Reykjavik Blog, Day Three

Hmm, lots happened today.

Headlines (for EVE players): Dominion will be released on 1st December, with Walking in Stations sometime after that. I posted a video of the teaser shown here to the EVE Markets site, forgetting that I pay for bandwidth :-S See http://fanfest.mmmetrics.co.uk/ for a decent summary of all the chatter. Oh, and someone who wasn't me mentioned EVE Markets in a dev round-table!

Headlines (for non-EVE players reading this because you know me): More internet spaceships stuff. Surviving mostly on chocolate covered raisins and orange juice, though I managed to sell a couple of beer tokens for 1000ISK so might be able to afford nutrition today! It's been cold and wet, or at least it was this morning when I last saw the outside world...

Reykjavik Blog, Day Two

FanFest proper opened today.

I'm sat on the floor next to just about the only plug socket I could find in the FanFest venue - and yes, that is the Jita 4-4 undock point you can see through the 'window' - because there's free wifi here.

Didn't manage to get a slot in the frigate free-for-all tournament, but went to round-tables on the EVE server architecture and web development team. There is only one database server for the whole game... (Actually, there are two - one is a hot-standby machine - but the 30sec of unavailability that a switch takes is enough to kill the cluster anyway).

An (ahem) interesting presentation from those idiots at Goonswarm concluded events today as part of an alliance leaders' panel. EVE really is a cold, dark, harsh universe, and that's reflected in some of the playerbase...

I met CCP Applebabe today too! Finally shook hands with DV of EVE University. And, I was in the same room as StevieSG. Wow, I'm mixing it up with the stars here at "Jita 4-4"! Now, I should head off and find some food - it's only 8PM but it feels like it's been a long day. If only there were an easy way of getting or making a cup of tea here...

Tomorrow's expected highlights: talks on COSMOS (nicknamed 'Spacebook' by pilots), the API, the in-game browser and the economy; a preview of the next expansion, Dominion, and throughout the day the main PvP tournament. It's an even longer day tomorrow!

Reykjavik Blog, Day One

Left my flat at 7.30 this morning, got to Gloucester Green and on the Airline coach at 8. Checked in at Heathrow by 10.30am - I was amused by the EVE banter going on in the queue. The poor an behind me lost his Absolution the previous evening. (But it's not all bad; his son salvaged the wreck in his Paladin.)

The flight itself was about three hours, end to end - I got a window seat above the wing so got a few nice pictures, as well as some video footage that's just begging to be used at the next Late Service I run visuals at... Very smooth flight, and any form of transport where the tea is complementary is a winner to me.

Got to the hotel at about 5.00, and I went for a wander around the city while I had the chance... Managed to get thoroughly lost, and did actually end up going in circles for a while before I worked out I'd been right the first first time... It's not warm here, but above freezing, so I'm fairly comfortable with the temperature walking around.

Grabbed some food from the Subway across the road. This hotel's a little stingy - there's not even a "welcome to the hotel" pack, let alone a kettle or even any toiletries - and the WiFi is costly, so I've had to make the choice to leave the "leet haxor" skills in the toolkit and will use the FanFest area's free WiFi tomorrow!

Tomorrow's expected highlights: Free-for-all PvP tournament, plus some round-table discussions on the EVE server cluster and web development. More photos, thoughts and news from Iceland as it happens (and as I find free WiFi hotspots and the time to type!)