Experiment in cleaning

January 31, 2010 at 1:41 pm · Filed under ideas

I”m taking a hard look at the Crafts industry. Overall, I think the organization is fairly sound.  There are a few industry descriptions that need tightening up, but it’s not at all bad. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that a lot of the blogs, particularly those in Fiber Arts are cross voted all over the place. usually when I clean, I do so by looking at one subindustry at a time and by reindexing from the bottom up.  This was proving problematic with the cross voted industries and I was having a hard time keeping track of what I’d cleaned and what needed to be cleaned.

I created two folders in my ideas portfolios and dumped all of the industries under and including crafts into one labeled “cleaning”. As I’ve been cleaning them, they move over to the “cleaned” folder. I’m trying to move around a bit. Jewelry making the one day, needlepoint the next, then say over to Beadwork. That way I have a relatively empty canvas to deal with.

Knitting is going to be a pain. Lot of deads, but it’s such a massive industry. Will tackle that headache when I get to it.

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So I’m being attacked

January 9, 2010 at 8:25 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

And it’s gotten quite bizarre.

A player (will call him Mr. ???) was sending me messages initially about incorrect votes. I dealt with it. He started discussing a dispute he was having with a player from my corp. Now I’m not corp admin and having heard her side of events, and seen through his transactions what had happened, I wasn’t about to intervene for him. Mr. ??? complained that other players from our corp were attacking him with reindexes and links.  I dealt with the IM side of things and suggested he send a message to this player. End the hostilities.

Apparently, that made too much sense.  He informed me that he would be attacking the corp and that since I held most of the holdings, he was sorry but I would be targeted first.  Since corp interest is measured by shares,  I was somewhat confused, because most of my shares are, well, the impolite term would be “crap.”

Reader, he’s been attacking the industries I work. Apparently, he believes that since he lost 100T in ideas, we should all suffer. Now I have worked almost all of these industries with player from other corps. Rather than hurt them, I a) let them know what was happening and b) offered to sell to them rather than dump stuff on the market and have them take a loss.

That is what I did.

Apparently that is not good enough for Mr. ???

He informed them he intended to reindex the hell out of them.

He has now enlarged the hostilities to players from multiple corps.

And the reason I call this player Mr. ???

Is because it’s more polite than Mr. WTH

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Why I’m in the corporation I’m in

December 3, 2009 at 4:33 pm · Filed under corporations

There’s been another change in how corporate interest is configured. With that comes a flurry of activity and discussion and the usual adjustment of strategy.

I didn’t join the corporation I’m in for the interest rate. And I haven’t stayed or left because it’s gone up or down.

I like:

  • the camaraderie – most of the people in my corp have become my friends
  • the protection – I can depend upon these people for voting help, for help defending my blogs
  • the insight – the corp members have always been willing to share that with each other
  • the fit – this is the right group for me.
  • did I mention the camaraderie? Cause ultimately, that’s why I stay.

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I

October 20, 2009 at 9:45 am · Filed under Uncategorized

is here.

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Reorganizing

May 4, 2009 at 4:14 pm · Filed under shares, sigma

I just finished reorganizing my shares portfolios. I do this every so often. I dump it all into one folder and over the course of a week or two go through every single blog (or I try to anyhow). Title changes? Fix the titles. Deads? Sell them off and delist. Nearly dead? Usually sell off and set a watch on the blog to delist. Not voted? I vote them, although I usually try and keep my blogs voted. New blogs

Why go through all that bother? you ask. I don’t have much of a portfolio as far as shares go–and frankly, I probably never will. Well, it keeps things tidy and I like that. A lot of players have sixteen million folders. Many have lots of deads. Some of them have incredible amounts of spam. Well, that’s great for them, I guess. It’s also great for the sigma hunters out there. In my opinion, it also attracts a lot of attention to one’s holdings, but to each his own.

I’d rather have stuff voted so that when it does go dead and the p/e is at 2000+, I can PRD it down low enough to sell. I’d also rather be the one with the karma and the sigma. I’d rather have the deads, the non-blogs, and the spam the heck out of there, so that I don’t take a hit if another player delists it on me. And frankly…well, I like to know what I have.

So it’s done for the next couple of months and I feel pretty good about it.

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I’m #1! (for now)

February 13, 2009 at 4:38 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

composite rankings

composite rankings

Feels so good!

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How to get your blog in the game?

November 8, 2008 at 10:53 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

If you’re playing already, this is easy. You do a search on the url of the blog. If it’s not there, you have the option to add it. Easy 20 chips and 1 sigma point.

If you’re not playing already, you need to either join and add it in, or find someone who will do it for you.

Remember it needs to fit the definitions of a qualified blog.

The game can be played as a non-premium player, i.e. for free.

This is how I got started playing the game. I was looking at my stats and wondering who the heck these people were. Then I got in and saw that my blog was only worth $3000 (which is not surprising, this was a personal blog that had about 3 readers).

How to get the value of your blog up? Well, does anyone else link to it? Is that blog in the system? Has it been reindexed? If it’s not in the system and it’s a qualified blog, add it. It’ll show up.

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Understanding the market for bonds

October 4, 2008 at 12:23 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ,

A new player was asking me about how the bond market worked in the game and how one went about pricing bonds. He asked me to write a post about it so here goes.

People who buy bonds are usually looking for convenience. They are willing to pay more than market value because of that. Figuring out how much above market value is the trick.

There basically two reasons why someone shops on the bond market.

1. To obtain enough ideas to build artefacts

If the artefact is easily obtainable, it’s probably best to issue a bond in 5000 or 10000 idea increments.

If it’s a rare one, say the way the Seuss artefact is, then you can get away with smaller bonds.

2. To obtain rares

These are usually sold in increments of 10 and are bought usually by people who are looking to raise in rank by obtaining as many industries as possible and by collectors (like me!).

Pricing. These are questions you need to ask yourself.

1. How many ideas are there extant?

2. How many blogs are there in that industry? Do they have incoming? If so, how many?

3. Are there other bonds for that industry already?

4. How many players have ideas in this industry? Is it a lot? A few?

Advertising

Use the forums or the main room on irc to get the word out about your bonds.

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Getting started on Blogshares

October 2, 2008 at 4:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

I’ve helped enough new players out that I’m thinking some basic advice is worth a post. In no particular order…

  1. It’s worth it to introduce yourself on the forums. People often send new players chips or blogs and are very welcoming.
  2. Get yourself on IRC. A lot of valuable advice and help can be found there.
  3. Read the help. It’s a complex game and it can be daunting, but it’s where you should start.
  4. Start buying up 10001 of every cheap idea you can. Build every artefact you can.
  5. As you have more wealth, buy 1 of every industry you can.
  6. Look at inactive player holdings. Do they have deads in their ports? Anything worth snagging? Chances are no one is going to come after you.
  7. Figure out your game goals.  What is it you want to accomplish? Do you want to focus on shares? Ideas? Rising in composite rank?

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Never thought I’d say this

September 5, 2008 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

but I’m getting a bit sick of sigma hunting.

I’ve been doing everything. Going through my ports, inactive players’ ports, typing in names and words into the Blogshares search engine (there are no longer any blogs with “cashew” in the title), random blogs, cleaning industries. You name it, I’ve done it.

And I’m finally starting to have my fill of it. Need to keep plugging away. Sigma is one of the few ladders with room left for me to climb. It’s also one of the two categories where the player has to do the work without help.

Back to hunting deads….

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