1.8 Arrives and the people rejoiced...well, some of em.

  Minecraft 1.8 has arrived and it's been one hell of a trip. Here's a quick recap. Everyone was happily playing 1.7.3 eagerly awaiting what was being hailed the adventure update. Out of nowhere a pre-release version hit the web. Mojang chose rather than fighting the leak to embrace it and use it to find more bugs. The pre-re led to a second pre-re fixes some of these bug and delaying the official release, but not for long. Two days later 1.8 officially hit the scene. Aside from the fact that Mojang had a beta of a beta this is all pretty standard stuff. Or at least it would be in any other community.
  Video game communities are well known for having rowdy members. All our bases are belong to them. Usually this manifests in aggression towards bad games, bad companies, outsiders, the web itself, and even the players themselves. Often the only thing that escapes this scrutiny is the the team behind the game. They get attacked of course, but not on the same level as the others. This tends to be especially true in the indie gaming scene. I hate the term indie btw, I prefer underground gaming but whatever.
  Indie game companies tend to be much closer to their player base. They actively communicate with them and even frequently request feedback on how to make the game better. Because of this intimacy, the gamers themselves tend to be more polite and respectful of the game and everyone involved. They tend to thank and encourage the coders. The coders in turn tend to work harder and with more passion. Everyone wins.
  The best community I've seen so far that exhibits this kind of relationship is dwarf fortress. The game is an underground classic and to those in the scene, it's the measuring stick all other games are measured with. It's complexity and depth is matched only by the wretched ugliness of it graphics and interface. The game is dense, difficult, incredibly fun and the community loves it. They embrace the fact that with such depth you sometimes get nasty bugs. They accept the fact that with games that live in beta things can get hairy. Not only do they embrace these things they actually use the bugs to their advantage and end up having even more fun. Yes both kinds!
  No matter how bad it gets, the community in general, loves ToadyOne and continue to embrace dwarf fortress. This community may be the best in my opinion but they certainly aren't alone. Another game called Cataclysm(not the WOW add on) has the same kind of community. It's much smaller but the respect for the coder is there and so is the understanding that games are not easy to make and take time.
  Which brings me back to Minecraft. Minecraft started out like all the rest, small indie game, tight player base and a coder who has no problem talking to his community. But something about minecraft was special and it suddenly exploded onto the mainstream gaming scene. Everyone seems to love this game and with good reason. It's a lot of fun, it's easy, and it can be played many different ways. Because of this, it's captured a very large player base even though it's still in beta, and as a result has made a lot of money.
  And yet for all that minecraft has going for it, it still has the worst community base I've ever seen. They're rude to each other, they have an unreal amount of trolls, and they're ungrateful. Before we continue, I should point out there are good members, you know who you are so don't get pissed. Now back to the douchebags.
  A large chunk of minecraft's base seems to think that since they paid 20 dollars for a game, they now own Notch(the coder) and have the right to basically act like a bunch of brats. They've decided minecraft should be a 24/7 job and that it should run flawlessly. No matter what notch does, it's not good enough. The players will scream for an update and get one, and then scream that the update sucks, notch should have waited. If he had waited they would have called him lazy. This time in particular it was Jeb's fault the update was late. Turns out jeb is married and his father in law was visiting. The selfish prick actually went an spent time with his wife's dad. The nerve of him. I guess no one told him that he was a slave to minecraft and as such is not entitled to family visits.
  I'm not suggesting the game is perfect or that the developers themselves are perfect. They've made mistakes and there are bugs but there's a difference between acting like an ungrateful prick and helping find bugs and working to help build a game. Everyone that has bought Minecraft knew they were buying an unfinished game. This was never kept a secret. In addition to that, Mojang has given the players free updates, little drm, and access to the finished game when it is done. They have been beyond generous in how they offer up their game.
  In spite of the communities attitude, Notch and Jeb continue to work hard at improving minecraft and they never seem to complain about it. Maybe they realize that the ones screaming the loudest and acting the rudest are just a small percentage of the true minecraft community. A large but silent group of people who love minecraft and appreciate the effort that goes into creating it.

My Sacred Place

   Most people who know me would have no problem calling me a geek, nerd, shut in, or whatever the current fancy term is for 'guy who sits around playing with computers all day'. And for the most part they'd be right. There is another part of me however. As with almost everything in my life there is a polar opposite version of me. This part of me loves the outdoors. Hiking, camping, that kind of thing. I love forests, I love the way they look, I love the way they smell. I love the way you can feel the cool damp air crawling out a big forest when you stand at it's edge.
   The only thing I love more in the natural world than forests is water. Oceans, streams, creeks, ponds, hell, give me a big puddle and I'll just stare at for hours. Bodies of water have some kind of strange hold over me. I'm not sure what it is or why but it's there none the less. My favorite of all however is lakes, which brings us to my main point, Lake Wallenpaupack.

   Lake Wallenpaupack is located deep within the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is a place of phenomenal beauty. People from all over come here to fish, camp, hike, boat, water ski, and much more. The lake itself is 13 miles long, has 52 miles of beautiful shoreline, and at it's deepest point is about 60ft. The lake is surrounded by large swaths of forests and smaller lakes, streams and tributaries.     When you see it first hand it's hard to believe that a place of such immense natural beauty could ever be created by man, but that's exactly how it happened.
   In 1926 PPL(pennsylavnia power & light) Corporation decided to build a hydro electric dam, over what was at time, the Wallenpaupack creek. They bought up a ton of land from local residents, and cleared the valley that held the creek. Houses, stores and everything else had to be demo'd and/or relocated. To this day there are still, some remnants under the lake of the small town that once stood. Not full houses mind you, but foundations and even some roads can still be seen by brave divers who venture below the lakes waters. At the time of  it's completion, Lake Wallenpaupack was considered a marvel of engineering and was the largest man made lake in the state.

   This is one of the places I grew up. Normal life was spent in the suburbs, but summers, and occasionally winters were always spent 'up at the lake'. We gathered at the lake house each weekend. Usually there were about 10 to 15 of us there at a time. Everyone would go out hiking or swimming all day, and then in the evening we'd have a huge communal meal. It's hard to describe the effect this had on me, but some of my fondest memories occurred here.

   Eventually, in my later teen years my mom and step-dad split up and I lost access to the lake. At first it didn't seem like that big of a deal. But after a year or so something strange started happening. I started thinking about the lake more and more. Simply reminiscing about all the good times I spent there. A little while longer and I was starting to have dreams about the lake. After that I'd start getting this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I thought about. Eventually it gets to the point where I can think of nothing else but the lake.

   This happens at regular intervals, roughly every two years or so. I try to ignore it because I live an hour an a half away and I don't drive. But the only way to stop the obsession is to go there. To be at the lake. Once I get there all I have to do sit down next to it and the feelings start to disappear. Replaced with a sense of peace and calm that I rarely ever experience in my normal daily life, I'm ADD to the core and I don't handle anxiety very well.
   I'm not a religious person, and I'm not a hippy by any sense of the word. But I can't deny that somehow this place is a sacred spot for me. It holds power over me that I can not control and must obey. It is absolutely relentless. No other location has this kind of hold on me and no other place can replace it.
   Someday if I ever get my life in order, one of my dreams is to own a home on the lake. I would love to buy the exact property I grew up on, but even if that's not possible, a new home on Lake Wallenpaupack would be the perfect place to create new memories and bring peace to my twisted head.

Google Plus - It's about damn time!

  I'm in fan boy heaven right now. Over the past year or so, after a shoddy mobile experience and a photo system that's rotten to it's core, I've slowly gotten more an more annoyed with facebook. I wouldn't say I hate it but I'm always waiting for it's replacement. And suddenly, my favorite tech company bursts onto the scene with g+.
  I was thoroughly let down by wave and buzz just became a boring feed of useless and mostly automated data. So let down that when I first heard about plus, I said fuck it, and decided not to even bother trying to get an invite. After that first night I started to hear some of the preliminary reviews and it got my attention. Now I wanted an invite and it didn't seem like I had a good shot at getting one.
  Then something weird happened, I got an email from someone in china. It was all in chinese so I couldn't read it, but there was a hyperlink and the url was in english. plus.google.com/allkindsofcodeystuff. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was either an oops email or I just got an invite from a stranger. My gut screamed scam, but I know how to read a url and this link was clearly to a google site.
  I clicked it and it took me to my new profile page. The only problem is it was all in han, I couldn't read anything but my name. Fortunately google translate came to my rescue. It took me a while to figure out how to change my language settings inside plus. I also had to ditch all my default circles because even after the language switch, they were in han.
  So far I am loving g+. The interface is slick and the concept works. I like how easily the circles work when adding people, and I like that adding people works more like twitter than facebook. It's cool to be able to basically follow people. Pictures are a breeze but the android apps need a little work. It's still early though and google says this is just the beginning. So I have hopes.
  I really can't believe it took google this long to seriously enter the social scene. This is what wave and buzz should have been. I'm glad they got it together but I really hope it's not to late. Facebook is a beast now. It's huge and it's grown outside it's main perimeter and entrenched itself on the web. They have login and their commenting system everywhere. It's going to be very difficult to dominate them.
  As a show of support I've disabled all my fbconnect logins and I've started removing my older fb content. Nothing major yet, but hopefully soon I won't have to straddle two networks at once. I can't wait to see where things go from here.

On the Go

   I just installed the blogger app on my kyocera zio. I'm hoping this will get me back into the swing of using my account. I don't have much pc access these days except for at work. Plus ever since I got a decent phone I really haven't been using pc's as much anyway.
   As strange as it sounds, getting an android phone completely reshaped my digital existence. The deciding factor in things has shifted to a "can I do it on my phone" mentality. If I can't, it gets pushed to the wayside. Blogger was one of those things.
   I guess this isn't always the best way to go about dividing my time, but I've always jumped from thing to thing anyway, so for now I'll just ride the wave and adjust as necessary.

Bye Digg

I've been on Digg for a long time now and I'm not a big fan of the new digg. I may grow to like it but I doubt it. Losing the bury button was a big mistake, and it's seems so far, that it's all gonna be rss feeds from here on in. I don't need that, that's what google reader is for. So goodbye old friend. I used to visit you every day. In loving memory I made this little graphic for you. May you rest in peace digg.

The Real Waterworks, During the Day.

This is our second trip. This time we actually made it to the water works. There was one large building and then a smaller building that seemed like a small power station. After that we headed back to the lock to get some daytime shots. I was really pleased with the "building in the woods" shots. To see larger, better quality pics, click the slideshow.  Enjoy.

A Late Night Trip to the Water Works

  I got home from work and was feeling antsy. It's fourth of July weekend and I'm working most of it, so I wanted to go out and do something. The wife had to work so I called up the irasian to see what he doing. He was bored too, so we decided to go check out an abandonment. The chosen spot was an old water works near a local river.
  We started out and the directions were sketchy, but we finally got to where we were headed. When we got to the street where we were gonna park, we were greeted by night time construction. We couldn't get past at all, so we decided to drive down another street and come at it from the other side. We parked near a train station and headed down a dark side street that went under an old stone over pass.
  When we hit the train tracks we followed them for a while and almost ended up on top of the construction again. Our only choice was to climb down the drop off onto the trail below us. We knew the trail would be right by the river, and that was where we needed to be.
  We finally got down there and kept moving. That was when we realized the construction was on the trail too. We decided there was no way we were gonna see the waterworks and turned around and headed back the way we came, but this time on the trail instead of the tracks. Walking along the trail we saw the spillway across the river and some other cool structures.
  Eventually there was a big slab of granite that we decided to chill on for a few minutes. We noticed a campfire way upstream and on the other side of the river. We also noticed smaller lights around it. The irasian decided to start trying to signal them with his led flashlight, I joined in an after a while they actually noticed us and started signaling back. We had fun with that for a few minutes when we suddenly heard voices.
  A group of teens came around the corner and you could smell the alcohol a mile a way. They started talking to us about a mansion that was in the area that they wanted to find. They asked us to come with and we declined. We warned em about the construction but they went anyway. We got up and headed the other way.
  As we were walking down the dark path, the irasian tripped over something and grumbled. I was behind him and noticed what he tripped wasn't dirt or roots but some kinda concrete that went all the way across the trail. I turned on my flash light and followed it into the brush next to the trail. There was a slight opening and when I shined my light in, I saw it. We had just tripped over our destination.



  We crawled into the bushes and found a large concrete walkway that ended next to a large metal locke wall. The drop off was about 10-15 feet. In order to get across we would have to go out and find a better way down. Just as we turned around we heard the teens coming back. We were still in the bushes so we turned off all our lights and ducked down. They walked right by us and never even noticed. Once they were gone, we hopped out and found a new way down.
  Once we were down there we walked along the bottom, looking up at where we had been. There were small tunnels that led into the dam and lock next to us, above us on the concrete were the broken remains of the waterworks building. We climb up a concrete slope on the other side and made our way in to the building.
There was no ceiling and inside we found the rusted remains of old metal wheels and cogs. They were about 3 feet in diameter. They were bolted into the concrete and hung above large pits. All the windows were either gone or cemented closed. We walked along the back side near an old metal railing, and found some steps that led down to the water. There was graffiti everywhere. After seeing everything we could, and running out of batteries way to soon, we decided to head back home. We followed the trail and headed back to the train station.
  The irasian and I had a lot of fun and we are definitely gonna go back during the daytime to get better pictures. This spot was great, lots to check out, not hard to get to but not easy either, and not a lot of people. Though that may be because it was so late at night. Enjoy the few pics we got.

NOTE: after doing a little more research I've realized we didn't find the water work we found a lock station near the water works!