It's a line from a song titled Big Red by Frank Black. It's December 2024, and I still feel angry, like I wish I could grab millions of people by the neck and shake them like Bart Simpson, shake them good, like only the cartoon father Homer Simpson can. Can't grab or shake real people. The TV does reach out and throttle people's minds. Our only choice to prevent this is to turn off the screens.
I "should" go walk in the woods. It's December, it's cold outside, so instead I "walk" in a giant virtual game by myself. And type foolish posts to myself to replace social media time.
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| Maps of the Pit |
Minecraft maps are 128 blocks square, the Pit is just under 4 maps wide by 3 maps, but it takes 5 maps to get the overlap on the edges. Plus another row of four maps where the low flat area extends beyond the main 5 x 3 area.
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| Inside the top left map |
I'm holding the top left corner map, the little player icon in the image shows where I'm standing.
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| Same area mapped May 24th 2024 |
This is in another tp hub far away from the sea temple in the top photo. I double mapped this area on purpose to have a before and after image/record of what I built in the game.
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| Sep 29th, 2024 |
And here's the in-between state. It's really not much detail or visible changes in the maps. It's a lot when you are running around in the game. Perhaps I'll take some more screenshots of the builds. Or not, same question, "Is it fun?".
Dec 9th,
Continued with cloning water wall. I paused for a couple of evenings to gut and rebuild this Pillager tower, I wonder if I turn the mobs back on if they will return or if they will know, it isn't theres anymore?
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| Structure block in hand, looking back for a screenshot |
Dec 16th,
Whatever this many Minecraft screenshots talking to myself about "things" phase seems to be, it is winding down this month. My evening playing of the game isn't because I'm still not back on social media. I don't miss social media at all. I miss the people. I miss people I haven't ever met, some of whom I haven't talked with for years when the Home feeds started to get really bad, clogged with crap that wasn't my friends, until one by one, I didn't see them at all any more. It seems one person would always pay attention, even before it got bad, but I couldn't stand it. The bots and the crap. I've taken several breaks over the years. Taken "media fasts" before there was social media, in the 90s when it was only TV, radio news and PAPER newspapers.
Something has been wrong with the news for a long time.
Back in my world of peaceful mode survival and creative mode to clone and use structure blocks.
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| Friday the 13th, Dec 2024 |
I built this mini-village out of these two houses I found cut open along the cliff edge, years ago. Took a screenshot to remember where it is. The villagers didn't like it, they didn't respawn. So, it's a survival hub with crafting gear now.
Last night, Dec 15th, I cloned water wall to my 3/4 of a million build, at 750,000. It's a 100% survival built, little walled city made out of a village. The villagers do like it, and are busy doing what they do there. I've traded with some, but often don't find the ones who are leveled up with the good stuff more than once, because there are too many of them.
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| Standing on the M rail looking towards the 500 edge tower |
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| Standing inside the tower Zero, the M rail in the distance behind the little city |
It's one of the older builds that I have consistently added to over the years. I will build on an area for a while, use up whatever is filling up the bulk of my inventory, then move on to another area when the "is it fun?" rule has past. This time I added over 20 trees to the flat to break up the grey and filled in a lot of holes with dirt from a pit mine that is off of the edge, a few hundred blocks past the 1,000,000 garden, just past the tail end of the 'M' rail.
Dec 17th, A marathon couple of water wall building days. Cloned, not built in survival. I found some old water walls, before I decided to clone them, well I build them in survival then clone them, but it's easier to not make a mess when you are in creative. And it's faster with structure blocks in creative if you have an actual half a million blocks to clone.
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| glass, stone and dirt water wall |
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| wood, bamboo and glass water wall |
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| cement glass and lantern water wall |
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| area of schroom on my custom flat desert |
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| M rail hub with mid-level garden |
Dec 23rd,
People make the world go around, with just physics alone, does the planet even spin? I took the train from family to family in-between holidays. And I met a lady who said her name was Sara, not her real name, but her American name. I started to wonder if the ticket vending AI was seating people based on their electronic devices. We both had the same phone. The exact color, model, year of phone. And we had the same brand of laptop. Anyways, do AI arranging seating get bored? If yes, this might be one more way they sort people.
It turned out that we also play video games, and Minecraft as my anti-stress game was played on the train, so I showed how to use structure blocks and cloned a couple demo walls for Sara. I decided to return there when I got to my Mom's. And finish the rail-hub oasis because there wasn't any towers to board the M-rail in survival for a few thousand blocks.
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| Inside the walls looking up at the tower to the M-rail |
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| The latest oasis survival hub 12-22-24 |
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| Sign on top, and of course villager staring at me |
Dec 28th, I've continued cloning water-wall.
This is one of I don't know how many custom-flat desert, game generated desert temples I've rebuilt as survival hubs over the years.
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| Rail-hub temple, built and cloned in survival. |
Yes, I'm flying away, looking back with a structure_block in my hand. I continued cloning water-wall until I found another section of wall I built and cloned without structure blocks, years ago.
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| Green glass, years old wall, new wall visible 16 blocks behind glass wall. |
P.s. No that's not the same rail hub in the background. This is at 627k the previous pic was at 634k.
Dec 29th, I made it past 600k last night to 580k. There wasn’t water-wall to clone for many regions but the green ring on the side had holes in it. So I was reloading that. Filling in shallow, flat areas with taller newer areas since they increased the height of the sky and lowered the bedrock to add more interesting caves and copper ore in recent years.
Dec 31st the green ring has thin spots on this side still. In the screenshot below the lower flat is at ~ 5 ~ and the green ring is at ~ 10 ~ (lower left). The red sandstone with 8 blocks of sand top, custom-desert is at ~ 41 ~ right. That cliff is at 256, the M rail is at 0. The glowing blocks in the center of this pic are at 500, and the opposite edge wall (not in this pic) is at -500, as far as I've seen, there isn't thin areas on the -500 side. But the last 80k blocks have looked more or less like this on the 500 edge wall. And this is how this year ends for this game. Bye, bye 2024.
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| Flying along the 500 edge wall |
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