No more Lego scientist ladies???

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Caroluna

I was disappointed to read that the Lego company does not intend to continue its Lady Scientist series, or even, to make any more of the original set. This set sold out in about two weeks. Here’s the article where I read the sad news!

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/09/12/hey-lego-bring-back-the-women-scientists/

That’s such a shame. I was really looking forward to a Lego entomologist, botanist, or ornithologist. The Lego company is really missing out by not continuing this series. A lot of adults enjoyed playing with them too!

Picture found here

So how does this tie into Minecraft, you might ask? Well…to me, Minecraft is like a form of digital Legos (except you don’t step on them in your bare feet on the way to the bathroom at 3 am).

Minecraft has kept the broad appeal that Legos used to have. If you want pink and purple and pastel colors, there’s now stained glass panels and colored clay. If you want to blow things up (or get blown up) there’s lots of ways to do that. You can built fortresses — or cute homes with a fence and flowers in front — or magnificent cathedrals — or geodesic domes. You can farm, and raise animals. You can make complicated things with circuits. And if you like banging your head on the keyboard while learning new editing software — there are hours and hours of fun for you!

So — great job, Notch for inventing Minecraft! and props to the folks at Mojang, who keep adding cool features! And thanks to all you out there who write the editing programs, develop mods, create new “skins” for characters, run servers, build adventure maps, make videos — so that Minecraft can appeal to such a broad spectrum of people.

One Quadrillion?!

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Caroluna

A while ago, I accidentally created a world where the mountains were so tall that you can’t add any more blocks. It was way above the cloud layer…

Try as you might, you can’t place any blocks on this plateau — it gives you an error message. But, in Creative Mode, you can still fly above this! So I gave it a try. I flew so high that I lost all sight of the ground. At this point even though it was night, the sun re-appeared (was I seeing around the planet???)

Using the F3 key, I displayed the X, Y and Z coordinates. Y is the altitude. It seemed to take forever, but I finally got above 1000 meters. I kept expecting something terrible to happen (would it crash my computer?) so I got scared and gave up.

So — how high up can you fly in Creative Mode? Using our handy-dandy Google, I found this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwvw72NxaeY

The short answer is, you can go 1 quadrillion meters. One quadrillion and one, and you get an error message. I’m not positive but I think the error is so severe that you can never enter that world again! The guy in the video used the “teleport” command, which I don’t have, so I’m not going to try it.

One quadrillion can also be written in exponential notation as 10 to the 15th power.

Just for scale, one AU (astronomical unit) is a measly 1.5 times 10 to the 12th power. (One AU is approximately the distance from the Earth to the Sun.) So in Minecraft, you can fly about a thousand times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This is waaaaaay past Pluto, which is an average of 40 AU away.

A lightyear is 9.5 times 10 to the 15th power. That means the Minecraft sky extends about A TENTH OF A LIGHTYEAR away from the world’s surface.

Won’t be able to reach any stars. According to this article, the closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, at 4.5 lightyears away.

Of course, in the Minecraft world, there could be stars much closer than that, who knows?

Creator of the Earthsea books receives award

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Caroluna

Found this at the blog The Marysue —

Neil Gaiman to Present Ursula K. Le Guin With Lifetime Achievement Award

Among the nation’s most revered writers of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin’s fully imagined worlds challenge readers to consider profound philosophical and existential questions about gender, race, the environment, and society. Her boldly experimental and critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and children’s books, written in elegant prose, are popular with millions of readers around the world.

I would like to build a Minecraft world that is a collection of far-flung islands. I got this idea from Ursula Le Guin’s series of Earthsea books — I loved spending time in the world she envisioned, and want to have my own parallel universe version.

Here is a map of Le Guin’s fictional world, Earthsea.

click here to see a poster-sized version of the map!

Beautiful images of distant space

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Caroluna

No, not the Minecraft universe this time — it’s new discoveries about the universe we actually live in!

Thanks to two friends who both sent me the same link.

This new game looks pretty cool

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Caroluna

I just read about this game and would like to learn more about it. The evolving critters look a little cheesy, but what a great idea! I would love to see this sort of thing take place in Minecraft landscapes. It’s already fun to suddenly see a school of squid or a family group of ocelots. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see something out of the corner of your eye and think “Uh, …what the heck was THAT?!”

Visiting Sept Seven

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Caroluna

Flying around Sept Seven! What would those blank areas in the corners be? How would the cliff-borders look? Are the caverns interesting? And, I always love visiting flat sandy beaches and really dense jungle.

Well, the blank areas on the map were, again, those gaps in the world. I was hoping it would fill in with water. Still, I love flying above the Void, and occasionally falling in.

Yes, the cliffs were impressive. The roots of the trees go down to the very bottom of the world.

Beautiful beaches!

I’m not sure if I like the caverns. They look weird in sand. Maybe if I restricted them to certain areas. Also, they’re kind of dangerous — I was walking around at night, was taking some pictures of the moon, and fell in one.

This picture is awfully dark, but I think you get the idea. This would be nasty to get out of, if I couldn’t fly.

Yes, the water levels match perfectly! I built a little glass bridge from the island, across the Void Gap, to the surrounding ocean.

More pictures soon! This is a very nice little world, and I’ve already carved out some “camping areas”.

The World of Sept Seven

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Caroluna

Using Worldpainter — on the menu “Create New World”

Type of world: round Topography: hilly Surface material: grass
Minecraft seed: ocean
…Everything else was set to the default (the normal values).

I “scraped” the green away down to the blue level, to make the undulating coastline and islands. I made the coastline flatter (I love wide beaches!) and raised up some small hills. I added some sand (in the “terrain” palette) and various percentages of Jungle (in the “Biome” palette).

Next stage — Save World As — “Sept 7”
then — Export as new Minecraft map

When you go to export, you will get a lot of choices. Most important — remember to choose CREATIVE MODE!!!… or, when you visit your new world, YOU WILL DIE. A lot. And you won’t be able to fly, either. Especially not when you’re dead.

Border: water     World type: large biomes     Structures: no     Chest of goodies: no
Caverns: no     Chasms: yes, at 50%     Chasms break the surface: yes
Remove water and lava above openings: no     Resources: everywhere, 50%

I left everything else the way it was already set up (default).

Note that it’s a round world, and almost all the edges of the circle are water. I selected a border of water. I figured that the water edges of the round world would blend nicely into the rectangular water border. I knew that the places where land came up to the edge of the world, that would look like a cliff.

Tomorrow — What does Sept Seven look like?

Controversy in the gaming world

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Caroluna

I just read this article over at Salon.com…

Over the past few weeks, the video game community has erupted into a full-blown culture war. On one side are the gaming journalists and developers, circling the wagons around feminist activist Anita Sarkeesian and feminist game developer Zoe Quinn, and on the other side are legions of self-proclaimed “gamers,” outraged that the games they love are being criticized….[snip]

… Sarkeesian has been deluged with sexist hate of all stripes, from virtually every gaming community on the Internet. It reached a peak when she actually had to leave her home following particularly detailed threats made on her by a Twitter user who knew her address and parents’ names… [snip]

The sexist gamers are the ones who feel most strongly about the issue, and are so loud about it you’d think Anita Sarkeesian had personally gone around to every male gamer’s home and smashed up their “Call of Duty” discs.

Anita Sarkeesian’s videos can be found at her YouTube channel, The Feminist Frequency. Note that some of the videos come with a warning –“This educational episode contains graphic sexual and violent game footage.”

Two videos that I especiallyenjoyed were the ones about Legos — how they were originally marketed as toys for the entire family, but gradually separated into “pink” and “blue” versions.

I think Minecraft is now what Legos used to be; there’s a whole spectrum of ways that you can play the game.

Thanks Anita Sarkeesian for your thought-provoking videos; stay safe!

Squid Behavior in Minecraft

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Caroluna

Yeah yeah I know. They’re not real critters. It’s all in the Minecraft programming — some rudimentary AI (artificial intelligence) generating random behaviors. Some behaviors are common and some are more rare.

No! Who am I kidding. Of course they’re real!

So — here’s some typical squid behavior — swimming peacefully by moonlight…

…and sometimes they swim to the surface and take a look around.

Less common is for them to come up on the land. They call loudly and attract others.

REALLY loudly.

Mating takes place.

OK, fine. But … what in the world is going on here?!

The Creeper approaches the squid — then notices my presence. Now what?

I…I just…I don’t even.

Extreme mountain!

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Caroluna

In the previous experiment, I clicked the brush 15 times and then 30 times. Here I just kept clicking until it stopped growing. How would it turn out?

Well, there it is, off in the distance. I don’t think there’s any mountains on Earth that have such a steep slope. Maybe on a planet with smaller gravity it would be possible.

It was so tall (how tall was it?)… it was SOOOO tall that I couldn’t add any blocks to the top. When I tried to spawn in some creepers, they fell off and wound up randomly scattered on the sides.

Here’s an official description of altitude
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude