Apologies for the lack of new posts

I feel I have to offer some apology for the lack of activity on this blog for awhile. The holidays, family, and financial hardships have sort of collided to form a "perfect storm" that has left me with a lack of blogging enthusiasm. I'm currently sorting things out however, and am attempting to hit the pavement looking for work and trying to get back into the swing of some normalcy. I'll do what I can to update a bit more frequently, but I can't promise too much.

Renovations and The Nether

My recent Minecraft time has been spent not mining fantastic new depths or discovering uncharted landscapes, but rather doing a little interior managing and cleaning. As it was, in my haste to dig deeper and find new minerals, I had left my home mine a terrible mess of sloppy caverns and nooks that lead nowhere. So little by little, I've been sorting things around, closing off dead ends and sprucing my stairways for ease of travel. I'll put up some sign markers as well just to make sure I know what's what. All these steps are part of the bigger plan to link together several different mines and islands together in one more unified feeling network. Through hell or high water I want to bring order to my Minecraft world.

And speaking of 'hell', I decided to take a break from what I was doing in order to take a little vacation to just that place. Although in Minecraft they call it The Nether instead of Hell, it's basically the same miserable place. After some trial and error, I concocted a nice Obsidian portal in one of the little nooks of my home.

Look at the pretty colors!

Making sure I left behind many of my more important items and was traveling light, I stepped inside. After a nice trippy screen wobbling effect, I found myself here...

The cure for the Winter Blues

After taking some time to soak in my hellish surroundings, I walked forward a bit to see what I could find to bring back. After mining a few of the local rocks, I noticed some of The Nether's less than friendly inhabitants (known as the Ghasts). Being that I was on a small island surrounded by lava, I had few options when it came to hiding, and once he started shooting fireballs that sounded like they exploded behind me, I knew it was time to head back.

Once I rushed through the portal back home, I breathed a sigh of relief. Considering though I could still hear the disturbing noises of The Nether on the other side of the portal, I didn't want to hang around there much longer. Safely back in the depths of my home, I cooked some Pig meat and pondered what to bring on my next trip to The Nether.

The guy who makes his living being a badass

Came across this story here about Max Hardberger, the guy who makes his living stealing back boats stolen by pirates. Pirating pirated ships is like being a double-pirate, therefore that makes him pretty much awesome already, but reading some of his exploits should have Hollywood lining up to get this guys life into a movie.

Over the years, he's distracted crews with prostitutes and witch doctors, bribed officials to look the other way, conned Russian mobsters and hidden from naval radar by riding out thunderstorms at sea; he's even taken a 10,000-tonne freighter out of Haiti while the 2004 revolution was going on around him. 

Here's a guy you'll never be as awesome as

All that and he's never failed to take a boat back. 


Oh and he also has an English degree from the University of New Orleans, an MA in poetry and fiction from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa (one of the best creative-writing programs in the US), has a law degree from the University of Northern California, and has taught English and history at high school.

Holographic character Hatsune Miku performs at sold out concert

In news that could make human musicians sweat a bit, a hologram is having great success on stage in Japan. For those not in the know, the software Vocaloid allows users to create synthetic singing voices for music tracks. Someone took this to the next level by having a holographic avatar of the fictional singer Hatsune Miku perform live on stage. Whether you find this creepy or enticing, the result is undoubtedly fascinating.



And for those possibly aroused by the above video, again in Japan we had the recent news that holograms you can touch are becoming a possible reality. At the University of Tokyo, researchers devised some clever methodology that can allow one to feel the images being displayed.

Hungry? How about a tasty beard?

In the category of "so absurd you just have to believe it", comes this story here about a man who was forced to eat his beard after an argument. Naturally the battle royale was over something important like a tractor, and sadly for this fella, it escalated to where he had to have a hairy snack.

"Troy offered to buy it from me for $250 dollars. I paid twenty bucks for it. He thought I was trying to cheat him," Westmoreland told WLEX-TV. 

"One thing led to another, and before I knew it, there were knives and guns and everything just went haywire."

"(Then) they cut my beard and forced me to eat it," he said.

So remember kids, beards are dangerous, and should only be handled with caution and by professionals. Otherwise you might end up like this poor guy.

Facelifts and island building

While it's been awhile since I could devote a serious chunk of time to Minecraft, there has been progress to be made. Some time ago I decided to embark on a building project that would include bridges connecting the various islands around me, and a tower over the ocean. Well it wasn't long into my construction that the first blunders occurred. This one started as a result of building a ladder to reach the surface of my home island quickly. In my haste, I hadn't properly enclosed the exit hole, so one morning when I went to the surface I was given a greeting by two Creepers who wanted to give me an explosive hug.

One death later, and I was taking the long trek back again. I knew for this building project I needed lots of two things: Stone and Glass. With that in mind I went about putting my furnaces to good use, pumping out ample quantities of both. I finally felt like I was putting my resources and efforts to a unified use now, and with a spring in my step, I went out and began making my first bridge.

And this was where I started to see the bigger picture, and realize the challenges I'd face. The first island I would approach wasn't much of an island to begin with. Barely more than a sandbar, I contemplated just building my bridge over it and ignoring it. But then I decided that if there wasn't much of an island there to begin with, I could just build it up. So slapping dirt on the ground, I began to expand and eventually raise it up. I'm planning on this island to have a greenhouse of sorts.

Also during this timeframe I began to experiment with different texture packs, as the latest Minecraft patch offered quick and easy swapping between them. I'm fairly pleased with the one I'm trying now, although some of the textures I might look for alternatives to.

The bridge to nowhere

To see this through to completion will take much time for sure, but I'm ready to tackle it.

Open source PC driver for Kinect already?

Hot off the heels of the story that there's a $2000 bounty out for an open source Kinect driver, we've got some results already surfacing.



And this was just 3 hours after the European launch of Kinect. Personally I'm curious as to what sort of apps and uses we could see utilizing a Kinect/PC setup.

In other news, I apologize for the lack of updates and such recently, as I've had company from out of town the last few days. I'm working on my next Minecraft progress report, and I'm considering a few other things like revamping the visual layout of the blog.