Tales of the Aggronaut

Tunneling Addiction

December 28, 2016 by Belghast

I think we need to talk. I have a significant problem on my hands… and that problem is Minecraft. What I mean by that is that I have been obsessing about the game since Christmas day, and wound up staying up until 1:30 last night. I apparently was digging more tunnels that never seem to end… and just when they appear that they might… I find a way to start a new one. I’ve said before how my bases in Minecraft tend to be more a complex of interconnected tunnels and underground areas than really anything big and above ground… and in truth that is happening again in a big way. The project I happened to be obsessed with last night, however was my treasure room.

When I play Minecraft, it is less that I am willfully building structures and more like discovering them in the existing land. I almost always start out exactly the same way… which is burrowing into the side of a nice large hill with the purpose of creating a temporary shelter to survive that first night. However what inevitably happens is that I then use that cave as a sort of starting point for burrowing deep into the hillside and connecting up a bunch of disconnected areas. Then it is almost as though I am uncovering a lost civilization… and connecting up pieces to create a former empire or something. Which lead to the thought that I really needed a proper warehouse/treasure room… and where better to put it than deep under the ocean. I have a dock of sorts and off of it is a large building hovering out over the water… which then leads to my obsession of the night which is a large stairwell shaft that leads down into the water and underground beneath the ocean finally ending up in a room with tons of chests for storage…. and then apparently I dug a shaft back up to create a skylight of sorts.

There was then a point last night when I realized that I had no real way of getting back out of my tunnel system other than jumping from one of the many bridges I have built. As a result I constructed this entrance point of sorts that leads out onto the mainland… and being me I then apparently started off a whole new tunnel complex to the left of the above screenshot. Now my previous tunnels had quickly ended up in the ocean… where I built some sort of an outpost. One of which literally is a staircase that goes deep down into the ocean and all the way down to bedrock. That was a bit of a challenge to build and I ultimately flipped on creative mode since I had to be underwater for large chunks of time during its construction. It is cool however because as you are going down the staircase I have windows that allow you to see out into the ocean and it is really cool when the sun is coming up and the water is swarming with squid.

This new tunnel project however that has consumed most of today… is apparently going off in a direction where there is nothing but land and mountains. So as a result each time the tunnel has broken free of the mountain briefly I have created a little outpost or at least an exit into whatever area happens to be surrounding it. There are roughly five of these… and another that I discovered yet another ravine while tunneling, so I took time to build a ladder all the way down to its floor. The problem with my tunneling obsession is that I have zero clue where exactly I am going or if I will ever reach a point where I consider it “done”. This is ultimately the challenge I face each time I boot back up Minecraft, is that I get caught up in a project that I never quite know when it is going to let go of me. However since it had literally been a few years since I last built anything in the game… I am guessing I had a lot of tunneling pent up inside of me.

A Shit Year for Idols

December 27, 2016 by Belghast

In the microcosm that is my life today was a pretty good one. My wife and I spent it running around Northwest Arkansas… more specifically the sprawling corridor that connects Fayetteville to Bentonville and all points between. We have family there and quite honestly… its just a nice place to go visit every now an then. We always say we should do it more often… but in truth we seem to get there once a year… almost exclusively over Christmas break. However while running around and enjoying myself… I was also processing the news that this asshole of a year 2016… took yet another awesome person from us. So now that I am finally home I thought I would write a thoroughly bummer post and talk about all of the amazing people we lost this year… or at least a small list of them.

@belghast its just a sign were getting older combined with the speed news can travel. this same kinda of thing happens every generation

— Squirrel Pope (@squirrelpope) December 25, 2016

The other day I commented about just how many people this year has stolen from us and my friend Squirrel gave some sage advice. Firstly that we are getting old, and that the people that are dying… are finally folks we looked up to as kids or at least came to know through out our lives. I remember my parents going through this same phase, and I guess it is my time. They now joke that they attend more funerals than anything else… and since I have gone through the “everyone is getting married” phase, and the “everyone is having kids” phase… I guess I am beginning to enter that territory as well. Since the Idols we grow up with tend to be a generation ahead of us… I guess that it makes sense we are entering that territory with them first. Tonight I am going to talk a little bit about some names that we lost this year.

David Bowie

This one hit me way harder than I expected it to. Bowie was one of those presences that always just sort of existed as a beacon that you could literally be anything you wanted to be. Throughout my life I watched this man re-invent himself every few years and still seem just as genuine in doing so as he did the very first time. He was a force of constant evolution that made me realize that we never had to stop growing as people. Tin Machine still will stand out as probably my favorite of his phases… but I can find something from literally every one of his phases that I can relate to.

Alan Rickman

Such an amazing actor that I am still pissed that this shitty year conspired to rob us of. Sure he was Snape, but before that he was Hans Gruber, the voice of god, a hair stylist, and so many other roles that always played out in unique and interesting ways. By Grabthar’s hammer, by the Sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!

Garry Shandling

This is the theme to Garry’s show, the opening theme to Garry’s show… Garry called me up last night and asked if I could write his theme song. I grew up during that weird time during the early days of the Fox Network… and one of those early shows was the Garry Shandling show and I loved it so much. He has a sense of humor that seemed to match mine and he even played a great bad guy… as evidenced from Winter Soldier.

Prince

Now I am not the biggest Prince fan in the world, but no one can doubt how much of a force he was in music. So insanely talented, and even though he become the brunt of many punchlines during the era when he shifted to being an unpronounceable symbol, he managed to continue trucking on and making solid music. I guess the biggest thing about him is that he was an individual much in the same way as Bowie was, and served as this alternate focal point to say you could grow up to be any damned thing you wanted to be. All of his music holds up today in the same way as the day it was released.

Morley Safer

For me at least this man represented seasoned journalism in a way that probably few could. I grew up with him as the face and voice of so many stories on 60 minutes. In many ways it feels like the end of an era… and in this political cycle where the truth seemed not to matter much… we are far worse off for it.

Kenny Baker

This was the first of the Star Wars cast that we lost during 2016, and for those who might not know who he is… he was the actor behind R2-D2. For me he will always be Fidget from Time Bandits, or honestly a long slew of roles he played.

Gene Wilder

I am pretty sure if you did not like Gene Wilder you did not have a soul. He was the only Willy Wonka as far as I am concerned. There is an entire chunk of my childhood devoted to laughing at movies like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein.

Leonard Cohen

So if anyone is going to single out a single song by Leonard Cohen… they are going to bring up Hallelujah. It has been covered time and time again… because in truth it is just that damned good. It would be hard to find a more perfect song in composition or lyrics that conveys a certain feeling of lost innocence and longing and still a tinge of hope for better things to come. I was late to know about him to be honest, because it was not until the Natural Born Killers soundtrack that I even knew he really existed. There was something about his voice however that was just so damned unique and intoxicating. I am personally partial to The Stranger Song.

Carrie Fisher

This one is possibly the hardest right now… because it is also the freshest. It is impossible to put into words or adequately explain how much Star Wars meant to me growing up. Luke and Leia were almost family members, and as those characters shifted into the very real world Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher they almost felt like the Aunt and Uncle you wish you had. There has been a certain pride as I followed each of their careers, and it was absolutely glorious and triumphant to see both in Force Awakens this time last year. Star Wars was the second movie I saw in my life… and in many ways it was the character of Princess Leia that taught me that Princesses didn’t really need saving in the first place. While that might sound cheesy it was a powerful lesson that I carried with me from that point on. The real Carrie Fisher though… was a freaking badass. I angrily shook my fist at 2016 when she had her heart attack and told it that the year could not have her. This year really is horrible, and I am saddened that it won.

There are so many others that I didn’t mention for one reason or another… but earlier I paged through a list of some hundred or so deaths this year… and so many of them were really important figures that we lost. With each one I think there was a certain feeling of “it can’t get any worse right?”… but no it continued to get worse as the year went on. I am ready to put a close to this chapter and hope the next year will start to get even the slightest bit better. In the immortal words of Ripley… take off and nuke the entire year from orbit… it’s the only way to be sure.

Christmas Basebuilding

December 26, 2016 by Belghast

My friend Grace calls today Super Xmas… or the day that you get to chill out and rest after the manic running around that happens around attempting to make everyone happy on Christmas and Christmas Eve. This absolutely used to be the case for me, but over the last few years Christmas has become a much more low key affair. I’ve talked a bit about the concept of an anchor household, but for me most of those are now gone. Instead we have to sort of make our own new traditions, and one of those recently has consisted of going out to dinner on Christmas Eve with my folks, and then coming back to our house and doing gifts together. For years there used to be a strict schedule of… my folks and mothers side of the family on Christmas Eve, and my Dads side of the Family early early Christmas morning… then my wife’s family for Christmas lunch and eventually another gathering Christmas evening. Over the years deaths in the family have taken the corner stone of each of those gatherings to where there really isn’t a whole lot going on during the holidays on either of our families.

There were of course a few options… one of which was the household that introduced me to the term “titty milk” a few years back and we opted out of that one. Instead for the most part we just chilled out at home and enjoyed the fact that it was freaking 70 degrees outside for Christmas. In the afternoon between thunderstorms we went out for a walk, which is something I need to start doing every day in an attempt to get myself prepared for all of the walking that is going to happen at Pax South. As far as gaming goes… I spent a lot of time not actually gaming yesterday but more in an extended state of transitioning between games… as I checked twitter and surfed the web. I did play a significant amount of the Sparrow Racing League, but largely playing remotely through the laptop. I am getting surprisingly good at dealing with the input lag that comes from playing PS4 via PC, so much so that it actually takes a bit to get adjusted to using the real console again. I am now in this place where I need two items to hit 400 light… Ghost and Heavy. I’ve since gotten two Exotic Heavy Engrams… but both of them decoded to 399 light instead of bumping on up to 400. This seems like a massive bug because every engram seems to decode at 399 rather than giving me what is usually a level bump. As far as the ghost goes… I tried some more forge only to have it bug out on me with the waves sitting at 100% for 10 mins and then eventually failing out without actually spawning the boss.

Another thing that happened yesterday is that I fell into a giant Minecraft shaped hole as we hung out and watched some shows on demand. It has been several years since I had legitimately played Minecraft and as a result I went back to pure vanilla for the moment at least while I get my bearings. Before long I was back into my standard operating procedure which is digging a big hole and then eventually erecting some large structures. I decided to have my main base out over the open water with a big tunnel leading from what is ultimately turning into my quarry. I used the seed “BelChillingChristmas2016” and wound up with a pretty cool spawn. My original cave opened into a giant chasm underground and I have been building the infrastructure needed to explore it more properly. I wound up digging down into the rock and laying a bunch of ladders as I went which ultimately allowed me to create a shaft straight down to the chasm floor. I have a hut of sorts down at ground level that lets me get down there in relative safety and at least see what monsters happen to be around.

I plan on building a dock of sorts under my base that should allow me to launch boats easily for exploring new areas, and I also plan on building another big land bridge/tunnel to the other nearby coast giving me access to new areas. Right now a lot of my time has been spent simply quarrying cobblestone and hollowing out the mountain side for that purpose. There is a bunch of gold in the chasm, but I don’t really have much need for it yet. I have not seen any of the more useful materials like Diamond or Red Stone so at some point I am probably going to have to do the whole dig down to bedrock thing and start some branch mining. At this very moment however I am trying to expand my base of operations and make more safe space for me to travel in. Minecraft is one of those games that triggers my base building instinct to the extreme, and I am ultimately falling back into the familiar patterns I do when I always play this game. In truth I should be playing Diablo 2 since we plan on recording the game of the month show this coming week… but for now I am indulging myself in a little bit of structured madness.

Posts I Didn’t Hate: 2016 Edition

December 23, 2016 by Belghast

With the impending arrival of the end of the year, I have been going through a lot of introspection. As a result I have been thinking about a handful of posts as a sort of way of reviewing the past year. One of the side effects of daily blogging, or at least week day blogging like I have been since the tail end of this year… is that you feel pressure to put out a post regardless if you have a lot to talk about. After doing this so long I can sit down at the keyboard and come up with a post regardless if I think there is actually stimulant for it. However occasionally I make posts that don’t actually embarrass me. The point of this mornings post is to review some of the posts this year that actually made me feel sorta okay about this blog.

January – Virtual Reality

My entire life Virtual Reality has been one of those things that is only a few years away from happening. In the January post I am singling out I talk about how close we apparently are… and how generally unexcited I am by it.

February – Brightly Colored Tinker Cart

During the February post I talk about nostalgia and how certain events just give you the warm fuzzies. I tell a story about one of our World of Warcraft servers long time residents and originals.

March – Open Game ID

During the March post I lament how many different systems and IDs that we have as gamers that we have to manage. I wish for an Open ID platform that anyone could use, that would potentially supply cross game communication.

April – Seven Years

The post from April that I singled out is the one celebrating the seventh anniversary of Tales of the Aggronaut. More importantly it shows off the amazing artwork that I commissioned my good friend AmmosArt to do for me.

May – Cycles

During the May post I talk about a weird sequence of events that lead a whole slew of bloggers to contemplate stopping. I was personally going through a long slump where I was struggling to find the motivation to keep going.

June – For Azeroth

During the June post I talk about how much I enjoyed the Warcraft movie and how much nostalgia it had wrapped up in it. While it failed to make significant box office bank, it was absolutely a film out there for the fans of the franchise.

July – Revisiting Memory

During the July post I talk about my experiences leveling through Wrath of the Lich King, and how we might have been wrong about it. Wrath of the Lich King has been heralded as the best of Warcraft, and I talk about how we have largely been looking at it through rose colored lenses.

August – Expansion Retail Forgot

The August post was ultimately misinterpreted by some reading it… however I still think it is an interesting post. With the release of Legion I noticed just how non-existent the retail presence happened to be and talk about my experiences with retail and past expansions.

September – Operation Hey Folks

During the September post I talk a bit about an attempt to return civility to the World of Warcraft random dungeons. In Final Fantasy XIV it is common place for folks to talk… whereas Warcraft has been a traditionally silent experience. As a result we started off with a simple “Hey Folks” and it had some interesting results.

October – Finally Grasp It

This is an interesting post in October because it had been a long time coming. From the release of Guild Wars 2 I never quite grasped why folks seemed to like it. After spending a lot of time with the AggroChat crew running the “end game” content, I finally found some reasons and a sense of progression.

November – Family We Choose

This post is a deeply personal one. In November my friend Tam unveiled his side project in which he had Ammo draw how he viewed a lot of his friends. Each and everyone one is so perfect and filled with details about that specific person. This gets me talking about our friends and the family we choose.

December – Four Years of Thought

Finally we end up with my December post, where in my current introspective state I have been going back through the last four years of posts since starting the daily posting thing. As a result I noticed that bloggers don’t seem to collaborate with each other nearly as much as they used to. I also talk about what seems to be a chilling effect in the sort of topics we discuss.