Last of the alpha-draft adventure map pix.

Comments? Opinions?

More pix from my project. Yes, I am rebuilding all of these.

Especially the sewer level. It was fun.

Just a few pictures of the alpha draft rooms. Each room has a math puzzle to solve, except the obsidian pyramid, in which you have to literally find the answer before lava completely covers the interior of the pyramid.

I’m so nasty, sometimes.

Thanks a bunch, Notch

So, you’ve all heard by now - or all of you that care about Minecraft - that they’ve updated Minecraft again with taller worlds. Yay. And jungles. Yay. And massive trees. Yay. And pet cats. Yay.

And I now have to re-make my adventure map in progress because I’m that gosh-darn obsessive-compulsive.

Boo.

It’s times like this that I wish Minecraft had a copy-paste mode. Or mass replace commands like the maps in World of Minecraft (coughfreeplugcough).

Because digging/rebuilding a large volume of large rooms with scenarios and redstone and every last sort of malarky I could think of is not just a can of arseholes. It’s not a sack of arseholes. It’s a frikkin’ large shipping container of arseholes with a side order of armpits.

At least I get the swamp/jungle I wanted in room 3.

And then there’s the thing I’m dreading - destroying the original. Yes, ‘cause retard!me decided to add hazards like lava and water and monsters, oh my!

At least it gives me something to do when I’m resting my feet.

As the Drama Flies: episode 2

As you may be aware from the previous episode, I have been invited to Thailand for a few weeks, and also begun the process towards getting a passport.

This involves getting hold of a registrar’s office official copy of my birth certificate and my marriage licence. Which means getting hold of the department of births, deaths and marriages.

Sure, you can get lots of information online, but you can’t order a copy of your own ID papers.

I eventually figured out one has to turn up in person with every document you have, fill in a form, and pay a staggering fee to get a couple of official pieces of paper mailed to you.

Now, a little backstory. When I left to pick up the kids, the hound was on his long leash. When I came back, he was sitting on the verandah. He sat like an angel when I opened the gate to come in. After I freed him from the leash [still attached to the harness which was attached to him] I figured I could rely on him to sit like an angel every time the gate opens.

He sat like an angel when I went to the courthouse to get my paperwork filed.

He sat like an angel when I came back.

He took off like a rocket when I trusted him the third time that gate opened - when it was time to pick up the kids.

I tried to catch him, and lost sight of him. Therefore, I was obliged to go pick up the kids with visions of dire consequences dancing in my head, and worried tears dancing in my eyes.

Mayhem was understandably upset. I was crying. He was crying. Even Chaos, who’s normally scared of the hound, was crying.

We worked on some Missing posters, and discovered our printer was shit out of ink.

We just got to the point where we were expecting ominous phone calls when a familiar bell sounded and the hound gallumphed in for hugs and loves.

We fed him and hugged him and gave him skritches… and discovered he was bleeding from his nose.

New panic time! Yay. Not.

Dragged family and Hound off to the vet’s. Got hound checked out, also got hound immunisation boosters while we were there.

Hound is fine. None the worse for his adventure.

I feel like I want to melt into some comforting figure’s lap and cry the whole world away.

Finding the Raw Materials - My Adventures in Frugality for Freedom

This Saturday was the day I was supposed to change everything. Or start changing everything.

The ONLY farmer’s market I could find nearby operated one Saturday out of every month. Odd, I thought, but I thought I made it understood that we’d be going together to get infos.

The day dawned and Hubby volunteered to look after the kids whilst I ventured forth on my ownsome.

Like shit, I said, and bullied the kids and my main squeeze into coming along.

To an event that had shut ages ago from lack of interest. The webmeisters in question had evidently failed to notice. Yeesh.

Far be it for me to admit defeat. I went scavenger hunting for big, foam boxes that the BigBoxmarts tend to throw out.

Turns out they arrive Sunday. Fury.

Still, I managed to talk the nice folks into reserving me three of them and I plan on striking five seconds after the doors open.

Hubby, meanwhile, bought a shitton of perishable and frozen goods as an excuse not to be roped into further adventures.

I took mercy on him and went on a pricing expedition to Big Garden Chainstores B and M. I hit M first, because it was newer. Turns out Big Garden Chainstore M is interested in selling one all SORTS of semi-useful and decorative crap for both indoors and outdoors. The garden section is relatively tiny, but their big bags of rocks and sources of mesh are relatively cheap.

B had the bigger gardening section and was actually willing to sell one some varying items needed for hydroponics… but they had no hydroponics-for-idiots starter kits. Just separate items for a whole ton more. Big Garden Chainstore B loves selling items separately, they get more money that way.

Next, I tried the long shot, the biggest dollar shop in the area. It used to sell all sorts of Demtel crap at much less than the easy-installments-of-X tallied up to.

It had been a long time since I’d seen any dollar shop selling Demtel-associated gadgetry, and this visit was no exception.

Maybe Demtel (and its relatives, you know the sort “but wait! There’s more!”) realised they were loosing their hats by selling their shite directly and stayed on the late-night television-only advert circuit. I dunno.

Still, at the end of the day, I know where to strike, come the morrow.

If you can imagine a plump, frumpy commando ninja who cackles occasionally and talks to herself… that would be me. Whisking from A to B to C with a gleeful little scamper and a lot of lookers-on wondering who that strange, lumpy ‘tard was.

And as soon as hubby lurches into wakefulness, that day, I’ll have my mats ready. All I’ll need from him is some fresh garden biomass (You’d know it as “lawn clippings”) to feed to the compost-tumbler and turn into industry-free high-quality potting soil