Everyone Loves a Good Story

Entry: six hundred nine.

I ventured out of station a bit late today. There wasn't much of anything going on for the first two hours, so I took the time to get a good workout in. When I got back, still nothing was going on, so I took some time to catch up on the public logs of several other capsuleers. Of the ones I keep up to date on, the ones most interesting to me are the ones that harken back to my old days, of how they were and how they should have been.

Taurean's logs reflect how I wish my early days had been: full of life, access to good information, and every day seemingly as interesting as the last. 

TurAmarath's log bring nostalgia to my door, reminding me of a secluded, dangerous life in unknown and undeveloped space. The little I'd managed to learn from my first six months in Empire paled to the knowledge and understanding I gained in W-space. The riches I acquired from W-space far outstripped anything I had made in Empire prior to then. The fun I had compared to Empire was such an immense gain, I knew I could never go back for long. 
 
Rhaldar's logs however tell a different story, more closely resembling my early days even when I was recruited into my first corporation. Information was hard to come by, support far flung, ISK more difficult to acquire than it should have been. On reading his logs, had I not experienced similar hardship, I don't think I would be able to relate. Life in New Eden is exceedingly more difficult when you have to learn from scratch, as opposed to having resources at your disposal to point you in the right direction, the most important of which being knowing which questions to ask.

This isn't to dismiss the lives of others, such as Taurean's. I can't say for sure if he had information and understanding about a capsuleer's life before becoming one, or how much access to information he gained early on via the pirate community, but my impression was that advice was given quite liberally, and that he did have some knowledge of what awaited him. Still, knowledge nor understanding does an easy life make, not necessarily.

Of the logs I follow, those I find the second-least interesting are the meta logs. They're largely the sort that take every opportunity to take yet another tidbit of information about or from the Concord Police's {CCP} records or politics and use it to speculate on the future of New Eden. While it's clearly important, as I can clearly see that they have quite large followings, they aren't for me. Keeping abreast of the mood of New Eden in a must though, however lacking in excitement such speculative logs and hard analyses are. I do sometimes find these "hard" analyses to be skewed in data however, focusing on single or small sets of related talking points, and ignoring other issues that come in to play on the data in question. 

It is worth noting that some of these meta logs are interesting, and do not (usually) have skewed data and skewed arguments, directing a reader towards a particular conclusion. Admissions of inaccuracies are typically clearly laid out, a refreshing practice for anyone doing any sort of analysis. 

My favorite source of reading material at this time are Pirate and Factional Warfare logs. The incidents are exciting, the analyses thoughtful and unbiased, and After Action Reports written extremely well, engaging my senses and drawing upon my own memories to manufacture replays worth watching.
 
I do wish there were more null-sec oriented logs available. Perhaps I've not searched enough, perhaps there really are that few. Currently, I only know of two other capsuleers with public logs concerning null-sec, one by Easley Thames, and one who titles his logs "Aggressive Tendencies".
 
Last on my list, logs I can't bear to read, these are logs that rarely talk about anything relevant to capsuleer life in any respect, except for the occasional "meta" entry, almost always geared towards slamming CCP, or New Eden, or some other faction in this galaxy, and always talking about other stuff such as Tanks, or politics in another galaxy, all of it completely unrelateable and completely uninteresting to me. What the hell do I want to read about tanks for? I pilot starships, the smallest combat variant being at least double the size of a tank, able to move in four dimensions quite freely, with massively more firepower, and more speed. What do I care about events on some distant world that may or may not exist, as if the politics in this one weren't interesting and relevant. And yet, these logs are still somehow popular among the active public loggers of New Eden. Consider my mind blown.

To finish up, I do follow several news sources. Evenews24 is a good one, though typically sensationalized, and for as long I've been with Cascade Imminent, a propoganda machine for the DRF and the Deklein Coalition. Lost In EVE is another excellent one, sadly reduced to one or two podcasts a month. Voices From the Void is another excellent one, largely for entertainment value as the news sources seem to come straight from Evenews24. Kugutsumen is an excellent source of the "real news", but sifting through troll posts for the meat if an exercise in masochism at best. Kugu is one those places that requires real dedication to bring the story to light, or rather trudge through all the slag to find it.

To anyone who reads this, I recommend you visit the above logs at least once. You should be able to make a determination within one log entry if you will enjoy the logger and his style of recording. If you do, you've helped yourself and perhaps inspired the logger to put more effort into his own logs, and if you don't you've lost nothing but a few minutes you were going to spend unwisely anyways.

And to anyone who reads this, what types of logs do you follow, and how do you get your news?
 
Computer: terminate recording.