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05 December 2017

Holiday Ball 2017

 Some photos of our Holiday Ball 2017  from Patty Poppy. It was held in a big icy structure up on the sky platform.


10 November 2017

Windows Fall Update Annoyances

Yes it has several for me...

A new security section "Controlled Folder Access" stops "unfriendly apps" from changing files in certain data folders. By default, these are any non Microsoft program and everything in the User folder.
Oh dear! Some programs store data in User folders, so they need whitelisting. EVE Online was one such, and it was generating alerts as it tried to Save its chat logs. I suspect this might have been causing crashes as well.
Another was, mysteriously, a Microsoft program... msiexec.exe is the Windows installer program which I get repeated alerts about for trying to access the Desktop folder. There are only shortcuts there.

27 July 2017

I'm not that wealthy!

According to her EVE Character Sheet, Ori is worth 82 Billion ISK. Now while as a corporation CEO she is not short of funds that is plainly untrue, so what was going wrong?

There is a Character Assets XML table that can be downloaded via the EVE API. This doesn't include some things which are on the Character Sheet such as cash and escrow but still...

The XML had a column with mixed Tables and nulls which Excel wouldn't expand, so I had to create a second table to get this flattened out, it held the contents of containers and ship fittings.
Annotating the tables revealed an accounting glitch. The corporation transports goods from the factory to the market where they sit in a warehouse before going on sale. A corporation warehouse would be absurdly expensive to rent at a trade hub so the corp uses Ori's personal storage hanger which is free, and this comes up as her assets.
So that was around 40 billion located. Where was the rest? It turned out that sales orders were also being credited to Ori, only when items were sold did the cash arrive in the corporation bank account. And there on the order sheet was another 37 billion!

Another glitch was found whilst doing all this - the API ignores personal stuff in player owned space stations. This is unlikely to be corrected as XML is being phased out.

30 June 2017

Spacesheeting 51

'51' being the version of the EVE spreadsheet I've reached!

Following the conversion to Power Query all seemed well. There is a bug I created myself by deleting worksheets without disconnecting downloads on them, but that just requires pressing a button twice.

Meanwhile the devs have progressed from one API front end, CREST, to another, SWAGGER. Noticing that it had a useful price list I ventured into it armed only with my shaky knowledge of JSON and it was as tricky as I feared. Why is every entry called 'Record'? Much searching followed until I realised that the 'List to Table' button was the magic one.

26 May 2017

Luncheon at Trikassi

An al fresco luncheon at Chateau Trikassi.with friends.

Some of our guests live in Aislinn castle, top left.



Dame Litta and Oriella with tomato soup:



13 April 2017

Time to upgrade

After seven years, a new desktop PC! The previous one has served well with only one hardware failure, the power unit.
So as before something middle range for about the same price and rely on Moore's Law to make it better.
250GB SSD
GeForce GTX 1060
Intel i7
Aero Cool DS200 case+fans

It is, as advertised, silent.
I could have used a shift everything over utility, but that would have taken accumulated junk with it so I'm only moving specific files and where possible downloading and installing from scratch.
So far, no drama. If anything over enthusiasm, since Windows was grabbing settings from the old machine without asking!

And then I hit an Excel snag. Excel 2016 has integrated Power Query into the main program, it was an optional Addon for earlier versions. In doing so the old XML table downloader seems to have been broken, it fails to Save Maps correctly.
So I had to convert. Power Query is more generalised and is indeed powerful, but it's a complicated pain to learn. There is a button for everything, but where is it?
Today came the big test, running the converted sheet on Excel 2016. Success!

[added] Time to check really old programs: Webedit and WS/FTP are both Win95 vintage, mirrors of their folders have followed me faithfully and... they still work. A test edit of a website page uploaded with no complaints.

The sad demise of Daisy

My very old Email address daisy.freeserve.co.uk will be no more in a few weeks. My ISP has decided to no longer provide a mail server.
So, since I already have a Google address Google it is.

06 February 2017

Oops

Oh dear - not been killed in EVE for a long while. I forgot that War Declarations only expire 24 hours after the clock runs out and got ambushed in my big fat freighter.
In EVE you wake up in a new clone minus your expensive implants and with a depleted bank balance, a totally unpleasant experience.

20 January 2017

Nothing of Interest


The big change in EVE last year was a new range of player owned space stations, so my Corporation built one. It's a robot factory called "Nothing of Interest" orbiting the innermost moon of a gas giant, a pretty spot.
Editing the spreadsheet to take account of the various advantages not renting factory space provides has been tricky, but if I've got it right the green lights say we are in for a profitable year. Assuming no one decides to blow it up that is.