I have read a poem by Jane Kenyon named "Otherwise", and after contemplating
it for a period of time, I have come to the conclusion its lesson is that no
matter how great things are going right now, Finagle's Law is always waiting
just around the corner to turn everything horrible. The poem goes through the
day of a person in a concise manner, and whenever he does anything, he comments:
"It might have been otherwise."
This ties in to "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe to an incredible
amount: At the beginning of "Things Fall Apart", at least from a strictly linear
perspective, all's well and good for Okonkwo. Over time, however, this was no
longer the case - it did become otherwise. Not only that, but the chain of
events eventually culminated in Okonkwo commiting suicide.
Another example in "Things Fall Apart" is the religion war: at first, the
natives had a religion in which the dead became spirits of what could well be
called an underworld. However, when the white men from across the sea brought
their religion into the mix, it spread like an insiduous plague, even though at
first the strangers did nothing to actively promote their religion over the
natives'. By the time the natives realized what was happening, it was already
too late for them to fight back.
In fact, in both cases, the point at which the victim or victims realize
what's happening, it's already too late to turn the tide back again. In this,
one can easily be lured into believing nothing will ever change, seeing as it's
incredibly difficult to realize what's happening before the tipping point has
been reached.
However, this would be an incredibly foolish strategy, as letting nature
take its course is the surest way of ensuring the tipping point will be reached.
Although it's not easy, it's necessary to make sure we realize what's happening
before the tipping point has been reached. I believe that is the lesson the poem
is trying to teach us.
Thoughts on Exams
In middle school, exam week was hectic, horrifying, and generally insane. The classes were out-of-order and as far as I could tell followed approximately the same level of orderliness as a die roll. I could imagine the staff taking out a meter-sized six-sided die and flinging it as hard as they could down the hall.
However, I like my schedule to either not exist at all or follow a level of predictability. Unfortunately, due to my lack of psychic abilities, I am unable to see into the future and thus cannot predict the roll of a die. As a result, I often dreaded exam week, commenting frequently on my thoughts about the randomness of the class schedule.
Of course, the exams themselves were orderly and predictable, but there were three grades and only one was taking their exam at a time. This meant the other two were shuffled around in a way which coincided with the times of the normal schedule classes, but in an order which did not.
High school, on the other hand, whether because the die was too expensive or because the disorderliness was too taxing, has more orderly exam dates, where the seemingly obvious and sensible pattern is followed - everyone takes their exams at the same time.
An added benefit from the students' perspectives is that as the exams are spaced at one class to a day, the exams only run to roughly 10:30, at which point all of the students return home. However, this adds the extra risk that Finagle's Law will kick in and you forget your key while no one else is home.
Exams themselves have never been a problem for me. As one of my teachers would have put it, I'm the person who would sleep through the class, then ace the test. (Most of it involves applying elimination and common sense to the areas you're not already familiar with. An ability to recognize root words helps.) However, this presents an interesting challenge to me in itself - if I forget a book to read, or read it too fast, I end up having to sit in the middle of an area which by its very nature must have very few stimuli. As a result, I generally put a book in my book bag the day before the exams so I don't forget on my way out the door.
I bring the subject up because it just so happens my exam week starts tomorrow. Accordingly, I've put a befitting total of zero hours into studying for the exams, just as I always do. (I've always been very bad about my mental border between school and home. You can imagine how my ability to complete homework has been affected by this ... unfortunate habit.)
Happy testing to all you students!
However, I like my schedule to either not exist at all or follow a level of predictability. Unfortunately, due to my lack of psychic abilities, I am unable to see into the future and thus cannot predict the roll of a die. As a result, I often dreaded exam week, commenting frequently on my thoughts about the randomness of the class schedule.
Of course, the exams themselves were orderly and predictable, but there were three grades and only one was taking their exam at a time. This meant the other two were shuffled around in a way which coincided with the times of the normal schedule classes, but in an order which did not.
High school, on the other hand, whether because the die was too expensive or because the disorderliness was too taxing, has more orderly exam dates, where the seemingly obvious and sensible pattern is followed - everyone takes their exams at the same time.
An added benefit from the students' perspectives is that as the exams are spaced at one class to a day, the exams only run to roughly 10:30, at which point all of the students return home. However, this adds the extra risk that Finagle's Law will kick in and you forget your key while no one else is home.
Exams themselves have never been a problem for me. As one of my teachers would have put it, I'm the person who would sleep through the class, then ace the test. (Most of it involves applying elimination and common sense to the areas you're not already familiar with. An ability to recognize root words helps.) However, this presents an interesting challenge to me in itself - if I forget a book to read, or read it too fast, I end up having to sit in the middle of an area which by its very nature must have very few stimuli. As a result, I generally put a book in my book bag the day before the exams so I don't forget on my way out the door.
I bring the subject up because it just so happens my exam week starts tomorrow. Accordingly, I've put a befitting total of zero hours into studying for the exams, just as I always do. (I've always been very bad about my mental border between school and home. You can imagine how my ability to complete homework has been affected by this ... unfortunate habit.)
Happy testing to all you students!
Minecraft IV - The Last Stand
Due to an unfortunate incident involving large numbers of creepers and enough skeleton firepower to overrun a castle, I was forced to abandon Hope (the primary city of Last Stand) and fall back to Alpha Site, named after the Stargate colony which the best and brightest are to go to in the event of a worldwide catastophe such as a Goa'uld invasion. (However, that's another blog post completely and I won't go too in-depth with it.)
Unfortunately, no sooner had I arrived than a super-charged creeper appeared, no doubt a remnant of a thunderstorm which occupied the first few days of my stay. The creeper packed quite a punch, and Alpha Site was more or less destroyed. This meant I had to fall back to Beta Site.
• My life
(You would not believe the lengths I had to go to in order to get the pictures organized nicely. Eventually I reverted to manipulating the HTML by hand, because it doesn't take a Ph.D. in Blogspot.)
This is Hope Two, and for Last Stand it may be the only chance to ever reclaim a fighting stand for survival against the waves and waves of ever-advancing bad guys who would gladly end your creations even if it meant their lives.
Although I hope Hope Two is not overrun, forcing me to fall back ever further, I cannot dismiss the possibility after such unfortunate tragedies in the recent past. My only retreats now are Gamma Site, Delta Site, and End of Line... and I don't intend to lose more ground before the assault. The world was named Last Stand for a reason ... here, I make the last stand. Either they die, or I do.
Unfortunately, no sooner had I arrived than a super-charged creeper appeared, no doubt a remnant of a thunderstorm which occupied the first few days of my stay. The creeper packed quite a punch, and Alpha Site was more or less destroyed. This meant I had to fall back to Beta Site.
However, Beta Site was more or less the second of a chain of four fallbacks - only the first, Alpha Site, was within feasible distance of Hope to make work on it practical. This meant sites Beta, Gamma, and Delta are more or less crude huts with just enough to hopefully recover Alpha Site and from there make a stand for Hope.
Due to the nature of creepers, they have a tendency to overrun anywhere you've worked on signifigantly. This included Hope and Alpha Site, meaning my repair attempts were more or less in vain. After a near-fatal incident with a creeper in what used to be my place of residence in Hope, I fell back to Beta Site and renamed it Hope Two. (Hopefully I can revert the name once Hope is a city once more, rather than a remarkable blast crater.)
Although I would love to get some pictures for you to show the extent of the damage dealt to Hope and Alpha Site themselves, this would be nothing short of a suicide mission - there are no roads on which to walk, and the shadows of buildings make perfect breeding grounds for the nasties which have an irrevocable repulsion regarding my continued existence.
As a result, the pictures you are going to see are not nearly on the order of grandeur I had hoped to capture, but I'm afraid the impossibility of retrieving supplies from either Hope or Alpha Site makes large-scale rebuilding currently impossible. I've more or less been forced into a position from which I must start from scratch, which is an interesting truth in itself. However, at the moment I'm temporarily barred from taking daylit pictures by a storm. In the meantime, the list of notable items currently in my possession at Hope Two is as follows...
• One block of TNT • One bow and only eleven arrows to fire from it
• Enough apples to feed a man for half a year• My life
While I was typing, the rain let up - now I can show you Hope Two. Bear in mind this used to be a wooden shack with the absolute basic necessities short of punching trees down again, and that my lack of progress in the seventeen days after my arrival was mainly due to repeated attempts on my part to take back Hope.
 |  |
| The main house, along with an as-of-yet unfilled lava moat. | The apple tree farm a few second's walk away from the house. |
 |  |
| The secondary house, as well as the only viable way in or out. | A sign marking the quarry site. |
 |  |
| The quarry's rather shallow progression into the ground. | A birds-eye view of the compound. |
(You would not believe the lengths I had to go to in order to get the pictures organized nicely. Eventually I reverted to manipulating the HTML by hand, because it doesn't take a Ph.D. in Blogspot.)
This is Hope Two, and for Last Stand it may be the only chance to ever reclaim a fighting stand for survival against the waves and waves of ever-advancing bad guys who would gladly end your creations even if it meant their lives.
Although I hope Hope Two is not overrun, forcing me to fall back ever further, I cannot dismiss the possibility after such unfortunate tragedies in the recent past. My only retreats now are Gamma Site, Delta Site, and End of Line... and I don't intend to lose more ground before the assault. The world was named Last Stand for a reason ... here, I make the last stand. Either they die, or I do.
Politics
Politics is the art of keeping track of favors so you can rule the planet - or at least that's the way it looks from my perspective. Of course, the closer one gets to the point of planet-ruling, the harder it is to get up another rung, because everyone below you on the ladder is trying to pull you off.
Beyond that, politicians are too busy fighting each other to even allow logic to intervene. Sound laws are horribly, horribly corrupted by people trying to one-up one another to ascend just one more rung. It also seems strange that their ultimate goal is to become President - a job which has made everyone who takes up the mantle appear to age forty years in a mere four.
Why anyone would want a job whose description is basically "stress, stress, more stress, and heaping piles of stress" is beyond me. I also have no intentions of becoming a politician now or ever. I have better things to do with my life than run around thinking I'm the center of the Earth.
Although I may not think highly of politicians, they are a vital part of our governmental system - though I'll not comment on which part! In fact, the government is doing a very good job of defending its own interests, like any organism would - at this point, we have more than enough computer power to tally up all votes of the citizens of America directly, making the Electoral College technically obsolete.
Another thing I have a problem with is the sheep-like attitude of some voters. As my father would put it: "the Republicans have them [the sheep voters] firmly convinced two plus two equals seven." If all voters were to look at the best candidate for the job, that would be one thing, but I occasionally picture the majority of voters as wandering around saying "Hurr, I'm a Republican! Durr!" Taking and holding one opinion and never allowing anyone to tell you an argument against it seems to me a dangerous case of self-concietedness and not to be encouraged.
I'm bad at endings, so here's a picture of ABC's logo!
<random>
</random>
Beyond that, politicians are too busy fighting each other to even allow logic to intervene. Sound laws are horribly, horribly corrupted by people trying to one-up one another to ascend just one more rung. It also seems strange that their ultimate goal is to become President - a job which has made everyone who takes up the mantle appear to age forty years in a mere four.
Why anyone would want a job whose description is basically "stress, stress, more stress, and heaping piles of stress" is beyond me. I also have no intentions of becoming a politician now or ever. I have better things to do with my life than run around thinking I'm the center of the Earth.
Although I may not think highly of politicians, they are a vital part of our governmental system - though I'll not comment on which part! In fact, the government is doing a very good job of defending its own interests, like any organism would - at this point, we have more than enough computer power to tally up all votes of the citizens of America directly, making the Electoral College technically obsolete.
Another thing I have a problem with is the sheep-like attitude of some voters. As my father would put it: "the Republicans have them [the sheep voters] firmly convinced two plus two equals seven." If all voters were to look at the best candidate for the job, that would be one thing, but I occasionally picture the majority of voters as wandering around saying "Hurr, I'm a Republican! Durr!" Taking and holding one opinion and never allowing anyone to tell you an argument against it seems to me a dangerous case of self-concietedness and not to be encouraged.
I'm bad at endings, so here's a picture of ABC's logo!
<random>
 |
| Yay, randomly random randomness! |
</random>
Minecraft III
This time around, I'll try to explain it from the bottom up. I looked back at the last two and it looks like trying explaining TCP-IP to someone who doesn't know what the Internet is.
At the very bottom of what Minecraft is there is a three-dimensional grid of effectively infinite size. This grid is filled with possibly the most basic three-dimensional object save a sphere: the cube. These cubes are one meter on a side and are lined up to one another to infinity. These cubes come in four basic variaties - air, dirt, stone, and sand. All blocks a first-time player will have to deal with in their first playing hour are either one of these four, or easily definable as a sub-block of one of them.
The grid is 128 meters from top to bottom, and the surface area of the world is approximately eight times the surface of the Earth - although your computer would have run out of memory long before you got anywhere near that!
The Player can break any block with the left button of the mouse and can place a block with the right button. However, there is one exception - Bedrock cannot be broken and is therefore unobtainable and unplaceable. These blocks are used to create structures of the player's designation.
The first structure will be a very basic house created by the Player in a frantic hurry to get into safety before the first night falls and may be nothing more than a mud-hut dug into the ground. The largest first-day house I've ever successfully completed was fairly large for one day's work. (It helps to spawn in a forest.)
Chances are the Player won't be able to put windows into his house on the first day, which makes the GURRRs and UUUGHs of the zombies outside even more terrifying. What's worse is that it means the player has basically no way of knowing whether a creeper is sneaking around the house (which they love to do!) waiting for the Player to re-emerge. The Creeper makes sounds very similar to the Spider, but to an inexperienced player they may sound effectively the same. The Zombie sounds like someone moaning the word "brains..." and the zombie sounds like a windchime, but the spider and creeper both sound effectively the same - an unnerving hiss. The only real difference is that the Spider's hissing is longer and tends to change pitch halfway through, while the Creeper's is shorter and generally stays roughly the same pitch. (Note: pitch does not mean volume!)
The unexperienced Player may also find it unnecessary to hide in a hole while the night passes. They won't make that mistake a second time... unless they do in which case they won't have a house any more.
There also exists the capability to craft objects from other objects. One block of wood will turn into four plank blocks, which can be placed in a two by two square to make a workbench, essential for all tool-making...
...such as the pickaxe. Most of the objects one can craft in Minecraft are made by simply making it 'look right', as one Minecrafter puts it. For example, an axe looks like an axe on the crafting grid, as does a workbench or a pickaxe. Some things are borderline - a furnace is a cobblestone chest - but only so much detail can fit into a 3x3 area.
The furnace is another basic necessity - one needs it to get ores into a utilizable state. Some people have a room of 8000 furnaces, but I've found that to be a sign of lack of management abilities rather than a sign of wealth or progress. Personally I rarely have more than four furnaces in a single dwelling, although Last Stand - the oldest save I still have and one of my pinnacle achievements in Minecraft - probably has 8000 furnaces, seeing as there are more dwellings in it than I care to admit.
Minecraft IV, two posts from now, will take you through a small area of Last Stand. Until then, may your swords stay sharp and your creepers stay away!
At the very bottom of what Minecraft is there is a three-dimensional grid of effectively infinite size. This grid is filled with possibly the most basic three-dimensional object save a sphere: the cube. These cubes are one meter on a side and are lined up to one another to infinity. These cubes come in four basic variaties - air, dirt, stone, and sand. All blocks a first-time player will have to deal with in their first playing hour are either one of these four, or easily definable as a sub-block of one of them.
The grid is 128 meters from top to bottom, and the surface area of the world is approximately eight times the surface of the Earth - although your computer would have run out of memory long before you got anywhere near that!
The Player can break any block with the left button of the mouse and can place a block with the right button. However, there is one exception - Bedrock cannot be broken and is therefore unobtainable and unplaceable. These blocks are used to create structures of the player's designation.
The first structure will be a very basic house created by the Player in a frantic hurry to get into safety before the first night falls and may be nothing more than a mud-hut dug into the ground. The largest first-day house I've ever successfully completed was fairly large for one day's work. (It helps to spawn in a forest.)
Chances are the Player won't be able to put windows into his house on the first day, which makes the GURRRs and UUUGHs of the zombies outside even more terrifying. What's worse is that it means the player has basically no way of knowing whether a creeper is sneaking around the house (which they love to do!) waiting for the Player to re-emerge. The Creeper makes sounds very similar to the Spider, but to an inexperienced player they may sound effectively the same. The Zombie sounds like someone moaning the word "brains..." and the zombie sounds like a windchime, but the spider and creeper both sound effectively the same - an unnerving hiss. The only real difference is that the Spider's hissing is longer and tends to change pitch halfway through, while the Creeper's is shorter and generally stays roughly the same pitch. (Note: pitch does not mean volume!)
The unexperienced Player may also find it unnecessary to hide in a hole while the night passes. They won't make that mistake a second time... unless they do in which case they won't have a house any more.
There also exists the capability to craft objects from other objects. One block of wood will turn into four plank blocks, which can be placed in a two by two square to make a workbench, essential for all tool-making...
...such as the pickaxe. Most of the objects one can craft in Minecraft are made by simply making it 'look right', as one Minecrafter puts it. For example, an axe looks like an axe on the crafting grid, as does a workbench or a pickaxe. Some things are borderline - a furnace is a cobblestone chest - but only so much detail can fit into a 3x3 area.
The furnace is another basic necessity - one needs it to get ores into a utilizable state. Some people have a room of 8000 furnaces, but I've found that to be a sign of lack of management abilities rather than a sign of wealth or progress. Personally I rarely have more than four furnaces in a single dwelling, although Last Stand - the oldest save I still have and one of my pinnacle achievements in Minecraft - probably has 8000 furnaces, seeing as there are more dwellings in it than I care to admit.
Minecraft IV, two posts from now, will take you through a small area of Last Stand. Until then, may your swords stay sharp and your creepers stay away!
"The Holocaust was a lie!"
The moon landing was a hoax, global warming isn't real, aliens have taken over Area Fifty-One, and the Holocaust never happened. If we keep this up, soon there'll be a conspiracy theory about how 9/11 was actually planned and co-ordinated by George W. Bu--
Oh God.
All the above conspiracy theories are completely and totally rational - as long as you have no prior experience with the irritatingly real real world and don't dig too deep. (Read: Below the first layer of evidence.) If aliens were to actually take over Area Fifty-One, chances are we would have heard about it by now. The truth: yours truly the Government is testing top secret aircraft. As for global warming not being real, ice cores beg to differ. The truth: people want to say it's not happening because doing nothing is easier if you think you're not killing your own race in the future. The moon landing? Well, we have two rovers on MARS, which is that much farther away, constantly sending video to us of what they're doing. I'm sure if we can put so much as a pebble on Mars, we can get a man on the moon. You can take a step if you can leap a mile.
The Holocaust conspiracy: The Jews wanted to benefit at the expense of others. Let's take a look at what I just said, shall we?
The Jews wanted to benefit at the expense of others. To accomplish this, they starved and massacred themselves even though they had absolutely no certainty they would benefit from it. That sounds quite rat-- what the $#!@ are you thinking?!
Two Americans have a conversation about how to rip off Europe.
John: Hey, let's go kill six million Americans so Europe will give us stuff! :D
Joe: Yeah, that sounds like a great idea! :D
Do you really think anyone in America would put up for this? Do you think they would have even managed 6,000 before the whole US army is waiting for them wherever they go? Do you think I'm not going to address the counter-argument of the deaths being faked?
If you said "no, no, and no" then you're absolutely correct. There's no way I would just let two strangers walk up to me, say "Hey, we're going to kill you so Europe will give us stuff :D", and not do my best to defend myself. Multiply that by hundreds of people, and they're both in jail already.
As for it being a total lie and no one actually did die... Note: These cannot be unseen, unless you have no soul.
There's an enormous hole. It's got hundreds of bodies in it.
A mound of bodies in it. The people were so starved you can almost literally see their bones through the skin.
Presumably an 'order' of Jews, killed on schedule, in a gas chamber.
Each one of those people were living, thinking human beings with three-dimensional personalities. Unless you live in a supercity like Beijing, New York, or Los Angeles, chances are your city ranks nowhere near six million people. Everyone in the city you live in would probably have to die more than once to even be within an order of magnitude of six million. A thousand people dying can't even be grasped by the human brain. How much further removed must six million people be?
Oh, and the Pearl Harbor bombing is a conspiracy too. I'm sure the USA just decided "Yeah, okay, we weren't in the war but now we're going to drop a nuclear bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki!"
Do conspiracy theorists just look for the biggest thing in recent history and yell "FAKE!"?
Oh God.
All the above conspiracy theories are completely and totally rational - as long as you have no prior experience with the irritatingly real real world and don't dig too deep. (Read: Below the first layer of evidence.) If aliens were to actually take over Area Fifty-One, chances are we would have heard about it by now. The truth: yours truly the Government is testing top secret aircraft. As for global warming not being real, ice cores beg to differ. The truth: people want to say it's not happening because doing nothing is easier if you think you're not killing your own race in the future. The moon landing? Well, we have two rovers on MARS, which is that much farther away, constantly sending video to us of what they're doing. I'm sure if we can put so much as a pebble on Mars, we can get a man on the moon. You can take a step if you can leap a mile.
The Holocaust conspiracy: The Jews wanted to benefit at the expense of others. Let's take a look at what I just said, shall we?
The Jews wanted to benefit at the expense of others. To accomplish this, they starved and massacred themselves even though they had absolutely no certainty they would benefit from it. That sounds quite rat-- what the $#!@ are you thinking?!
Two Americans have a conversation about how to rip off Europe.
John: Hey, let's go kill six million Americans so Europe will give us stuff! :D
Joe: Yeah, that sounds like a great idea! :D
Do you really think anyone in America would put up for this? Do you think they would have even managed 6,000 before the whole US army is waiting for them wherever they go? Do you think I'm not going to address the counter-argument of the deaths being faked?
If you said "no, no, and no" then you're absolutely correct. There's no way I would just let two strangers walk up to me, say "Hey, we're going to kill you so Europe will give us stuff :D", and not do my best to defend myself. Multiply that by hundreds of people, and they're both in jail already.
As for it being a total lie and no one actually did die... Note: These cannot be unseen, unless you have no soul.
There's an enormous hole. It's got hundreds of bodies in it.
A mound of bodies in it. The people were so starved you can almost literally see their bones through the skin.
Presumably an 'order' of Jews, killed on schedule, in a gas chamber.
Each one of those people were living, thinking human beings with three-dimensional personalities. Unless you live in a supercity like Beijing, New York, or Los Angeles, chances are your city ranks nowhere near six million people. Everyone in the city you live in would probably have to die more than once to even be within an order of magnitude of six million. A thousand people dying can't even be grasped by the human brain. How much further removed must six million people be?
Oh, and the Pearl Harbor bombing is a conspiracy too. I'm sure the USA just decided "Yeah, okay, we weren't in the war but now we're going to drop a nuclear bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki!"
Do conspiracy theorists just look for the biggest thing in recent history and yell "FAKE!"?
Minecraft II
My last blog post was a disorganized blog post on the subject of Minecraft. (Sorry about that, I didn't use Preview as much as I should have.) I used to play vanilla (unmodded) Minecraft (which I'll call the V), but recently I installed the Technic Pack to add a little something to my worlds.
The V 1.0.0 has three 'planes', of which only two are officially named. The two which are officially named are the Nether and the End. The unnamed plane, on which the player spawns and respawns, is the Unnamed (under which is the Void). I named this plane the World, in keeping with the Trend. I'll start there first.
The World is the first place any save will have, and the place most people will spend their time in. Most mods focus on editing this plane, and this is the only plane which has ores in the V. However, it's also arguably the most dangerous plane the V has to offer, with creepers, skeletons, spiders, and zombies, along with the occasional Enderman. Since this is the only place in the V which offers ores to mine, any players who want to explore the other planes will have to spend extensive time in their mines here. While mining down to find lava to enter the Nether, a player may accidentally find a hole in the Bedrock and find the Void.
The Void isn't an actual plane of Minecraft, more of an accident. It's caused by falling through holes in the Bedrock layer of Minecraft, and will in fact kill the player quite rapidly - destroying any items they drop after they die. The Void lies under the World and is strictly the same plane. If I recall correctly, there is now a solid floor of Bedrock at the bottom layer of the map, regardless of the terrain generator, making it impossible to fall into the Void in the V.
Near the Void is lava, occuring in all naturally-occuring air pockets at the tenth layer of the map and lower. Lava is required to make Obsidian, which is in turn required to make a Nether portal, a rectangular four-by-five doorway-type structure which, when lit on fire, forms a bluish-purple thick layer of liquid-type material. If the player stands in this substance for a period of about three seconds, they enter the Nether, the least dangerous of the three realms (which is ironic, considering its Hellish nature.) The only threats which can be found in the Nether are the Ghasts and the Zombie Pigmen. As the Zombie Pigmen are neutral (passive until attacked), they're no threat - unless you hit one, in which case you should probably RUN.
As for the Ghasts, their gigantic size may intimidate the player at first... but they have truly awful aim and weak firepower. The Ghast fireball can't break through stone, but it can deactivate portals and destroy weaker materials. However, the Ghast is still one of the scarier mobs of Minecraft. Worse, it can go through blocks, meaning walls won't stop it. It can literally drift into your house and start shooting at you.
Possibly the hardest of the three planes to get into is the End, home to the Endermen and the Enderdragon. To get to the End requires around sixteen Ender pearls. Not only does one have to activate an only partially activated Ender portal by placing Ender pearls in the deactivated slots, but one also has to locate a Stronghold with such an Ender portal in it ... a portal which could be potentially miles away. Once one has successfully found and activated this portal, they appear in the End with only a small Obsidian ledge to stand on, and hundreds of Endermen below on a giant floating island of stone. The End is the inverse of the Nether - instead of enormous pockets of air surrounded by stone, the End is filled with enormous pockets of stone surrounded by air.
I have myself been to two of these four areas legitimately - the World and the Nether. As for my plans to enter the Void, I have better things to do in Minecraft than die. The End is on my list of places to visit in Minecraft, although it seems unlikely I'll get there soon. I have much, much more essential things to do in Minecraft than gather sixteen Ender pearls.
There's also an unofficial fourth plane which follows the Trend, called the Aether. I've never installed the Aether mod, so I can't give a description of it. I plan to try it sometime, but I don't know when. As for my worlds, that will have to wait for another post!
The V 1.0.0 has three 'planes', of which only two are officially named. The two which are officially named are the Nether and the End. The unnamed plane, on which the player spawns and respawns, is the Unnamed (under which is the Void). I named this plane the World, in keeping with the Trend. I'll start there first.
The World is the first place any save will have, and the place most people will spend their time in. Most mods focus on editing this plane, and this is the only plane which has ores in the V. However, it's also arguably the most dangerous plane the V has to offer, with creepers, skeletons, spiders, and zombies, along with the occasional Enderman. Since this is the only place in the V which offers ores to mine, any players who want to explore the other planes will have to spend extensive time in their mines here. While mining down to find lava to enter the Nether, a player may accidentally find a hole in the Bedrock and find the Void.
The Void isn't an actual plane of Minecraft, more of an accident. It's caused by falling through holes in the Bedrock layer of Minecraft, and will in fact kill the player quite rapidly - destroying any items they drop after they die. The Void lies under the World and is strictly the same plane. If I recall correctly, there is now a solid floor of Bedrock at the bottom layer of the map, regardless of the terrain generator, making it impossible to fall into the Void in the V.
Near the Void is lava, occuring in all naturally-occuring air pockets at the tenth layer of the map and lower. Lava is required to make Obsidian, which is in turn required to make a Nether portal, a rectangular four-by-five doorway-type structure which, when lit on fire, forms a bluish-purple thick layer of liquid-type material. If the player stands in this substance for a period of about three seconds, they enter the Nether, the least dangerous of the three realms (which is ironic, considering its Hellish nature.) The only threats which can be found in the Nether are the Ghasts and the Zombie Pigmen. As the Zombie Pigmen are neutral (passive until attacked), they're no threat - unless you hit one, in which case you should probably RUN.
As for the Ghasts, their gigantic size may intimidate the player at first... but they have truly awful aim and weak firepower. The Ghast fireball can't break through stone, but it can deactivate portals and destroy weaker materials. However, the Ghast is still one of the scarier mobs of Minecraft. Worse, it can go through blocks, meaning walls won't stop it. It can literally drift into your house and start shooting at you.
Possibly the hardest of the three planes to get into is the End, home to the Endermen and the Enderdragon. To get to the End requires around sixteen Ender pearls. Not only does one have to activate an only partially activated Ender portal by placing Ender pearls in the deactivated slots, but one also has to locate a Stronghold with such an Ender portal in it ... a portal which could be potentially miles away. Once one has successfully found and activated this portal, they appear in the End with only a small Obsidian ledge to stand on, and hundreds of Endermen below on a giant floating island of stone. The End is the inverse of the Nether - instead of enormous pockets of air surrounded by stone, the End is filled with enormous pockets of stone surrounded by air.
I have myself been to two of these four areas legitimately - the World and the Nether. As for my plans to enter the Void, I have better things to do in Minecraft than die. The End is on my list of places to visit in Minecraft, although it seems unlikely I'll get there soon. I have much, much more essential things to do in Minecraft than gather sixteen Ender pearls.
There's also an unofficial fourth plane which follows the Trend, called the Aether. I've never installed the Aether mod, so I can't give a description of it. I plan to try it sometime, but I don't know when. As for my worlds, that will have to wait for another post!
Minecraft I
This is going to be image-heavy, so it may take a while to load!
In short, Minecraft is a sandvivalbox game with the ability to create some truly incredible things. (Some things people have made include: a model Earth, a 125-meter Stargate, an Enterprise-D, and a WORKING 16-bit CPU and ALU.) However, most people don't have the patience or planning skills to make working computer parts, which is okay! Minecraft offers something for them too: Minecraft is all about bending the world to your will. The start of every world is hiding in a quickly-made shelter to avoid the night, but the end of the world is yours to shape. Do you want the world to be scarred for miles and miles from your mining? Will there be vast craters from planned TNT explosions? Will you only build with wood so as not to ruin the underground caves? Will you live underground? On the ground? Above it? Minecraft is your world to shape as you see fit.
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| Minecraft: Addiction Redefined! |
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| The iconic Creeper. He'll be seeing you around... ...the crater he just put in your house. |
Minecraft is a computer game in which one places and destroys blocks. It has absolutely no other appeal besides being a sandbox game. There are no zombies, skeletons, spides, or exploding green things called Creepers. It's all an elaborate hoax. In the commercial Minecraft, the goal is survival and creation. (There's also a free creative mode.) Enemy creatures like Creepers and zombies come out at night, which means you need a shelter for your first night. Minecraft day/night cycles are twenty minutes long, which gives you twelve minutes to build a basic shelter for eight minutes of night. To a newcomer, the whole deal is confusing and bewildering. However, to old players, building a basic house in twelve minutes is as easy as walking - but new or old, every player must have a house done by the first night: that's when the nasties come out to play. In the Beta version of Minecraft, there were four basic mobs one would encounter in the real world. The Creepers,
walking green kamikaze bombs which do their best to remove you and your creations from existence; the skeletons, archers who prefer to deal with the pesky Player from a distance; the spiders, who charge in fast and furious but don't do much damage. The fourth mob is the Zombie, which blunders around stupidly and generally gets in the way of the other three.
walking green kamikaze bombs which do their best to remove you and your creations from existence; the skeletons, archers who prefer to deal with the pesky Player from a distance; the spiders, who charge in fast and furious but don't do much damage. The fourth mob is the Zombie, which blunders around stupidly and generally gets in the way of the other three.
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| "I did not think that through." |
In Beta 1.8, a new mob was added - the Enderman. Possibly the most terrifying mob in the whole game barring the Creeper itself; the Enderman teleports, picks up certain blocks, stands looming over the player at three meters tall, and does NOT like being observed. If you place the crosshair directly over it, it turns to stare at you with its mouth gaping open. If you take the crosshair off of it for even a tenth of a second, it charges you
even faster than the spider. It also has the potential to be effectively more destructive than any of the other mobs. It can pick up Redstone, effectively destroying circuits, while leaving the rest of the area untouched. Meanwhile, the Creeper would leave an extremely visible crater in the middle of your Redstone circuitry.
However, nothing can ever, I say again, ever stand up to the Creeper when it comes to the screamer factor. I've jumped in my seat and befouled the air with impolite language many a-time when a Creeper fell onto my head. Creepers have a detonation time of a second and a half, which seems like a very short time.
It is.
Creepers are merciless: whether it's your hard-built house, your newly-found diamond, or just generally your continued life, there's always a creeper around the corner. Creepers are the only mob which both stays aggresive and alive during the daylight, so it poses threat to the Player wherever they are and whenever it is. However, there's two threats even more dangerous than the eternally infamous creeper.
Threat one is the environment. Steep falls, sudden water floods, mining into lava, digging down, digging up, or just plain digging can kill the player quickly or even instantly. The environment is what it is, so a player who assumes it's something else will soon fall into lava or a pit of creepers.
Threat one is the environment. Steep falls, sudden water floods, mining into lava, digging down, digging up, or just plain digging can kill the player quickly or even instantly. The environment is what it is, so a player who assumes it's something else will soon fall into lava or a pit of creepers.However, the surer and more dangerous threat to the Player is the Player. The first time anyone sets of a block of TNT will also be one of the many self-induced deaths the player can encounter. Other examples can be running into a long-forgotten trap in one's own world, building incredibly tall structures, creating a lava moat, or trying to pass the night by pretending your floor is made of lava.
I have hundreds of deaths, but they can't all make the list of the top five deaths I've ever had. Here's the list based on how hard I laughed at my own stupidity afterwards, from the bottom up.
5. New world. I walk forward one block, fall down a really steep cave, and slap my face into the ground. I respawned, and did it again.
4. I had at one point created a massive trap based around a chest with diamond in it. I didn't remember what world it was on, so when I came across it I opened the chest and was subjected to an incredibly horrifying sensation of remembering the trap just seconds before the sand landed on me.
3. Before the Beta 1.8 update, I had a fairly epic seed: "Luck" without the quotes. Before I had become familiarized with it, I wasn't quite aware that the two overhangs were large enough for mobs to spawn during the day. As a result, I got blown up by a creeper while building my shelter.
2. This is really my only really epic death on a multiplayer server - all the other ones happened too laggily for me to really rate them. I had stopped for the night in a house I had built on the server before; unaware that the hoster had turned mobs on, making my previously safe open patio now a perfect creeper entrance. I walked downstairs and into a skeleton.
1. A creeper somehow got itself into my mine, and snuck up behind me. It exploded, flinging me off a short ledge onto a skeleton and a creeper. The skeleton started shooting at me while the second creeper got ready to blow. BOOM. That's not actually what killed me, I fell thirty feet straight into lava, and suffered a slow, horrible, grisly end.
In short, Minecraft is a sandvivalbox game with the ability to create some truly incredible things. (Some things people have made include: a model Earth, a 125-meter Stargate, an Enterprise-D, and a WORKING 16-bit CPU and ALU.) However, most people don't have the patience or planning skills to make working computer parts, which is okay! Minecraft offers something for them too: Minecraft is all about bending the world to your will. The start of every world is hiding in a quickly-made shelter to avoid the night, but the end of the world is yours to shape. Do you want the world to be scarred for miles and miles from your mining? Will there be vast craters from planned TNT explosions? Will you only build with wood so as not to ruin the underground caves? Will you live underground? On the ground? Above it? Minecraft is your world to shape as you see fit.
TRON: Legacy parallels and analogies
I was writing another blog post, but it felt incredibly slow, clunky, and generally disorganized, so I saved it as a draft and started writing about TRON: Legacy. (It was my mother's idea - be thankful, otherwise you might be reading an incredibly slow, clunky, and generally disorganized blog post right now.)
TRON: Legacy has a lot of parallels and analogies. First, some of the major characters:
Tron - A security program who fights for the users. In Legacy, CLU had corrupted him.
Rinzler - The corrupted alias of Tron.
Kevin Flynn - A User and primary creator of the new Grid. He disappeared in 1989.
Sam Flynn - Kevin Flynn's son who was left in control of Encom, Kevin's company, when Kevin disappeared.
CLU - Codified Likeness Utility. A creation of Kevin's which turned against him.
Quorra - The last ISO after CLU massacred all other ISOs (assuming Castor/Zuse isn't one and/or is dead.)
Kevin, Sam, and Quorra are the main protagonists for purposes of the Grid, whereas CLU, Rinzler and the Black Guard are the main antagonists. The Flynns have a very Biblical analogy around them when on the Grid. Kevin can effectively change the world at will and has programs bowing down and praying to him (I'm not even kidding) as he's leaving the End of Line nightclub, while Sam doesn't fit into the Jesus mold perfectly when he first enters the Grid but grows into it quite nicely as time goes on. Meanwhile the antagonists all have a very fascist Germany feel to them: CLU, the main antagonist, portrays Hitler - he aggresively seeks Grid perfection above any other factors to the point of enacting an ISO genocide. The ISOs even have glowing TRON-style tattoos on their left arms, a hexagon to the left of a rotated T, which is analogous to the Star of David Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust.
Some interesting parallels exist between Sam and Kevin and between Legacy and the original TRON. For example, both Sam and Kevin have an enormous window in their house which looks out upon a tower they own but can't go to. Then there are parallels between the film and its predecessor: when Sam cracks the Encom basement door, he says "Now that is a big door," which mimics Kevin's remark in TRON. As CLU is leaving the End of Line nightclub owned by Castor/Zuse, he says "End of line, man!" which both mocks the name of the club and is a parallel to the main antagonist of TRON (the Master Control Program) who would say "End of line." whenever he ended communication with an outside user.
Before said scene, Kevin had walked into the same nightclub while a heated battle was occuring in the End of Line club in which the antagonists had the upper hand. Kevin touched the floor, changing the music - at which point the protagonists suddenly had the upper hand. As Kevin is leaving, he holds his hands in a Christ-like pose and programs bow down and pray to him (although only one is seen doing so on screen, it's virtually definite there were others doing the same.)
Another interesting analogy is that most programs on CLU's "perfect" Grid will instantly and completely derez at even the slightest injury (they became imperfect and couldn't stay in one piece) whereas when Quorra was injured only the damaged limb derezzed (which REALLY enraged Sam.) It seems ironic that the 'perfect' programs are instantly killed by slicing off their arm, whereas Quorra, an 'imperfect' ISO, wasn't. Indeed, any perfect system will quickly become totally imperfect if even the vaguest amount of imperfection is introduced. (Think about a perfect wind system moving around a perfect sphere. Then, a small object enters the atmosphere. Soon the whole wind system will be completely chaotic.)
TRON: Legacy has a lot of parallels and analogies. First, some of the major characters:
Tron - A security program who fights for the users. In Legacy, CLU had corrupted him.
Rinzler - The corrupted alias of Tron.
Kevin Flynn - A User and primary creator of the new Grid. He disappeared in 1989.
Sam Flynn - Kevin Flynn's son who was left in control of Encom, Kevin's company, when Kevin disappeared.
CLU - Codified Likeness Utility. A creation of Kevin's which turned against him.
Quorra - The last ISO after CLU massacred all other ISOs (assuming Castor/Zuse isn't one and/or is dead.)
Kevin, Sam, and Quorra are the main protagonists for purposes of the Grid, whereas CLU, Rinzler and the Black Guard are the main antagonists. The Flynns have a very Biblical analogy around them when on the Grid. Kevin can effectively change the world at will and has programs bowing down and praying to him (I'm not even kidding) as he's leaving the End of Line nightclub, while Sam doesn't fit into the Jesus mold perfectly when he first enters the Grid but grows into it quite nicely as time goes on. Meanwhile the antagonists all have a very fascist Germany feel to them: CLU, the main antagonist, portrays Hitler - he aggresively seeks Grid perfection above any other factors to the point of enacting an ISO genocide. The ISOs even have glowing TRON-style tattoos on their left arms, a hexagon to the left of a rotated T, which is analogous to the Star of David Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust.
Some interesting parallels exist between Sam and Kevin and between Legacy and the original TRON. For example, both Sam and Kevin have an enormous window in their house which looks out upon a tower they own but can't go to. Then there are parallels between the film and its predecessor: when Sam cracks the Encom basement door, he says "Now that is a big door," which mimics Kevin's remark in TRON. As CLU is leaving the End of Line nightclub owned by Castor/Zuse, he says "End of line, man!" which both mocks the name of the club and is a parallel to the main antagonist of TRON (the Master Control Program) who would say "End of line." whenever he ended communication with an outside user.
Before said scene, Kevin had walked into the same nightclub while a heated battle was occuring in the End of Line club in which the antagonists had the upper hand. Kevin touched the floor, changing the music - at which point the protagonists suddenly had the upper hand. As Kevin is leaving, he holds his hands in a Christ-like pose and programs bow down and pray to him (although only one is seen doing so on screen, it's virtually definite there were others doing the same.)
Another interesting analogy is that most programs on CLU's "perfect" Grid will instantly and completely derez at even the slightest injury (they became imperfect and couldn't stay in one piece) whereas when Quorra was injured only the damaged limb derezzed (which REALLY enraged Sam.) It seems ironic that the 'perfect' programs are instantly killed by slicing off their arm, whereas Quorra, an 'imperfect' ISO, wasn't. Indeed, any perfect system will quickly become totally imperfect if even the vaguest amount of imperfection is introduced. (Think about a perfect wind system moving around a perfect sphere. Then, a small object enters the atmosphere. Soon the whole wind system will be completely chaotic.)
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is a wonderful thing. If we didn't have it, we would anyway. However, sometimes it's hard to notice it. Some people don't get sarcasm regardless of the situation, whereas some just can't see it in text very easily. As for me, sarcasm is obvious regardless of where it appears and I use it the same way as I use the ability to create vibrations in the air - naturally and fluidly as a basic means of conveying information.
In my opinion. sarcasm generally tones down the impact of an insult. If someone drops a box, say "Nice job." is far less hurtful than "YOU $#!@ING KLUTZ!" and is also less self-infuriating. When one is on the verge of becoming enraged, what you say can often either calm you down or fulfill the anger. For example, shouting and cursing at someone who drops a box will get you all worked up, whereas saying a sarcastic comment in a calm tone of voice won't.
As for detecting sarcasm, I don't need a detector for it ... or rather, I already have one. It's a dollop of pinkish meat matter in a shell of white bony matter. How someone can't detect sarcasm is beyond me: sarcasm is really an insult via lying most of the time: if someone drops a box, they didn't do a nice job - quite the contrary, they did a bad job! Can some people genuinely not tell when someone is lying even if it's clear that what that person is saying is contrary to the truth? (Also, the background this text is on is dark red.)
Sarcasm is vital in daily life in modern-day society. For example, if you're talking to someone about something and they say "Really? That's so interesting!", the correct response is "Yeah, I think so too!" or some variant thereof, whereas the correct response to "Really? That's so interesting!" is "Oh, sorry; I didn't mean to bore you." or some variant thereof. Getting these two responses mixed up can lead to disaster:
"Really? That's so interesting!" "Oh, sorry; I didn't mean to bore you."
"Really? That's so interesting!" "Yeah, I think so too!"
In my opinion. sarcasm generally tones down the impact of an insult. If someone drops a box, say "Nice job." is far less hurtful than "YOU $#!@ING KLUTZ!" and is also less self-infuriating. When one is on the verge of becoming enraged, what you say can often either calm you down or fulfill the anger. For example, shouting and cursing at someone who drops a box will get you all worked up, whereas saying a sarcastic comment in a calm tone of voice won't.
As for detecting sarcasm, I don't need a detector for it ... or rather, I already have one. It's a dollop of pinkish meat matter in a shell of white bony matter. How someone can't detect sarcasm is beyond me: sarcasm is really an insult via lying most of the time: if someone drops a box, they didn't do a nice job - quite the contrary, they did a bad job! Can some people genuinely not tell when someone is lying even if it's clear that what that person is saying is contrary to the truth? (Also, the background this text is on is dark red.)
Sarcasm is vital in daily life in modern-day society. For example, if you're talking to someone about something and they say "Really? That's so interesting!", the correct response is "Yeah, I think so too!" or some variant thereof, whereas the correct response to "Really? That's so interesting!" is "Oh, sorry; I didn't mean to bore you." or some variant thereof. Getting these two responses mixed up can lead to disaster:
"Really? That's so interesting!" "Oh, sorry; I didn't mean to bore you."
"Really? That's so interesting!" "Yeah, I think so too!"
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