Last of the First

And with this we finally get to the "last of the first posts", after which I will fall into the actual pattern of blogging, rather than blogging about blogging.

Warning: This gets technical. No hard feelings if you skip over this post and read the TL;DR.

The purpose of this particular blog post is to explain the name of the blog. I'd hope that it was odd enough that it at least garnered a bit of curiosity from you, by this point. And more than that, I hope that the explanation makes a bit of appropriate sense for down the line.

\begin{engineering_lesson}
So, I've alluded to the fact that I'm an engineer by profession. When you're looking at controlling a system, or optimizing something, you have the choice of two extremes. You can have a centralized controller that is responsible for making the decisions for everything that happens in the system. On the other side of the coin, you can have an entirely decentralized strategy, where each individual part of the system (down to some level) is making independent decisions based on what that piece can sense.

You can also do some blending of the two, to get the best of both worlds, if you know what you are doing.
\end{engineering_lesson}

What does this mean?
This means that in the first case (Centralized) you have one "thing" that is making all the decisions for every part of your system. This means that the right hand always knows what the left hand is doing, because the brain is controlling it [Central nervous system and all that]. This is a very very good thing if you have a controller that is good enough at processing to make this happen. You can get some very impressive results. But... (and yes, there is always a but), you have a choke point in your system. You have a single controller that is:
- Obtaining all the information about the entire system at once
- Doing all the processing
- Communicating to every piece of the system what it is supposed to do
This leads to some obvious technical requirements.
-Your controller needs enough incoming communication bandwidth to receive all the necessary information.
- It needs enough processor power to be able to take all of that information, make sense of it, and figure out what each piece of the system needs to do to get the desired results.
- It needs enough outgoing communication bandwidth to send all necessary information to each piece of the system.
- It needs to not fail, because if failure occurs at the central controller (or its communication points), then the system is without a head. Total system failure is expected.

You can notice here that there are some analogies to biological systems. You have a central nervous system that senses and controls (almost) every action you take.
These kinds of strategies are used pretty often in an engineering setting as well. Assuming your problem is simple enough and your controller is robust enough, then this is a very good solution.
This is also used in some kinds of organizations (or situations pretty close to a centralized controller). I have been in some EVE fleets that have functioned very much like this. We'll touch back on this later.

For the second case (Decentralized), you have a bunch of separate "things" that are each taking in the information available to them, and making decisions based on what they can sense, and what options are available to them. You can start to see that this is the exact opposite of the centralized scheme. So each "thing" (let's call a "thing" an agent) is responsible for:
- Obtaining as much information as is available to it
- Doing some processing using that information
- Deciding what its best action (if any) is to take
In the purest sense, no communication between the agents is necessary for some coordination to appear.
This leads to some different technical requirements.
- Each agent needs some way of sensing whatever it can
- Each agent needs some kind of processing power
- Each agent needs to take the "best action" that it can to help the system get the desired results
- Agent failure leads to some decay of system performance, but isn't catastrophic

Now, this is entirely opposite of the centralized scheme. But it is pretty important to notice that this one also bears some similarities to some biological systems. Look at an ant colony: each ant goes about its business, and the colony survives without the need for meetings to make sure that each ant is caught up on the comings and goings of the other ants.
Likewise, look at a termite colony. The towers are impressive, to say the least. And these termites are blind. How do they do this? Well, I guarantee that there isn't an architect termite that is drafting up plans and directing the workers around. They just follow a set of very simple rules, and the results speak for themselves. They simply put the building material near other freshly deposited material. This forms a pile. Piles start to form small spires. These spires join to form arches. Arches join with arches. Floors are formed. And then all of a sudden, the simple rules are starting to make something not so simple. An Emergent Structure starts to form.

I've also been a part of EVE fleets that have been run like this, where each pilot is making their own decisions, and just using comms to inform the other pilots about what they are doing. No one is directing the whole scheme, but the interceptor pilots are tackling, the EWAR pilots are ewarring, the logistics pilots are keeping ships up, and the damage pilots are picking off easy targets.

But... (and again, there is always a but) the right hand can not know what the left hand is doing. It is possible that agents can be (intentionally or not) working against the interests of other agents. Remember playing basketball in elementary school? Remember the kid that was the ballhog? The actions he was taking (which I'm sure he meant the best with) were hurting the team overall. Same story here, but in a very different setting. How do you get around this? Well, that's not an easy question to answer, and that's why I have a job in real life ;-). Suffice for now to say that as long as you zoom out far enough to look at the longer term results, you can start to figure out which actions were good and which actions were bad.

So how does this all relate to this blog?
Well, first of all, it's a glimpse into what I do with my everyday, which affects the way that I look at problems. Second of all, the concept of emergent structures will pop up again and again through this blog, whether I specifically call it out or not. None of the ways that I go about looking at a situation involve any black magic or voodoo. It is always just taking the problem, breaking it down to its most basic, and then figuring out how to solve each individual problem. I do the same thing whether I'm looking at the market, or looking at a ship fitting, or looking at a fleet engagement.

It's okay if you don't quite get what I am saying here, yet. If you did, then I'd have awfully little to write about, wouldn't I? If you managed to get through this far, then I do thank you for your patience with Russian novels.

TL;DR:
Simple rules, impressive results: Emergent Structure.

Next we will, in fact, go into a ShipStudy of the Drake. What makes it so popular? What settings does it work well in? What do you need on it when you fit it? What are the misconceptions? How can we use those to our benefit?

-K'

Where/When/How?

Where
Here!

When
When I have a chance. Obviously I like to actually play EVE, but one of the benefits I've found is that there are plenty of times that there are a few minutes here or there that waiting is the right course of action. I'll probably end up using these and the miracle that is having a second monitor to write a post here or there. My goal at the moment is about a post a week, depending on how broad of a topic I choose. When I choose to tackle something, I try to get as far into it as I can to get something out of it, so if I choose something big, there might be a bit more lead time.

How
Hmm. "How". There are a lot of different ways to answer this. With a computer?
Nah, cop-out. Let's go for the more "how is this going to be structured" side of things.
Each week I'll choose a topic that interests me, and throw EFT, EveMon, Google, Excel, or another tool at it, to see what shakes out. I'll write it up, and put it up here for perusal at your leisure. As an example of the kinds of things I might do for a post, here are some potential titles (mostly from forum posts that I have made that will likely be cross-posted at some point)
- The joy of stealth bomber ratting
- How to: fleet comms
- Why should I do T2 production?
- Using market orders for the non-trader

Given my past experience with the written word, my posts might be a bit longer than you would expect, but most of them shouldn't be excessively so.

In each post, I'll always finish off with a TL;DR, so that if you aren't sure if you want to spend the time reading the entire post, you can at least get the overarching idea of the post, and decide for yourself if you want to read more.

I'll try to post the subject of the next entry I will be working on at the bottom of each post, as well. If I don't manage to do this at the time of posting, I'll come back and edit it at some point when I know what the next post will be! Again, I'm not going to handcuff myself with this, and if something else pops up that attracts my attention, I'll write about that first before getting back on track. Likewise, I might have a small post here or there in between the more significant posts that will likely be on an entirely random topic. Just fair warning.

I am perfectly open to taking requests/questions for future posts. Comments here work, so does EVEMail. I really would like you, as the reader, to feel involved in the evolution of this blog, and have it be a bit more of an interactive activity than it might otherwise be, so please, feel free to speak up if you have something to say!

It's also entirely possible that I will talk a lot about fitting specifics. In the case that I'm looking at one specific fitting, I'll probably leave it in the main body of the post, but if it is more than 1 or 2 fittings that I am talking about, then I'll very likely put them in a separate post of just-fittings.
That is, unless I figure out an easy way to allow part of my post to fold out of view by default...

And just to make sure that everything is comparable throughout the life of my blog, whenever I'm looking at the stats of a fitting, I'll be comparing numbers using all level V skills, and will call out whether drones are considered in a DPS calculation or not.
For the ease of you, the reader, I will also be using a direct copy-and-paste out of EFT for the fittings, and will name the fittings something reasonably descriptive, so as you follow along throughout the operational life of my blog, you can copy/paste those fittings into EFT to start building your personal library of fittings to play with (at no work for you!), or do the copy/paste shenanigans with EVEMon to figure out how long of a skill train that particular ship loadout will be.

TL;DR:
Once a week-ish, a topic should be pretty thoroughly considered here. Expect longer-than-your-average-blog posts. When I'm talking about fittings, sometimes I'll just put the link into the post (if there is a lot of them) and post the fitting itself elsewhere. It will always be set up to be easy to copy/paste so you can do additional analysis on your own, if you like! I am open to suggestions on ideas to consider/posts to make/etc, and would like for this blog to be interactive for the reader.

Next Time:
Next, I'll wrap up my blogs-about-blogging, before actually launching into the kinds of posts that you can expect to see on a more regular basis from me. I'm thinking of starting with something simple, like a ShipStudy (which will likely be a regular fixture in this blog) where I consider the ins and the outs of a particular ship for the various roles it is good at playing. I'm thinking first it might be a ShipStudy of the ever-famous workhorse, the Drake. We'll see.

Until next time, remember "hoW" has a W too ;-)

-K'

Who?

"Who" is also a very important question to ask, here. I could be some crackpot. And maybe I am, but that's beside the point. The point is that my background affects the way that I look at things, and the way that I tackle an issue, so you knowing that gives you a bit better clue as to what you can expect out of me.

Let's break this up into two pieces. Who am I outside of EVE, and then who am I inside of EVE?

Outside of EVE
Outside of EVE, I am a 23 year old Mechanical Engineering graduate student in the US. I like using numbers to understand things. I like looking for trends in things. I like looking for, and potentially finding, things that are unexpected. Solutions that you might not "normally" see.

I enjoy games of all sorts, from athletic to card to computer. I like the organization and framework that a game provides. In the past I have subscribed to that game that is traditionally not named in the EVE community, though I've now been free of that for long enough that the memory of it is beginning to fade. Because I do have plenty of other things to do with my time, with respect to MMO's, I do try to be pretty efficient about what I do in-game. Figuring out how to get more/better results in the same chunk of time is something that's fun for me.

Inside of EVE

Inside of EVE, I am K'endro of Adhocracy Incorporated, of Adhocracy.

I tried EVE once a year or so before I actually picked it up. It didn't quite stick for whatever reason. I think it had something to do with me trying to use Bantams for L1 missions (they were cheaper than the other ones!), and getting blown up. The second time that I put together a 14-day trial, though, something was different, and things began to click easier.

I immediately thought "well, I might as well jump all the way in", and found a 0.0 corp that I could join up with and move out to nullsec. I'd read a good bit, and knew that it was far too easy to get "stuck" in empire space. Unfortunately it was a smallish corp, and no one seemed too terribly interested in helping the new guy out, so that didn't work out too well. And then I heard about the UNI, in the rookie help channel. And people didn't start immediately shouting down the guy who said something about it, so I went to check it out!

The UNI
That had mixed results. I appreciated the Uni for some of the stuff that they did, and not for other things... but even the things that I didn't like had positive effects.

I loved the class library that they had put together, and listened to what was at that point every single class that they had up, putting them on in the background while I played, etc. 

The UNI likewise got me into station trading; when you are stuck in a station in Korsiki for so long, spinning while wartargets run about, you might as well do something, right? So I started remote trading in Jita, and found out that that worked pretty well. I started a small trading fund, where I took some ISK donations from people to fund my new trading habit, and turned 100% profits for the first 3 weeks I did it, before eventually getting out of that (to trade with my _own_ isk, now that I had some!)

The UNI got me into FCing. During my time in the UNI I think I was _not_ FC in a total of about 2 operations, that happened near the end of my stay there. The first time (and every time after that) I was on and looking to roam, no one wanted to FC. After warning people that they were going to get popped with me as an FC, I volunteered, and my first fleet was a 40-man patrol.

The UNI got me into wormholes. I soon learned that combat patrols were relatively pointless as a unista, and started looking for other cool things I could do. Wormholes were new, so I led a few fleets in there, to try to figure out what we could do with them. The first few trips were successful. Eventually I got locked in, and lost my first pod to the self-destruct button, having no other way to get out after having to log.

ADHC, I

Pretty much as soon as I was eligible to graduate, I was looking to get out and on to other things. Wartimes were far from entertaining under the UNI ROE, and I was playing a game, after all! I happened to find ADHC on the work fair forums, and soon gathered my things to move into W-space with them. It was a much smaller operation then, and very different than it is today, but it was a whole new world apart from the UNI. I loved it. It was great.

SF

A few months later, though, I got an interesting response from an evemail that I had sent out when I was looking for corps originally out of the UNI. It was from a member of Star Fraction, about my letter of interest that I had sent. At this point in time I was still very interested in a pure-NRDS engagement policy. I thought it would be nice if everyone used one (I now realize that NBSI is a major driving force in the economy), and the whole concept of SF intrigued me. So after considering for a while, I ended up deciding that the only fair thing to do would be to give SF a fair go as well, and packed up to move out to their lowsec headquarters at the time.

There, I learned a lot about different combat tactics, different ways of getting results. The fleets moved way faster than ADHC's. WAY faster than the UNI's. The whole lowsec combat style intrigued me and proved very instructive in my PvP knowledge. SF later moved to nullsec combat, and for a little bit, nullsec living, with me learning more about the mechanics at every turn. POS bashes, gatecamps, faction warfare, black ops.... you name it, I learned about it there.
I also took advantage of my knowledge of WH's to lead SF PvE raiding fleets into W-space, to fuel a T3 production machine (that later resulted in my Legion that I still fly). Running these fleets like PvP operations honed my FCing skills to the speed of "actual" PvP. My experience in SF really was irreplaceable.

ADHC, II

And then life came up, and I let my subscription drop.

A bit ater, I decided to reinstate it, and wasn't sure what I would do with respect to corp. I posted on the ADHC forum, asking if I would be welcome back if I chose to take up EVE again. The ADHC response was very warm and friendly, and after thinking about it, they became the clear choice for coming back; while I learned a lot in SF, the WH life just appealed more to me, and I tended to steer a bit more clear of RP than SF. Plus, rejoining ADHC offered the opportunity for me to take what I learned in SF and share it with a whole new group of people. ADHC doesn't spend nearly as much time in lowsec or k-nullsec as I did during my stint with SF, so I definitely had some expertise to share.
It turned out to be a good decision.

Present Day

And that brings us pretty much to present day in my EVE career. I now do research and production, market trading of all sorts as opportunities present themselves, and spend a large chunk of my time in W-space with ADHC.

I've also taken on roles as a diplomat for ADHC, which I'm sure will lead to a post or two here.

I like to EFT around with ships that I have no experience flying just to see what they can do (this is usually step 1 for me wanting to train a new ship, as it turns out).

I'll mission in known space when the opportunity presents itself, and occasionally will explore or rat in nullsec.

I've taught a few classes at EUNI, some of which have probably been recorded (I will post links at some point), and plan on teaching more as the opportunity presents itself.

What I really like about EVE, though, is the market; reading the market, playing the market, understanding the cause and effect of it all, and profiting from it.

You

Enough about who I am... you're involved here too! Send me an EVEmail, tell me what you do in the world of EVE, maybe what you'd be interested in seeing me do a post on. I have a few ideas of my own (which is good, or this blog would already be in trouble), but I'm always looking for new opportunities.

TL;DR:
I'm a numbers nerd that likes to use those numbers to look at the bigger picture of things, and to try to find some patterns in the chaos.

-K'

Why?

So, why make a blog?

Well, the reasons are many, but they come down to these: I do it for me, now; I do it for me, later; and I do it for you.

I do it for me, now, because I have begun to realize exactly how much of a therapeutic outlet writing is for me. Writing about pretty much anything. My corpmates have seen this in some of my Russian-novel-worthy forum posts, and they will still likely experience a lot of that. But there is plenty that I have to write where a blog makes a bit better choice of a locale, for whatever reason. As it is, anyway, having something to be able to regularly sit down and write on is something that I think will offer personal benefit.

I do it for me, later, because it makes a pretty good place for storing info about EVE. It will be way easier to search through blog posts for a "Market Insight" tag, for example, than trying to search through my hard-drive for a word document that may or may not actually have a useful tag, that I may or may not have deleted, or probably didn't even write down in the first place. In terms of RL benefit, I have noticed that my writing skills have started to decay, since I've last actually *had* to write anything. This is bad, as I'll soon be doing a lot of writing (grad student reporting in), so just getting back into writing will be a plus. You will probably also notice that this means that I'll stick pretty well to the standard rules of English, as opposed to much gaming/online shorthand. Habits and all that.

And I do it for you. I like helping people out. Even if those people are an internet away from me. It doesn't stop you from being any less real. And yes, I may be helping you out by writing about a virtual world, but that doesn't make it any less of a help. EVE has its fun parts and it's not-all-that-fun-parts (that help to make the fun parts more fun, or meaningful), but there's no reason that we can't put a little thinking to the problem to make the not-all-that-fun-stuff a little more fun, or a little less present. Grinding missions for a long time isn't too fun, but sometimes it is necessary to afford a new shiny toy. If you could put your production skills to use while grinding missions, though, and cut off a few hours of missioning time that way, while still getting your shiny, then everyone wins.

And then, going with that example, there is even the side effect that helping you change your habits helped make something that I might want to buy just a little bit cheaper... and voila! We have ourselves an effect on the virtual economy starting up. Multiply that by however many people start to read something I write, and that's potentially a big change. All because of a few words.

So, I hope this becomes a repository of very useful insights into little bits of the EVE universe.

I hope this is a place that unistas will be able to come and find a bit of info that's perhaps a bit more advanced than some of the classes that E-UNI teaches, that'll help them transition into their eventual place in EVE with less pain.

And I hope that it is entertaining, along the way.

TL;DR:
Why? Because I want to, because I can, and because I think you might like it.

-K'

What?

So, as my first foray into the W's, I suppose that "what" is the best place to start. Or at least as good of a place as any.

This is going to be a blog.

This is a place where I will apply my RL training (engineer) to game problems.

This is going to discuss matters of interest to me. 

This is going to be intermediate-to-advanced, as far as EVE-depth goes. I hope to write about things simply enough that even beginners can find some usefulness in it, but I don't plan to handcuff myself inside of the realm of what a beginner can fully understand.

This is going to discuss matters as varied as EVE itself. Some posts will delve into a specific mechanic. Some posts will look into a specific ship. Some will be about the meta-game. Some will be about something cool that happened to me. I'm not limiting myself on content possibilities, but if you are interested in what is more likely to show up here, I'll point you to the "Who?" post.

The basic idea here is that I like to look at a situation and look for the unexpected. If everyone says that a particular ship is bad, for example, my immediate reaction is "Yeah, but what is it good for?" This is the type of attitude that I plan to bring to any topic I bring to the table--looking for something non-obvious, and hopefully insightful.

The other hope is that this will turn into a place where I can do my part to collect and record some of the EVE knowledge I've acquired, to make it easier on the new guys. There is a lot of good info out there on EVE, and there is a lot that is a little sub-par. I'm definitely not perfect, but I hope to keep the information at a high quality level, so that you can know that if you read it here, it's pretty likely to be true.

The final thought that is worth mentioning here is that the goal is for this to be a place where you come, read a post, and leave a slightly better EVE-pilot in some way. While I am interested in "newsy" matters, I'd love for most of what I write to be a bit more timeless, and there is enough of interest in EVE that I think I don't have to turn to news to keep enough interesting topics on the table. To really draw the distinction here, I, for example, wouldn't be particularly interested in making a post on the recent "NEX riots", for the sake of the news of it... why the people are doing it, and such. I might, however, take a look at how people shooting at monuments for days on end impacted the ammo markets around that time, because that's an interesting trend that could be turned into profit if something similar happens again.

I hope that sheds a bit of light as to what you can expect from this, because I'm not sure what else to say, except... wait and see!

TL;DR:
It's a place for my random thoughts on bits of EVE to see the light of day, and hopefully a place you can come on occasion to broaden your EVE horizons.

-K'

First!

Hello there.
If you've stumbled across this, you are either randomly web surfing, completely in the wrong place, or have some kind of interest in EVE Online. In any case, I hope that there is something interesting here for you.

Over the next day or two I'll post a series of blogs answering the "W"s (who, what , when, where, why, and how), and kind of laying the groundwork/philosophy of what I want this to become. This is as much for me in the future as it is for you as the reader, so that I can periodically check back and see how I'm doing on the goals that I'm setting.
None of these goals that I'm setting are written in stone, by any means, and will be subject to change at a future point.

Some of the posts might turn into Russian Novel length entries, and for that, I apologize in advance. I'll try my very best to be concise, while still offering all of the appropriate details for those interested.

And a general shoutout, if you read an entry that I make and want to bring up something, a point that I missed or whatnot, your comments are completely and entirely welcomed. Post them here, EVEmail them to me, whatever. If you'd prefer that I don't directly address that comment in a later blog entry, or if you'd prefer I leave your name off of it if I do, please call that out clearly if you EVEmail me though, otherwise as fair warning, I'll consider anything EVEmailed to me as fair game.

Before I call it a post, I guess that here is probably the best place to mention that the layout and look of my blog will change quickly in the first few weeks that it is up, as I play around a bit to find a look that I like, and may change periodically after that. While I can appreciate the significance of keeping an aesthetic, at the same point I'd like to hope that anyone reading this is more interested in the content than the pretty background. Besides, I like a little change every now and then!

And with that, I shall call this a successful first blog post, and get to tapping out some of the W's...

-K'