1.8 is here.

So, like everyone else, i've been playing the minecraft 1.8 update. It's pretty darn good but there are a few things that are pretty annoying about it. However I don't blame Notch and Co at all, as it was leaked before they intended it to be released so there would be bugs. It seems they've got rid of using the F key to change the render distance, which I'm not happy about, but on the whole it's an awesome update!

Oh, and there doesn't seem to be any snowy biomes. I explored for ages and didn't find any.

I built a nice house on the edge of an ocean.

 

 I had my first Endermen encounter, though it was pretty underpowered, it still scared the hell out of me.

 And found a lot of sheep near a forest.

It was an interesting first few days.

COK-CA-CAWW!

Pokemon Drinks

Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, Venusaur

Ingredients:

Bulbasaur-
1/2 shot lime vodka
1/4 shot lime juice
1/4 shot melon liqueur 

Ivysaur-
1 shot lime vodka
1 shot lime juice
1 shot melon liqueur
1 shot sprite

Venusaur-
1 Bulbasaur
1 Ivysaur
1 shot lime vodka
1 shot lime juice
1 shot sprite 

Directions:  For the Bulbasaur shot, simply mix all three ingredients into a shot glass.  For the Ivysaur cocktail, shake all alcoholic ingredients, pour over ice in a rocks glass, then add Sprite to fill.  Add a stem of mint as a garnish.  Finally, to evolve to the Venusaur cocktail, shake a Bulbasaur shot together with the alcoholic ingredients of an Ivysaur cocktail, along with an additional shot of lime vodka and lime juice, then pour into a highball glass and fill with Sprite.  Again, add a few leaves of mint as a garnish.

Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard

Ingedients:

Charmander-
1 splash of grenadine
1 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
.5 oz Bacardi 151

Charmeleon-
1 spash of grenadine,
1 splash of scotch
1 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
Fill with ginger ale

Charizard-
2 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
2 splashes of grenadine
2 splash of scotch
1.5 ounces Bacardi 151
Fill with ginger ale 

Directions: For the Charmander shot, pour a slash of grenadine into the bottom of a shot glass. Add the Fireball, then top with the Bacardi 151. Light it on fire, then extinguish before drinking.
For the Charmeleon cocktail, mix all the alcoholic ingredients and then pour over ice in a lowball glass. Top with ginger ale.

For the Charizard drink, Mix all of the alcoholic ingredients, pour into a highball glass and top with ginger ale.  If you plan on lighting the Charizard on fire, add the Bacardi 151 last, after the ginger ale, on top of everything else.  As always, be careful with flames and don’t try to drink flaming cocktails while still on fire! Fire burns people and stuff and faces.

These drinks scream fire, from the cinnamon punch, to the smoky scotch aftertaste.  Get your team ready and go hit up Cinnabar Island.  This night is for fire!

Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise
Ingredients: 

Squirtle-1/3 shot spiced rum
1/3 shot coconut rum
1/3 shot blue curacao

Wartortle-
1/2 shot spiced rum
1/2 shot coconut rum
1/2 shot blue curacao
Fill with Mountain Dew Voltage

Blastoise-
1 Squirtle
1 Wartortle
1 shot light rum 
Fill with Mountain Dew Voltage 

Directions: For the Squirtle shot, simply pour all three ingredients into a shot glass.  For the Wartortle cocktail, shake the alcoholic ingredients, pour over crushed ice in a lowball glass, then fill with Mountain Dew Voltage.  For the Blastoise cocktail, pour one Squirtle and one Wartortle into a highball glass over ice, add the light rum, then fill with the Mountain Dew. 

I want more Firefly.

Catch all the things part 4.

This'll be the last pokemon post for a bit, as i'm a lot less enthusiatic than I was two days ago. However, I accomplished a lot with it today. I beat te Elite Four, twice, and caught all of the legendary pokemon without using the master ball. It's the first time i've done that. 

Sunday

I've lost enthusiasm for the pokemon challenge, after playing it for two days. I'll continue with it though, just not all at once. Doctor Who was awesome today, the dolls were a bit creepy. They were nothing compared to the weeping angels, they were terrifying.

The Disco Henry pictures from Thursday were put up today. My favourite is this one.

Catch all the things part 3.

I've just got to Victory Road, so i'm on my way to face the elite four. But i'll catch Moltres on the way there. I've already caught Articuno and Zapdos. They were a lot easier to catch than I remember. All I had to do was weaken them, then use Venusaur's sleep powder to put them to sleep. I caught both with less than 5 ultra balls each. From what I remember from last time I caught one, it took about 50.

Catch all the things Challenge: End of Day2

Catch all the things part 2.

I've progressed quite far in my first day, though I realised I may have a few problems aquiring pokemon that aren't available in the games i'm playing. However i've decided it's okay to trade with previous saves on other games, though i'm not sure how i'll get mew and other rare legendary pokemon. I'll have to ask anyone if they have any of them they'd be willing to trade.

Catch all the Things Challenge: End of Day 1

Catch all the things.

I've set myself a challenge for the next week. I'm going to catch all 493 pokemon across the 4 generations.

- Each game will be the final game of each generation: Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum.

- The pokedex has to be complete before moving to the next game.

- The games must be played in correct order.

I've already begun yellow and i'm currently in Pewter City.

duuhh duuhh, duh duh duh duuuuuhhhh duuhh.

I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic for the past few days, beacause I'm still not sure whether to buy Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is coming out soon. Despite KOTOR being one of the best games i've ever played, I probably still won't buy TOR, i'm just not a fan of MMOs.

I realise 10 years is a bit too late for a review but, KOTOR's gameplay is brilliant, pretty much all aspects of this game are extremely well done. Particularly liked the character development, as it allows a very diverse range of skills for different characters. For example; the skills allowed you to hone a certain character's demolition skill, to difuse mines, and another's security skill, to pick locks. This allows characters to excel in a specific skill, so you can continuously switch party members to change your approach to quests.

Also... THE STORY WAS AWESOME!

I could argue that this game had a much more powerful story than the original trilogy, but I won't yet. When I reached the scene with Darth Malak, where he suggested there was something about the main character, in my case "Sora Kaah", that you didn't know, I assumed the worst and expected the whole thing to be ruined when he announced that he was Sora's father. But NO, Sora Kaah was Revan! The Previous Sith Lord. It was insane, that twist hit me harder than finding out Ed Norton was Tyler Durden! When playing through I noticed no hints to this at all. But the game shows you by flashbacks to earlier dialogue which, after you know the twist, make you realise there were hints everywhere. It was so well done, and subtly put together. I'm now downloading KOTOR II, so that's what i'll be doing for the next few days.

Oh, and when Jolee joined the group I made sure to give him a purple lightsaber.

Mace Windu rules.

VVVVVV

I just found this screenshot on my laptop.

This has to be one of the most significant achievements of my gaming career.

Farming

The new Doctor Who episode is this weekend. At least something good has came from having to sell my Creamfields ticket, well that and being able to pay rent. As usual, I spent all of yesterday playing minecraft, but that had something to do with not wanting to move due to the night before. I went out with Gareth, George, Baz and Ashley. It was pretty good, had a few pints at Eastgate, then went to Balestra. It was a good night, even though it was a sunday. Town was pretty dead, but that made it better, we just sat in the garden of balestra getting £1.50 pints all night. With no douchebags bothering us, music wasn't too loud. It was good. Anyway, back to minecraft, I finally finished the automated mushroom farm.

I started of by digging a 10x20 room and builing two levels of cobblestone, with a water source at the back, and a piston directly in front of the source.

I then dug an alcove in the back wall and linked a redstone torch to the pistons. I then linked another redstone torch directly below the first to a lever.

Next I dug a trench at the front end of the room, so that when the pistons retract the water flows to the edge of the cobblestone.

I then repeated the same layout for multiple layers above the original whilst planting mushrooms on each of the raised cobblestone paths. I mad sure to place the relevant redstone circuit so all pistons retracted at the same time. I also placed a water source at the edge of each side of the front trench, so that all mushrooms collected at the center.

I then replaced the lever at the back of the room with a lever at the front, via a redstone circuit under the farm. I removed all torches and closed of the room so it was completely dark, and created a ditch so that the water flows forward to a collection point.

Pulling the lever causes the pistons to retract causing all of the mushrooms on that level to flow off the edge of the cobblestone and collect in the middle, at the collection point. So far it seems to produce about 50 mushrooms every 20-30 minutes, but this can be improved by adding extra levels to the farm.

I've just begun making an automated sugar cane farm, by having pistons placed a block higher than the sugar cane, so that when activated the top two sugar cane blocks are knocked loose. These will be collected by a constantly flowing stream of water, with a collection point similar to the mushroom farm.

Free house week.

I've had a busy week, that's why I haven't blogged, as opposed to the usual not blogging because I haven't done anything. I got home on Tuesday around midday, and posted the Creamfields ticket I sold. Then played minecraft for a bit, before people came over. It was an awesome night, with very deep and intellectual discussions, such as; the migration of language, and it's benefits, aswell as the corruption of passed on experience and meaning as we are limited to communicating this information by the words we use.

There were also less intellectual conversations, lead by Dani's itchy bum comment. It was awesome to see everyone though, and I got to know Millie a bit better. 

Jenny and Gareth didn't come over though, i'd hoped they would, I think Jenny may have been nervous to meet everyone. She definitely seemed anxious when she got here the next day, Gareth said she was worried about meeting my mum. The three of us went to Northampton's first Starbucks on Wednesday, it has a drive through. On Thursday I had people round again, and suffered the great misfortune of locking myself, aswell as the others, out of the house. So I had to knock the bottom panel of the back door in, I managed to do it without too much damage, and replace it to a sufficient extent that it doesn't need replaced. A small victory. My Dad thought he'd come home to shards of wood scattered about the place.

Probably the best thing to happen this week, is that I found out that Mark plays minecraft! Now I have someone to talk to about it, and compare builds. He was talking about setting up a minecraft server when he goes back to Oxford, so that we can both build on the same world and log on whenever to see what the other has done. This would be awesome! Due to this, I've been playing Minecraft all day today, I seeded a new world from Tau: 6.28... and i've been mining and building on this world all day. I've mined to bedrock, built a small tree farm, started a mushroom farm and I'm in the process of builing an archers tower that I can take an underground minecart to.

I'll most probably be playing minecraft tomorrow too, but it'll be the first time that me, George and Gareth will be in the same city/town. So, They're coming over for a few drinks with John Barry, then we'll head to a few pubs. It should be good. Perhaps George or Baz will be interested in my minecraft builds. There is a chance, however unlikely.

Abe + Richy

I'm going home to Northampton tomorrow. I've just spent half an hour calling and texting people to see if they're about and are up for a gathering at mine. It seems like it'll be a good turnout. Richy B will be there so it'll be awesome regardless of all other circumstances.

Also, I forgot how awesome this game is. I'm extremely thankful to steam for allowing me to experience such nostalgia!

Took me a while, so it should be documented.

So Jen sent me a poem through facebook a while back, then I received this today:

Dear Kyle 'Curly' Wood
I really think that you should,
get on a train
yes, i know its a pain.
but im taking a trek
to gareth's and beck's
we could meet up for...
COFFEE
and maybe eat toffee?
so get off your bum
come see your old chum
or i might make you.....
SMILE
not seen you in a while
so please come say hey
just for one day
or il claim that you're....
SILLY
and you'll end up a billy
and il chop of your........
HAIR
and i really wont care.
so why not come share
just a moment together
no matter the weather
dress up in......
CLOTHES
just as long as you show
and i want you to know
that i miss your face
and i think that you're ace.
So quick, come on, scuttle
dont get ina kerfuffle
il give you a 5 knuckle.....
WAVE
have a quick shave
its true youre my fave
next to the mister,
and also the sister
i know you want to fist....
A MAN IN THE EYE
please dont make me cry
ive gone to all of this work
and i may go berserk
if i dont see you soon,
just for one afternoon.
So if you're around,
come show me round town,
il let you go.....
IN MY CAR
you can bring a guitar.
all i'm trying to say
at the end of the day,
i dont mean to be rude
and a little bit crude.
but i just miss you dude.

xxx

_______________________________________________________________________

So naturally I had to reply in the same manner.
I'm not ashamed to admit I put a bit of effort into it, and i'm fairly proud of the result.

_______________________________________________________________________

Salut! Jenny Rouse, so pleasant and fair.
See you in Northampton? I don't think i'd dare
decline your offer, and if G-Reth permits
you can meet me in town and show me your...
...photographs of your summer.

What day are venturing to gareth's abode?
Just tell me a date and i'll get on the road,
well not on the road, i'll get on a train.
It'll be good to see you, cause last time I...
...really enjoyed your company.

I'm actually in N'town on tuesday next week.
We can meet up in town, and together can wreak
havoc on Gareth, play on his fear
Have you heard the story when he put his finger in his...
...coffee to check the temperature?

I can't travel earlier cause Lesley is here,
she arrived Friday night, with a bag full of beer.
No-one else is about, so i'll leave at the same
time as Les does, I'll get on a...
...train, I told you in paragraph two that I was travelling by rail.

We can hang out together and ignore Gareth's whining.
Tell him to shush, he's hardly a shining
example of a man, so flimsy and frail.
Exactly what a convict would happily...
...apologise to for any inconvenience caused.

I don't know if a Bucks has been built in the town.
But there's always a costa, not as good, but don't frown.
We'll be able to meet, if we we have any luck
we can go buy a coffee, find a table and...
...drink the coffee we purchased whilst enjoying pleasant conversation.

But in all seriousness, I hope to see you this week.
Whilst i'm back home, it's your company I seek.
We can discuss Dostoyevsky or is that too complex?
But if all else fails, we could always have...
...well, sex.

You and me, me and you.
If that's what you're into.
Me hanging round, around you.
You hanging round, yeah you're there too.

XX

Jack Nicholson is a badass.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

I've been watching Breaking Bad recently and it is awesome! I just finished watching season 3, and I immediately had to download what there is of series 4. It's such a good show, but I find myself getting too into it at times, especially as i've watched all three seasons in one week. At times when Walter's self destructive, I find myself having to take breaks, because I get too involved in it and start feeling slightly depressed. I've been using a lot of Stand up to counteract this, and a healthy dose of Saul Goodman.

 Despite how badass and brilliantly performed as Walter White is, my favourite character has to be Saul Goodman. He is the perfect comic relief, and has a plethora of awesome quotes. He immediately made me love the character from the godfather reference."What did Tom Hagen do for Vito Corleone?.

"Let's just say I know a guy ... who knows a guy ... who ... knows another guy."

 

Gotta finish this now. I have S04E01 ready to watch.

Riots

I'm confident this accurately represents the average IQ of those involved.

Mo money

This is such an uneventful blog, but i'm not doing much at the moment so it'll carry on this way for a while. I got a free dinner last night from Gareth and Giles, then I made us all an Apple tarte tatin, which was awesome. Went to the hardware store to get a fuse for the dishwasher, downloaded screen recording software, though I don't know what i'll do with it.

I spoke to Les today and she seemed resentful that I can't afford to go on holiday this summer. I wanted to go though, I just haven't been able to get a job and with my first rent installment coming out on the 15th, and Creamfields at the end of the month, I just won't have any money left. I'm disappointed we can't, but when I get some money together I'll see if she wants to go around christmas. There's a vacancy at Rythym and Booze down the road so i'm going to hand a cv in there, even though I think I handed one in there just over a month ago, i'll drop one in on my way to town to sell a bunch of stuff.

Bloodlines

That bloody game I bought yesterday took ages to setup. There was no mention on Steam that it couldn't run on windows 7, unless you count not indictating that it could run on it. I managed to find a thread on the steam forums on how to sort it out with an unofficial patch. I ended up downloading a german version, so had to then download the english version, then change loads of settings and stop steam from auto-updating. But it still didn't work. So I decided to uninstall the game, then download it again, and repeat the steps.

I eventually got it working, and it's an awesome game so far!

Jan and Barry's

When I started this, it was something I wanted to update daily so I'd have a diary of sorts. The problem is that i've done fuck all for the past few days. I've played minecraft. That's about it.

I left the house today though. Me and the family went to see Jan and Barry, our godparents, and it was a good day. I spent the first hour or so just watching Barry, he's from a couple of generations ago, so some of the stuff he says is hilarious, I wish i'd understood his sense of humour when I was a kid, because trips to see them would have been much more interesting. For example, i'd never heard the expression: 'I'd give a black man a cup of tea'. He said it on two occasions, and I still couldn't work out what it means. Also, upon spraying a wasp with bug killer: 'If only it'd work on these foreigners'.

I bought another game today, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It was 75% off on steam, so I checked reddit and it seemed to be a good buy. I'll check it out tomorrow.

Don't know if I can be bothered to get a train back to Sheffield tomorrow, so I might wait until Tuesday, I just hope Lesley's plant isn't dead when I get back.

Lie

I've had a fairly uneventful day today, made a cake in minecraft and just hung out with the family. It's good being home, one thing I enjoy is the availability of food, it's brilliant. Might be going out tonight, but not sure who's about, might just go back inside and play minecraft.

I can't remember what I wanted to write here.

I've had a good day today. I didn't wake up until 14:30, even though I wanted to catch a train at 12:27. But I got home just past seven, and spent some time with family. I wanted to see some people so I called Nick, and then Louis and ended up going to Amelia's and having some drinks. It was awesome catching up with them, Liz was there too. We had brilliant conversations and I discovered that Eoin Colfer has written a book following the events of Douglas Adam's 'hitchhikers' universe. I'm definitely going to read that at some point soon. Also while watching bleach, I saw an error in the subtitles, at least I assume it's not what Uryu said.

This post is definitely a good method of me remembering tonight's events.

I also found out today that Matthew has cancer in his thyroid, so i'm hoping to go into the office tomorrow and see him and/or Philippa just to give my regards. I hope he'll be alright.

Oh and I think the newest Zero Punctuation review is one of his best yet. Though I haven't played Ocarina of Time 3DS, I have played the original, and the heaps of other Zelda games Nintendo has churned out. This one is hilarious and brilliantly accurate. Well done Yahtzee.
Zero Punctuation - Ocarina of Time 3DS

Anyway, goodnight Kyle.

Back in Ntown

I'm back in Northampton, don't know how long for though. It was a decent train ride aswell. Just spent 90 minutes playing Minecraft. Very enjoyable.

Humble Bundle

I bought the newest Humble Indie Bundle today. I only paid £3.50 for it though, because that's what the average windows user paid for it, and i'm skint. It's not much, but I paid £20 for the last one, so it evens out. I'm hoping i'll have more money by the time the next one's released, so i'll pay a decent amount for that.

We have to support the Indie developers.

One last thing for tonight. I've been catching up with Bleach and Isshin Kurosaki just showed up, revealing that he's a Shinigami to Ichigo. He's going to be such an awesome character.

TIL

Today I learned that Skrillex is Sonny Moore. I've liked skrillex for a while, but now I can't stop listening to it and From First to Last, except for this afternoon when I put some on crash test dummies. I haven't listened to Dear Diary for years, but it's just as awesome as the last time I heard it.

Somewhere around 2007 I began looking into older music; Bowie, Sabbath, Led Zepellin etc. This changed everything. I spent 2 months solid listening to Led Zepellin and nothing else! I haven't kept up to date with anything new that's been released since about 2007, So i've made a list of bands to to both listen to again and check whether they've released anything new.

The list so far is as follows:
Senses fail
The scene aesthetic
coheed and cambria
Billy Talent
A Heartwell Ending
The Academy is...
The Epoxiesthursday
poxies
Mindless Self Indulgence
Dashboard Confessional
Brand New
Taking Back Sunday
Eighteen visions
Funeral for a Friend
Matchbook Romance
HIM
Alexisonfire
Gogol Bordello
The Horrors
The Pipettes
The Subways
The Used
The View
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
InMe
Rise Against
Weezer
Streetlight Manifesto

A lot this is stuff was into when I was about 14. I'm gonna have a nostalgic few days.

up early

I woke up at 8:30 this morning. The last time I was up at that time was because I still hadn't gone to sleep from the night before. I walked Les to the train station, had a walk through town, rented some books on C++ from the library and i've played minecraft for two hours and it's not even two o'clock yet.

Amy Winehands

In tribute to Amy Winehouse's passing yesterday.

Snape, Snape, Severus Snape

Okay, Harry Potter was awesome! However, the two scenes that I though were the most important seemed to be cut short. I thought the pensieve scene where Harry learned the truth about Snape was one of the better scenes in the book, but the movie just didn't seem portray this moment as well as it could have. The same goes for the scene with Dumbledore. Although I thought this scene was well done, as the setting was exactly how i'd pictured, Dumbledore seemed too distant with Harry. When I read this scene, it was an incredible moment; but, as before, it was not portrayed as well in the movie.

Oh and i'm glad they included the 'mega happy ending', they missed out the best lines:
Harry: Give our love to neville
Albus Severus: Professor Longbottom? You can't give love to a professor.
I don't think that's exactly it, but it's close.

Overall, it was a brilliant finale. With the two most interesting characters, Snape and Neville, portrayed brilliantly. Alan Rickman is awesome; Metatron, Alexander Dane and Severus Snape. Perfect.

I've just commenced the cleaning session ready for Lesley's arrival.
The dishwasher's broken and I completely forgot that we'd left stuff in there. The picture doesn't accurately express what I just experienced. It smells horrific. Wait, that's not good enough; bloody horrific.

 

I'm off to watch Harry Potter tomorrow though. I passed up free tickets, to both parts, on release night, so as to see it for the first time with Les. I'm not sure she realised how much of a big deal that was for me. I'll have to keep bringing it up until she acknowledges it for the great gesture that it was.

First post: Minecraft.

I finally bought Minecraft yesterday, so Minecraft post!
I remebered hearing that you need to get coal very quickly, so when I began, I started looking around for some. After a couple of minutes I found some, I just didn't know what to do with it. Eventually night fell and i'd begun to dig into a cliff, then I started hearing noises and growls. I panicked and blocked the entrance.

Now I was in total darkness, cowering in fear of whatever was out there, with no idea what to do next. I eventually realised what the coal was for, and crafted a torch and lit the area.  Whilst waiting for daylight, I decided to dig down into the cliff to se what I could find. I found a coal, iron, a cave and a skeleton archer. I died.

When I respawned I made sure I was able to survive the night, and then wandered about in the day. I made some nice leather boots, and then came accross a snow capped mountain and thought to myself; 'you know what that snow-capped mountain needs? A Fortress!'. So here is the beginning of my fortress... 4 hours in.