More Pirates! awesomeness has been bestowed upon me.
With a bit of navigating and heading towards Florida, I came across a marshy archipelago where a map pointed out to me (1/4 of a map) where a lost family member was hanging out in a plantation (1-tile small island in a massive reef; and I had to find it with a war galleon with wind influence now since the difficulty upgrade). After the tearful reunion, I learned of lost Inca treasure and got a map fragment (1/4 again). Turns out, I just passed that same area, and it's no more than a degree away from the reunion site on a neighboring island.
100,000 value no longer than 1.5 months after the previous division of plunders. That rocks.
I'm debating whether or not to hunt for Treasure Fleet again, or hunt the Silver Train after this. You know what we need, I just realized? Someone has to make a Pirates! LP thread. Which version is up for grabs (from C64 to Sid Meier's Pirates (PC)).
EDIT:
I've also managed to get myself a copy of Blender, learn the program a bit and see what I can make of it. Nothing big, nothing for games. Just doing some 3D art work. As an exercise, I made a simple reasonably low-poly ship based on a medium multi-role transport from a past sketch. Also learned by tinkering the animation tracker, and that much like Flash, it uses keyframes. Could maybe use that for simple animations or presentation spins/looping animations. Could work for making avatars.
EDIT EDIT:
One idea to model already came to mind, and could work for a simple low-poly. My current avatar rendered 3D. And if I have the time to as well, animate it (360 spin, and maybe have it's fins move back and forth and move it's head around as well. I think about, what, 3 main body pieces (head, body, tail), feet individualized? I'll maybe make that a future project.