Minecraft: the return

I couldn't help noticing that it's been over one and a half years since my last Minecraft post. I have no idea where time goes, but since I'm playing again, here's another update!

Last time, I'd taken an extended walking trip into some new biomes, and ended up on a seashore, where I built a little tower:



Note: Ever since Blogger changed their user interface into the infernal piece of sh*t it is now, I haven't been able to get these pictures to upload right. They look completely f*cked on the preview. Sorry! Not sure what to do, as I'd hate to just scale them down to fit the page on my screen. You should be able to see them properly by clicking on them.

I took a bit of a break from Minecraft after that and kind of lost the thread of doing these updates. Having traveled a ways south, I turned home to work on my subway. Going home was a bit of a surprise, what with the new view out my front door:



And, as I mentioned in my previous post, the terrorism.



Back when Endermen were introduced, they had the ability to pick up blocks. Any blocks, up to and including bedrock. So the above is what happened when one of them ended up in my base. I was going to say spawned, but I don't know where he spawned, because they teleport. Now, I'm a huge fan of the game, but honestly, introducing into a building game an enemy who teleports into your house and fucks it up is not, in my opinion, a great idea. They were part of the reason I took a break, until Mojang came to their senses and limited the blocks they pick up. Frankly, they still kinda annoy me.

Remembering good old Mount Impossible, I decided to build my subway at least that far, and started building a station directly across from it.



It kind of started growing into a bigger project...



...complete with on-site farm:



Back when animal breeding was introduced, animals were made persistent - i.e. they stopped de- and re-spawning. It occurred to me that I should gather up the animals near my base somewhere where they'd be safe from wolves and other hazards of the landscape.



I mean, look at the poor little guy. Would you leave him somewhere where he might get hurt? This led to a great animal exodus:



It was tough going at times, but worth it, as I got the animals all penned up and safe next to my new subway station.



With my combination ranch and farm, I tried breeding some more animals and even experimented a little with colored sheep and heredity. It's a Lamarckian world, this.



And the baby chickens are just the cutest thing ever.



Only, why are they up in the trees?



The biggest chore in building my subway is getting the gold needed to build powered rails. Since gold only occurs in the bottom 32 layers of the map, finding any takes quite a lot of mining. That produces a lot of cobblestone and redstone, so I decided to take a plunge into the world of redstone circuits and build a beacon with a blinking light. That meant crafting a redstone lamp with some of the glowstone dust I brought back from hell, and hooking it up into a clock circuit like this one:



With a system of steps and repeaters to carry the pulse from the clock circuit to the lamp on the roof:



All this results in the light at the top of the tower blinking:



Not that you can see it. But trust me, blink it does.

Anyway, that's pretty much what I had gotten up to since my last update, so next time I'll catch up with what I've been doing now that I got back into the game. Finally, here's a shot from my southernmost subway station of the sun setting over Mount Impossible. Thanks for reading!