Friday Morning Minecraft
I hopped on a stream with my buddy James this morning to fight the ender dragon in Minecraft and things didn't quite go as planned.
Watch the clip and then read my explanation below:
The server lagged as I jumped into the End portal, so I hit the lava under it and caught on fire. Then when the end portal did snag me and send me to the End, I landed on the edge of the Obsidian platform and accidentally jumped or was bumped into the void due to the fire tick on my body.
Just incredible comedy.
|
This blows me away
I'm a sucker for Minecraft "redstone" projects. Redstone is essentially an in game circuitry system and it allows all sort of cool things, such as this video which is entirely about simulating what looks like a fan in Minecraft.
|
Some excellent chunk punching
This morning my friend James Turner streamed and celebrated five years of streaming his silly version of playing Minecraft. Specifically he streams "punching chunks." Which is about removing a section of the world in Minecraft, in 16x16 areas, one layer at a time.
It's a very chill way to play, and it allows him to relax and hang out with chat and listen to music while he streams. He began this stream during Covid lockdown and it has continued on ever since.
This morning a group of players got on the server for up to five hours and just enjoyed silliness and hanging out while James streamed. It was an excellent time.
|
The Minecraft Uncensored Library
In many countries, websites, social media and blogs are controlled by oppressive leaders. Young people, in particular, are forced to grow up in systems where their opinion is heavily manipulated by governmental disinformation campaigns.
But even where almost all media is blocked or controlled, the world’s most successful computer game is still accessible. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) uses this loophole to bypass internet censorship to bring back the truth – within Minecraft.
I have known about it for a while, but had never actually checked it out. Knowing this existed led me to an idea I plan to do for my own Minecraft game where I have a library of actually books on shelves, pulled from gutenberg.org, etc.
So this morning I decided to actually go check out the library. Sadly my Minecraft crashed when I tried to connect to it, I'm guessing that's a version issue or maybe one of the mods I run. In any case, I couldn't get on the live version in my quick test. So instead I downloaded it from their website and ran it locally.
And, having loaded it up, I have to say the build is very impressive in scope and size! Definitely looking forward to exploring it more when I have more time.
|
I updated my Minecraft
Today the latest version of Minecraft released. 1.20 comes with a new cherry blossom biome, and new recipes using bamboo among other things. I went ahead and made some bamboo wood, and then I went exploring for a cherry blossom biome. I eventually found one very far from my main base.
I need to figure out the best way to trim my world's chunks. I've explored a lot of it and I'm very spread out, but there are really only a few things I need to make sure I keep and then I can delete other stuff to see what biomes and new generation take place.
We'll see. I've got a work trip this week, so I'll get to dig into it next week. That said, I also got clearance to tackle a project I've been thinking about for a while, so I might dive into it hardcore.
|
Coding Updates
This will be a bit of a meandering post, not in the sense that I don't know where I'm going with it, but that I plan to hit a few tangentially related topics along the way. Obviously my last post was about how I had revamped my project boards for my main coding projects, so coding is on my mind.
I have found Minecraft scratches a lot of the itch I serve by coding on my own projects. Coding projects, to me, are my equivalent of the people who sew, or do woodworking, or work on cars, etc. It's a hobby and craft that I find satisfaction in the work and the end product. And Minecraft's world building fills much the same mind space for me. It's gotten to the point where I have to force myself to put Minecraft aside and turn back to these side projects lest they fall by the wayside and into disrepair.
It's also notable that the only one of my code projects which is used by other people is the main motivator for this. I run a self-hosted custom MLS Pick'em league for friends and acquaintances. With the next MLS season on the horizon, I have to get moving on updates and fixes in preparation for the next season.
And so, after several months of going hardcore on Minecraft, I have to move it to a back seat for a bit and instead return to my hobby of coding in the hours after work.
My current plotted course for this work is:
- MLS Pick'em - It will be my exclusive (well, probably) coding project until the new season kicks off. Then I'll let it fall back in priority to maintenance rather than working for new features. Putting arbitrary dates on it, I'm expecting to focus on it until middle of March and then it gets backburnered.
- Clerk - My personal tracker, it's a small project and I have a few updates and new features I'd like to add. This stuff should honestly take a week or two, so probably through the rest of March.
- Glowbug - This blog hasn't had any serious work from me for nearly a year now. And I do have work I want to do on it. This ranges from front facing layout and design, adding visitor search, importing tweets into daily archives so they get archived here, and other sundry items. Assuming the time estimates for Pick'em and Clerk are correct (and we know how good coders are at estimating work time) I think the work I want to do here would probably be all of April and could extend into May depending on how ambitious I want to be.
- CEMENT (CollEction ManagEr aNd Tracker) - I wrote about a flexible collection manager tool last year, and it is still an idea I have been turning over now that my Magic collection is sorted. So, if I'm still actively thinking about it, then it is time for me to probably act on it. It would have utility for my Magic collection, Katie's Pez collection, our boardgames, and various other collections we have. In scale, I think it would end up being closer to Pick'em as far as size, there's a lot of front end which would need to be done for it. We'll see. For Cement, I can easily see it being a 3 month project to get it up and running and then it becomes about maintenance and adding new features.
Assuming my time estimates are correct, and that life cooperates (meaning there is nearly a zero percent chance I'm right) I have coding plans up through July. We'll see.
|
You Always Remember Your First
We're about to reset my first Minecraft game world. So I decided to snag some screenshots so I can remember what I did before we erase it all.
|
