2011 in review

Another year gone by. What did we get up to in 2011?

* We did our best to promote Goblin Camp, with a let's play kind of thing and a bunch of other posts. The game is still a going concern, and although there hasn't been an update for a while, I'm assured there will be. Eventually. Back in February, I put together really epic camp. The website is here; if you haven't tried it, do.

* There was an election in Finland, that led to no noticeable changes in Finnish politics. We have some really good-looking athletes, though.

* They killed 'Usāmah; I was skeptical about that being the death-blow to terrorism. Sadly, terrorism took a different turn shortly thereafter with the senseless attacks in Norway, the background to which we discussed. Steve Jobs also passed away, and we felt that his eulogies went too far.

* Throughout the year, we were alarmed by the police, as despite the death of "Osama", new threats to our precious bodily fluids continued to emerge. To combat these, we got everything from American police UAVs and the German police going all Gestapo on the German Pirate Party to the Finnish police hacking your phone. I also lost faith in Radley Balko, of The Agitator, for hithcing up with the Kremlin's propaganda machine, and my post on the topic inspired a TV show host to discuss my underwear.

* There was a lot of Minecraft. At the beginning of the year, I was still hanging around Epic Island, and we were impressed by music. We also weighed in on the Mojang - Zenimax legal battle.

* Apart from Minecraft, we liked Harms Way, but were disappointed by Mass Effect 2 being a sexist white supremacist game and by EA's various antics. The future looked bleak. In other media, we liked Detroit 1-8-7 and Sucker Punch, as well as the fantastic Robot.

* We all enjoyed some excellent music!

* Some memes were participated in, and scientology was addressed. We also started a series of posts on the Bible.

* There was, of course, a lot of hockey. At the very beginning of the year, the wrong guy was made MVP of the World Juniors, and later on Winnipeg got an NHL team. Sadly, our favorite NHL player called it quits. However, there were the world champs. In my preview, I had a good feeling about Team Finland, and even though Mats Sundin assured us it was impossible, Finland actually won. We were a little disappointed by the overblown coverage given to one particular goal, though.

Sadly, in the words of Jonathan Toews, the summer of 2011 was the worst ever for hockey. Not only did three NHL players pass away during the summer, but the plane carrying the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team crashed, killing the whole team. Earlier this month, the New York Times published a series of stories on Derek Boogaard, an NHL enforcer who died last summer. I highly recommend reading them.

**

Maybe that's a bit of a sad note to end this post on, but as the new year comes around, it won't hurt to take a moment to remember those who aren't around to see it happen. Having said that, though, I'd like to thank everyone who read this sorry excuse for a blag over the past year, and wish you all a happy new year! See you in 2012.

Minecraft Boxing Day!

Since it's boxing day, we'd best start with a picture of a boxer.

Her name is Fatima Adib, and like Batroc the Leaper and me, her martial art of choice is savate, in which she won the 2008 European Championship in her weight class. I ran into a picture of her while image searching "savate", so that's all I know. Isn't she cute?

**

And now, Minecraft. I complained earlier about the endermen in Beta 1.8, who would pick up blocks, including bedrock. While I was strongly tempted by the idea of putting out all the lights in my pit and seeing if the endermen would really dig a hole through the bedrock, I decided the smart thing to do is run away before endermen break all my stuff. So that's what I did.

I'm heading west, toward the sunset and away from Epic Island. As I'm going to be staying on the move, this will be a very visual post.

There's my first tower on the right, and the new tower on the left, flanking the rising sun. After spending most of the day walking west, I found a nice little cubbyhole with a small coal deposit in it, and decided to spend my first night there:

Here's what it looks like from the outside.

Turns out good old Mount Impossible, which I first visited ages ago, is just around the corner:

Here's the view to the west of Mount Impossible.

As I was looking at that lovely pine forest, I couldn't help noticing that there was rather a sheer drop below me...

That's where I took the previous screenshot from. Now, I'm no programmer, but it occurs to me that I might have encountered the edge where the terrain generated under the old system ends.

I'm not complaining; I think it's cool.

There was even a bit of a cave in the previous chunk, which opened onto the water but wasn't flooded by it:

Making an excellent location for an underwater base!

We move on, into the desert:

Since the desert looks kinda boring, I decided to walk through the woods next to it. That turned out to be more hazardous than I expected:

Here's another innovation: shears. As something of an animal rights person, I heartily endorse the new Minecraft, where you no longer get wool by punching sheep.

Eventually the forest gives way to a rolling plain, where I built a house. But what's that in the distance?

It's an NPC village!

Only pigs roam the deserted streets of NPC Village...

...and the houses are empty.

But their crops are doing okay.

This is a church. I do not approve.

The only good thing is that it has a tower.

Here's the view from it.

Getting back to the good things for a moment, there are now also proper oceans.

And, frighteningly, ravines. I nearly fell into that one!

Because it's turned into something of a habit, I'll finish off my sightseeing tour of the new biomes with a sunset.

Next up: my home away from home, and proof that the Endermen really are terrorists.

Going to hell

Earlier, I explained about my lighthouse problem: to build a lighthouse with a lasting fire, I'm going to need some netherrack, which is only found in the Nether. Or, in other words, hell. So that's where I'm going.

If I'm going to build a portal to hell, I'm not just going to stick it in my basement or something. I can do better than that!

If you could see anything in this picture, you would see my underwater tower:

Using the map, I picked a spot along my subway track that was at about the deepest point of the expanse of ocean east of Epic Island, and started digging up. Building an underwater tower from the bottom up presented some interesting engineering challenges, which I was able to overcome.

I then built a glass-lined tunnel out to a flat spot on the seabed, where I erected my dome:

In my books, that's a suitably dramatic place for a portal to hell. Here's what it looks like from the surface, with Epic Island in the background:

Building the damn thing is a bother in itself as well, as it needs to be made of obsidian. Naturally occurring obsidian is rare and hard to mine, so the easiest way to procure some is by using lava. After hauling bucketfuls of lava over, the portal is finished:

All you need to do is set it on fire, and voilá:

Just walk right on in.

**

The Nether is scary. It's almost pitch dark and there are creepy moaning noises. My immediate purpose in coming here is easy to achieve: pretty much all of the ground is netherrack. But now that I'm here, I feel obliged to explore. This is where I've landed:

The glowing blocks are glowstone, which is the best artificial light source in the game: it gives off more light than torches, and also works underwater. Since I'm here, I gotta get me some of that. Only, here's the problem:

It's all above a giant lava lake. Sure, you can get to it, but it's nerve-wracking:

After I pocketed some glowstone and netherrack, it's time to make my way back to the portal...

...and get the Nether out of here. And finally, a lighthouse:

Whew!

In a station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
— Ezra Pound

This is just a short post to let you know what I've been doing. It's extremely exiting for me, but unfortunately not very photogenic: a subway.

Here's a wall in my underground base:

I've now turned it into a staircase that goes down to my first subway station:

My idea is to eventually have multiple parallel tracks, but I'm starting with one. What you need to get started is a button or lever, a powered rail and a minecart.

Then plonk down 37 regular iron rails after it (for optimal speed!), followed by another powered rail, this one permanently powered by a redstone torch:

And you're away! Traveling by minecart is much faster, and on a properly constructed track, safer, than on foot. Some engineering may be required; for instance, I had to build this bridge over my chasm:

Of course, while digging that secure track, you might run into some unexpected surprises.

I wrote about mob spawners in my last post, and I've now gone from never having seen a dungeon in my life to running into one every time I start digging...

But in the end, this is what you get: a quick and safe underground ride in a minecart.

As I said, digging this damned long tunnel was neither very interesting or photogenic in itself, but it's very rewarding. I have a subway system! Here's an approximation of where the line runs on my composite map, with the "stations" marked in. As you can see, I've nearly reached Epic Island!

The one at the bottom (furthest west, that is) is my underground base; the next station down is the latest tower I've built, and the last one, well, you'll see!

It's dangerous underground

There's one constant in a Minecraft dude's life: mining. Amidst all these surface escapades I've been chronicling in this blog, I've also been regularly returning to my big dig and carrying on digging, with the occasional company of underground chickens:

Mining is necessary. Sure, I've got plenty of rock, but all the good stuff is down at the bottom of the map: redstone, gold, diamonds... Not to mention the lava I need to build my portal to hell!

It's not all work and goodies: here's what I ran into!

The fiery box next to the chest is a mob spawner, which creates monsters to ruin your day. You can do all sorts of clever things with them, mostly by devising fiendish traps to kill the spawning monsters and get the loot they drop, but that's a project for another day. For now, I've walled it off with an earthen bank.

As I kept digging, I started hearing a funny squelching noise from above. I went back to look:

Slimes! They're a rare beast; I knew they existed, but never saw one before. Now there's two!

Slimes only appear in certain chunks of the map, and at its very lowest levels, so it looks like I'm lucky enough to have a slime-generating chunk directly below my main base, and that I'm very close to the bottom! And, after a sequence of events, I find myself with some slimeballs:

They're useful for piston-related purposes, and somewhat rare. So when and if I decide to immerse myself in the wonderful world of pistons, they'll come in handy.

And soon enough, I've hit rock bottom:

The dark squares there are impenetrable bedrock. That's as deep as the map goes; there's nothing under those blocks. Here's the view from the bottom:

It kind of looks like a chasm, even if I say so myself. Frankly, I was a little disappointed at not finding any of that elusive lava that I'll need to get to hell, but luckily, as I expanded my dig, I came across this:

Next time on my Minecraft posts: some Ezra Pound.