IRL Stuff

My brother mentioned a new science fiction convention that's starting this year in Atlanta. Unfortunately, it starts tomorrow, so I won't be attending. But it did put an idea in my head of promoting my Youtube channel IRL at regional cons.
I go to Dragoncon every year (What? You've never heard of it?) and I used to go to a lot more, but haven't lately. Once I've moved and get my budget set I'm going to put aside more money to go to other conventions in the area.
And with that came my idea for a way to promote my Let's Plays. A business card with a creeper's face on one side with the text "It's dangerous to go alone!" and on the other a picture of a diamond sword and the text "Take one of these!" with my Youtube channel address on it.
Of course, it'll be a while before I need anything like that, but it's still an idea for shameless self-promotion.

What a disaster!

Do, today I got a new video up, Meandering. I actually had it up yesterday, but stupid me, I forgot to watch the video or anything before going through the process of encoding and uploading it. There was no audio! I had game sounds, but for some reason, my mic didn't pick up. Not sure if I accidentally muted it, or what, but I had the video up at the usual time, but it was unwatchable.
So, instead of recording a whole new video, I just decided to dub it. I watched the video and recorded commentary. Then I took that audio track and overlaid it with the video and Viola! you have the newest Meandering.
To be honest, I was kinda scared to do it. I thought I'd have a hard time making it feel real. But in the end I think it turned out ok. There are some points in the video when I was watching it that I almost forgot the voice-over wasn't recorded with the video.
Don't worry, this won't become a regular thing, unless you guys really like it, then I might start doing the series this way. Not having the commentate (is that a word?) would make it easier to survive, but who wants to see that?
Of course, I recorded some footage for Mining with Munchmo that same day and had to completely re-record that portion. Luckily there wasn't anything major that went down.
Course, then later as I was doing some work on the rail station, I found a cave and went exploring. Found another zombie dungeon, and got eaten alive by them. Then, within moments, the guy that was tagging along got killed by a creeper and Poof, there goes enchanted diamond sword, pick, and shovel. . . /sadface

Creeper Madness

So, I have another episode of Mo' Angels 'n Creepers encoding now, and I'll be uploading it soon. In this episode we go back down into the cave system and explore some more. Turns out there is a nice ravine that leads down to lava level, so hopefully I'll be in the diamonds next episode.
I didn't expect when I installed Elemental Creepers that I would end up with so many creepers in my world. I think in this episode I fought off more creepers than I ever have before. Unfortunately, I had a little problem with one. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I think my fingers slipped off the WASD keys and wreaked havoc.

National Margarita Day Fail

Boy, that was a mistake. I Just can't believe how it went from bad to worse! I guess I just got a bit cocky and it totally bottomed me out. I lost all the stuff I had, diamonds, iron, bookcases, obsidian, everything! Even if I was able to get back to where I died, there was no way I'd have made it in time. So, look forward to next episode where I go cave diving in the hopes of replacing even a fraction of what I lost.
This has taught me a valuable lesson though. I think from now on, I will place a chest at each place I sleep so that if I do die, I will at least have something to start over with. Put one of each tool, the best I can currently afford to lose.

Another Mo' Angels 'n Creepers is in the can!

So, I got another episode of Mo' Angels 'n Creepers recorded, edited and ready to upload. Should be going up in the next couple of hours, so look forward to that. In this episode we go cave diving and run into a lot of the new creepers added to the game. I sure have a lot to learn about them!
I had an issue Somnia, but after I finished recording I figured out the problem. For some reason, while recording with Fraps, Somnia goes REALLY slow, but if I'm not actively recording, time just FLIES! At least I know this for next time, so I don't have to worry about it.
I'm really happy about all the iron I found, so I can make some better tools. Next episode I'm thinking about moving my little hovel out of the hillside and into the cave I'm exploring. It appears as if there's a lot there, so I might spend a decent amount of time down there.
I've found another mod that looks like it might add some more challenge to the game, but it will change the world in a way that will require me to travel outside the areas I've been to find the new content. What do you guys think? Should I install Better Dungeons?

Meandering forward!

So the votes were in and forward was the choice! This week we fight off creepers in the night as we continue walking around my vanilla server. I am beset upon by all sorts of monsters and bugs, but the lag was kept at bay!
I think restarting the server just before recording helps, although I still got hit with the weird bug where I get stuck in a spot and the one where the blocks around me change (or even disappear completely!) as I light them up.
With that video up, it's time to begin work on my next Mining with Munchmo! This time we're going to clear out the old chicken room to make way for a new farm! Silk touch is going to be even more important than ever, unless I want to try to run grass down 30 blocks, which I don't.
Wish me luck!

Wow, Creepers and Kitties, eh?

So I threw together a little video having fun with the new AI stuff in the weekly snapshot. It really wasn't much, just me playing around with an idea I had from DocM's video earlier today. So I uploaded it and posted it to Reddit, and people actually liked it!

Marooned, E04

So, the next episode of Marooned in Minecraft is ready to upload! I ended up having to split it up into two episodes again because I just couldn't fit it all into a length I felt good about. The episode starts off fairly slow until I find a nice little surprise waiting for me! I was completely taken aback when I saw the opening of an abandoned mineshaft right down there in that ravine. And it shocked me even more to realize that I have found such easy access to a cave spider spawner! And, because of that, a new project is underway. One that has already taken me nearly 10 minecraft days, and will take many more before I'm done with it. The worst part is, after all that work I put into it, I nearly died a couple times, which would have totally destroyed the world I was working in. Below the cut you'll find a current map of my world and the video.

Putting it all together

So, I'm in the process of editing the fourth episode of Meandering together. I start by taking a look around the world that's already been explored and finish filling in the map that I created previously. After that I take a nice long boat ride to a whole new area of the world. You'll get a quick look at some of the stuff that the children have built on the server. This is the first video of this series that I recorded outside of the initial livestream I did when 1.0 was released. The video turned out to be a bit longer than I would have liked, compared to the other three in the series. Turns out I got so much footage I ended up splitting it into two episodes. Unfortunately that means you'll not get a new world map from me in this post, but you'll get one next time.

Melon Time!

So, I finally got a new video up. Sorry it took so long, but I don't get a ton of time alone to record, however my schedule at work just changed which will allow me free time daily to record more often. In this episode of Mining with Munchmo I explore the world in search of an abandoned mineshaft so I can get some melon seeds to setup an automated melon farm. I won't go into a ton of detail, but it turns out my server was running on easy, so I kinda got screwed by the poison spider experience. I have since turned the difficulty up to hard, so in the future I'm sure to get poisoned.
I did come across a couple of dungeons as well, which I lit up, but did not destroy the spawner, so I might try to use those (or at least one of them) to make a dungeon grinder or maybe just a single mob farm. I would just have been happier if they had been skeletons instead of zombies.
In the video I made reference to Zombles, which I've picked up by watching Kurt J Mac's videos, and for those of you unfamiliar with him, check out his channel on youtube.
I also noticed the last couple videos I uploaded had black borders and I couldn't understand why, but I finally fixed that so this video should be sized right.

Micromancero's auto melon farm tutorial

E05 - Slime Time

My first large project is complete! I'm in the process of putting the video together as I type this (final check of the recording to make sure it's not completely horrible). I spent many hours over the last few days digging out tens of thousands of blocks to make a slime farm. The process went through scores of pickaxes and shovels and was a lot of work. I ended up gathering multiple stacks of iron, gold, and coal, plus a ton of redstone, and about 20 diamonds. Overall, I ended up with a lot more materials than what I started with. I didn't use as much glass as I was expecting, but I decided to not create a complete floor for the viewing chamber. The most interesting thing to note is the shadowing. If you watch carefully you can see how things keep getting darker as I got closer to the bedrock. I'm not sure what caused it, but the area where I first hit the lowest level (where I dropped the ladder) I could get a full view (as you can see from the viewing room) of the area. However, if I were to step about 5-10 blocks in any direction the darkness would close in. Once I got down to about level 12, I started having to contend with the slime spawns and fought them off as they spawned. I ended up with about 25 slimeballs from that. Once I got into digging out the trench I had some lighting issues and had a few endermen, zombies, and creepers spawn, which is why I ended up putting torches around the edge. After I put the water in, there really wasn't any worry about them, but decided to leave the torches there.
In case you're interested in doing something similar and want to know how to figure out where to dig, I used the Minecraft Slime Finder to pick the best place to find slimes. All you have to do is put in your seed (found by pressing F3) and then your coordinates, and it'll draw you a map of the surrounding area with the slime chunks highlighted in green.
ETA: Even though I cleared 9 chunks for this slime farm, only 5 of them are actually slime generating chunks.
After editing the video together and watching it, I see that I am going to have to be careful in the future to watch the things I say. Seemed that every time I started recording I said "Alright minecrafters." I'm still pretty new to this whole video thing, so I'm hoping you guys will stick with me while I get better at this.