The End of a Different Year and Hexxit

It is getting closer to the end of the year 2013. A lot of changes happened over this year that I was probably not prepared for.  I did not write much here on Biebsworld, mainly because I am not even sure what I want Biebsworld to be. I did a lot more over at joshbieber.com, which is currently dead because my webserver took a dump and I didn’t have a backup for it. The reason it died was due to a power outage that fried the hard drive. Joshbieber.com was my tech site the site I maintained for all my tech stuff. All my articles I wrote are gone which saddens me a bit but it’s not life or death and probably most of them needed to be updated.

I found that I love to write about how to keep your computer up and running and at its peak performance. It is not hard to do so and people pay hundreds of dollars to companies and person all over to have it do when most of the time a little reading could save you that money. The problem with people today is they do not want to self-educate themselves but for those few that are willing to learn I have no qualms teaching.

Teaching, I never thought I would ever hear myself say these words: “I love to teach.”  I am not a teacher but I got the chance to tutor a child this year on the different parts and how to build a computer. I loved every part of it. I wish more young people were more interested in learning like this kid was but alas they are not. They want everything done for them with the least amount of interaction and instant gratification.

I still play minecraft though. Here lately I am playing hexxit (www.technicpack.net/hexxit‎). The Minecraft mod that takes the open world and construction of Minecraft and fuses it with the explorative nature of Dungeons and Dragons. Hexxit doesn’t have a clear goal. Some goals I have set for myself:

  • Make a full set of Hexxit gear
  • Defeat all the bosses
  • Defeat the hydra (the hardest Twilight Forest boss)
  • Clear 50 dungeons
  • Make a wall of every trophy from each epic moment.
  • DO ALL OF THE ABOVE

Hexxit focuses on exactly what I found fun about Minecraft: exploring a procedurally generated world. Only now there’s very real rewards and very real surprises as you’re zipping around looking under every rock and raiding every ruined fort.

fort

The most impressive part about Hexxit is that it focuses the player’s experience without betraying the core spirit of Minecraft. It is not an RPG, there are no stats. It is not a story game, there are no pre-made structures. It is Minecraft in every single way.

I like to think of Minecraft like a generic set of Lego blocks: you can do most anything with them as long as you provide enough elbow grease and imagination. But Hexxit is the Castle set of Legos that provide a granularity and specificity that aids imagination without restricting it. The mods provide you with new pieces and tweaks that promote a very new exploration-heavy experience, but ultimately you’re still finding your own fun by combining the bricks at your leisure.

If “exploration heavy high adventure” doesn’t convince you, here are some of the mods that are included within Hexxit:

  • Tinker’s Construct: Craft tools and weapons out of component parts to create your dream shovel. Socket in diamonds to increase tool durability, cover it in magic slime to make it tools repair themselves over time, and even craft a pick axe made out of flaming gems to instantly smelt ore! It’s complicated but a hell of a lot of fun.
  • Better Dungeons: This mod fills your world with awesome locations like volcanoes and jungle temples, but the real draw to Better Dungeons is its tweaks to enemies. Human enemies will be equipped with real gear with very real powers, so now your enemies may have their own healer, their own grappling-hook to pull you in, or even a grenadier to blast you and your buildings to bits from a distance. This mod also includes awesome staves for players, allowing them to fly like the wind and trap opponents in bubbles.
  • Chococraft: Chocobos. Chocobo breeding. Riding chocobos. How are you still reading this, go download this mod!

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Minecraft, whats the point?

minecraft_iconI was asked today why I “play a stupid game like Minecraft” well its fun and simple but minecraft also teaches, creativity, planning, and project development methodology.  When I play other games like Planetside or Guild Wars I enjoy them but they can really really frustrate me. Minecraft is game I can sit and relax and just enjoy a simple fun adventure game. You might ask but Minecraft has violence too! There is no blood and dead mobs simply turn red, fall over, and then disappear in smoke. There is combat, but it is in the context of survival, not gratuitous killing and is not graphic.

Minecraft can have a huge educational benefit for children; it can help teach numerous subjects both with and without adult involvement. Learning in Minecraft can be faster than traditional methods of education, as children are often far more motivated, get more practice, and feel that what they are learning is useful.

Reading  – The names of items in the inventory are a great place to start teaching children to read, since each item has a tooltip and image which go together. For older children, reading the wiki and online guides can extend their skills.

Math – The crafting system can help in teaching basic math (e.g. I need 3 Sugar Cane for Paper), which transitions to multiplication (I need 3 Paper and 1 Leather for a Book, and 3 Books for a Bookshelf, so I need 9 Paper and 3 Leather all together) and division (When I create Paper I get 3 at once, so 9/3 = 3 times per Bookshelf I’ll have to create Paper).

Geometry – While the Minecraft world is only made up of cubes, the creations a child makes may resemble other shapes. Parental involvement can help teach children to recognize these shapes (cube, cuboid, square based pyramid, etc.). Also, counting the number of blocks that were dug out when making a 6x6x3 cave can help multiplication skills and understanding the of concepts of volume and area.

Music – With the preparation of some Redstone circuitry, experimenting with Note Blocks can teach children about notes, octaves and chords.

Social skills – By setting up a private server, parents can provide a safe environment for children to interact with friends and make playing Minecraft a cooperative event. Using a Local Area Network (LAN, or “home network”) will allow children to play in the same room with their friends. By using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP, or “voice chat”), a phone call, or the in-game text chat, they can play together wherever they are. Either method allows children to work together to build, explore, and learn as they develop their social skills, especially teamwork. For older children, contributing to the Minecraft Wiki can be a chance to learn about Internet etiquette and collaboration.

Basic Computer Science – Redstone circuitry provides an interactive environment to build basic logic circuits and combine them for more sophisticated purposes. Feedback is immediate, and the mistakes don’t destroy expensive electrical components.

Server Crash!

I woke up this morning and had a few mins to spare and so i decided i was going to log into my buildcraft server and check up on my quarry. behold i get the dreaded “Server not found!” error. i’m like its right there see! there is the console window right there ….  first thought to my mind ok lets just restart the server …. i issue the stop command and it just sits there ….. i look at my CPU usage java is sitting at all most 85% of my quad core …. i’m like something not right … back to the console still just sitting there now i’m getting not responding and i was forced to kill the process. great now i bet my world is now corrupt i relaunch the server … sure enough its corrupt. its a good thing i got that video recorded last night. good news is you guys will get to see me re build my power plant and i think ill make a slightly smaller quarry because i think that what caused the corruption.

now thats what i call mining

me and a buddy spent several hours mining out this entire section tonight. sometimes i wonder if i play too much minecraft then im reminded there is no such thing as too much minecraft … ive been looking into some different plugins for my server i think im going to introduce buildcraft on one of them and the other i think ill introduce heroes its and RPG like plugin. ive been wanting to get more in to adventuring with minecraft and since i lost my minecraft single player worlds all i have left is my server worlds.

stripped mined

 

stripped mined 2

 

then my furnaces in full force after gathering all the resources. i can tell you one thing coal is the most abundant, followed by iron and after all this we only had one stack of 64 diamonds

New HDD, new world

my Minecraft server died … or at least the HDD did. but new HDD and a new world started and building has started just wished i had a few more members …

xpChief's house

 

beginning of my house

 

Das Boat

woe is me!

ok i know i promised some minecraft posts last weekend well i have tons of screens shots to go through and do some write up but this week has been hectic with work and thunderstorms i had 3 tornadoes come close to my town and across the whole state they are saying we had a total of 15… so between having to hide in my basement and having to work its putting a pinch on my free time! i promise to try and post a large post up ive already started it and its in my drafts i just need to go through all my screen shots and upload the ones i want to use.

more adventure

i havnt posted in a while mainly because ive been working way too much. though last night i did do some exploring. first i had to do some fishing, after i finished cooking my fish i went down in to my mine and started doing some mining for diamond and other precious items. after a couple hours of finding nothing i went back up topside and went creeper hunting so i can make some TNT makes mining a lot faster.Also my green house is doing a pretty effective job at keeping the crops growing so much so that i almost just need to only stock bread but they only heal 2.5 hearts

fishing

Going into my mine

Growing Crops