleaning. Not to worry though, if all goes as planned we should be back and transmitting as normal later on in the day.

Wish me luck.

M out

First post from Dominion

Mandrill — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:37:56 +0000

Dominion has dropped. The new mails system and in game browser have landed. Planets are gorgeous and this post was brought to you from in game. =D

Mandrill out

Work is underway

Mandrill — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:35:17 +0000

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. and with a brand new look too. Bear with me

Site Redesign Underway

Mandrill — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:03:00 +0000

I am in the process of redesigning and re-organising my blog. I have a completely custom built theme pretty much ready to go, hopefully I’ll be able to offer it for download once I’m finished tweaking it.

There are alot of other changes that I’m planning behind the scenes too. I’m going to go through all my posts and pages and archive/cull those which are no longer relevant to the focus of the site (I’m going to try and figure out a way to keep them available, but no promises) I’m also going to be re-organizing my links with only some of them appearing in the sidebar of the site.

So if the site goes down for a while, fret ye not. it will be back. And I hope it will be better than ever.

Mandrill Out

Moving House, Connection Interrupted

Mandrill — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:25:51 +0000

I will be moving house (in fact I’ve already moved technically, all my computers are now floating on the ocean somewhere) and so I will not have regular and reliable internets for a couple of weeks. See you when all my belongings get to their destination

System Requirements

Mandrill — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:47:28 +0000

EVE is a demanding game, even more so since they abandoned the old classic client for the new premium lite. Its visual beauty is something which, once experienced, canot be discarded for somthing of lesser fidelity.

This is not a post about the technical requirements for EVE, as even with its stunning graphics it can still be played on a relatively low-end machine. This is a post about the more meta requirements that EVE demands of its players (its also a creative way of explaining my lack of play time in the last couple of weeks)

First and foremost EVE requires time, lots of it. To get the most out of the game you have to be willing and able to put the time in. Many EVE players are willing, the ability to put aside the time is one which often causes problems though. Having recently become (for a few months at least) a single parent, I’ve discovered that time is something which I am having to ration quite assiduously. The only opportunity I get to enter the spacelanes of New Eden is in the evenings when my young charge is safely tucked up in bed, by which time I’m often dog tired and brain-fired to such an extent that I can’t focus my attention on the complexities of EVE.

Which brings us to the second requirememnt onf a life in New Eden; energy. EVE is hard work, both physically and mentally, and requires high levels of attention and concentration in order to play effectively. So after 12 hours of engaging with and chasing after a 3 year old you can understand that I’m not going to have much in the way of energy to direct towards EVE.

Nevertheless, I am henceforth going to try and get a least a couple of evenings worth of play a week in the bag.

On another note I’m working on an aggregated collection of feeds from EVE bloggers, I’ve been through Ga’len’s OPML file and categorised the 480 or so blogs on there and am currently looking at scripts that will present these feeds in a nicely usable way on a single page. If anyone has any suggestions or experience using feed aggregation scripts, feel free to let me know.

Till next time, good hunting and fly safe.