The perils of a Minecraft addict

Something funny happened a few weeks ago: I got addicted to the ugliest computer game that has been released in the past few years. The damn thing is ugly. And that’s how it gets you.

After a friend keeps bugging you to check it out, you take a look at it. First reaction? It’s fugly, but you still decide to click around a little bit.

The next thing you know, it’s 4:45 AM ON A WEEKDAY and you are desperately building up defenses trying to fend off the critters that come out whenever the game switches to night time. The worst thing is that this cycle is very repeatable, everywhere I look I find people that got sucked in the exact way. You are not truly addicted to a game until you skip naps or real sleep in order to play it.

Alex Esoterica calls it a “sickness.” Here’s an example of one of my very first rudimentary structures:

That started as a wall in front of a hole in a mountain. Then I added a roof, then a second floor, and then it got crazy:

Notice how the damn thing is now taller than some of the clouds, and I actually dug underneath and built a whole atrium. The lake? It has a glass dam. I thought that by then I had it out of my system, but I was wrong:

This was generated with the Minecraft Topographic Survey tool, it shows my tower and the area behind it. Notice the elevated walkways with glass handrails, and a frickin pyramid. And then it got even crazier:

I dug around the pyramid and built DOWNWARDS, plus the transportation network now reaches the pyramid (and many more points on the map), plus two more buildings. And a diverted waterfall, which now rides a glass viaduct.

And these are only the things you can see from the outside. I am not even showing you the mines that reach down to the very bottom of the map.

So yes, a sickness it is.

On sleep deprivation and Incan Monkey Gods

From: Dilbert comic strip for 08/03/1992 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. I was trying to show this strip to a coworker who is dangerously toying with the harsh mistress that is Insomnia. What shocked me is how quickly I was able to look up the strip, which was published when he was just 11 years old, and two weeks before my just-out-of-college ass shipped out to US Army Basic Training.

The Black Hole

If this was a minigolf hole, you can't reach B from A. Ever. If this was a room lined with mirrors, and you lit a candle at point A, you can't see it from B, not even reflected. Update: I guess I didn't explain this all the way through. You can't reach B from A with just one stroke, there's no direct line between them, and there is no way to bounce the ball (assuming perfect conditions). Thanks to Ben for pointing this obvious error.

Goodbye Blackberry 8530, hello Samsung Intercept (both Virgin Mobile USA)

Got the phone switching bug again, and this time I am going to try to see if I can live with an Android phone . According to Virgin Mobile, they will be upgrading their Samsung Intercept to 2.2 froyo sometime in Spring, since I am completely new to Android I am not too worried about it yet. And no, I am not interested in a jailbreak. The dots are used for the unlock pattern, which after very little time becomes instinctive, much easier than having to remember a password. The new phone is slightly longer and narrower than my Blackberry 8530. The back cover is as flimsy. The Samsung Intercept is of course thicker since it has a slide-out keyboard. I haven't measured them, but the new keyboard feels at least twice as wide as the one in the Blackberry. The only problem is that due to the USB port being on the top of the phone, and I am a lefty, it is really damn hard for me to type if I am charging the phone. I imagine right handed people have the same ki...

The Insomniac Coder

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