Dragons in Minecraft

Notch you beautiful man!

Finally answering the cries of many, he has started work on dragons within Minecraft. This neatly expands the scope for airborne creatures, and in making the scaly beast itself, Notch made some quite significant changes to the way animals and moving entities can look in the game, changing behaviours and the number of polygons (or knobbly bits to you and me), though it's probably fairer to say that we're looking more at additional blocks of details, than finely tuned rounded edges! Having said that, it looks fantastic, and going from it's original incarnation of a horrifying blocky mass, it now boasts lovely shapely wings,
which is yet another indication of Notch's lovely ability to branch out within Minecraft, and surprise us with curved edges! Sometimes it's just too important to be given detail on a plate, rather than fill in the blanks (or blocks!) with our imaginations.

We're not quite sure where the dragons will end up, but we know they're going to be indestructible, more a terrifying feature of the landscape (that flies around!) than a combat-able creature, or even a mount. Some things suggest that it may be found in the new Ender-World, a new area similar to the Nether in construction. This video on a new Youtube account (owned by Notch) shows the world with Endermen in the murky background:



...and when brightened up we can see the dragon fly across the top of the frame!

(Thanks to Youtube user 'mastatsan' for the brightened video!)

This of course does not mean that dragons will be restricted to the one area, they may (as in the screenshots) be rare features within the ordinary Minecraft world.

What do you guys think?

I'm hereeeee!

Just to let you all know I'm still alive... again.

Started my OU work last Monday to get ahead. I'm essentially doing the preparation/familiarisation week. It's really well laid out. The books are fantastic.
The hope is that we'll get to go to the South Downs to see some home-ed friends. Very excited about that prospect.

I have a violin lesson tomorrow so I need to hit the sack. I also need to do more than four hours of OU work to make up for Thursday, as we're planning to go to North Stack as the 'powers that be' promise good weather.

Use the Twitter application on the right hand side to see me plod through my days in more detail :-)

Speak to you all soon.

-David

Tea Parties and Praise

Hey people!

Just a short blog tonight.

Had a lovely relaxing morning. Dad came ad picked me up and took me to Aunty and Grandma's house which was great fun. Saw Austin (her famed cat) and also Tigger, the playmate of the celeb feline.

Had a nice lunch and then sat out in the sun, occasionally joined by purring little monsters.


Went home by 4:00, got suited up and then left for Church, to celebrate it's 40th year of being um... a church with people in it and things. Woop?

Didn't get to stay for the presentation, but got a bellyfull of lovely food. It was nice to speak to members of the church who had moved away, but come back for the event. Hopefully I'll get to speak to them more tomorrow.

We rushed off to Llandudno then for Prom Praise, which was really epic. We met up with people from A's fellowship and took our seats.
Loved the music, the laughter and the loud singing. The speaker was a great old man, full of vitality and good humour. He kept jigging around on the spot during the songs!

Talked to everyone after the concert and singing ended and compared notes (teehee), and then bombed off back home and now here I am, sitting in my PJ's, wondering if I'll be able to get up tomorrow in time for Church. There's a fellowship lunch tomorrow so that'll be nice.

Speak to you soon everyone.

-Dave

P.S. The photo was taken by me in Newborough Forest.

Orchids and Ordinary life

Morning all.

This morning I went with my Dad to do some work at a local Botanic Garden.
I did some spraying after Dad showed me how, to get rid of some mealybug which was on the leaves of many of the orchids. We managed to clean out the pump spray wotsit thingy, which was good, as it was full of green sludge and whatnot. However, it was falling to pieces, and it eventually gave up the ghost so Dad had to blitz the last bit while it held out (leaking air) and then took it back to his house when we left, in order to repair it.

Anyway, we made progress and one of the ladies there did several repots which is good, as we needed to keep that going.

After that I came home and performed my new violin piece to Dad, shabby, but none the less, beautiful music even if my unpracticed self didn't do it justice (which it didn't!).


I also managed to excecute a really tricky card flourish called The Eye Cut, in front of Dad, which I was quite pleased about!

This is a performance by the man who created the display, Bone Ho:



No one performs it like Bone!
I'll have to explain card flourishing at another point.


In the evening we left for Youth Club.

We played some rounders which was fun, and then we went indoors as it was dark which presents problems when you're trying to hit a ball and not the backstop!
I did another eye cut and wowed everyone which was great fun.
DF lead the study, which was looking at the introduction to book which is a guide to the gospels.

J and H bought various sweets, crisps and drinks to restart the tuck shop which we've not had for ages. It went down really well, and they collected £5.80 on the spot and had several IOUs beause people didn't have money with them as they'd not had a reason to bring it :-)

Pretty cool stuff.

Tomorrow we have Ebenezer's 40'th anniversary. Quite a long time. They thought it sensible to rent THREE portaloos.... hmm. I'll leave it to you to wonder why they thought they'd need 5 toilets in total. Hey ho. The Church has been converted into a massive dining area. It looks fantastic.

We'll have to leave the celebrations early to go to Prom Praise in Llandudno with the All Souls Orchestra. Should be good. It always has been!

Oh, I'm going to suit up for both events! Any excuse ;-)

Night ya'll!

-Dave

Artist's waffle and Peninsula Photos

Hey people!

Whilst watching Mock the Week on one half of my screen, and typing this blog post on the other, I shall try and recount the somewhat few events of today and share the photos from yesterday... though you might have picked up on that already :-)
The picture at the top of this post is of Porth Dinllaen, the small village + pub (bonus) jutting off the Llyn Peninsula, on a little peninsula of it's own!

I cleaned up Mum's computer today. Freed up several gigabytes of space on the harddrive, deleted Temporary Internet Files and binned all the unwanted desktop icons. Great success!

Later on I did some washing up for Mum which I did speedily.. she said so!

After that Mum and I spent about 20 minutes choosing which photos to delete/keep from the trip yesterday. It's a long process, especially when the pictures are all quite good, it's hard to break it down to the final flaw which makes one picture minimally inferior to another. It's easy to say "That one isn't as good", but it's important to check why it isn't as good as the other candidate.

After that I mooched around, listened to some good music, played a few games, checked Facebook repeatedly *addict* and talked to a few people on MSN.



I practiced my violin, still love that new piece MS gave to me, and managed to crack a few of the trickier quaver and semi quaver runs in there.
The other piece, a study, isn't so joyous. It's a nice tune, but extremely technical (which is why MS gave it to me!) unlike the other, which needs to be lyrical and smooth. I'm trying to get my head round the position changes from 1st, then to third and on to 4th. All fairly unfamiliar territory, so it's quite hard to practice without getting frustrated because of the need to stop and figure out what to do when.

Picture time! We'd walked around along the top of the spit of land that you see in the first picture, and through a golf course (which you see part of in the second picture) to reach the village. The golf course was scary. Balls flying everywhere.

This was taken on the edge of a cliff (Mum wasn't there to panic over me at the time!) of the houses (and pub ☺) of Porth Dinllaen. You can REALLY see how close to the beach they are in this picture. They're part of the geography of the place now to be honest.



After finishing my violin I hopped back on the computer (surprise surprise) and it crumpled beneath my weight.... only kidding! Yeah, you've checked back to find where the joke was haven't you? Sheesh. We digress...
I went back on the computer, only to find that an email had come from http://riptapparel.com/ (via Twitter) telling me that I'd won a free t-shirt!
A while back I bought a shirt that Phil Brown had done the design for, from RIPT Apparel and have checked back to their website every day since, to see what new t-shirt design they are selling that day.

This is what they say about themselves:

We showcase one brand new, uniquely designed t shirt every day for only $10. Then it rests in peace forever! If you love limited edition shirts, tees, tshirts and t-shirts as much as RIPT, stop by and pick up yours today!

So yeah, I "Re-Tweeted" some of their Tweets about the shirt available one particular day, which entered me into a random draw to win a t-shirt.
I did know about the contest, but I didn't think I'd win it!
You can see the shirt I bought previously, here: http://riptapparel.com/shirt/08/27/2009/vulture




Stunning light reflecting off someones uncollected teapot at a little cafe that we stopped at after our walk to Porth Dinllaen.

We all had Icecreams and I had a lovely Pineapple and Passionfruit smoothie... on the rocks ;-)


At 6:10 we left to pick Grampy up from his house, to take him to the David Woodford talk.
David is very passionate about protecting "fine art" against the evils of "modern art" (if I can lower myself to call it art) and so much of the focus of the talk and question time was dealing with that topic, though obviously there was some discussion on his own paintings etc.

All very interesting stuff. The whole thing lasted two hours, and Grampy was pretty tired as sitting still for that long meant his knees froze up, but he enjoyed it a lot and I expect he liked being out of the house (even if he had to keep his slippers on!) for a change, as he's been resting a lot after the operation.

Got back home this evening, very tired but still managed to talk to people on MSN and listen to more music.... and get my fix of Facebook ;-)
Ah, that reminds me! Did you hear that the internet is merging Youtube, Twitter and Facebook? It's going to be called "You Twit Face"

*Tactful pause for convulsions to cease*

I'd better be off to bed now, as I've got to be up tomorrow morning to go to the Botanic Garden to continue repotting the Orchids with my Dad, which we've been doing over the summer. It's more fun than I thought it would be at first, and I'm glad we're both doing it.

In the evening there is Youth Club. Hopefully everyone will be there.

Mum took this last picture on the very tip of the Llyn Peninsula. 30 degrees to the left, and you'd be looking at Bardsey, but we didn't want to be looking at an island when we had light like this.

-David

What a wonderful world!

Hello Blog.

Yesterday (15th)

I did various things about the house, kept checking the OU site out to continue to get accustomed.
Mum, H, J and I went to visit Orel Mon to see David Woodford's art in the afternoon. We're going to hear him talk Thursday night, but we wanted to be able to draw whilst we were there, so it was a nice opportunity. I got absorbed with an artists pen, drawing people sitting on a bench looking at the art and listening to David W (he happened to be there with the local U3A) and ended up doing several miniature drawings of his, as I had some wall space that the people were sitting in front of!
Good fun.

In the evening we had Youth band. Gwyn was really nice about my trouble with my braces, and I only had to stop once during rehersal so that was encouraging. I do have some ulsery type things, and a blister though, which isn't too pleasant, but not overty painful.
On the way home we visted Grampy. Saw the scar on his right knee (he's had it replaced recently) which is pretty impressive to say the least! Really long :-)
He's doing fairly well, though I feel he'd be happier if the leg wasn't so swollen still. I think it has a right to be a bit swollen after being cut, pushed, pulled and sawn apart so much!


Today 16th

I had a Violin lesson this morning (9:00 ugh, up by 8.20 for the first time in ages), the first one in several months as I'd not continued over the summer holidays. Got some lovely new music which I sight read, and MS was pleased with me I think, I hope so anyway!
Mum played the piano really well whilst MS aided me. She sight reads well, and even managed to get a page turn in without stopping!!

After that had ended, Mum and I rushed back home to get the others ready. Alan came by about 10:30 and we all set off on a trip round the Llyn Peninsula.

Couldn't have picked better weather for it! Stunning sunshine.

We stopped off at a shop Mum spotted on the way there, a driftwoody arty place. Had a talk to a very non-politically correct man (teehee) who had radical (but sadly fairly understandable) ideas about how this nation of ours (nation? that sounds too grand!) could become great again, or even just a little bit less of a civil war zone than it is at present!

We moved on to a lovely village perched on the shoreline (actually right on the beach, for real!) on a spit of land jutting into the sea. It had about 6 or 7 houses, and one pub. We walked around the spit, and combed the beach for bones, quartz and driftwood. Got a decent conglomoration of stuff!

I took some good photos with Mum's camera which I'm quite pleased about.

We moved on to Whistling Sands.
The sand really does have a special quality to it. It's very extraordinary. Akin to a sort of crumble mix (as Mum put it) but easily separated when you pick it up! If you scuff your feet when you walk, it squeaks quite loudly!! We all amused ourselves in this manner for a few minutes, before I decided I wanted to have a photo taken of me holding my cards on a footbridge, and J (not content with being a bystander) decided to hang off bottom of thethe bridge underneath my feet, a good 4 feet off the rocky floor.

I didn't get a decent close up of myself, J fell off the underside of the bridge and bashed his face (mega lolz!) and we all had a jolly good laugh and brush off.

Then I dodged the waves breaking on the shore (incoming tide) by jumping onto a rock whenever they came close. Mum took photos, H sat serenely, and I looked like a Ninja O.O

Then we went to the end of the peninsula, overlooking Bardsey Island, and watched the sun begin to sink right over the sea, splitting into rays of light shining down onto the sea through some clouds, and finally sinking lower and lower until as we drove off, it lined the clouds with orange as it fell beneath the horizon. Amazing.

We stopped off on the way back for fish and chips. Great fish!

Back home by around 8:30, 9:00. We'd been out for over 10 hours!


I'm shattered now anyways. I've been up for 17 hours so far, and I've still got to get ready for bed. Stupid child. I wish I'd not decided to write a blog tonight!

Tomorrow 17th
We've got H going to Grampy's to do her work there. I'm helping Mum, and in the evening we're going to hear David Woodford.

Sorry for the lack of jokes! I do appologise. This has been a merely factual experience for you, which is shockingly out of character for one such as myself. (For those of you who don't know me, I'm the wag of the group of people you're kindly imagining in your brains)

Peace out ya'll.

-Dave

I'm still alive!

Hello blog!

Wow, it's been such a long time.

I've got several more exams since I last wrote. I now have 8 GCSE's, (A) English Lit, (A) English Language, (A) Geography, (A) Physics, (B) History, (B) Religous Education, (C) Biology, (C) Maths. I also have two Grade 5 qualifications in theory and practical music, which is equivelent to a Music GCSE.

I've just got back from Cefn Lea, a Christian home educator's holiday (alternate years also have a conference). Had a fantastic time, and loved meeting my friends again. So much like a big family.

I went on the teen panel, and got asked questions by adults and children about my experiences with HE. I was nervous, but soon realised everyone was on my side, cracked a few jokes, and answered questions, including some from a woman who had just taken her children out of school for the first time. I hope she found my advice helpful!

Lots of people said I did well apparently, so I'm chuffed about that :-)

I had a photo taken atop a mountain overlooking Cefn Lea, (see my display picture) and it was edited by a member of my card flourishing and magic forum (www.the-3c.com), Andrew, who did an amazing job of making an amazing picture look.... more amazing!



Today I had a good look at my Open University course material and also their website. I'm starting a course in "The arts past and present" on the 3rd of October. Scary stuff! I'm feeling more confident about it the more I look at it though, so that's good.

Tomorrow I've got to head off at 8:45am and play with the Brass Band outside some local counsellor's workplace or something. It's a protest against the proposed closure of most of the local Sports Centres (including swimming pools) which would be a terrible blow to the community, and also the island's economic system.

I'll leave this post as it is now.

Good to be back!

Peace out,

-David

Birmingham!

Heyloooo!

I had two more teef out today. Rather painful when one of them was litrally yanked forth from my bleeding gum, but apart from that it's been less bad than before. Just a general ache at the moment. I think if I put my brace in I'm going to be beside myself with agony.... heyho!!!


Tomorrow morning at about 11:00, we're leaving for Brummy land to see Jo and Nic and their fambily. I'm really looking forward to it although, typicical girl, Jo is worried we won't get on.
Doh :D


Hope you're all enjoying erm.... life and that uh... life is treating you with the respect you deserve!

Cya on Sunday ;)

Peace out x

Ow...

My teeth hurt and my head hurts.

Not good.

I did more gardening at 9:30 this morning in the church to prepare for the funeral tomorrow afternoon. Pretty tired.

Violin lesson and Band in the evening today. Paul had no reason to tell me off so I was chuffed, I played 1st cornet well :D

Margret confused me loads in the violin lesson and I felt a bit miserable.

Never mind!!

Don't say I don't blog!

Just so tiiireZZZzzzz

Brass Marathon.... sort of

^Tombstoning on Conan!^
Hello!

Played a great session of Conan with Steff this morning. No bugs or glitches, Rhino's all around what ho?!

We went to Youth Club this evening, had some fun. Shawn didn't come, but Tom did.
Played more touch rugby.


Tomorrow is the brass 12 hour test of endurance. *sniff* It's just so hard! Not really, well it will be hard, but it should be fun. We'll have a couple of breaks so it won't be too painful!

Aunty Amy has flown up to us today (posh de?) and has arrived safely, yet very tired... LOL, I nearly wrote 'tried' Haha. Anyway yes, who wouldn't be tired after flying 900 odd miles. Drains one does this flying bussiness, so hard to keep your back straight when in the most areo-dynamic position. Eyes up, shoulders back, legs straight. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeooowwwww

Tomorrow night Steff is leaving for Greece! I'm happy for him as it is his first family holiday in FIVE YEARS. I'm also sad (rather selfishly) because I'll miss my best mate. Hey ho! I expect it will help me to get on with work and stop thinking about Rhino's stampeding innocent gyrgoyles into the forest floor etc etc.

I love jugglers! And that's what this video's about...



I wish I could just stand on the blinkin' box with the tube lol!

Amazing.

God bless!

Ðxx