How to describe Minecraft… Well, as a friend put it, it’s like legos in an old school computer game. you have a variety of different coloured blocks that you can stack on top of each other to build pretty things or you can hack away at them with a pick axe made of diamonds. Whatever you decide to do, you will end up doing it for the rest of your life. To date, Minecraft is probably the most addictive game I have ever played (I even stopped playing Batman Arkham Asylum because of it!!!). With the introduction of “creative mode” in one of the most recent updates to the still-in-bata-masterpiece of a game, the doors have been opened to allow literally limitless creativity (well almost).

But lets not rush into things. What exactly is Minecraft (although shame on you and the rock you’ve been living under if you don’t already know). Still in it’s Beta form, Minecraft is an independently funded computer game, created by Markus “Notch” Persson and his company Mojang, where the player can gather resources by destroying various different types of blocks and from there work their way up to building anything they want limited only by what their minds can imagine and a 64 blocks above sea level height restriction (similarly, you can only mine down so deep before reaching the bedrock which can only be destroyed in creative mode leaving you to spiral down into the abyss of nothingness below the world before a lack of oxygen suffocates you and you die a horrible painful death!).

In its most recent form there are two playing modes, Survival and Creative (Adventure mode is still in a sort of sub beta where by, elements of the mode have been introduced but won’t be fully finalized till the next update or the official release). We’ll start with Survival mode. The object of the game, as I’ve said, is to destroy little coloured blocks to gather resources. So if, for example, you destroy a block of a tree, you will be given a block of wood from that broken block. Next up comes the creating part. from this block of wood, you can get 4 blocks of wooden planks. these planks can then be put together to create a crafting table which allows you to put more blocks together. Now you can begin to gather more wood and build tools such as axes and swords and pick axes. Now that you have tools you can begin to mine faster and gather resources that were previously unobtainable such as stone, iron and coal. With these stone blocks you can build furnaces to smelt the iron ore out of the iron blocks over a fire made from the coal that you’ve obtained and… well you see where it’s going. The limitless boundaries of destruction and creation make this an extremely engaging game.

look out behind you!

However, maybe after a couple of hours digging and building you might think that you’d get board of it all and move back to having a social life and friends. WRONG! you see, on top of having all the fun of creation and destruction, you also have the creatures of the night to look out for. you see, when night falls in Minecraft, you meet all manner of creeps and freaks. There’s the slow paced zombies that spring up out of nowhere, the giant spiders who have a tendency to drop down from above, the skeletons who fire arrows at you, and then, the bane of all Minecraft enthusiast out there, the CREEPERS. Creepers are these armless slimy green things that love darkness and tend to come out at night or in poorly lit mineshafts. the Creeper has a dynamite core and just loves to to blow up right next to the monument to starwars that took you 25 hours to build. Although if you really don’t want to encounter these creeps, you have the option to play in peaceful mode.

The Enderman Stare

Recently a new creature was introduced called the enderman who is this long legged long armed creature of darkness. they will ignore you so long as you ignore them but look them in the eyes and you’re FUCKED! thankfully though, i have yet to meet them because all of my time since the 1.8 release (in which they were introduced) has been spent in Creative Mode!

Creative Mode is where you go when all you want to do is build. You don’t have a health bar so you can’t die (unless you dig through the multiple layers of bedrock screaming “don’t do it you mad man” before eventually letting you fall into the black abyss as i mentioned earlier). The only thing in creative mode is you, the land, and an unlimited abundance of every material available in the game. if you want to build a city of TNT, you can. If you’d prefer to build a scale model of minas tirith, go right ahead. Personally, I decided to start off by creating a giant tribute to Nintendo and Mario (although i have since altered it to include Link and Donkey Kong instead of the Goomba and Koopa Troopa).

So that’s about it really, I’ve run out of things to say (that’s a lie, i’ve been struggling to finish this when I know Minecraft is only a few clicks away). For those of you reading this before November 11th, go buy Minecraft now! it’s still in beta so it’s a fiver cheaper than the full version and you will get the full version anyway once it is released on 11.11.11. If you’re reading this after the 11th, buy the game anyway. Sure it’s only 20 bucks, it won’t drain your bank account. and those of you reading this who already play Minecraft, feel free to link to your creations in the comments below .

I leave you with this:

minecraft nintendo

So, today I woke up to the news that Death Row Convict Troy Davis had his appeal for a stay of execution denied and and at 11:08pm last night (4:08am GMT), he died from lethal injection.

Despite the fact that 7 of the 9 non police eyewitnesses changed their testimonies after the original trial, despite the fact that over half a million people had signed a petition for clemency including former US president Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the motherfucking POPE, despite the fact that there was no clear evidence in the original trial to begin with except the word of a few eyewitnesses who admitted that they had been threatened by the cops to testify against Troy Davis, despite all these things and many more, The G’damn Supreme Court of Georgia has decided to ignore all these things and murder an innocent man for a crime which there isn’t a shred of evidence linking him to it. 

From time to time, I’ll admit to finding myself hoping that some people could be executed in violent and brutal ways for crimes they’ve committed and admitted to, but cases such as this make me believe that the world might be a better place without the death penalty. Sure, people such as Saddam and Osama deserve nothing less than death but if innocent men are to continue to be executed, even when doubt about their guilt remains, then there shouldn’t be a death penalty at all.

Here‘s a list of a few prominent cases where it is highly likely that the men executed were innocent, just in case you need persuasion as to why the death penalty should be abolished.

My thoughts and prayers are with the family of Troy Davis who have fought a long 20 year battle with the US legal system to try and help an innocent man get the justice he deserved. RIP Troy Davis.

The Exhibition launch will take place on Wednesday 25th at 5pm with the opening speech given by a guess speaker.This will be followed by a wine reception.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see firsthand, our media skills put into practical use and being displayed.

Today’s graduates are tomorrow’s professionals.

http://mmashowcase2011.com/

RSVP on the facebook event here

So just a brief hello again to anyone who bothers to read my random ramblings (that one’s for you John )and thank you to whoever it was who checked back in at least once a day (or, if that person happens to be persons then thank you all of you).

Also, slightly awesome note in my books, if you google “Dark Knight Rises Pre Production” my blog is the first link so thanks to google and whoever read that blog to get it up there ( I know that it’s just some random thing but I’m a huge fan of the last two films and cannot wait for this one so to have my name linked in anyway to it is awesome!)

Now, I know I’ve a lot to do once I finish my thesis presentation and subsequent Exhibition (25th -27th of this month in the Helix, DCU ) such as actual blogging, updating the 30 day challenge pages (I finished it on Facebook but have not had the time to update here), and fill you two in on my plans for the summer but for now, I shall just leave you with a hint as to what my next post will be all about (how will you ever guess):

Rises

{edit}: sorry, make that the next post after the next one. The next one is dedicated to my Thesis Exhibition coming up this week that you should totally go to cause it’ll be awesome !!!

One of the last times I blogged was the night of the Smedia awards where DCUfm did pretty damn good for itself winning 4 awards over the course of the night. It was also the same day of the Society Awards for which I was nominated for best poster. Winning in the Society Awards leads to a night at the BICS which are the all Ireland Society Awards taking place this Thursday. Unfortunately, style soc won for their poster of cobble stones with a photoshop filter over it (swear I’m not bitter at all…).

But forgetting about my totally un bitter loss there ( it was two weeks ago, I’m over it already!), last week was a second chance for me to shine. For weeks I had sat in work in the loans office where the submission box for the DCU MPS Hybrid Awards remained fairly empty. We had already decided that we would all submit for radio presenter of the year (we being Carly, Kev an I with Boomstick etc) and enter for arts/features show (should have gone for entertainment in hindsight). I also decided that since luck had screwed me over at the Soc Awards, maybe my poster might fair better at the Hybrids.

On the final day of submissions, everyone came to enter… Everyone! The box was literally at breaking point from all the entries. “Well, there goes my chance at poster of the year” I thought as I saw multiple posters being slipped into the box. Then the girl in charge of the box, Robyn, told me that no-one had entered for script of the year yet. Bam! That was my gold mine. I had done script writing last semester. I had a script written. Easy win for me. Done. Submitted. Kev, who just happened to be sitting in loans with me when this news was unvealed decided he too would enter a script he had come up with a while back so he typed it up and sent it in too. A bit of competition, didn’t worry me too much. After all, I only entered for the laugh. Then I mentioned to our mate Cormac that he should enter his thesis. So he did and I accepted the fact that if I was going to be collecting any award on the night, it would be Cormac’s award foe best script that he would be unable to collect due to other commitments.

So the Smedias came and went, the soc awards didn’t bring me any joy, roll on last Wednesday. Work till 4, prep for radio till 5, get dressed in my nice suit and finish getting ready for the rest of the night ahead till half 6/ 5-to-7. Show went quite well. The show was meant to begin at 8 but when we left the studio by 5 past, we assumed we would have time for a drink or two and a platter of food before it came to the radio awards category cause, in all fairness, those were the only ones we had a chance in. So roughly about 9ish we finished up in the bar, went outside for a smoke, then sneaked quietly in the door at the back.

BANG! The door just had to slam behind us and draw all attention to the fact that the late comers, those too high and mighty to show up to an award show on time, had finally arrived. We made our way into one of the empty back rows. That was the intention anyway. As I moved to slip into the row of seats, DCUfm station manager Dennis MacEvoy, stormed up the steps silently shouting at me asking where I had been. “You’ve won two bloody awards! where the hell were you???”

“He’s drunk” I thought to myself. No way would they do the radio awards first and how the hell could I have won best presenter? My entry was crap. He must be pulling my leg.
I sat down and went to tell the others what drunken ramblings Dennis had imparted on me but was interrupted by a friend who was sitting in front of me turning to tell me the exact same thing. “Ok this is weird now. Is it some sort of prank that a group of people I know are playing on me? Why is everyone saying I won?” I checked my phone. It had been dying all night so after I had to wait for it to load up again but when it did, I found I had 4 new texts claiming I had just won the awards.

At this point, Dennis came marching back up to me and handed me two glass awards, one for poster of the year, the other for script. He then dragged me out of my seat and down to the front rows where he made me wait for a couple of minutes so he could get me up on stage to make a speech. All around me, people I knew were congratulating me on my wins and still, even with the awards firmly in my grasp, I didn’t believe what had happened. I was ushered onto the stage in front of about 100 people, maybe less (it was hard to tell with the lights shining in my eyes), and stood there, hazardously waving the awards about without a clue of what to say.

After making a speech for what felt like an eternity of stumbling over words and twisting tongues, I made my way back to the stands and took my seat. Carly won best Radio presenter, (and honestly I think I was happier for her winning that than for my two wins because it still felt like some elaborate hoax where any moment a guy with a camera would hop out from under the seats and everyone in the audience would turn and laugh in my face about it as Dennis took the awards off me and gave them to the real winners) and we had a few drinks to celebrate our wins afterward. I don’t think it really sunk in till Friday when I finally got home and put them on the mantle piece above the fireplace in my sitting room that I was an award winning graphic designer/scriptwriter.

So now that I have actually had time to let it settle in, here is my acceptance speech, with a bit more thought and a lot less stammering and stuttering than the one I made on the night.

First off, thank you to Vanessa Monaghan for collecting both awards for me. I really appreciate that and owe you big time. I’d like to thank everyone who supported me while working on both pieces, to everyone who told me to stop tweaking the poster before I ruined it even though I felt that if I could have just one more day working on it, I could make it perfect, and to everyone who put up with me as I slowly descended into madness while writing the 24 pages for script writing over the course of 3 sleepless days fulled by about 10 times the lethal dose of caffeinated energy drinks and junk food; I know I stank and needed to get sleep/shower so thanks for not pointing that out to me too much (although in hindsight, you might have been saying it to me, I just don’t remember due to my lack of ability to take in anything that was being said other than deadline in an hour, deadline in 30 mins etc. I would like to give a shout out to Carly and congratulate her on bringing glory to the Boomstick family. And finally *get off the stage music plays and drowns out the rest of my speech*

Anyway, I’ve just come back from watching Source Code by Duncan Jones and will write a blog about that later but for now I’m just gonna say a special good luck to all those who ran in the DCU SU elections. was amazed at the turn out at the polling stations this year compared to last year and hopefully this time tomorrow, we will know the final tally. Also, good luck to everyone in the Hybrids next week. Fingers crossed for all of you, except of course, for those who are in the same categories as me, those trophies are mine!!!

OK Bai!! ttyl