I also brought a rather nifty domain name for it… Simply volt.vc is the address. As VOLT and VC being common tickers used for Volition Cult in games the domain is suitable, short and easy to remember. In fact if you throw volt.vc into Twitter, the shortened url is actually longer than the original url.

With the domain cost, chat licence fees and game server costs if I setup a Minecraft server again it might turn out to be quite expensive. Depends how many people take advantage and use it. If many do, it becomes worthwhile and rewarding. If not many do, I can pull back costs so its cheap to operate.

There is the need to get to a critical mass in terms of active members for the project to work and the website to be active and worthwhile, getting to that point so that we can then see stable long term growth will be the biggest challenge, as with any new website. I am investigating various marketing ideas, but if I can get groups of friends to take advantage of the platform it should be fine.

For the past few months I have been spending quite a lot of time with Eve Online again and its not like I don’t have enough time for gaming. I must spend about 50 hours a week playing games, its just that there is simple too many games and Eve Online being quite time demanding.

Updates from Eve Online

Lots of things have been happening in Eve to keep me busy. We have seen a couple of new corporations join The Volition Cult alliance and a corporation leave us. We also did some much needed reshuffling and reorganisation to improve communication and get our goals aligned.

PBA lunax was the CEO of Volition Cult at the time but needed a break so resigned. I stepped up in the interim which is why a couple of weeks ago I became CEO. PBA lunax came back from his break pretty quickly but he is just working on recruitment and PvP for now.

Things are calming down and looking pretty positive these days. Work is delegated out nicely so there is not too much for me to worry about as we have a great team of people covering everything. Biggest challenge is probably going to be getting used to stability and ensuring growth continues, but that just takes time.

Updates from Gaming

The list of unplayed games in Steam continues to grow larger, but I am actively working through the backlog of games.

Nearly finished LA Noire which is pretty cool, more of a story driven game. Much longer than I initially expected as the game seems to keep continuing with plot twists and such. The game play is different and sometimes frustrating but it has a nice “skip” feature if you fail something three times in a row.

Mass Effect 3 was not too bad either. Not much closure on the ending of the trilogy, but still good. Not sure why there were so many red telephone boxes in London though. Have I mentioned before how much EA and Origin annoy me?

Guild Wars 2 public beta starts this weekend though, so I am really looking forward to that. Only a few days to go until I can finally have a go and try it out. Have to install a new SSD, reinstall Windows and get it all setup for Friday though.

Updates from Real Life

Still testing out my new Axbo Sleep Phase Alarm Clock. So far things are going fine and it appears to work well as I do feel better in the mornings and its nice to have a proper alarm clock rather than just a mobile phone, but its still too early for me to feel happy about the purchase.

Getting rewards for doing something is cool, but artificially extending a game with grind annoys me. (Like the pointless gear grind every six months in World of Warcraft!) Now all I have to do is cross my fingers for a beta invite to Guild War 2.

Thankfully BE offer a cheap landline service and as I already use them for my internet service, there is no contract for the landline as it just uses my broadband one which ended years ago. So I decided to switch to from BT’s £15 per month landline to BE’s £10 per month landline.

Decided to check with BT to make sure there was no cancellation charge, there should not be as I signed up to a 12 month contract in 2007 which would have ended and became rolling in 2008 so I thought I was 4 years out of contract.

Has my contract ended and now just rolling? I am thinking about signing up for another providers landline service so want to make sure when I sign up on there site, and they inform you of the transfer, you don’t charge a cancellation fee.

Sent the above to BT and started an online live chat with someone in there Indian call chat centre.

Vanishree Karkera: Hi Ross
Ross Stone: Hi
Vanishree Karkera: Please give me a minute, while I check the details for you.
Ross Stone: Thanks
Vanishree Karkera: You are on Unlimited Evening and Weekend calls and this offer expires on 10/08/2012
Ross Stone: So I have to wait until the 10/08/2012 before I can move to a different provider?
Vanishree Karkera: Is there any particular reason you wish to cease service or anything we can do to retain your custom?
Ross Stone: My current ISP (BE Unlimited) offer a basic landline service for £10 / month.
Ross Stone: I don’t use the landline for calls.
Ross Stone: I just need it for ADSL. So want to have the cheapest service you see.
Vanishree Karkera: We have the Line Rental saver offer http://www.bt.com/rentalsaver
Vanishree Karkera: £10.00 a month equivalent
Ross Stone: I signed up to BT years ago on a 12 month contract I thought. I moved in 2010 maybe so I should be out of contract and free to move without cancellation fees but wanted to check.
Ross Stone: Hmm
Ross Stone: Not interested in that saver thing you linked as its not cheaper and having to reorder and pay up front is not convient.
Vanishree Karkera: We have a separate team called Customers Option team who normally offers Special deals.

I am afraid that I am not authorised to provide Special offers and Customers Option team do not work on Chat Is that Ok If I can call you get this arranged
Ross Stone: Could you just advise if I will be charged a cancellation fee if I transfer line to another provider?
Ross Stone: Not in a position to answer call at the moment, hence why Chat / Email is preferable for me.
Vanishree Karkera: Yes you will be .
Ross Stone: I will be charged a fee?
Vanishree Karkera: £15.42 is the cancellatuion
Vanishree Karkera: sorry
Ross Stone: I don’t understand, how am I still on contract?
Vanishree Karkera: £15.42 is the cancellation charge
Vanishree Karkera: You are on Unlimited Evening and Weekend calls and this offer expires on 10/08/2012 If you cancel the charges are £15.42
Ross Stone: When did that contract start though?
Ross Stone: As I have lived at my present home for over two years… I would not have signed a new contract in the last two years?
Vanishree Karkera: This was a auto renewable contract. It renews once in 12 months and on the 11th month we advise the customer
Ross Stone: So it does not become one month rolling? Hmm, this is not what BT advised when I first signed up five+ years ago.
Ross Stone: Do you have a link or copy of a web page that explains this clause of your standard contract?
Vanishree Karkera: http://www.bt.com/termcharges
Ross Stone: How do you advise me? By email? I don’t believe I have received notices (paperless billing). Searching my Gmail does not advise of such.
Ross Stone: Your website states…
Ross Stone: “No. Early termination charges only apply if you cancel within your minimum term. So for example if you took a 12 month contract and then sought to cancel 13 months later then no minimum charge would be payable.”
Ross Stone: I am cancelling on the like 60th month of my contract.
Ross Stone: Its not an early cancellation. (There was no response for 10 minutes)
Ross Stone: Well, if its only £15.42 then that still works out cheaper moving to another provider as I save £4 / month so I will switch to avoid your complicated and misleading fee structures.
Ross Stone: Thank you for your help
Vanishree Karkera: Your contract got renewed on 11/08/2011 and will expire on 10/08/2012
You have disconnected.

Bugger. It seems that during my time with BT, they had called to offer me a “free” addition due to my loyalty to BT and offered me “free” evening and daytime calls at no extra charge. Not that I use the BT line for calls anyway. It seems that this gift to there valued customers comes with a clause that you agree to a 12 month recurring contract, rather than my 12 month contract and no contract then onwards.

They tricked me out of £15.42! Don’t trust BT salesman is the lesson to learn. If I was told all the details I would have rejected the offer, but I unwittingly agreed over the phone not really caring as I don’t make calls so I thought it did not really effect me.

As for the £10 month contract they offered me to switch too. Its hidden behind requirements to pay one year upfront for it and to make two calls a month to avoid a £1.50 surcharge. Meanwhile BE offer £10 with no contract (uses broadband one), no hidden surcharges and no cancellation fees. Much simpler.

It also seems that although I have signed up to paperless billing, BT will send notifications of contract renewals by post? I don’t really pay attention to the post I get as its mostly spam and all my bills are online and paperless these days so I must have missed it. Why they did not email me, I don’t know.

The other thing that annoyed me was how BT keep ringing me up on my landline offering me other services like BT Infinity. I registered my number against the TPS in 2007 and so don’t get marketing calls, the only time I get calls on my landline is from BT marketing who seem to ignore TPS.

BT Infinity is crap for gaming anyway. Download limits are too restrictive… Four games off steam will max you out and then would have used your monthly download limit in a day. So if you format your machine like I did and then reinstall your games off steam… Well, that’s it… No internet for you.

Not sure if BT are better or worse than Virgin, the other fibre internet provider in the UK. Virgin are terrible for gaming too though. While they offer the fastest download speeds in the UK, the performance at peak times is unplayable for gaming as they throttle things.

Thank goodness for BE being around to save us gamers from the terrible alternatives.

BT only scammed me out of £15 plus the £70 I paid on there more expensive services over the last three years so its not too bad I guess. Lesson learned. Reading forums, others were not so lucky.

Elsewhere BT announced a jump in profits last quarter… maybe they could invest it in better customer service, easier to understand tariffs or sales staff that don’t falsely explain products.

/end rant about being charged £15 cancellation fee by BT once my transfer order with BE is completed.

Until now, people had always said that solid state was the way to go and they saw some great improvements in load times of various things but because I was never able to actually sit behind a computer before and after one of the drives had been installed it was difficult to visualise in my head if it would be worth while.

Having installed the drive, which came in a nice heat sink thing so it could be fitted in the bay smoothly, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate onto the drive. One of the first weird things I noticed was that the windows installer was much faster, although I was using a DVD rather than USB stick as I had given my USB stick away to a friend who uses it more than my once a year for OS installs. (Need to buy a new one sometime.)

Windows installer does not quite work right though. The progress percentage for copying files for example stays at 0% and then jumps to 100%. Because SSD’s are silent, there is no Hard Disk Drive noise… This feels strange. I expect to hear the HDD so when I don’t hear anything, I actually have to bend under my desk and check the disk activity light. Windows 7 now boots up and shuts down faster though.

C: is a 60GB SSD
D: is my old OS partition
E: is a large storage HDD

Now I don’t want all my games installed on the SSD as I would quickly run out of space. I also don’t want my generic documents, music, pictures and movies on my SSD.

So the first step is to move the libraries in Windows 7 to the E: which is fine as I am the only user, I can Cut and Paste everything in C:UsersRoss Stone into E: and Windows 7 knows to update the library settings so the default paths are in E:.

Next is installing Steam and Origin (I hate Origin) onto the E: so that by default games from those online services install to the E:. The issue is that Steam by default only installs games into its own directory in steamapps folder. So all Steam games have to run from E:. If you install Steam to C: by mistake like I did, you can move but its a pain.

Origin on the other hand only allows you to install applications to one location. You can choose the location, but all your games installed from that point have to go there. Changing it before each install works, but its a pain and there is no means to move a game afterwards. So I set that to default to E: too.

Moving specific games to the SSD as needed

With around 40GB free on my SSD, I can choose a couple of games that I play the most and run them from the SSD so I see the biggest performance gains. To do this smoothly, you install all games to E: as per how Steam and Origin like, and then create a symbolic link after moving files.

Eve Online does not really need to run off an SSD so it can stay on the HDD.
Battlefield 3 is retarded and the game launches fresh for each game, it also takes minutes to load a level for multiplayer so SSD would be great here.

Step 1: I created a folder here C:Symbolic
Step 2: Moved the E:OriginBattlefield 3 folder to C:SymbolicBattlefield 3
Step 3: Create a symbolic link in E:Origin called Battlefield 3 that points to C:SymbolicBattlefield 3

This requires you to open up command prompt as Administrator and type either of the below…

mklink /J “E:OriginBattlefield 3″ “C:SymbolicBattlefield 3″
mklink /D “E:OriginBattlefield 3″ “C:SymbolicBattlefield 3″

/J is used for directory junction.
/D is for directory symbolic link.

PC Gamer for example advised using /D in its SSD articles which is what I used. Steam forums advised of using /J though. I would imagine both work well enough for this.

Anyway, Origin will think its running Battlefield 3 off E: so run fine, but its actually running off C: sort of transparently so you get the performance boost of the SSD without having to reinstall games.

If I want to clear some room as I don’t play Battlefield 3 anymore, I can simply delete the link and copy the files back onto E: where they started.

Now its all setup its great though. Windows 7 is quick and Battlefield 3 actually loads into a game before the round has already started.

Unfortunately SSD’s are still expensive, but I can see the benifit of them and my mind is made up… My next computer will probably have an SSD, although hopefully they continue to drop in price over the next year or two.

£300 for a 256GB SSD is crazy considering all it does is improve loading times, not actual game performance. £70 for a 60GB SSD is justifiable but its quite restricted as most games are 10-20GB now and while Windows takes up 20GB.

All of that however is out of date and old news because as of today its now safe to say that both of those things have been achieved! Stone’s Wishing Well exists and anyone can fly to Y-MPWL and see it. While the Nyx also now exists albeit on a character and location that will remain undisclosed.

Lets start with the Supercarrier, basically it was purchased finally. It looks very shiny and I called it Flagship of Volition. Not sure I will use it any time soon but that’s not really the point of it for me, it was more the challenge of acquiring one. I use other characters more often.

As for the Outpost… That was much more work and required contribution from hundreds of people in the alliance. As of writing we actually have three outposts now. Thankfully we are lucky enough to have some very experienced pilots to cover the various aspects of the task. The work required is insane so its certainly an accomplishment.

We had our military arm of hundreds of people spending hours each day for a week over Christmas attacking and destroying all of the enemy infrastructure. Meanwhile our industrial arm was busy deploying and managing our own infrastructure. The whole process is horrifically convoluted, but fun.

As this is part of the alliances history now, I recorded the above pretty crappy video with no real content just as a means to save what we had achieved really.

This was until I remembered Dave on TeamSpeak saying that there result was Ultra High Quality. So I decided to create the following #firstworldproblems #skyrim internet meme image.

Its a hard life.

As usual, thanks to Luth Curmal for content, our unnamed fleet commanders for battlereports, unnamed players who took videos and screenshots of those battles and Gareth Barkwell for proof reading.

Newsletter can be downloaded in PDF format from the below link.

Link to Voice of VOLT 19 (1.9 MB)

Content Includes:

• Editorial Message and Introduction.
• Battle Reports for second half of August.
• Corp Introductions from MAX H, TRGSS, VC and GV.
• More Battle Reports for second half of August.
• Details of how Usurper. [STOLN] alliance suck at PvP and fail consistently.
• Even more Battle Reports for second half of August.
• Details about a really stupid Executive Outcomes pilot called Anat Tenner.
• Insight into our reformation.

Feedback welcome. Contributors for next quarter welcome.

The Volition Cult Forums Link: http://www.eve-volt.net/smf/index.php?topic=7528.0

After that, the next few I got from the much safer Amazon website from a company called DagaCanvas. Pictures below…

The first was £9.99 for all three sections, which I picked up during my time in the dangerous Kingswood. It actually fits the room quite nicely though although the theme is random.

The next two were from Amazon and cost £12 to £30 but they were themes that I have a direct interest in so worth while.

Next on my list of home improvements is a vacuum cleaner and new office chair I guess, although I also need some new kitchen things too. New technology will have to wait.