I recently spent some time at RAF Syerston and saw plenty of flight simulators there and generally the fashion was that you can’t have too many screens. So, because I’ve had a spare screen sitting on the dining room table for the last eighteen months I decided to fit it, again, to the PC. The only place it can go is at “the top” although I’d be tempted to place it into an aircraft instruments position at some point. I had all the gear because I had already tried the monitor there, but didn’t like the look of it. I’ve probably changed my mind for now.
The Flight Simulator System
So, this screen shows the flight simulator running with aircraft view on the right and various instrument views on the other screens. I’m not entirely sure I like this set up and I will try another way of doing this.
Have changed to have the cockpit view spread across the two centre screens, ancillary instruments at the top and a tablet with flight information on it under the main screens. This set up makes more sense as far as I’m concerned. I know the items on the upper screen wouldn’t be there in a real cockpit but I don’t have the kit to move the monitor. It would take too much hassle to make it look proper and I don’t use the PC as a flight sim all the time anyway.
Current Flight Sim Set Up
I’m not necessarily happy about the bezels in the middle of the cockpit view and I know I could adjust the offset to make it look slightly more realistic, but then I would also lose some of the centre instrumentation. I guess the only answer is a massive curved screen. Maybe I’ll get one sometime in the future but I am massively aware that my hot water boiler is fucked and I need to think sensibly about spending money for the next while!!
This is communication number 1942 and so here are a few [non WWII] things that happened that year:
The Sikorsky R-4 first flies
A coal dust explosion in china claims 1549 lives.
The first nuclear accident occurs in Leipzig.
Plutonium is isolated.
The first man-made self sustaining nuclear chain reaction at Stagg Field in Chicago.
I spent a few hours yesterday gathering resources to start the landscaping project on my base area in the Caves and Cliffs part one section of my world. I expect to move to a new base area once the next part of the update is released.
Map Of The Land
In the above image you can see railways over the sea connecting the main components of the base. Sitting in a minecart allows me to eat and get my inventory sorted while also travelling from one place to another. I am going to keep the railways but I wanted to make it look a little prettier. So, I decided to claim back some land and build an artificial island.
Obviously Man-Made
The above picture shows the start of the landscaping works. My first thought was to try and make it look natural but I’m actually now keen to make it obviously man-made. Let’s see what I can be bothered to do. It turns out I’ve also made a secret harbour area and so I need to add in railways to that somehow. The pond in the middle is going to be for the axolotls I gather. I also need to light up quite a bit of the work so to avoid mobs spawning. I don’t want all of it to look the same so I have some other ideas for joining to New Holland. Look out for a walk around video on my YouTube channel at some point.
This is communication number 1929 and so here are some things that happened in that year:
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu moves to India. This woman is horrible.
This is my solution to – how do you split a small room into separate rooms? I had been trying to work out how to give my kids a bit of privacy and their own area in the house which isn’t very big. I had thought about a loft conversion which I’ve had in other houses I’ve lived in but I can’t afford that type of house conversion. I thought about a wall down the middle of the room to make two separate rooms but they would both end up being quite small. So, I did what everyone does and Googled to see what ideas other people had. This was the best result I had:
Initial Sleeping System Idea
I don’t have a larger size image and I’m not even sure there this idea came from but it struck me as a sensible way to split a small room. Each side of the room gains half a bed width worth of floor space compared to a wall down the middle. I also like the floating upper bunk with no supports but that wasn’t really what I was after. I spent an age thinking about how to do this. How to utilise the current sleeping system that I have and how much stuff I would need to buy and also what would I need to throw away. I just played this over in my head as I walked around or ran or cycled or drove somewhere.
I did some research on tools I would need to use as I didn’t want to have to hand saw all the wood. It seemed that I would need a circular saw and maybe a mitre saw. I already have a jigsaw for the tougher pieces. I also didn’t want to use a chair as my work bench so I looked up workbenches. I think the investment was worth it. I could use these things in the future and I do think I have achieved peak “man” now that I own a Black and Decker workmate and compound mitre saw.
I had a general plan for what I wanted to build and I worked out how many lengths of wood I would need along with screws and other bits and bobs. I had already wandered the halls of Homebase and Wickes to see what sort of materials were available and how much they were. I had always considered Wickes to be the cheaper option but for most of the wood and materials Homebase was cheaper. So, one morning I went to Homebase [one of the local three stores] and bought all the things I assumed I would need for the main sleeping system structure. The biggest challenge was trying to ensure that wooden spars 2400mm long would fit in the car and I had to hope I wouldn’t look an idiot in the car park when I either threw everything out or broke the boot door window. It turns out that there is plenty of room for a straight object 2400mm long in Bora Horza Gobuchul.
The Sleeping System 2021 – The Start`
This is the room at the start of the project once the existing furniture had been removed and the carpet lifted and chucked out the window. It took a good morning of work to remove all the stuff. The beds had to be broken down and the chipboard removed to the garden. All things being kept were offloaded to other parts of the house. The carpet was wrapped in bags to make sure it didn’t become overly wet in the rain of the English summer. While I worked I listened to music on my Sonos Roam. Once the test match season started I listened to Test Match Special on BBC Radio 5 Live. I’ve been getting back into the cricket a little recently and I am enjoying it.
The aim for the first day was to build the structure of the bunk bed sleeping system. The overall aim was to have the beds stacked with one opening to one side of the bedroom as and the other bunk opening to the other side of the room. This meant measuring to ensure fairness in terms of room placement along with plenty of time thinking about how to make the structure secure enough for grumpy teenagers for later on in life. It took around a day to build the basic structure to the point where the beds were mostly made. The room could be used from this point although there was plenty of time before it needed to have live sleepers. I can inform you that sleeping on a mattress on top of a mattress is not as comfortable as you think it might be. Every other room in the house was filled with stuff from the second bedroom.
The Sleeping System 2021 – End Day One
The above image shows how the main structure was built and created to be stable and strong. The system is secured to the floor spars on one side and roof/ceiling spars on the other side. The triangles add lateral strength and all the wood is a good 2.5cm thick and so strong enough to support people. I even spent time manoeuvring myself around in the top bunk as I secured the system and it was nicely secure. There are some lessons I learnt as I built this. One is that if you keep a window open below this room then all the sawdust will sneak back into your house and cover everything with a fine layer of tiny particles. The image above is a room that has been hoovered and cleaned to show the best perspective of what has been completed.
Day two was about fixing hardboard to the surfaces that mean the room will be split into two and reasonably private each side of the bed. I had to make a number of decisions about placement of the boarding and the whole process took the entire day. I also created a small ladder for the top bunk – I quite enjoyed building this part! After this weekend of complete sweat and work I had organised a couple of days training cadets on the L98A2 weapons system. This was a nice break and gave me a chance to run ideas through my head ready for the next phase.
Painting an undercoat on the structure came next and this, I thought would take maybe an hour. Well, it turns out that painting takes roughly three times longer than I had expected and I had actually just run out of the undercoat/primer at completion of the coat so this was fortunate. I did not enjoy painting the thing. The next day was the main coat. Both the primer tin and the main coat tin had said that one coat should be good enough and I hope that is the case. I still have about a litre of paint left ready for any touch ups that are needed.
I will say at this point that I’m not putting any more images in to this communication because this is where my kids live and it’s up to them what I show of their lives on this site. Given my profession and the age of my kids there are many opportunities for their compatriots to find out information about them that they wouldn’t want public. If I know you then I might send you a picture anyway. But overall, you’ll have to read the descriptions.
So, the bed part of the sleeping system was complete, nicely painted and the mattresses fitted perfectly well. Next up would be general furniture, some shelving, the lighting and the flooring. The shelving was just some things that I had already taken down before. There were two and so that was an easy decision to make what goes where. Lights were LED lights controlled by a remote and fitted to the house lighting system. There’s already a complete system of smart lights within the house and only two rooms without them [the bathroom and the stairs which isn’t really a room]. So the lights are controllable by voice and phone or even switches on the walls.
The flooring is a laminate thing which was measured and ordered and arrived within a week. it took a day to lay the flooring while listening to the cricket and getting covered in sawdust again. I also had to buy the beading which meant I aimed for the cheapest and now I can confirm that none of the wood items in this room match colours. It is a many wooded room. I also got annoyed/bored at doing the trimmings so I just stopped at some point and while I know where that is no-one else has pointed it out to me. Maybe one day . . . .
The last thing was to build a couple of pieces of furniture which I bought from Argos and then wait for the glue to dry because I never just screw things together. Everything gets glued. It makes it stronger and less likely to wobble as time goes by. Finally the furniture, clothes, toys, electronics and all storage forms were placed in the the sleeping system room. Finally the rest of the house looked back to normal after three weeks of nicely placed chaos. It is nice to have the space back in the house. I am pleased with the sleeping system and I hope it lasts. At least I know how to fix any part of it should that be required.
I had intended to use this summer time to also clear the loft of things that I don’t want but my energies have been used up and I am now just chilling the fuck out. I don’t want to spend another few days of lugging things around and making the house a mess again. Once again I think this job will be pushed to next year. Also, the bath needs replacing and I’m considering doing that myself. I reckon I could do it. Possibly. But as long as I have a few weeks it’s definitely a job I would be prepared to do. Next year for that too.
Communication number 1925 requires a list of some things that happened that year:
The RAF bomb mountain strongholds in South Waziristan.
The Scopes trial.
The SS are formed.
Enclosed double-decker buses are used in London for first time.
I play a lot of Minecraft. I’ve been into it since the start of the first pandemic lockdown when my kids talked a lot about it and I decided it’d be nice to know what they are talking about. So I gave it a go. I have loved it every since. I mean, I made a YouTube series on my megabuild in one of our worlds.
It was an interesting experience doing the recordings once the build was complete. I had to learn how to play the game, or at least wander around, while also talking about what I have done and I found that quite tricky at first and so there were plenty of recordings that I deleted for quality purposes. I am also not going to edit the videos once recorded because that’s a level of caring I don’t have.
For a long time I have used some software t create maps of my world. I know this is cheating to a certain extent but I have decided that it’s ok to do somethings but not others. I think it’s ok to have a map and I think it’s ok to have coordinates turned on. Other than that I don’t employ any other “cheats”. I have played in some worlds with teleporting and keep inventory turned on but to be quite frank that makes it too easy. There should be an element of death and destruction within the game. The random things are what make it interesting for me. So, I don’t really play in creating mode, in fact I’ve only ever been in creative mode once, and I don’t have many “cheats” turned on. Everything I have done is in survival mode, because it’s more interesting to me.
Map Of The Land
The above map shows the area of my current base. Once the Caves And Cliffs Part One update was released I went a long way in the nether and popped out wherever it was in the overworld. The aim was to generated new areas of the world using the latest version of Minecraft. I suspect that I’ll do this again once the Part 2 update comes out and start a new-new base there.
Things to note in the map of my world are the mob-spawner just SE of the centre of the map along with an island, called New Holland, just SW of the spawner. The island is around 70% man-made in terms of area and houses my slave villagers and farm animals. There are two iron-golems there to protect the villagers which is nice I guess. It is my trading area. From the villagers I have easy access to mending and silk touch enchantments for tools. Over the next while I think I need to look more into potions and learn how they work.
Just left of centre in the map is my portal to the nether where I popped out originally when finding a new area for the latest update. There are three railways that connect this hub with the island, the spawner and my crop farm and storage area. Just NE of centre is my crop farm – currently wheat and potatoes – along with a subterranean storage area and my bed on top of a hill nearby. I’ll see if I can get some screenshots or do a video walk around of this new base area. I should probably do a video of the old base area in this world although I think I wrote about it here.
For information, the mapping software I use is called bedrock-viz for Minecraft Bedrock Visualiser. It works on the server map files and turns them into a webpage that works similar to google maps. So, if you are running your Minecraft world on a PC and you know where the database files are and you are comfortable taking copies of those then you can probably use the software. I also FTP the files to a webspace so I can see the map on a laptop screen while I’m playing, it’s a little small on my phone. I like it and I find it really helpful just for getting around the place. It’s just enough of a help that it’s worth it and not a silly amount of cheating that I think it’s ok to use. To give you an idea of what it does here is what it looks like at level 13 under my base:
Level 13 Overworld
In the real version of the map you are able to zoom in and hover over blocks to see the coordinates so that’s really helpful. In the picture above you can see water and bubble columns – blue and light blue – along with geodes. The yellow bits are gold and the dull yellow is iron. Bright blue is diamond and red is redstone, green squares are emeralds but once you’ve got a trading farm going with villagers who cares about mining for emeralds?
Communication number 1924 and here’s a selection of stuff that happened then:
A radio time signal is broadcast for the first time.
An explosion in a mine in West Virginia kills 119.
I took a small trip to see Jungle Cruise at the cinema. I could have paid to stream it on the television but I really like going to the cinema. I noted that the tide was very low in the river, all the mud banks were exposed. This was a metaphor for my low expectations of this film, even then, the film disappointed me a bit. I rated the film on IMDB, there’s a communication dealing with the scoring system.
I didn’t hate this film but I also didn’t think it was worth watching by the end of it. I know this is a film based on a theme park ride but maybe people should just stop making those. The premise was ok-ish: a plant to cure all diseases exists somewhere in the Amazon jungles and the protagonist has to find it, for reasons. Stuff happened including loads of supernatural bollocks. But, here are the things I found most annoying:
A lot of the action was filmed close up and without a steady camera and so it all blurred and I couldn’t really tell you what was going on during the action scenes. Maybe I’m getting old but there was a lot of CGI and fast moving cameras which took away from the actual action for me. Although I am prepared to say that I am definitely not the market for this film.
Why is the bad guy a German? In a submarine? Why German? Why not some mega-capitalist? Why German? Have we not accepted that perhaps not all bad people have Germanic roots. I kind of get it with Indiana Jones and the Nazis, because that was when the film was set and they were really bad. But this guy just seemed to be some low level German royal who wanted the plant-thing. Maybe I need to re-evaluate my approach to whoever the bad guys are.
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS by Metallica was the music that opened this film and also came along for a bit of easy rock half way through. Fuck this song. It is shit. What is happening in the world?
{SPOILER FOLLOWS} Why did the protagonist, who is motivated by saving the sick of the world give the only flower to a dead man she had fallen in love with? Where was her sacrifice for the better good? What an utterly selfish bullshit thing to do. Fuck this move.
I didn’t really enjoy this film. I was curious to see what the ending was going to be, and, of course, it was completely happy. Except for the German, obviously.
What happened in the year 1910 given that this is communication number 1910?
Slavery made illegal in China.
The Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s comet.
This is my current base in this latest world. I’ve written about things recently but this is a whole new era of my Minecraft skills. I have a simple base at the moment, I have a villager breeding area as I try to get the mending enchantment and I have a kelp XP farm. Things are going OK at the moment. The island in the bottom is mostly reclaimed and so I’ll be calling it New Holland.
I’ve got railways joining these places over the sea. This land is in a new chunk since the caves and cliffs update part one and therefore there are geodes and glowing squid all over the place. I’m not sure how to make a proper base yet, but part of me wants to build up a massive volcano and go completely Bond-villain.
I’ve been spending some time at Linton Park Cricket Club recently and although I regularly try and walk around the ground a few times each visit I went in the opposite direction on my last attempt. I am normally hanging around in the nets and when I go for a lap I start there and head away from the pavilion. The lap in question started north of the pavilion and so I walked in a clockwise direction [when viewed from above]. It’s always good to approach things from a new point of view and I thought this would just look a little different. I was not expecting the result of this walk to be such a surprise!
LPCC Tree
On the return leg towards the pavilion I saw this tree. A whole tree growing in within the boundary. In the year or so that I had been coming to this ground I hadn’t seen the tree. I just hadn’t noticed it at all when I was completing laps in a positive direction [when viewed from above]. Why had I not seen such an obvious thing? Why had this tree not been part of my viewing on the numerous times I would have walked past it in the past? What is going on? It’s clearly not a newly planted tree and given its size it’s been there for a while and anyway, why would you plane a new tree within the boundary? Although the club itself and ground is a lot older than the tree so there are questions I need answered.
There is something called the Mandela effect. It’s not a real thing. But everyone has things that make them question what they know or can remember. The Mandela effect is meant to explain a mis-remembering of an event or thing. When I saw this tree my first thought was – that’s a surprise, how come I didn’t notice it before? My first thought was not – wow, that must have popped into existence from nowhere I am clearly in a new timeline and therefore aliens or whatever bogeyman you want. People don’t understand just how terrible human memories are. The general impression is that memories are like perfect video cameras and we can fast rewind through any event to see the truth of what happened or at least the truth of the experience we had. The reality is that human memory is fucking terrible and can’t be relied on at all. I am dreading being called as a witness to something where my memory is required. It’s quite easy to change how you remember things. Just remember them. Every time you remember something you change your memory. Have fun with that knowledge.
I spent a little while adjusting some of the decoration on the villa. The idea what to make it still look textured but less “busy”. I’m not sure it’s complete yet but it’s better that it was in the previous communication.
I’ve decided to fly somewhere in X-Plane. I’m not sure where I’m going to end up but so far I have travelled from RAF Valley to Mauritania [the worst country you’ve never heard of]. I’m doing short hops heading around the coast. The route has, so far, been roughly:
RAF Valley
Bristol
RNAS Culdrose
Southampton
Jersey
Somewhere in Brittany
Bordeaux or so
St Sebastian
Santander
Portugal somewhere
Lisbon
Faro
Gibralter
Morocco somewhere
Canaries – various
Mauritania somewhere.
For a laugh I have streamed some of these. I had streamed to Twitch but that doesn’t save your videos AFAIK and so I’m now streaming this stuff to YouTube. These videos are really NOT interesting. I’m not talking over them. I’m just recording the screens and considering that I get to FL300 and then go straight there isn’t a lot to see. I’m also using this as a way of learning more about flying aircraft. I think I’ve got the basics sorted. I can take off, manoeuvre, land etc but I want to learn a little more about a/c systems and so on.
I’m hoping the scenery will get a little better as I head further south through Africa. I think I’ll sneak out to Cape Verde on the next hop. I’ll also try to remember to fill the plane with fuel and use reheat most of the way. I’m curious to see just how fast I can get it going.
I’m using a multi-screen set up for these trips. The devices are as follows:
Main PC screen – X-Plane standard cockpit or outside views.
Second PC screen – X-Plane Garmin device and VR Tablet add-on.
Android Tablet – browser with details from X-Plane and ability to turn switches etc via the touchscreen.
iPhone – running X-Plane Control so I can see approach angles and flight information.
So, when it looks as though I’m not really looking at the main PC screen I’m not. I’m probably doing plenty of other stuff on other screens or just letting the thing fly. I don’t think I have breakages turned on so nothing should go that wrong as I’m flying. Mind you, I’ve had a couple of occasions where the aircraft has ejected me for some reason and I’m not sure why – I suspect it was over-g at low level. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing Table Mountain when I get there.
I really liked my beach house that I built in the Minecraft series that is on my YouTube Channel. It was placed nicely although a little small. So, in the latest world I wanted a nice big beach house. And I’ve made it.
RTX Sunrise
Now, I’m not sure I’m happy with some of the texturing and so I am going to remove and change of it. There’s too much detail in the fascia of the villa. The villa faces east and so this is a shot of the house with the sun rising.
Glorious Sunrise
This is a more front on view and you can see the levels. There’s an animal farm to the right rear of the villa. All the storage systems and other farms are hidden in a basement to the rear of the building.
View From North
Here you can see the side of the villa and the animal farm. In this series of screen shots I’ve got RTX turned on and it’s lovely. Absolutely lovely.
Second Balcony
This is the view from the top balcony. There’s a bridge in the mid-distance and that has the old entrance to the mine that we started. I now have a minecart that goes from the basement to the mine and I can get there straight from the villa rather than heading into the dangerous outside.
I recently had a long session on Minecraft, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out as I was waiting for someone to come and fix my boiler. I didn’t really feel like getting into a TV show so I spent some time [too long really] putting an idea I had a while back into place. Here’s an overview of part of the latest world:
Latest World Overview
The mess top right next to the bay is the MAIN Base. I’m going to see if I can get some screen shots of it, or maybe give a walk around viewing video, I’ll see what I can manage. The big grey blob in the middle of the map is a gravel topped mountain and I’ve not been there to get the gravel yet but it will be useful at some point I hope. In the bottom left of the map you can see the nearest village to the base. I wanted to create a way of getting to and from the village without having to walk over land. I could have created a minecart track but in this world I chose to dig a canal.
Sea Level Details
This cross-sectional map shows everything at level 62 – sea level [currently]. If you look closely at the top you can see a thin blue line going horizontally. That is the canal I dug and added water to. You enter the canal from top right and move directly westwards and exit in the Great Lake. From there you follow the passages and mini-canal southwards to get to the village. There could be an issue that I can’t remember whether it was this village or not that had actual live villagers in it. I didn’t bother to check before I started this infrastructure project so it could have been for nothing!
Length Of Navigation Route
My map making software also has a measuring tool. You can see that the total canal length is about 0.85km. So that’s 850 blocks long. I’ll probably create a video soon of the base and where the canal goes but until then, I leave you in peace.
Recently I went somewhere for a thing! Given the last year of lockdown and nothing really happening this was a super treat. Motorsport Vision emailed earlier in the year offering the chance to drive the GP circuit at Brands Hatch and as I considered the price to be suitable I booked a place. There were rules to follow once on the circuit but it was nice to experience the route in the sun and in my Prius. There were quite a few “showy” cars in the queue for the sightseeing but I didn’t care. I enjoyed it even though our speed never really exceeded 50 mph.
Driving The GP Circuit
I will say that even at the pedestrian pace we were going the compression going down Paddock Hill was surprising, it also started earlier than I had expected but now that I’ve had time to reflect it makes sense that you feel negative g as you go over the top and then the onset of positive g is fast as you approach the inflexion.
This was great fun and something I’d love to do again. I should probably see what lap time I could get by driving on Gran Turismo. Unfortunately the current GT version doesn’t have a Prius so I’ll try and find something else with similar power and torque.
I went along the river Medway for a walk in the cool temperatures and I wasn’t expecting to find a second world war relic. I mean, there are 17th century castles and defenses to save the British fleet from being destroyed [again] but something slightly more contemporary was a slight surprise. I also didn’t expect it to at an extreme slant!
Cockham Wood FW3/22 Pillbox
I guess the photograph doesn’t make it look so bad but I will confess that standing inside [it didn’t smell of piss which was a surprise] made me feel quite disorientated with walls and floors at strange angles. I almost felt like I do when I wear the PSVR.
Cockham Wood Pillbox Inside Out View
I think the above picture is pretty neat. I wasn’t expecting a family to be there but it works really well. So glad that I have a reasonable camera on my phone. I tried to avoid taking pictures of all the rubbish inside the pillbox.
St Mary’s Island, Medway
The river itself was very still, I think it was approaching high tide and there wasn’t that much wind. This meant I didn’t have to use a slow exposure to get a smoothing of the water.
Upnor Steps
God, it was nice to be out and somewhere else. To be somewhere where the limit of my view is more that about three metres. I do think that my eyes are suffering with this being stuck indoors quite a bit. Maybe I should get to taking tea in the garden more often. I think I could stand and stare at Bushey Wood.
Early on in this pandemic that is fucking the world I started playing Minecraft pretty much so I could engage in conversations with my kids and understand a little about the world they were obsessed with. I still don’t know everything but I know what I like and enjoy and so I’ve been building. It gave me purpose. I hated it at times, having to head off to the farm to get wool or go and get supplies so I can make concrete. I considered making a squid farm at one point, but just changed my design to have less black concrete. I quite liked the process of building a thing and then changing my mind about what I wanted to to look like or how to complete a particular section. I would often think about what to do while I was running or working.
I haven’t done everything I want. There are things I kept thinking about that I could make to increase the complexity of the build and make it look even better. I wanted exhaust tubes to be built heading from the base of the launchpad up to the ground level around 100 blocks away and these would have smoke constantly pouring out of them to look as though the rocket was taking off. I wanted to build a launch control centre like the one at Kennedy for the Apollo launches but I only have so much time and there are other things I like doing. I’m not a complete obsessive!
Once I had done enough – I don’t think I should say finished – I tried to figure out the best way to save this build for posterity. I have the world save files backed up and stored on a NAS and in the cloud. But I wanted to be able to show this off I guess so I looked into making a YouTube walkthrough. Now, I have some rules about this website and I decided I should have rules about the videos. I wasn’t going to feature my ugly face, but I decided I would in the end. I have an opening title card – ha ha, created in MS Paint – yes it looks cheap but these are my first videos. Not sure what I’ll do next. I’ve been really impressed with the video recording software and I found it very intuitive. So, here is the first in the series, Episode 1 of Megaship 3000.
It turns out I can talk much better if I have wine and it amuses me how stilted and staccato my opening words are. I think I relax a little once I get going and know what to talk about. Many, many thanks to Penguin for giving me feedback on the first few attempts at a video and I would also like to thank the penguin chicks for their advice which, as seasoned YouTube watchers, was really good. I guess it’s now time to publicise my efforts and think about a release schedule! There are eight episodes in all and I guess, one day, I might do this again.
So, as time goes I progress on my Minecraft Megabuild. Even as I continue to build I keep coming up with ideas for new things and extensions but I have decided that once I’ve completed the inside and possibly adjusted the route of the underground railway approaching the build I will stop. I’d love to make a launch control like the one at Kennedy Space Centre but maybe another time. I need to start playing on a new world. This server is now known as Season Two and Season Three has already started. I expect another couple of weeks of tidying up this thing and then I will start recording the tours. I’m keep planning how this is going to work. I’ve practised recording a video with audio and it went ok. I just need to sit down and plan the sections. I think I’m going to make each video around five minutes long covering a single aspect of the build each time.
River and Rocket
I’m currently fitting all the control systems to the rocket. Really this is just a bunch of switches and toggles in places that look right. I’m also moving all the material I excavated from the hole into rocket storage. I guess my plan is to have this thing be able to blast off and then build a new world somewhere. I’ve got my cabin sorted and I’m pleased with the view from there.
Top Half Of The Rocket
I’m not sure how much time I’ve spent on this. It’s been around an hour a day for quite a while. I’ve been spending time collecting the resources as all this has been made in survival game mode.
Minecraft Statistics
I’m waiting on a new camera and then some more time just to sweeten off this model and then it’ll be record time. I’m looking forward, it’ll be a new skill and one that I’ve kinda tried before but the result was terrible!
Gantry and Beach Base
Here you can see my beach house, tree farm, beach bar and monolith. There’s also a nether-portal and if you know what you are looking for you can see Beach Station. Anyway, just wait for the videos!
I’ve been working on a Minecraft mega-build. I don’t think it’s as mega as some of the things made by the Hermitcraft server people but this is still pretty large. I’ve been working around an hour a day for what feels like ages. It started out as an experiment and now I seem somewhat obsessed with it all. I think about the plans as I go about my daily business and some of those have had to be binned as just too extravagant. Once this build is finished I think I might have trouble becoming motivated again in Minecraft, it’s been such a labour that this could end my metre-cubed-block career.
Sneak Peek
There’s also the problem of saving this build for posterity. That is where I will be upskilling. I intend to record some videos, to be placed on the YouTube platform, of me moving around the world and talking at the same time. I tried doing this in the lockdown and I hated it but I think it’s the only way to record the details of this build. I’m going to be testing recording and talking in other areas of this world to get practiced at this and hopefully be able to sound almost professional when I publish the videos of this build. I’ll also be using the PC rather than the PS4 to complete the screen recordings so that should look at lot better too.
Beach House Complex
I do not intend to learn any video editing software so I expect my tour around the base will be short clips rather than one long massive video. That way I can maximise the information given. Wait and see.
At the beginning of the national lockdown I went out for daily exercises with the kids and they talked constantly about Minecraft and I just nodded along. Then, I decided to join in and at least understand what they were talking about. Now, about half a year later, I still don’t always understand what they are talking about but I do at least get some of it. Our second world is progressing well and the luxury now is that we’ve conquered farming and so are able to devote time to “projects”.
I will confess that I have been using a map application to help with guided mining. While cheating I don’t think this is the worst cheat. I also started showing coordinates on screen which feels a little like cheating, but, not the worst as far as I’m concerned. Recently there have been nether tunnels made to progress around the world faster than my minecart railway from the Meadow to the Beach.
A while back I introduced the world to the HOLE via my YouTube channel. I don’t think I wrote about it on these informative pages but I didn’t really have much of an idea what to do. I think the HOLE took about two weeks to dig playing one to two hours a day. Two hours is my limit before I start getting restless.
The bottom of the HOLE is now layered with glass, there are torches placed at the lowest bedrock level and I have also filled a layer of water at the moment to save me dying if I fall into the HOLE. I might or might not remove the water, I’m not sure yet.
I have started a build project in the HOLE. It is going to take some time. So far I think I have spent about a week on it, playing for one to two hours per day. There are a few issues. The main one is resources. After building for a session I am generally out of particular resources and have to spend the next session building those resources up again. It does give me a break from the project I guess and allows me to think about how to design the next stage. The lowest level of the build was almost done as a proof of concept and it looked so good that I decided to carry on. After about a week of building the whole project started to take shape in my head and I now have most of it loosely planned. I know what I am going to do, it’s just a matter of getting the resources and doing the building.
I guess there will be a grand reveal here and on YouTube. I expect this project to take another two weeks to complete the main section of the build. I think it’ll be another couple of weeks after that to build the extras – such as minecart tracks and redstone components. So, given delays and that a national lockdown seems unlikely, this project looks set to last another month. I can’t wait to show people around the project. I will have to come up with some name for it.
A while back I journeyed to Dover and the White Cliffs. Just went for a walk and to see what it looks like. It’s an odd feeling looking at the massive modes of transport going about their business. Fascinating. Quite a bit like watching aircraft or trains. I took a few photos as a test of my cleaning of my camera sensor. There is a small spot that I can see in photographs still but overall the result is pretty good and I am a happy chappy. I didn’t want to use a gallery for this collection as I really like the photographs. Click on one to get a, slightly, larger image.
For a few years now I’ve had some dark spots on photographs I’ve taken of aircraft in the sky. These show up when I’m on full zoom on the telephoto lens and a recent trip to Headcorn really showed this up so much so that I had to edit the photographs to get rid of those dark spots. Finally I got around to searching for a solution after I eliminated it being the actual lens. The first thing is to try blowing the dust spots out with some air. This is where my troubles really began. The guide I saw said hold the camera with the sensor facing downwards and blow the air upwards into the camera body. This was attempted but without much thought as I was using a can of compressed air and had to angle the can horizontally to get the flow direction correct. A load of propellant came out of the can and sprayed into the camera body. All of this stuck to the sensor and I effectively ruined the camera.
Another searching of the internet resources led me to find a microfibre sensor wipe that might clean the sensor enough so that I can use the camera again. I was either going to spend GBP20 or so on some special wipes or I was going to have to send the camera off for a new sensor or professional clean. The twenty quid seemed worth it before going for the Amber Level response. One day later and I’ve got the camera body open with microfibre wipes in hand and I’m trying to clean the most sensitive part of the camera full in the knowledge that I might destroy it. The process completed and I now have an OK-ish camera. I still think it needs to be sent off for a proper clean but I might get away with just that rather than having to buy a new sensor. The camera is working a little better than before and the original spots are reduced. They are still there but not as prominent. I need to go somewhere I can take photos of aircraft flying to see what the background looks like.
The first time I ever went to Headcorn airfield, or Lashenden Aerodrome or whatever it’s called, was in a little Cessna with Andrew Passfield. Andrew was getting his flying hours up to complete part of his CPL. He used to get a little bored flying by himself and so would take passengers. We took off from somewhere near Lakeside, Thurrock, and flew over Kent to Folkestone to see the Channel Tunnel Terminal being constructed. Then we landed at Headcorn and had some tea and doughnuts before heading back with a quick circle over Brands Hatch. It was a lovely flight and great fun. I particularly remember that the construction site of the channel tunnel terminal was immense and that Kent has some very straight railways. Almost strange to think that I am now living in that area.
I went recently to Headcorn Aerodrome just as somewhere to go. The weather was meant to be nice and, as you would expect, the aerodrome is mostly outside and so it seemed it would be a reasonably safe place to visit. I didn’t know if there was going to be much action there but we headed out anyway. On arrival there were parachutists gliding down from 8000′ and plenty of aircraft up and doing their thing. There was even a Stearman wing walker jobby flying around. Further inspection gathered the information that for a measly GBP350 you too could wing walk and spend some time being buffeted around by the atmosphere!
Just Dropped Off The Kids
I took the Camera and it was nice to get some use out of it. I’ve not really been anywhere this summer and so the poor thing has lain alone.
Lined Up
I have noticed that I have a lens problem though. My 300m telephoto lens causes muck spots on light backgrounds and that is something I’m going to have to look at over the next week. Also this coming week I will be mentally bracing myself for going to work. Something I haven’t done for six months. My last day in work was 16th March. I have been working but from home and so having to put a pair of shoes on will be very strange.
