A Pixel Nomad

A Greenhouse in Minecraft

I’ve been in a bit of a weird mood with my game choices lately. Due to that, most of my time has been in Minecraft rather than my typical choices, though I am still logging into those too. I’m running the Infinity Evolved server and it’s loads of fun. I ended up turning expert mode off and switched it back to normal. I found that there was really no point in making things difficult (ie: take longer) than usual and I have much more fun when I can accomplish things in one play session.

A good example of that is the greenhouse garden pictured above. I went to a few different villages and pillaged their own greenhouses and then came back and made my own. These food ingredients go to the mod ‘Pam’s HarvestCraft’ and it basically allows you to make over 250 different types of food. Want a BBQ burger with fries? Yep, you can make that. I haven’t delved too far into the other mod packs yet, I’ve got a tinkerer’s forge set up so I can make tools but I haven’t decided where to go from there. Perhaps a quarry? I’ve never actually made one before, though I have come close (I typically move on to another game before too long). I do have a portal to the Twilight Forest, but I could use some obsidian to make a portal to the nether. I also need some animals so I can farm them for bits.

All in all, it’s a nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Games for Christmas

The hustle and bustle of Christmas is coming to a close, and I hope everyone has had a happy and safe holiday. It’s a bit of an odd time of year for me. I love Christmas, it’s one of my favourite times, but it’s also incredibly lonely. My family lives too far away to visit, and I don’t know a lot of locals. My online friends are typically busy with their own happenings (as it should be) and so I watch from a distance, happy but sad if that makes any sense.

I did get a handful of great games from friends this year which was really awesome of them. I got enough WoW time to keep my account active for the next year (thanks Kasul and Shadowgeist!) I also received Stonehearth (thanks Scarybooster!) The Men of Yoshiwara (thanks Moumix!) and Aviary Attorney (thanks again Shadowgeist!) so even though it wasn’t quite the holiday I had planned in my mind, it was still very lovely. I didn’t spot anything in the steam sale that I wanted to pick up, but it’s always a great time for me to pass on some games to friends when funds are tight. I know Christmas is not all about the gifts or what you get from other people, but it does feel nice to be able to give and make someone smile.

I also decided yesterday to start up Minecraft again. I installed the new Infinity Evolved pack from Feed The Beast, and set the game to expert mode. This creates a more ‘difficult’ timeline in order to get things done, but what they mean by ‘difficult’ is ‘time consuming’. It’s not hard, it just takes a lot more time. One of the mods included makes it rain chicken / pigs from the sky on Christmas day. That would be what is showing in the screenshot above. I set up a home next to a mountain and began collecting items to better gear myself. The server is a bit crazy, I walked through 5 towns just to get to the place I wanted to settle. Each town had bits and bobs that I wanted to loot and take with me, so by the time I actually built my house, I had everything well established.

I’ve also been playing Wurm Online and World of Warcraft. In Wurm players received a reindeer decoration item which was pretty cool and nice of the developers. I didn’t log into EQ2 at all this holiday season, and a lot of the reason behind that is because I can’t seem to ‘get into’ it in such short spurt play sessions. I can’t do dungeons or raids simply by queuing, and I really wish I could.

A lot of my gaming has been limited because of a bug with Windows 10 and my mouse, too. For some reason it keeps performing double clicks when it shouldn’t. I know this is an issue with my logitech G700 mouse, I’ve seen lots of threads about it, but there’s no solution to keep it fixed permanently at this time and it bugs me to no end. It makes playing any game with mouse direction or clicking at all almost impossible, or at least incredibly frustrating. I’ve been plugging in the laptop mouse to game in the meantime, but that mouse is tiny and awkward. I keep holding off on purchasing a new mouse (like a corsair) in the hopes that microsoft or logitech or whoever will actually fix whatever my issue is (I’ve tried multiple drivers, I’ve tried no drivers, etc) but it’s certainly not happening any time soon.

Anyone else get any awesome game related gifts this Christmas? Let me know in comments and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Still Collecting Pets

This weekend I finally completed the 150 Draenor pet battles required to purchase the T3 pet home for my garrison. I had been procrastinating for quite some time, for whatever reason. Probably because I was just burned out. I updated my pet collection this morning and that brings me to 530 unique pets, 80 of those are level 25. I still have a long way to go in terms of leveling and in terms of pet quality. Now that I have a few characters at level 100 it makes things a bit easier as they can each do the garrison dailies, but of course then there’s the chance that I’ll burn out and just stop all together. Thanks to the Pet Battle Teams addon from Curse I just create a team for every fight, and it makes things much smoother. I don’t have to guess at who I need to use to defeat the team of the day.

My gear has slowly been improving, too. I spent a lot of time in Tanaan Jungle so that I can work on my factions, and this has resulted in me being able to buy the apex upgrade item for 20,000. I also looted one off of an encounter yesterday which I didn’t know was a thing. My ilevel is still not over 700 yet, but I feel more confident with it sitting around 685. I’m still sticking to my priest as my main, but I also have a level 100 paladin, and a 97 hunter that I’d like to level up eventually. There’s always so much to do that I never really wonder about what I should be doing or what I want to do.

I’m slowly working on the navel battles. Once servers reset today I should have my first 15 battles completed. I’m hoping this opens things up a bit because so far they’re incredibly boring and I just don’t understand why they were even added. I suppose we’ll see.

Holidays are almost here! Time for families and food and lots of gaming. I hope everyone has an amazing week, and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

The No Pants Gaming Club

My sim decided to host a club gathering at her home, and of course one of the activities everyone can do to earn club points is to ~~set the house on fire~~ bake together, which resulted in the neighbour setting the kitchen on fire. I actually miss having a fire department in Sims 4, it makes owning a fire alarm a bit silly. Instead of the department rushing over to put the fire out, you have to use your sim and select ‘extinguish’. Takes away a bit of the fun.

That being said, I’m having a lot of fun with clubs. I bought a few of the decorative items, set some outfits up, and basically created the no pants gaming club unintentionally. Then I decided to keep it that way. That’s right, in my club the ‘official’ uniform includes no pants, and gaming. Sounds pretty perfect doesn’t it?

Projects of 2015

I know I haven’t been as diligent about posting here as I should be, and I don’t have a very good excuse. Since we’re getting closer to 2016, I thought I’d talk a bit about the projects that I finished in 2015. Keep in mind that I’m still pretty new to knitting, at least in my eyes. I started trying to learn many years ago and I just never ‘got it’ – then in September of 2015 when I attempted again it finally all just started to make sense. My first big goal was to knit socks, which I have now completed 2 pairs of (and I love them). I’ve got another post lined up about my knitting goals for 2016, so I won’t get into too many more details about that yet. What projects did I finish in 2015?

A baby cardigan was my first ever completed project. It was done flat, and I had to seam it. I didn’t even know then that there were actually ‘types’ of seams, and the poor thing is going to be frogged because it just looks absolutely horrid and I can’t imagine a child actually wearing the item. The second thing I made was a baby blanket and it’s supposed to be in a basket stitch but for some reason my stitches are way off and things are crazy. Therefor it’s another frogged project. The yarn is beautiful so I’ll find a better use for it. Next up were a pair of fingerless mitts. Now, these were much better, still knit flat (I hadn’t ventured into knitting in the round yet) but they fit me and they weren’t half bad. Unfortunately they also were not seamed very well, and now they’re falling apart. I’d like to knit myself some proper gloves or mitts before too long.

Then came a batch of random dish towels. I learned my first lace stitches and practiced making my knitting even. I eventually gave those away to a friend. The projects that followed took on a much better look, as I followed up with a baby top, my first pair of socks, a colour work hat, and then a little mini lace headband. I still have each of those items and like them quite a bit. Then came a bit of a hat phase. I knit one minecraft hat for a friend of mine, and then another friend asked if I would knit her three of them for her family. Then came a lacework hat, and after all of those were done (and I swore off hats) I still ended up completing two more. A deer hat for my youngest brother, and a Star Wars hat for myself. I really enjoy colour work, that’s for sure.

Between all those hats I knit a tardis dishcloth, a cable scarf, my first shawl (mostly garter stitch, very little actual lace), and a spa day facecloth. 17 projects in total, using 5,157 yard of yarn. Not bad for someone who just started in September, I think. As always, please feel free to add me to your Ravelry friends list if you happen to frequent those forums. They’re absolutely fantastic, and I probably wouldn’t have knit half the things I did without the motivation and encouragement of the groups I joined, along with the amazing designers who have both paid and free patterns for people. It really is a great place for knitters and crocheters. Like I said, 2016 is just around the corner, and I have some big ideas in mind for what I’d like to accomplish – but that will have to wait for another post.