Minecraft Comes of Age

The 1.8 update of Minecraft seemed like the perfect time to play again. With the new terrain generation, new landscape features, and many other fancy additions, it was the perfect time to load up the game. So I abandoned a months-old homestead and sprinted clear across the map into parts unknown.

The update makes it clear when you've left the protective, smiling benevolence of 1.7 landscapes and basically cuts them off in mid-flow. Actually the game occasionally makes a cliff for no reason anyway but this one is specifically due to the update and new terrain gen system. At that point I knew I was lost. So I kept running in whatever direction promised new features and exiting lands that would be lost immediately afterward.

Fortunately, getting lost was entirely worth it. Exquisite landscapes popped into being around me, replacing the bland rolling hills of the totally boring game that Minecraft was pre-1.8. Yes, the game has come of age. It used to make awesome delicious landscapes and then stopped making them for a while, in an effort toward coherent geography, and now it makes delicious insane landscapes again with an effort towards geographic coherence. All in all there are many, many, many different places for people to build their phallic towers and insane castles now. Instead of building 1) in water 2) on a shore or 3) on the side/top of a hill/mountain/cliff you have the chance of being able to build on an entrancing combination of all three.

And if that hasn't convinced you to buy Minecraft yet, or start playing again, the update brought many new dangers in addition to new combat and movement abilities. Now when you've painstakingly crafted a map, compass, and several diamond-grade tools you have a chance to lose them to incredibly deadly and tricky terrain.

Even in the sedate 'Peaceful' difficulty the world now has dozens of new ways to make you ragequit when you lose your cool stuff – be it a devilish, almost invisible drop into surface-level lava (which as been around since 1.5 but occurs typically 1-3 times per crafted map area) or running off a precipitous ledge into a deep chasm. Minecraft is dedicated to making karst style landscapes as often as possible, and when they introduce glaciers I imagine they will make them treacherous as well. What this means for the average player is probably some type of hoarding behaviour where all good equipment is stored in chests (which are now animated to open upon use) and left to collect dust during the inevitable exploration deaths, which will probably go up twofold for incautious players.

In short it was an impressive gesture that indicates the game is still alive and may well become highly interesting and rewarding. As it stands you get out of the game what you put into it, multi or singleplayer, and that means that most people will build a large thing, find diamonds, and die a few times and call it a game. Things I'd like to see include a robust, unlimited leveling system with useful perks, a sprint toggle, further developments to the combat system, some kind of decent mineral spread (even with plentiful caves it can be a half-hour or more before you find diamond or gold) and some way to branch minecart lines. A lot of proposed additions cover parts of what I refer to, especially since the EXP bar will pretty much have to lead to some kind of leveling system, but the game is still pretty good as it is. What I fear is that Minecraft will become the GTAIV of its type - pretty, ambitious, even clever, but essentially empty.

(PS: Really, really want shoggoths to be introduced and mining imps a la Dungeon Keeper)

Lolnet.heh/msuic

Recently I overheard people talking about an album by Bon Iver. And I was thinking, to be honest, "Hippy Bon Jovi Nonsense". So I did my due diligence, business people, and the rest of you should know I visited wikipedia, followed up on the name-drops, and laughed at something I found. It's a piece of music journalism. Two pieces, actually. I like to call them the dueling reviews. They inspired me to do some listening many weeks ago.

And all that time those two reviews have stuck in my mind. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about them on the way to work, or while getting groceries, sometimes even in the middle of a conversation some spare remark will prompt the two Bon Iver reviews that Tim Sendra wrote, presumably for Allmusic. These reviews and the three-and-something years between them are, I think, representative of how the human socio-cultural system has shifted. Or maybe I'm a tin-eared bastard with a dumb, sloppy blog.

The two Bon Iver albums strike me as being remarkably similar. I haven't played them constantly; I haven't listened to either of the albums particularly critically (huh?); I have, however, listened to both of the albums in full at least four times. As far as I'm concerned, I have more respect for Bon Iver than for Tim Sendra, but Bon Iver has to admit that Tim Sendra has somehow managed to make Bon Iver weirdly important to me. I wouldn't have known about this band or even written them off if not for two reviews that produced a mysterious reaction in my mind. Tim Sendra, however, has explained where the last three years of my life went, for which I am in his debt - figuratively, of course.

The two albums are titled For Emma and Bon Iver, chronologically. Note how the second album title is eponymous. The fact literally does not matter to me. I somehow always think it's the first album, which may have skewed my idea of things, except that I knew exactly what Tim Sendra was talking about when he reviewed either album. Let me be concise for a moment: I think the first album is sincere and conceited; I think the second is sincere and conceited. I found both of them pretty enjoyable except they have a sombre, cool vibe to them. Let me post an image of Tim Sendra's review of For Emma. I hope he doesn't mind this mild intrusion, but I am acknowledging him as the author and Allmusic as the owner, so there's nothing to apologize about since I'm not planning on calling him uncouth names.

It seems to me an honest review. It's probably how Tim Sendra felt about the album. It's a fair representation and he does not oversell. He notes: 'subdued', 'isolated', 'voice', 'harmonies', and you can read the rest. I find the album decent, etherized and ethereal and with a few stand-out songs. "Lump Sum" is alright. In the end the album is alright. Some of the vocals are autotuned, so there is obvious conceit and if you are not a sensitive soul you will find these touches laughable or out-of-place. They are used for emphasis, don't sound entirely stupid, but still: fucking autotune in another heartfelt, subdued, harmonic indie-rock folkish lament. I don't even know if it's original but it surprised me.

So, cool album. Not something I'd want to listen to very often, but for times of illness or heartbreak I imagine it is suitable if unhealthy. In themselves, For Emma and Sendra's review are harmless enough and inoffensive. Now, gentle reader, please allow me to bring Exhibit B into these calm, idealized waters. Exhibit B is Bon Iver, the album, and Sendra's review as accompaniment in B sharp.

Revelations of an Aging Young Man

Radiohead totally ripped off Nick Drake. John Cale might've. Lots of music ultimately rips off other music. At least a little bit, and often very obviously. Life is grossly miscategorized and caricaturized for simplicty's sake. There is no way to succeed, just a way to infinite struggle. Making up words is easier than research. Web-browser spell-checks are woefully inadequate and irrational.

I've wanted to post a farce for the longest time. I just can't think up a really good one. A farce is just a light-hearted satire with no serious accusations. Or, rather, it's when a satire is beaten so severely that it loses its teeth, and learns how to tell mushmouthed stories for underwhelming profits and impact. 

And as time goes on I discover various logical conclusions I have no faith in them. I'm pretty cynical when I come to the point. And that's disheartening. I trust none of my impressions anymore. There is basically nothing from which a human takes faith anymore, outside of those varied populations everyone knows about.

User Comment Rodeo: Lone Edition

I'm still pretty down about summer ending thanks to season creep, that hurricane business, and Jack Layton. However I realize that I have a blog to maintain, and certain honourable traditions to continue.

So here's a user comment. It is one of those "Hey internet listen up about my GIRLFRIEND" posts. Everyone loves these posts because they're consistently useless on anonymous boards where the quality of your review matters. A related type of poster is the 'confused personal anecdote' poster who tells a story about how his cat chewed the wires - zero stars.

Rest in Peace, Political Maverick Jack Layton

I'll be honest, during the election season in April and May I was actually excited. It seemed like the NDP would win, a variable ~10 reader group was reading the posts, some of whom were even Canadian, and I got to write about politics that I was familiar with. Canadian politics, milquetoast in comparison with other countries where opposition parties are harassed or exploded, are still an important thing to follow and the election was most important.

But what really came out of that election was the feeling that Jack Layton had become a justified Political Maverick. And I didn't use that term lightly, fallaciously, or jokingly. I was really convinced that Canada's only decent candidate was about to win. Of course, that didn't happen, but I was hopeful that when the political season opened up and those loafers went back to Parliament to shout at each other, Jack Layton was going to tell the Conservatives what the fuck up. I was thinking that some great sound bytes would come out of that and reveal the Harper majority for the regressive, wasteful, ignorant political behemoth it was. (And it wasn't at all a majority, unless the apathy non-vote were Conservatives).

 The election was clearly demarcated from the start: Harper was going to be fiscally conservative on the surface and ideologically centrist, Ignatieff was going to be fiscally liberal on the surface and ideologically centrist or inconsistent. Jack Layton was going to deal with social problems and was ideologically right, because Canada does not look after her social problems very well. He had a history of giving a shit about people, which Harper (who shakes his own son's hand instead of embracing him) is possibly incapable of doing. Layton was the Maverick, and had proved it repeatedly...

Layton probably knew what was coming, and made a point of leaving final words. And really, on this day, as during the election, my regret is that I never met him. I would've had a few soft-boiled questions and mostly I would've just wanted to know if he was as nice as people said. He was demonized by the scared dummies of this country as a communist, and the politically ignorant crippled him in the last election, but he was nothing if not an aware and principled politician, whatever his faults.

Political Maverick Jack Layton in the early days.

Are There Any Real Problems Or Is Everyone Stupid?

The problem when I watch news services is that there's so much political nonsense going around. Every time I watch the news and hear about foreign politics I wonder how anyone manages to live in another country and not go crazy.

Then I remember... they all have already gone crazy.

Sometimes I'm thankful that political outrage where I am is nothing but huffy people spouting nonsense, and that political conflict is passive-aggressiveness and limited seasonal mudslinging. And, really, under all that calm, the country may be getting run into the ground.

YouTube Again?

Today the 'Most Viewed' feature on YouTube showed only two pages of videos. For people like me, who usually start at page 10 and work backwards, or who don't visit the site every 2 hours, this is an unmitigated disaster.

So far as innovation goes, this is another case of walking backwards. There's the odd day when the #1 most viewed video is actually decent, interesting, or informative, but that doesn't actually happen enough to warrant having only two pages, which end on a depressing but not unexpected note:

33 most viewed videos and, yeah, that's all we get now. I guess. I hope this is simply due to some updating or other work, because it's downright shitty. I thought it was bad enough when I had to click an extra time for the charts because of the 'Videos from around the Web' feature – seriously you think I come to YouTube to watch videos on other video sites? I go to YouTube to see if there's anything interesting or redeeming going on, and more often than not I am disappointed.

On YouTube there used to be 100+ chances for a lazy man to find something, anything to revive his faith in the world, with maybe 5 mouse clicks. Now it takes 100+ clicks to find 5 chances for amusement, information, or decent nonsense. And people game that system all the time. If you have an account, don't you ever wonder why all these unsolicited users want to be your friend?

London Burning

Lots of people are going to say their part about this, and so far I've heard everything from the 'shame' crowd to the 'let's go and riot' crowd. Plenty of riots this year and lots of people complaining and wondering why. Well, in London's case a black man who was young, poor, and a father was shot by police, then a vigil type of demonstration occurred and then violent elements started the riot. Why was violence answered with violence? Ask your local philosopher.

I was following the Twitter feeds and I must say I have absolutely nothing to say on this matter. It's, well, bloody when looting happens but then again it's also pretty bloody when someone is summarily shot without explanation. Also I've seen some comparisons to the Vancouver riots, which were puerile tantrums compared to this - don't mix apples and oranges people, or we'll make you drink the juice. Dumb fucks.

It's a bad situation and I hope it gets better. Personally I don't know why people are talking about an event which will happen in one year's time in relation to the current riots. I guess it's the same kind of muckraking China had to deal with a year before its Olympics which went very well, I might add. In any case this has nothing to do with the Olympics and everything to do with poor neighbourhoods and police actions and criminality. There is no reason to conflate this story with anything else when there are larger news stories going on.

And lets not forget what the News of the World might have said about this event: "Nazi Orgy involving Royals leads to Cold-Blooded Police Murder, Communists and Ultra-violence Droogs Riot in Response" except, well, they're out of business for being a third-rate opiate rag.......

Oh and the question I'd ask the experts is Where is the justice in all this? They're going to have a deuce of a time finding it.

Two Unforgettable Images from Wikipedia

Feel free to forget the following filler text and skip to the second screenshot in this sequence...

I wasn't going to write anything but it's stupid to just have an empty space.

This joke is kind of ruined by actually writing anything about it just please,

Please pay attention to the context and I'll tell you that includes the 'labels'

AKA the meta search engine words, or why not call them magical. Anyway

The entire Blogger system as hosted here seems like a content mill to me 

Anyway.

Yes, that's right: content mill. For instance I have not found a front page or 

Index style of page, but I'm not savvy, so I am not disappointed or critical.

It just seems to me that my only shot at exposure is a canny manipulation

Of various other websites or keywords and I use them frivolously, not in

Any crazy attempt to gain followers but because I think it's funny to throw

Weird ones in. It's not me spamming for statistical advantage. If I wanted

Statistical advantage, though, how would I go about doing that? Is the

Lack of advertising sinister or uncanny? 

And this large, previously empty space is just

So the picture below displays properly. So I hope

It displays properly because sometimes writing is

Difficult and coherence impossible nonsense.

Squatters' Revolution

Well America is looking as dirty as the last 30 years predicted. Sometimes I get the sense that there are significant instabilities in North America in general, and that the oligarchy can no longer mask itself and therefore has adopted the obscurantist angle. "Obscurantist?" you ask, mouth agape stupidly. Yes, stupidy, obscurantist as in not revealing anything to anyone AKA dealing with the world sensibly - information-as-necessary style living. Which is a pretty great hypocrisy in a system where your bank is entitled to know your state of employment in addition to the wealth of other personal information they are entitled to. Yes the ability to go to your bank and cash a cheque and go home without them having explicit statements from you concerning your status is probably eroded.

Now it seems a small thing, and it is. Frankly I don't really care so much as I find it odd the bank cannot just simply assume a thing like that. So you know nothing about the people who ultimately shape your reality (unless you think actors, celebrities, and personalities do this) and the global reality, but you share your information on a 'no-need-to-know-basis' because the information of your life is so useless to anything but a marketer or criminal that it is a balm to your existential angst that at the very least you can have a cyber-billboard. This could be protested by refusing outright to identify yourself on the internet, boycotting Facebook, Google+, etc... but of course your networking opportunities would suddenly revert to mid-90's standards. In other words we could go back to making personal statements in person, but then we can't hope 1000 strangers will praise us. We could hope for maybe 10 intimates to admit our ideas have some merit.

Not that protest will mean anything since freedom is still exactly what it was at the dawn of humanity: a dream that can be indulged in only by the most powerful individuals or through the most powerful delusions. Freedom is a pretty goddamned stupid goal, yet it is a noble one Oh, but ironically the idea of freedom has generated the idea of slavery. Currently there is also a pervasive mode of thought which infers that freedom can be bought, assuming freedom is laziness, recreation, or inaction and time is the currency which buys it. Microfreedom does exist - yes in day to day experiences you have a sense that anything could be done; in the macro scale there is no significant freedom at all. You must acquire and spend wealth, dress well, pretend to be contented with the system, and enter automobile culture or else live as an abnormal, stunted, or subnormal individual.