Crap, someone beat me to it...

Well it looks like a team of dedicated Minecraft players already beat me to it. They constructed the Kanto region from Pokemon. Check out the video below - it is pretty awesome, I'm not gunna lie.

Shaft Update

I know I haven't posted any shaft updates in a while, so here's a photo from my evening's shenanigans.

Happy Thanksgiving again! Sorry I've been AFK

Hey loyal fanbase. Sorry I've been AFK most of this weekend. I promise I will be diligent in responding to all your comments and well wishes shortly.

I had a great Thanksgiving, and hope you all did too! I also hope no one died shopping on Black Friday. I had a great time Friday morning, (long story short I elbowed a baby...jk...maybe)

It's going to be a hell of a week for me coming up.

• 10 Page Report on Microprocessors
  
• 2 Finals
  
• 2 Final Projects
  
• 2 24+ page case studies
  
• About 5 or 6 simulation labs, as well as a thermodynamic lab to finish.
  

tl;dr - Grad School Sucks.

Thanksgiving!

Hey gang, I'm home for the weekend for the Thanksgiving break. Just finished all the sync'ing via Dropbox to my desktop in my apartment and my laptop so I can do work and also play Minecraft at home.

What are you plans for Thanksgiving? Anyone else planning on going out on Black Friday? I go out every year, hehe.

Sync'ing Minecraft Saves over multiple computers using Dropbox

Hey all - here's a nifty little trick I setup after installing Minecraft to my new rig. You can sync all of your saved worlds to the cloud via something like Dropbox (yes that is my referral link), and access them on all of your computers.

Once you have Dropbox setup on your computers, open up the Command Prompt (Run > cmd) and make a link between the folders.

mklink /D "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves" "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\My Dropbox\Minecraft"

If done correctly - you should see something along the lines of symbolic link created.

Note - You may have to move (yes move, not copy) the saves folder into your dropbox first before establishing the link.

As a precautionary measure, back up your saved worlds - just in case. ;)

New Minecraft Update

Hey gang- sorry for being MIA for a day or so. Got a lot of work to do before the Thanksgiving holiday. :(

So I want to talk today about the newest update. One of the biggest additions was the support of Custom Texture Packs.

A lot of the updates are intended to running the multiplayer smoother- which I can confirm, as one of the servers I play on is working a lot better, especially the mincarts and boats.

Notch also added an option for no-animals, which I guess can be useful, especially now that I can have the option not to have pigs knock me down into my shaft and kill me.

These guys on the other hand...

Another shot of my base

I've been putting a little work in tonight on my home base, what do you guys think?

Going to probably make the moat go all the way around the castle.

No Minecraft tonight - too busy

I've got a Thermal exam tomorrow, so no Minecraft tonight for me; which unfortunately translates into no new updates nor photos for you guys. Mi dispace.

Instead, enjoy this bunny with a pancake on its head.

Interesting point about the inventory

A very good point is made - you can hold all that gold, but only 40 pork chops. haha

15x15 Update

I've made some progress with my 15x15 shaft.

As you can see, there is an endless water spawn located down there. I have decided to keep it because it allows me to jump down from the top without hurting/killing myself.

Though a pig did push me over the edge once and I died. Also a Creeper took out a good chuck of my ladder on the bottom right hand side - but its all good. ;)

Lockerz Invites - Round 2

Anyone else interested in Lockerz accounts let me know. Go ahead and post your email in the comments below.

I'll delete the posts after I send you an invite. ;)

Minecraft IRL

A tree in Minecraft

Square trees in real life

According to Snapple, and other more reputable sources that are not linked here because they are not nearly as humorous; there are regions of the world, more specifically in Panema, that actually produce square tree trunks. Go figure?!

50 Followers!!!

Hey everyone! Just hit my first real milestone. 50 Followers!

Thanks for the support!!!

Delicious Cake

Physics fail in Minecraft?

While playing this evening - I found a small issue.

The sand blocks should be affected by gravity, and thus should be falling. For some reason they are staying where they are... weird.

Random Question

Hey gang - no Minecraft update tonight, sorry! I am entertaining a lady-friend. ;)

Here's a question for you all though - Reese's Pieces or M&M Peanutbutter?

Rite Aid over by me is selling Halloween candy 75% off, so I picked up like $10 worth of each. hehe. Long story short- I just can't decide...

Some more screens for you guys

Here's a shot I just took outside my spawn base. Granted it might not look that impressive at the moment, but I have big plans. Inside the first wall there is a garden with plenty of trees and crops. Inside the second wall there are a few entrances to my mines that are close to my spawn, as well as bridges that lead to my mines that are further away. Eventually there will be minecart tracks connecting it all.

Here's a skeleton burning in hell... I mean my 15x15 shaft. Also note the progress... she's getting deep.

Poll Up

Hey gang. I just posted a basic poll over there <--. Let me know what you guys think. ;)

Also - added a page view counter by country - lets see how diverse my readers are!

A shaft update

Penis puns aside - I've been making some headway on my 15x15 shaft, take a look.

Been getting a lot of Iron, but no Gold or Diamond yet. :(

A nice shot from inside my spawn base

Here's a nice sunrise shot I took from inside my main base right by my spawn point.

That zombie is gunna fry in a few moments. hehe.

Did a little exploring this evening, as well as worked on my 15x15 shaft. Got a bit of iron, found a few more underground springs. Not sure exactly what I want to do with them, but for the time being I'll leave them be.

Given the recent update that introduced biomes, I wanted to branch out a bit for a few more chunks to see what I could find. The closest one to my 15x15 shaft was a frozen tundra, which was fun to explore during the daytime. Hopped back in my boat and returned to familiar territory before nightfall though. Just beyond the snow-covered tundra was a desert (surprisingly enough)

Here's a decent shot of the snowy area for those of you playing at home.

Neat screenshot feature

So I just remembered that after the Halloween Update, Notch added the ability to take screenshots while in game, instead of having to print screen and the paste into paint or something.

Holding down F1 and pressing F2 saves a screenshot in %appdata%\.minecraft\screenshots. This will make my life a lot easier. Hehe.

Long weekend

Long weekend, sorry for the lack of posts. I went home to visit my family, my dog, and my girl, and compete in a rifle match. (Not too shabby - but I didn't place. (24/30 points at 50m)

Gunna get some gaming in tonight, hopefully with some pics in a little bit.

Remember Remember

Remember remember the 5th of November, the gunpowder treason and plot.

I had almost forgotten what day it was (now that it is after midnight and all)

No crazy updates today - so here's a zombie thats on fire

Thought you guys might appreciate this screenshot :P

LOCKERZ Invites

Hey loyal readers, no minecraft update just yet tonight, but I do want to help reward you for reading. I have lockerz invites to give out!

If you wish - post your email below and I will send you one. I'll delete the comment after I send it so you don't have to worry about your email being out there in the public ;)

Zombies, Skeletons, and ... Chickens?

Ok, so everything has gone well with restoring my world, and I set back to work on my 15x15 shaft.

I've gotten a couple of more blocks down, and have bumped into quite a few caverns opening up along the sides on my way down. I haven't really explored them all that much yet, only mining a bit of coal and occasionally some iron when it is visible. As of right now however, I have found a rather large one right smack dab in the middle of my shaft. While that does make things a little easier on me for the next couple of blocks down, there is a small problem. There is a spring in the cavern (see photo below).

If my observations are correct, the spring should very easily be plugged, and not interfere with the rest of my mining activities for the time being, but that isn't the only issue unfortunately.

On top of all of this, in the north east section of my shaft I keep hearing zombies and skeletons shooting their bows. I haven't actually seen any of them, nor taken any damage just yet. I am going to dig down a block or two before expanding out a bit, just to see if maybe I'm like 3 blocks away from a mob spawn or a dungeon. But not tonight... it is after 0200, and not gunna lie the zombie noises are starting to creep me out.

On a lighter note. While mining, specifically at night (yes... with the creepy zombie moans still) every now and then a chicken will float down, flapping its wings furiously. I had quite a few of those little buggers flapping around. It was quite the comic relief considering the circumstance. lol

So my computer crashed and I lost my world.

Looking into it as we speak, but my computer crashed while playing this morning and as a result, when I logged in after restarting world 1 was no longer saved.

Basically - from what I've read online, I can just load a "new' file in the same slot and it will spawn me in my world, just at a different point. I went into C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\.minecraft\saves and backed up my world data, just in case. Ideally I would only have to repair the level.dat file in there, but because I crashed and got a BSOD while playing, the level.dat file was not merely corrupted, but missing entirely.

So after loading into my world, but at a different point, I made my way back to my original spawn. Utilizing a hex editor called NBTedit, I was able to reset my spawn point, as well as restore my inventory. Granted the latter was a painstakingly annoying process... changing dec values from dirt to pickaxes 16 or so times was rather cumbersome, but worth it.

Never fear, my world was safe. I am keeping a backup now not only on one of my external HDDs, but in my dropbox as well, juuuust in case.

Gunna do some mining tonight, hopefully will have another nice update on my 15x15 shaft later for you all ;)

New Alpha Update - Sunrise and Sunset

One of the awesome new aspects of the new update was the inclusion of really nice sunrise and sunset lighting. Check out some of the photos below.

Understandably, the game might not be as visually appealing as Farscape or F.E.A.R., or Half-Life 2 even, but you can't deny that this is pretty sweet.

Happy Halloween - Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

Hey gang, sorry for the lack of update in the past 24 hours or so. I was in DC for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

The Rally was pretty awesome; lots of great music, a lot of laughs. The entire Mall was pretty much standing room only. Let me see about getting some photos up here later. I unfortunately am unable to upload them right now because I left my camera in the back pack of one of my friends. But I'll probably get it from him tomorrow, so look here for them with tomorrows update if you are interested. ;)

I love DC so much, and the more and more time I spend down there the more beautiful I realize it is. After checking out all the monuments and memorials this weekend (before and after the rally) I was inspired. How would you guys feel about a 1:1 scale Minecraft model of the Mall in Washington DC?

View Larger Map

I would be interested in modeling the area between Constitution and Independence Avenues From the Lincoln Memorial to 7th Street.
Key features would include The Lincoln Memorial, Reflecting Pool, Viet Nam Memorial, Korean War Memorial, WWII Memorial, and the Washington Monument. I would focus primary on the western area of the Mall before expanding to the actual "mall" with the museums and buildings to the east later on.

Ghost and Goblins

Not a Halloween inspired post, I swear.


So I came down another couple of blocks in my 15x15 shaft, and came upon an underground cavern. I didn't think much of it at first, and was planning on exploring it a bit later, but sure enough two skeletons came out of it and began attacking me. Looks like I was going to be forced to look into it sooner rather than later.

I had bumped into a spider or two that had fallen into my shaft. I guess I didn't light the area surrounding it enough. I had placed torches around the island, but I guess I missed an area or two.

As of this post I am 15 blocks deep on my 15x15 shaft, and 12 on my other one.

On an unrelated note- I tweaked the layout of the blog. This should enable the images to be seen better and not get cut-off by the sidebar.

There's Gold in dem dere mountains! (erm... caves)

So I struck gold today. I was mining in one of my other caverns (not the mine shafts I spoke of earlier) and I found me some gold. :)

Now gold is a rather rare commodody in Minecraft, and is mostly used for cosmetic purposes. Gold tools are actually no better than wooden ones.

Current Projects

So in my one file in Alpha, I am currently working on two major mining projects. I will keep track of my progress here, for you, the loyal interested readers.

One is a 15x15 mine shaft, and the other is a smaller 10x5 mine shaft that I just drew up on a tiny island that just generated near my spawn chunk.

I am in the process of recording images for a time-lapse compilation, which should be pretty sweet once it's done. Look for it here sometime in the future!

Here's a taste of the latter mine shaft.

First Post!

Hey internet!


I'm going to use this spot to track my Minecraft activities.

Expect to see photos, maybe some videos, and just generally awesome Minecraft stuff here.

I will update pretty much daily, and encourage my followers to read up.