I sat down this morning in front of the computer and re-started it for a software update, drank my coffee, ate my banana, caught up on my phone, and watched my computer slowly come back to life. My morning routine typically runs in versions of this. Text my Dad. Check zKill to see if any Stay Frosty pilot exploded horribly while I was asleep. And then check messages across all the platforms. This morning I had some video comments over on YouTube and I try to answer as many of those as I can. And that's when I saw the update - overnight the channel passed 3k subs!!

First of all, THANK YOU!! I know this isn't changing world hunger, or solving the climate crisis, or stuff like that - but for me this is huge. Sincerely. I appreciate all of you and your support truly does mean the world to me. It is encouraging. And keeps my engine running, fueled up, and ready to tackle all the challenges that life keeps throwing at us all. It truly does. Thank you.

Your support really does mean something to me. And I make decisions based around that support, or the lack of it. Videos that do well encourage me to continue creating more videos like that, and videos that don't do as well encourage me to start thinking in different directions. I don't create anything for the purpose of being popular, that's not who I am. I create things I like and hopefully others will like them as well. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. But your support does help inform those decisions.

So special thanks this morning. You made my day. And now I need to open Premier and edit a new short for tomorrow.  This one captures a Drake we caught yesterday in our Dessies. I think you'll like it.

Onward & Upward.

So YouTube has a new "Show" feature that I've been exploring. It is essentially a playlist that can play videos in an episodic fashion, almost like you are binging a Netflix show. So I've created two new shows that organize some of my videos under thematic and related content.

The first is the new Universal Geographic banner. This Show currently has 18 episodes of Eve Online documentaries that I've created over the years. Obviously some of the older ones did not yet have the Universal Geographic branding, that only came around last year. But they are all docs created about the universe of Eve Online. Some are serious, some are humorous, some are a little unhinged, but they are all very creative and unique in the community. No one else is making content like this. So I hope you enjoy watching and more episodes will be coming soon.

The second Show is the Good Fight series featuring raw, visceral, entertaining PvP from the adventures of your favorite pirate corporation Stay Frosty. There are 9 episodes of this series so far with more coming every week or so. I just released a new one today entitled "Mixed Doubles" that features two great brawls including one in Null Sec. So be sure to check them out. And share with your friends.

And, as always, new shorts every day featuring combat, humor, fun, and tips/tricks filmed on location inside of New Eden. As well as more content than you can shake a stick at. Including a big one I'm working on right now, which will be the Definitive Guide to the Federation Navy Comet. That one is coming soon!

Plus The Safe Spot, the return of Pirates Corner (in a few weeks), and much, much more.

Onward & upward!

After once again being berated by a victim of mine in chat today, I thought it was time for some truth bombs some of you are not going to like to hear. I don't think twice about shooting young players. In fact, I don't even think once about it. If you are in space and in a situation, ship, and location in which I can engage you - I will engage you.

There is no way in-game for me to know ahead of time if you are a new player, a veteran player, or a veteran player's new alt they are using to generate income and who is strangely well-fitted and experienced for their age. I know I could sit around and look up everyone in locals "Show Info" screens, and then log that information onto a spreadsheet, look them up on zKill, coordinate the data, and then figure out who to attack. Oh wait, local changed in that ten minutes. I've even been told there are apps available that might help me do this. But I don't use them. Nor will I ever use them.

I don't own a magical Noob Detector device. And I wouldn't use one if I did. It doesn't matter to me. You are in space and in a ship, you are fair game. I might discover after our fight that you are a young player and I might reach out to you to suggest changes, encourage you, or even give you ISK to help replace the ship you lost. I do that quite often. Almost every day. But I won't do it if you are going to yell at me and try to make me feel bad about the victory I just scored. Because I don't feel bad. Ever.

Today's incident involved a Cormorant and I was in my trusty Comet. I've lost fights to Cormorants before. It's rare, but it happens. Earlier in the day I had a nasty tooth and nail fight with a younger player in a Tristan. Darn thing nearly killed me. And that rarely happens. I'm risking my ship when I engage. There was a couple of Cruisers on scan at the time, will those be coming along to help a friend? Maybe. Eve is complicated and the environment is always hostile, especially to me. I'm flashing, suspect, red, and often have a nasty skull blinking in local. I'm a -10 criminal, shoot-on-sight, without repercussions. You can shoot me on a Gate or Station and NOT get gate/station guns. I don't have time to make deep dives into every pilot's background, history, and inclination. I act.

It's not personal. But I'm not changing my play style for you. I see a ship. I attack. It really is that simple. And yes, you are often not a very good fight. But I only know that afterwards. Until then, what the heck do I know? Do you have any idea how often supposedly noob players are used as bait? Or how often they are the alts of a much, much older player? It happens all the time. All the time. Later in the day today I was in a system with two other players. One was a veteran 2011 player and one was a younger 2025 player. One was inside a Medium Advanced in a Catalyst Navy Issue, the other one was strangely not on scan. And yes, there being only two players I checked their Show Info. Obviously that veteran player was inside that Med Adv in a combat recon. That is what I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Eve is harsh. It is unforgiving. And it is insanely awesome. It is extremely difficult to be a young player in New Eden. I get it and I will help as much as I can, when I can. I write guides, I make Tutorials, and I will often give advice right on the spot. But I can't help once I have you locked and scrammed. At that moment you and I are locked in a deadly dance to see who will survive, and I want to survive. I want to win that fight. Especially against a much younger player.

I'm not out looking to fight younger players. And here is the harsh truth about this - young players get killed because they suck at Eve. A more veteran player would have gotten safe when they saw me enter local, or caught my Comet on their d-scan sitting outside their plex. They would have avoided the fight. You didn't. You make mistakes. You mine in Ouelletta. You run missions in Low Sec. You aren't checking your d-scan. You are afk. Whatever it happens to be, you aren't doing it right. And those mistakes are going to get you killed. Period. Hopefully, you will learn and get better. And I'm on your side here, I really do want you to get better. I want everyone to be good at Eve.

I didn't intend to write so much and I've probably said all of this before somewhere in these pages. But I really am getting tired of being yelled at. I'm a pirate. This is all I do. I warp around, shoot people in the face, and hopefully win more than I lose. And I am insanely good at it.

And that is your goal. Git gud. Or die trying.

Over the past month or so I've been struggling to figure out why I randomly seem to suffer from issues that cause my ships to explode. Mods won't activate. Mods will overheat and not-overheat, but not actually activate. Mods will seemingly activate, but strangely not do anything. I can smash click, or smash the keys and literally nothing happens. Again, this all seems rather random. And I've been losing ships at a rather alarming rate recently due to the issue.

I've posted a bunch of examples on various shorts on my YouTube channel. Even when I do get the mods working, I'm often starting fights already deep into a hole. This has been an extremely frustrating Summer. I've been clearing cache files, double clicking the ESC menu, cleaning keyboards and my mouse, testing, re-starting - all the typical things. I even sent a video to FC. And nothing seems to be working.

This all came to a rather horrible head yesterday. Which is sad, because otherwise my day was going great. I had just released my new Alliance Tournament trailer and was feeling really good about my Eve Online session. Then I lost three ships in a row. And I was so pissed off about these losses that I didn't even check that I had Snakes in my head and jumped into a triple bubble camp in it. Yep, that is the kind of day I had.

The first fight was only partially due to these issues. My Cat Navy wouldn't warp, so I ended up tangling with a Pilgrim and hoping help would arrive in time to save me. And while I lasted a lot longer than I had any right to, help did not arrive in time. This happens. And in isolation, no big deal. But my day was just getting started.

I grabbed a Coercer Navy and went hunting. Blow off some steam. My first fight was with a Thrasher Fleet Issue and I was deep into structure when I finally got the guns working. I don't think my ship even moved. Boom. Now I'm really mad.

So I cleared cache for the 2nd time and re-started everything. Jumped into a Thrasher Fleet and went looking for another fight. I needed to dig myself out of this slump. I saw a Pioneer in a site and thought this would be a good place to start. It warped off. And so did I... but nope. I did not warp off. And that's when the Cynabal landed.

I actually was a little bitchy in local. So I convo'd Zaneti to apologize and explain, I wasn't angry at him. I was just angry at the situation. We had a good chat and turns out he had a similar problem, although his turned out to mostly be his keyboard. During our chat I am warping my pod back home to call it a night. That's when I fell into the gate camp.

I asked if they would let a poor Pirate through. And one of them actually took their bubble down to let me pass. But the other two did not. That's when I discovered I had Snakes in from the other night when we were in Orthrus' chasing some ships around. Totally my fault of course. But it did manage to put a rather horrid cherry on top of a big pile of dung.

I suspect it is my internet connection. While we did get upgraded earlier this year to full fiber-optic zoom zooms, it has also been struggling over the summer. And I don't believe that is a coincidence. But I will continue to do what I can and hopefully things will clear up once all the internet sucking school children are back in school.

Otherwise this pirate might be spending more time sitting in the station.

A few weeks ago the team over at JUST challenged us with another Alliance Tournament reward. Create a trailer for the upcoming AT. The thing about being a part of the platform since the beginning is that often you will see the same rewards pop up over time. The last time this reward popped up I ended up winning first place in the reward for this trailer. Nothing wrong with that trailer, it uses captured video from various sources, mostly FC's previous trailers. It is well edited and I really like the music. But what could I do this year to top myself?

I did consider just not participating. But I really enjoy the Alliance Tournament, even when I'm not playing in it myself. And last year I was fortunate to be asked to create videos for each of the teams in the final rounds - which was a tremendous honor and I really enjoyed working on that project. You can see those at this link. Including a behind-the-scenes look at how I managed to build them all. 

So what could I do to top myself?

In cases like this I tend to start by watching the masters. I spent a few hours watching award-winning title sequences from the very best motion graphics people and teams. Including a lot of Saul Bass and the various people who worked on David Fincher's films - always among my all-time favorites. Eventually an idea started to form and the genesis of it came from my own work. 

I did a couple of art pieces based on the Mekubal and the Khizriel that you can still find over on my Etsy Store for purchase. These two pieces were done in a new style that I really enjoyed working with, a more graphical based style than my usual. What would that style look like animated?

I sketched out a few rough storyboard ideas in my notebook and got started. For a project like this I wanted to edit directly over a powerful soundtrack. And my only real option these days is Suno. But in this case I had to work harder to create what I wanted. In order to get the track I wanted I ended up creating over 20 tracks and editing them myself in Adobe Audition. This way I could organize the drum tracks, choir, and the big hits exactly where and when I wanted them. While I am no fan of AI, sadly there is literally no where else to accomplish something like this without spending thousands of dollars I don't have.

After that I spent almost two weeks creating the art and designing the animations. I used Adobe Illustrator for the art and created the animations in After Effects. I really went hard at this project and it occupied a large part of my time and energy. I think you can see the influences in the final product, but I also believe it is uniquely a Rixx project. Who else would even consider doing something like this? I dunno.

ChatGPT is always telling me that I need to be more like other people if I want to grow my YouTube channel. I need to formalize my thumbnails and create the kind of content that other creators create. I suppose my feed needs to be full of slack-jawed expressions of surprise. But I refuse. I'm not like other creators and there are no other creators like me. And I refuse to conform. If people like my content then so much the better, I feel like we are building a very strong community together. And I won't stop doing weird and unusual pieces that I want to do, that get me excited, and that I believe that community would enjoy.

This is one. And I hope everyone enjoys it. But ultimately, I do. And that is what really matters. The rest is out of my control.

Onward & Upward my friends. 

But I've got an alternative concept that I believe actually makes sense. Bear with me a minute.

FC always struggles with log-in rewards and free stuff around the Holidays or special events. We get skillpoints, boosters, that weird "logos on your ship" currency they invented, and maybe a Gnosis or a Metamorphosis. All well and good. I do enjoy some free stuff now and then. And if it helps retain or bring in players, so much the better.

But why not include an old model every once in awhile? A "Legacy" model. The type of ship could be easily tied to the promotion. And you only get one. No BPO/BPC, just a single model to either fly around or enjoy in your collection. Maybe with a new "Legacy" skin available in the Eve Store? Don't look at me, I'm only a marketing genius.

If you really want to be evil, then make them only available in the Eve Store for a price. But then you risk having Jita blown up and losing 7% of your subscription base. For my money, I'd stick with the giveaways. 

I'd personally enjoy an old Caracal or Scorpion model in my hangar. The whole thing could just be like a special hull-based skin, the ship otherwise acts and flies exactly like the more modern version. Nothing special other than looks.

As Eve speeds off into the future its legacy is something it needs to grapple with. And I believe this is one way it could do so, while also having some fun. And I think most players would appreciate it.

What do you think?

Just a small post to note a recent milestone. Yesterday I managed to score my 18,000th kill in Eve Online. You can watch the action in this short I posted this morning.

I couldn't have planned this any better to be honest. I was cruising around Black Rise looking for good fights and happened to land with this Imicus Navy pilot. It was a solid fight even though it took a while for my mods to start working. I'm still having issues with that. In fact, I landed on him again later in the roam and this time the mod issue cost me my Comet. Which is only fair. I keep clearing my Cache files and that seems to help for a day or so, but then it starts up again.

Anyway, I took my sorry ass pod towards home and stopped in a station for a break. Turns out I had sequestered some Frigates in that station over the years, so I grabbed a fitted Rifter and started back towards home. This Rifter might have been in that station for a decade or more, who really knows. I believe it came from an Average Pilot who retired and left me a bunch of ships about seven or eight years ago. But either way, I wasn't really planning on using it for combat.

But then I spotted the Thrasher. And honestly I couldn't resist. To be in a Rifter and go up against a Destroyer for my milestone victory was something I just couldn't ignore. As you can see from the footage I did not pod the other pilot and, in fact, I made a generous donation to his wallet to mark the occasion.

I don't mention my Killboard much in these pages these days. The last milestone I wrote a post about was my 15,000th back in September of 2024. There is a contingent of players in this community that hate when I talk about my Killboard, so I tend to just ignore it. And, if you doubt that, please feel free to check out Eve-Kill and marvel at the 15,000 shuttles that still show on my kb on that site. I won't be linking that in these pages. We use zKill here.

And I won't mention it again until 20k. Probably sometime around a year or so from now. 20k has been my personal goal since day one when the PvP bug bit me and gave me radioactive enhanced pew pew abilities and drove me into piracy at an early age. This is how I became your friendly neighborhood pirate. It is a crazy origin story.

So allow me this brief note of humility to end with today. There are about a thousand pilots in this game with more kills. And there are great pilots in this game with less kills. I've flown with, against, and among many of them. And I've appreciated, marveled, and learned from all of them. As I've said many, many times before - a Killboard is simply a journal. As more and more time passes statistics tend to accumulate. That is the nature of such things. But, in the end, it is the people that truly matter.

Still, having said that - still pretty cool.

Last week I took a minor break from things and decided to go visit my Father, take care of some things with the studio, and essentially just pull back on the throttle a little bit. I still played Eve, still published a short every day - but no big videos, or blog posts, or artwork. We aren't going on an official vacation or anything this Summer, so this is the best I could do.

Last evening that all came to an end as I sat down with CrazyKinux and we recorded the 12th episode of The Safe Spot podcast, which will be available tomorrow (July 28, 2026) on YouTube and Spotify. It was great to get back into the swing of things and catch up after our break. Which, due to the every two-week schedule of the podcast, turned out to be almost a month. So be sure to check the episode out tomorrow on your favorite platform. It's even available on Apple Music.

Speaking of music, I'm building up quite the library of original songs based on Eve Online. So I've finally made the decision to move ahead with getting those released across all platforms, Spotify, Apple, etc., so that you can all listen to them whenever you want. This project will happen around the end of August and I'll be sure to keep you all updated on the progress. In the meantime you can continue to enjoy a new song at the end of every episode of The Safe Spot. I think you'll really get a kick out of the one tomorrow, especially if you've ever been inside a wormhole.

I've also got some more videos in the works and hopefully you'll start seeing those popping up again later this week.

Anyway, back to work. Be sure to check out the YouTube channel and use code "rixxjavix" when checking out at the Eve Store.

More to come.

This week I decided to finally get around to updating and revising my portfolio.

I made the decision to focus my portfolio on illustration and remove all the old advertising and design work from my history. I'm still proud of all that work, but it is increasingly irrelevant and only gets older every day that passes. Especially now in this weird "AI" world we find ourselves living in.

Earlier today I had a brief conversation with an artist I admire. He has noticed lately that MetaAI is marking a lot of his work as "Likely Made Using AI" on Instagram. Which would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. Not only is his work exceptional, clearly hand-drawn, and a large portion of it was created before AI came along - but AI was also trained on his work. So to turn around now and tag it like that is pretty horrible. He is not alone.

For 15+ years I made a living in Eve Online by creating well over two thousand Alliance logos for ISK. My price during that time frame was always the same, no matter how big the Alliance. Doing this gave me the ability to avoid PvE and most of the in-game money making scramble that most players have to deal with. Of course I worked my butt off for that privilege. So it wasn't exactly a short-cut, but something I truly enjoyed doing. That work has largely dried up. The last Alliance logo I completed was back in March. Since then several other potential projects went the AI route. In fact you can see the rise of AI Alliance logos in-game.

Which is fine. I've been trying to slowly stop doing that work for years now. There are only so many ways of creating wormholes, fire, triangles, skulls, and infinity loops in a 512x512 space that looks good on the side of a spaceship. Trust me, you would never believe some of the things I've been asked to do.

Anyway, portfolio updated. I have some more tinkering to do with it, but that is always the case.

As always commissions are open if anyone is interested.

Cheers.

Yesterday I launched a new series of videos called "Artist's Corner" and I spent the rest of the day in a complete depressive funk. Yep. Giving birth to a act of creative energy is exhausting, ridden with anxiety, and stressful. It doesn't matter how old I get, or how experienced, or how certain I am of my own abilities. I'm still just as ridden with anxieties as I was back in art school. The difference now is that I know it is coming and I have adapted ways to deal with the flood. 

In fact the act of creation is one of those ways. And I'll be dealing with that in more detail as the series goes along. For now I will say this, it is not a shock to me that the period of my greatest creative output coincided with the period of greatest upheaval and disruption in my personal and professional life. Out of that chaos came this very blog and nearly two decades of creative expression unlike anything that came before it. And all of that expression was essentially me dealing with major depression, anxiety, and stress.

You might be shocked to hear that. Yep, I'm a real mess. We all are to one degree or another. Mine is built on a strong foundation of extreme trauma, a weird circle of imposing death, and a serious case of imposter syndrome that never seems to let up no matter what I accomplish. That is just pure honesty. And those are words I couldn't have written about myself even a few decades ago. I've come a long way in recognizing these things and dealing with them. Wisdom often does come with age after all.

I mention all of this in a blog about Eve Online to encourage you. Because I know you are dealing with your own craziness. At work, at home, in your personal and professional lives. No matter what you do for a living, or what your background might or might not be - these truths are universal. We are all wrestling with some demons on a daily basis. And often, video games, like Eve Online - are one of many ways we seek to distract ourselves. A form of self-therapy. An escape from the drudgery of day to day reality. Escaping into the virtual world can be a good thing. As long as you are also working on reality as well. Otherwise it is just a bandage that will come off in the approaching storm.

As for me I woke up this morning and posted my new video over on LinkedIn where it is getting absolutely zero attention. I tore down my portfolio site and started re-building it from scratch. I'm writing the copy for an exciting new tutorial video I'm working on. And I designed a new skin for a JUST contest. And it is only 11am as I'm writing these words.

Don't ever let the bastards get you down. Forge ahead. Be honest with yourself and embrace your demons, understand them, and then put those scaly beasts to work for you. Happiness, understanding, self-respect, satisfaction, these all come from within.

Life is a journey. And tomorrow is a new day.

When I decided to focus on building my twenty year old YouTube channel I watched a bunch of videos with advice and tips - just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. One of the most popular tips was to focus on providing shorts as often as possible. So, 140 shorts later - what have I learned?

Most importantly I've learned that I love it and I should have been doing it since the beginning!! I play Eve Online almost every day and recording fights then editing them into something short and sweet every day is a lot of fun. And educational. I've learned a lot watching my fights back and it has helped to make me a better pilot. I still forget to start the camera sometimes. Yesterday I had an epic fight with a Vigil and a Corax and totally forgot to record it. Which is a serious bummer. But yeah, this is a lot of fun.

Imagine if I had been doing this since the beginning? Wow. Well better late than never I suppose.

I publish a new short almost every single day (except Sunday) and that can be a bit of a grind. Creatively speaking. I have no control over the content that happens to me each day and that can be a challenge. I DO NOT take these videos into account while playing the game. I'm not letting the need for entertaining videos dictate how or when I play. But even so, some days are better than others. But it can be challenging to keep coming up with new ways to show the same fights.

Luckily I happen to be a very creative person. And sometimes it works better than other times. But I've also learned that it doesn't seem to matter. There is no way of predicting or anticipating what will be popular and what will not be as popular. So it is best to just do what I want and what I think people might enjoy, document what is going on, and leave the rest to the algo. Cause I have no idea how it actually works and I don't think anyone else does either.

In the end I have no idea if shorts are helping the channel grow or not. People who watch shorts might not be the same people who subscribe and support the channel. Who knows. The analytics tools available to me don't really show that kind of data. And so much the better tbh, I'd rather not know. All I know is I enjoy making them and I'll keep making them as long as they remain fun to make.

As for the other videos in the main channel, I'm taking a bit of a week off. I had some work pile up on me from Titan Forge that I needed to get done for the Eve Squadrons game - so I needed to focus on that for a bit. Plus it is Summer and things are always a bit slower around the community this time of year. But the Alliance Tournament is looming and things will start to pick up again here soon. And I have a bunch of videos in various stages in the pipeline, so more to come.

More Pew Pew, more shorts!

As always I appreciate any and all subscriptions and thank you all for your continued support.

This morning I got asked a question that knocked me off-kilter for a minute. I honestly had no answer for it. I spent some time sorting through images of Eve characters and I still don't know the answer. So I'm going to write this post with the following question, "Where are all the heavy-sized individuals"?

Looking at the body types generally represented in Eve Online promotional materials you get the sense that 25,000 years from now everyone is pretty much the same body type - athletic, thin, and long-legged. Where is the variety of body types? What makes this even weirder, is that in-game - none of us are visible to each other. We abandoned Walking in Stations years ago and now you can only see your own full body in the character sheet. So why is the promotional material so singular in its, some might even say, nordic idealism?

I'm actually not trying to stir any pots here. But genuinely shocked that I hadn't noticed this before. Our community contains multitudes, and not just geographically or culturally. We also contain people of all shapes, colors, and everything else under the sun. Odd that material intended to sell our game to a wider audience doesn't, at least in some way, reflect that wide spectrum of potential audience members. And I come from an advertising background - so I know all about 'aspirational' marketing. And yes there is some fundamental truth to setting generally accepted aspirational idealism in your marketing efforts. Companies do this all the time. But I do think that "all the time" is the true measure here. And I also believe we can do better.

I was in a conversation this morning with a friend of mine and the subject came up. There are no XXL Capsules? Well no, one size fits all. And this makes sense from an in-game perspective. But now I'm wondering, how much variety is there in character creation? I haven't made a new character in a very long time. I need to go exploring this avenue myself now. I'm extremely curious.

When we created character sheet commanders for War For New Eden we managed to work in a pretty wide variety of body types into the aesthetic of the board game. 

Maybe I'm missing something, I certainly haven't done a deep dive into Eve's promotional materials recently. Perhaps there is more variety than I'm giving credit for here. If so, then great. If not, then I think a wider spectrum would be more representative and more compelling if used in the right ways. Characters are not the true selling point of Eve Online anyway, we all know that this is a spaceship game. But I think some tasteful integration is long overdue.

What do you think? Have you noticed this as well?