Mambo Taxi

I've been playing Minecraft. This game seems to suit me. If you've never heard of it: it's world-building/exploring, first-person, with a fairly sophisticated physics engine. And intentionally blocky graphics, as you can see in this picture with a duck [ETA: chicken].



The waterfall was created when a nasty-bad blew up right next to me, also killing me in the process. The explosion took out a roughly 6x6x6 sphere of ground. Since it was next to water, the water rushed in to fill the hole. But fluids seem to flow forever, without equalizing pressures, which leads to interesting effects.



Here's the same area from a different perspective. I'm perched atop 30 or so blocks to make this shot. There are big, fluffy, square-edged clouds just off-camera. They always drift East to West.

You can see my working inventory at the bottom of that screenshot. Much of the game mechanics involve crafting items. For example, the bow was made from string and sticks. The sticks were fashioned out of processed wood, from trees which I cut down with my bare hands. The string was acquired by killing a few giant spiders, which was possibly the most exciting experience in game so far. I was experimenting with pouring water on the heads of the spiders when I got caught in the down-flow and trapped in a cavern with a monster-generator. I am surprised I survived.

I'm sticking with the one-player mode for now, because I've heard too many people getting their creations blown up by other players in multiplayer.

Meanwhile, I'm digging up a storm- that hill is basically my home. There are three doors to it in that screen-shot, though you'd have to know what to look for to find two of them. You also can't see the reason I adopted this hill. On the other side, there's a lava flow coming out of the cliff that's really pretty at night-time.

* Civic holiday off from work yesterday. Much happened. Short version.

* Folk Festival in Cambridge: d discovered for us a very tasty South American restaurant, we hung out with persephoneplace and bodhranman, and watched Morris Dancers in their finery. I have photos, but haven't gotten them uploaded yet.

* Birthday Party: elbie_at_trig is a Triangle Square. I mis-heard someone's comment but the result was an excellent idea; and of course it's already on the internet: caffeinated bacon.

* insomniac night followed by fairly long bike-ride == oddly restorative. Though I had headaches off and on all weekend. Weird dreams, too. John Denver, get out of my subconscious! You too, scary border-guard guy!

* Studying for my PACS class final, which is Saturday at 4pm. I'm looking forward to it being over- the class was interesting, but not nearly engaging enough for me right now. Ah well.

* an afternoon off at the_infamous_j's cottage: Gloom is a wonderful game. It is macabre, uses a gimmick of translucent playing-cards to neat effect, and has story-telling elements built in, as you try to lower the Self-Worth score for your family while making everyone else's families happier. You win by dying with as much tragedy as possible. Also a fun round of Unspeakable Words, which is great to introduce to new people who are good at scrabble because it hurts their sensibilities.

Some of you may appreciate this news from wunderland_syn if you've not heard already: coming soon- Zombie Fluxx. I find it funny because apparently Andrew Looney hates movie-gore as much as I do.

Also, they won their fifth Origins award, for Treehouse, which we happen to have the pieces for, because we bought "Icehouse" about a bazillion years ago. I think we'll give it a shot and see whether tipping over pyramids is as much fun as they make it sound.

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Pimping my friends' work: seasonalontfood is a blog about cooking seasonal Ontario food. It's written by a F/friend (that is to say, a friend of mine who's a Quaker), Jennifer S. of Cambridge. Anyhow they just visited Well Fed Food near Ayr who may be of interest to those who are interested in local meats. They have a wide variety of local meats farmed on local grain (Black Angus cattle, pork, chicken, fish, lamb, venison, elk, and buffalo.)