Minecraft 1.4 Update Review

I've decided to do something new with this blog...Minecraft!

I woke up this morning, hours before Hurricane Sandy is going to strike the east coast and I said to myself, "If I'm going to make this blog personal, I'm going to write about something close to my heart and the hearts of 8 million people and counting. Minecraft. Minecraft is an online game that is basically a sandbox world  - meaning you, your friends and anyone else in the world can play it however you see fit. This is like building with virtual Legos. There are rocks and ores and various other resources in this block land with which you can build a fort, a castle, a house, a tower, or anything at all you can imagine. That's the real point of Minecraft: to be transported into a world of your very own making, without global warming and wars and those kinds of things.

On Thursday, the 25th  I was watching a video about the upcoming Minecraft update and was shocked to find out that it was released the day before! I started exploring right away.

Here I present some screenshots of what's new in this update, All you, the viewer, need to do is scroll down and look and have your mind dazzled by this improved world of blocks. The update is impressive.

A lot of things were added into the update so I'll try to keep it short and simple.Bats have been added to the Minecraft universe, and I saw a bunch but they move so fast that I couldn't get any clear screenshots.  It seems they're just there to add to the cave-y creepy underground feel. Like most other creatures, bats spawn in caves and other dark places.

Witches have also been added. They are hostile creatures that will attack a player with various throwable potions of poison and instant damage. A creature to be feared! I did manage to get a picture of the witch. They look a lot like a regular NPC villager: they wear shirts that hide their hands and they have gigantic Squidward-like noses on their ridiculously large heads. I could not stop laughing when I discovered that they have a small wart on that Squidward nose. Here's a screen shot of the witch...

Do you see the wart on the right side of the nose?

Also added into the game were two vegetables, one of which I'm very grateful for (keep reading). Here's a screenshot of the first veg, the carrot. 

You can tell these are carrots by the little bit of orange sticking out of the ground. Carrots can be planted and farmed over and over and over, so if you have one - you have infinity.

Same goes for the next vegetable - infinity. And if you want to know why I like the this vegetable, I'll tell you. My ancestors span quite a few heritages. I'm Polish, Welsh, English, German, Austrian, French, and Irish. The last heritage is why this vegetable is dear to me. Potatoes were added into the game! So even when I'm playing Minecraft I can embrace my inner potato-loving Irishman. Here's a picture of the potatoes in Minecraft:

The list of new stuff in this update just keeps gorwing. Flower pots! If you play Minecraft and like to garden, then just craft yourself a flowerpot and be the Father Lawrence of Minecraft . (Anyone see the Shakespeare reference there?) Here's a picture of the flower pots and all the plants that can be planted in them.

Heads were added into the game as well. Not to say that the Minecraft characters didn't have heads before this update... these heads are decoration blocks that look like the heads of creatures in the game. Here's the screenshot, and don't worry, no Minecraft creatures were hurt in the making of this blog post.

These heads can also be placed on the player as a hat so they can look like any one of these creatures. And a simple solution has been added into the game for fixing a Minecrafter's worst nightmere, the inability to fix broken tools. In the picture below, my golden sword is nearly broken. I honestly want to keep my sword so I'll use the newly added anvil tool to fix it.

The anvil also alllows you to rename items. So I'm renaming this gold sword a "butter sword" because golden tools have lame durability of butter. Also gold ingots look uncannily like sticks of butter.

Now as I add more gold ingots the durability of the butter sword goes up, up and away! Repairs do cost experience points (XP), but it's worth it

As seen in the picture below, it will cost me 4 gold ingots and 13 XP to fully restore my butter sword.

Also in this update you can now dye leather armor any color you want. Here's a picture of my character in a great looking Irish green set of armor.

This is a great picture because it also shows how players can now take any item they want and frame it. That's how I made the insignia in the background Also, he's holding the nether star which is used to craft beacon blocks. I'll tell you about those in a future blog post because I think I just tore a ligament typing this post... just kidding. The basic point of the beacons is to make a beam in the air which creates a zone around it giving the player a boost like jumping higher or being stronger. Now there are a lot of things that I didn't cover in this post. But that's because I want you, the viewer, to got to minecraft.net and buy Minecraft 1.4 to explore the new possibilities. I even hyperlinked it for you... I'm so nice :).

The Fifth and Kennedy "Gang"

Funny story really... I’m now a junior member of the Fifth and Kennedy Street "Gang", a "gang" of teenage boys who ruled a downtown DC neighborhood in the 1950s. They’re in their seventies now, but they still hang out together and get kicked out of the occasional restaurant, Ocean City bar or drag show in Key West.

This whole thing started a few weeks ago when I was in downtown Silver Spring with my film group working on our dystopian trailer. We were shooting a fight scene in the mall. It was so obvious it was staged. Our slaps and punches never connected; we were like bad actors doing a Three Stooges skit. And we were laughing. And one of us was recording it on a video camera. And I was in a not very believable costume as an old man with a cane, my hair spray painted gray. Then a mall cop came over to us and said, “Hey, put that away. No taking pictures in the mall.” We obediently followed his instructions and stopped recording but he was not satisfied. He said, “I’m afraid I can’t have you taking pictures in the mall. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”  It didn’t really matter; we already got all the footage we needed, but we acted all upset and grumbled on our way out.

Most families would scold their children for getting kicked out of a mall, not mine! I immediately called my granddad when I got home, because when he was my age he had a BIG problem with authority and did this kind of thing every day. But I don’t think his behavior was innocent like mine. And I don’t think he did much homework on the weekends. Granddad says when he got my voice mail all he could do was yell YAAAAY! This was one proud grandfather; his grandson was finally taking after him. He’s always telling me stories about his days as a member of the Fifth and Kennedy "Gang", and about all the pranks they pulled and cops they ran away from.  He and a few of the other men that were in the "gang" still see each other regularly and even go on vacation together with their wives. One of their wives warned me not to say that I like anything like a glass or a knickknack in a restaurant or at somebody’s house because one of the "gang" will probably “lift” it for me.  They’re still at it.

So Granddad said that he would talk to Bill Steed, another man in the "gang", to see if I could join up now that I got in trouble in the city. About a week later he called me back and said that he discussed the matter with the leading members of the "gang", and in a 3 to 2 vote they named me a junior member of the Fifth and Kennedy "Gang". He said to call him back if I ever get chased off by a real cop, and I’ll probably have a shot at full "gang" membership. So yea, I’m now officially associated with my aunt, my grandfather and a bunch of other senior outlaws. I know, terrifying right?

Mr. Mayo, open this gate! Mr. Mayo, tear down these rules!

As you may have seen in the post title, where I co-opted Reagan's famous Berlin Wall Speech, because the rules for the blog post have been changed. So I will do some specific school assignments here, but for a majority of the time you're going to be reading what concerns and interests me day to day. I promise I will write one post per week, but I will do more if I can. I think up until election day this blog will mainly focus on politics and the 2012 election campaign. I honestly love politics and political comedians like John Stuart, Steven Colbert, Conan O'Brien, and Bill Maher. You could probably guess where I myself stand on politics by my favorite comedians. Well,  I'm going to say it anyway, I am an EXTREME liberal when it comes to social issues. In fact it shocks my own mother, who usually votes straight democratic on the ballot (except for Leggett, she leaves that spot blank). Anyway I was very glad about the outcome of the vice presidential debate, because it allowed a sort of redemption for the Democratic party. I think Obama had planned to work off of the idea that Romney was going to cut taxes for the rich , but when Romney said that wasn't his plan it invalidated almost all of Obama's argument and he didn't call him out on this blatant lie. After that huge failure I literally cried myself to sleep. But I wasn't the only one who took the loss to heart. Just look at this clip of Chris Matthews after the debate. He's beside himself in shock and disbelief at Obama's pathetic performance. And I apologize about the short camera man interruption, but it was the best footage I could find.


Now, Joe Biden, I love what he did. He basically took Romney's debate strategy and used it against Ryan. He slammed Ryan and basically pushed him around, because he basically that there are real and substantial differences here. He and Obama will protect and look out for the working American public. The Republicans will take care of their rich cronies at the expense of everyone else." It's that simple. Again, I'm just so relieved that the Vice Presidential debate  well was such a contrast to the earlier presidential one. It puts us back in the running, and sets the stage for a chance for Barack Obama to really resurrect his bid for a second term.

Archival Footage

WWII Basic Training   http://archive.org/details/WwiiBasicTraining

2:04-2:16 soldiers running in formation

INVASION, ETC(1946) http://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.39122

4:54- 5:10 bombs exploding

5:33- 534 cannons being fired

7:00-7:12 planes exploding

7:30-7:32 plane exploding in mid air

8:16- 8:28 footage of soldiers

 

For our Dystopia Trailer Projects, my job was to find archival footage that would fit into our premise. The premise my group decided on was that after a long period of war the government banned creativity to keep the citizens in line. I decided that I could use some news reels from WWII to show the time period of hatred and war. I am satisfied with what I found. The Internet archive is a gold mine for quality footage of various eras that don't have copyright licenses. If anyone out there is doing a project about history and needs footage, or knows someone who needs historical footage, show them this website. I can not express how helpful and just flat out cool these movies are. I know I went a little crazy with detail with the second movie, but it had great war battle footage and dogfight videos with in it, just what my group needs to set our scene.