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.