I have recently procured a Black Pegasus in Minecraft, via the breeding of a Pegasus and a Unicorn. Now, the Black Pegasus being the best of all horses, this one needs a name. I can't pick which. Your options are either Sleipnir or Shadowfax (I named one of my other horses Stybba, and still another Snowmane, so LOTR-based names are perfectly valid). Other options may be suggested, but nothing to do with MLP or I'll sic the Hounds of Tindalos on you.
One thing that bugs me, and which I hear a lot from people looking at drawings or playing Minecraft, is the tendency to look at anything that's been done well, and remark that they would never be able to make something as good as that. This is especially irritating in Minecraft, where we're all working with the same cubic-meter blocks of material, and thus there is no really good reason to think that any particular piece of work is impossible for you to match. The idea of someone being natural
I have recently seen an instance in which a single female character was portrayed overreacting to something. The scenario was played for laughs, and while a good amount of time could be spent going over the joke itself and why it was or was not funny, a more important issue is some of the criticism that the joke received - that having this character, who was female, overreact in an emotional manner, was sexist. That it implied the attitude that all women were prone to overemotional reactions.
One of my friends recently showed me a video of a song from a live performance Metallica did in San Francisco in December of 2011, citing it as evidence that Metallica has "a breakthrough on the way". Intrigued, I listened to the song, and found myself gravely disappointed. From the beginning, the song failed to sound noticeably different from other songs Metallica has done. Now, I'm not expecting them to suddenly become an entirely different sort of band, or for James Hetfield to pull a flute
As I sit here, listening through The Whirlwind for the first time in a couple of years, it strikes me that the vocals on this album compare rather unfavourably to those on Thick As A Brick 2, Ian Anderson's follow-up to Jethro Tull's legendary single-song album, released forty years late. It's not so much anything about the quality of the voices involved - years of smoking certainly were not kind to the pipes of Ian Anderson - but the technique of the singing. With Transatlantic's 70+ minute o
This document gives a pretty good overview of the principles of shipbuilding. --- Spaceships vary wildly in their designs, based on their intended function, however, they can generally be classified according to their size and intended function. However, there are no standard ship classes; if you like, a good general principle is to build your ships along real-world Navy ship designs. However, your species’ biology and culture will influence this, and you’re free to design your ships howev
The blogs have become an uncomfortable place lately, and, due to some disagreements on the way a few things have been handled, I have found myself at odds with people I would rather count as friends. I don't see an end to this situation coming as soon as I would like it to, so there is something I would like to make clear before things go too far. I do not want a fight. I have never logged onto BZP with that desire in my mind. I have enough people to argue with elsewhere, were I the sort of
It is hardly a secret that worldbuilding is my favorite part of writing. I don't care much for plots until I've got, at the very least, a detailed map of the relevant planet's ocean currents. I won't design a single character until I know where the tallest mountain is and whether it casts a significant rain shadow. I could go on, if I had no other responsibilities, for years, figuring out how a fictional world ticks. Once the planet is done, the ecosystems come in. Here I could get lost forever,
Today, I'm going to do a one-off feature - my "Premier" Membership runs out on the 28th, and I'm undecided on the matter of actually buying it when that happens. The purpose of this Tech Highlight is to point out the very real possibility of practical electric vehicles. The Tesla Roadster takes approx. 3.5 hours to charge, and, on a full charge, can go for about 245 miles - not too shabby, considering that other electric cars can take about 20 hours to charge and still don't go as far as the T
More Technic fun. I went tromping off through the Nether Portal I set up in a Siege Castle I captured a while ago, taking only weapons and food, with the intention of acquiring a few Blaze Rods so I could craft an Ender Chest or two... well, exactly two. Thaumcraft plans. Knowing that a Nether Fortress would be the best thing to find, I set about the task of wandering aimlessly until I found one - finding, instead, this cheeky little pigman in a funky robe who immediately started setting me
So I've got a piece of music that's been sitting unfinished on my computer for something like two years. The current list of instruments is as follows- -Flute -Alto Saxophone -Electric Guitar (Jazz) -Electric Bass (Fingered) -Drumkit -Timpani The first section went along fairly smoothly, with a four-measure ostinato primarily played by the flute and saxophone... the only problem is that, at this time, there isn't actually a lead instrument. Nothing's actually playing a melody over this, whic
So today I took my shiny new diamond pickaxe down into a cavern to mine some obsidian (and maybe more diamonds, because hey, I'm an optimist like that). Instead, a group of skeletons decided it was high time for me to take a good long time-out in a column of lava, beginning today's adventures in messy death. Next, I went back into the cave, recovered what I could (which did not include the diamond pick, because of course it didn't) and set out to mine some more - this ended with me using wat
Gets a whole lot less intimidating when you realize that, with a quick enough draw, Gilderoy Lockhart could have won a duel against him. What's that? Most powerful Dark wizard in living memory? That's impressive. Shame he can't remember which way is up.
Let's just take a moment to reflect on the fact that the Green Hornet got a movie before Wonder Woman got to appear in one. Okay? Had your flashbacks to how awful that movie was yet? Great. Wonder Woman's going to be played by a cardboard actress in a movie directed by Zack Snyder. Let me put it this way - given the choice between not eating, and eating a muffin made of broken glass, I'd go ahead and not eat. Zack Snyder movies tend to be muffins made of broken glass - very shiny, no r
So, a few months ago, I tried to find some reference on the medieval Chola naval vessel known as the Thirisadai - essentially the equivalent of a battleship. At this time, I posted a blog entry, requesting aid in finding these references - the request was unsuccessful, which is hardly shocking; BZPower is not exactly a community built upon a shared fondness for naval history, nor is a high proportion of the site's population comprised of historians. Anyway, I let that project rest for a while,
It may or may not be a well-known fact that I despise rather a lot of Christmas music. Songs about Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Commie-Faced Reindeer, and all the rest never really did much for me. Maybe it's because I've heard the same batch of songs performed by either dead people or dead careers for my entire life, but the whole thing seems tired, unartistic, and, oh my I finally get to use this word, hackneyed. This is not to say that I hate all Christmas music - not by a long shot. No,
So, my search for a mesa biome continues, as I have covered more than ten kilometers searching for that magical land of disco clay and pretty sand. Today, the search has hit a milestone - the first time I've found an entirely different ultra-rare biome while looking for mesas. On the one hand, this is really cool. On the other, I really wanted a mesa. It doesn't really help that I have nothing with Silk Touch.
...and Star Trek Colon Into Darkness becomes a much better movie. Why? 1. That's the Captain speaking, right there. 2. "Khan" was basically the hero anyway - he exposed a corrupt, war-mongering admiral, went toe-to-toe with the Federation to save his friends, and got shot in the back by Kirk and Scotty. Keep Burgerking Custardbath in the role, and it's just Sherlock Goes to Space with thirty minutes of desperately scrambling to make him the villain at the end. Swap Mal in, and it's just an
So here I am, hiding, terrified, in a shack I hollowed out of a rubber tree, when I see some dude with really long, thin legs marching around in diamond armor, carrying a diamond sword, and kind of walking like a chicken. It's night, so I figure he'd probably stab me if I went outside, so I just watch him through one of the windows. This goes on for five minutes, until I realize that the only piece he's missing from a full set of diamond armor is the pants. This disturbs me greatly, until I
So, yesterday, everyone's favourite guitar-playing undead penguin released a new album - his third, if you don't count the EP released under his metal side project, the name of which I can't even type right because Windows refuses to believe that you can put an Ümläüt over a t. You can follow the link above to the album's Bandcamp page, where you can pick up this shiny new album for a very reasonable seven bucks - not bad for 45:18 of instrumental rock. The cover art might be a bit sketchy, and
My new flute arrived in the mail today. I'm already decently good with the penny whistle, so the most difficult thing for me is going to be getting a consistent sound out of that little embouchure. I'll be spending the next week working solely on that, after which I will allow myself to begin working on actually getting a tune out of the thing. I'll be keeping a record of my progress on this blog, both for the really bored people who, for some reason, actually care about the "progress" some lo
So, I found the most adorably stupid Daily Mail article today - yes, I know, that's a tautology, but bear with me. The article, you see, was about the Greenland Shark, a large, cold-water shark most closely related to dogfish, that looks like this; Now, most of what the article said in describing this "fearsome creature" isn't factually incorrect - they have indeed been found with the remains of polar bears, reindeer, and seals in their stomachs. The article just failed to mention one thi
You know that incredibly weird moment when you're trying to talk to the chief of a neighboring village, and you shoot him in the face instead, and he doesn't even get mad?
This is it. The thing absolutely none of you were waiting for. The thing even I wasn't waiting for. Because I had no idea it was happening until literally five minutes ago. Also because I'm a little slow up top. But yeah. The First Ever Madman-With-A-Box Drawing Contest, to be held from this point onward at no specific time interval. Basic Idea: Combine two animals that should never be combined, in a way that makes it clear that yes, they totally should be combined. For examp
