ComputerCraft 1.46 Minecraft 1.4.2 Update

There's not much to go with this update, all this update really changes is that it is now compatible with the latest version of Vanilla Minecraft, 1.4.2. The only other change listed in the changelog is the addition of a separate tab for computercraft items in the new creative inventory mode that was first introduced in 1.3.2.

Download (this is Dan's adfly link not mine)

Blog post

ComputerCraft 1.45 (Now with colors!)

ComputerCraft's newest release! This version brings some very exciting changes that open up a whole new range of possibility and new things that you can do. The biggest feature of this release is the addition of Color Terminals! In previous CompterCraft versions the only colors available on the terminal were black and white, with this release you can now choose from 16 different ones. Besides colors, dan200 (author of ComputerCraft) has added advanced monitors and advanced computers.

The advanced computer is the only computer that has the capability to display different colors. Also the advanced computers have the ability to accept mouse input, with this comes amazing potential for programs, like the one included with the release, paint!

Advanced Computer Crafting recipe

The Advanced monitor recipe is mostly the same, just replace the stone in the old recipe with gold like in the advanced Computer.

Download (ComputerCraft)

Install:
ComputerCraft requires Minecraft 1.3.2 and at least version 275 of Minecraft Forge. Once forge is installed, simply drop ComputerCraft1.45.zip into your /mods/ directory, and launch the game.

Minecraft 1.4.1 Prerelease

Today brings a mild disappointment in the realm on minecraft releases... today they announced that the 1.4 release date would be push back from the 24th to the 25th of October, one whole day! This is another bug fix release, almost the entireity of the changelog is bugfixes or tweaks.

Changelog:

• Fixed mobs glitching through wooden floors
• Fixed players glitching through Beacons
• Fixed Redstone Repeaters getting stuck in ‘on’ state
• Bats spawn less frequently
• A number of minor font fixes
• Activated the Wither painting
• Fixed wet wolves looking way too scary
• Tweaked naming costs in the Anvil
• Tweaked enchantment points reward for smelting
• Fixed bug that allowed any item to be placed in the armor slots
• Fixed mob spawners spawning too quickly

Download Client Jar (Mojang)

Download Server Jar (Mojang)

Minecraft 1.4 Pre-release!

Today brings some exciting news from the Mojang blog. Today they release the minecraft 1.4 pre-release. This release will be adding many new features to the game, anvils, witches, bats, and pumpkin pie! Everything that you need to have a good and scary Halloween. Also they have added some new sounds, new sounds were added for the wither, the bats, the anvil (sweet!) and the ENDER DRAGON!!

The post does say that this is not what they will be releasing in one week, they will still have many more bug fixes and patches! One thing that the jars will be used for is new terrain gen as it is very unlikely that there will be any updates or changes to the terrain gen system between now and the official release.

Download Client Jar (Mojang)

Download Server Jar (Mojang)

Minecraft Snapshot 12w42b

Nothing too spectacular with this 'b' release, just the basic prerelease bug fixes and patches. This snapshot does also add some more info from mojang about the new fixes to the redstone system updates that they have been promising a long, long time.

Changelog:

• Falling sand now properly “pops” when falling on non-solid blocks (such as torches)
• The redstone repeater lock mechanism is now slightly more stable / predictable. It’s still not 100% as we want it, but fixing it completely will require bigger changes that we’ve planned for Minecraft 1.5.
• Fixed tooltip width for renamed items
• Added a number of sound events, but the sound effects are not added yet
• Server ping will now tell if the server and client have mismatching protocol versions
• Updated translation files

Download (Mojang)

Minecraft Snapshot 12w42a

Hooray! Early snapshot! The only downside is that it's a longer wait to the next one :O. This snapshot, like many of the past few has been more about trying to fix the bugs and other things. Some of the things that were changed/added in this snapshot are that the new bat mod will no longer trample crops and activate pressure plates as if it were a ground-mob.
There are new updates to the redstone repeaters that Mojang says are a hint of whats to come in the 1.5 release (yes the 1.5). They are pushing off major changes to the redstone system so that there is a final "safe version" of minecraft with original redstone mechanics. The change to the repeaters is "Locking" now when a redstone repeater has a redstone signal coming in from one of the sides that is not the input or output sides it will "lock" the repeater in place, making it so that the redstone signal coming out of the affected repeater will not change, if it was on when the repeated was "locked" then it will remain on, regardless of any input changes. Same goes from if the repeater was "off" when it was locked. In the snapshot blog (also below) there is a picture that hints at a changed texture to indicate that a repeater is in the locked position. I have personally not seen this displayed anywhere else, not even in the unlisted video on the TeamMojang youtube channel that displays the new behavior.

The recipe for crafting the anvil has also been tweaked to decrease the amount of iron required, below is the new recipe, it takes 24 less iron ingots to craft than the one in last week's snapshot.

Here is what the old recipe looked like, much more expensive!

Download (Mojang)
Mojang's Blog

Bukkit 1.3.2-R2.0 Release

Today brings the second revision of the 1.3.2 release of the bukkit server for minecraft! New in this build are built-in autosave functions that can be set in vanilla bukkit servers with new config options based on saving per tick.
To enable the new autosaving feature, set the "ticks-per.autosave" option to whatever you wan and it will autosave the server (obviously!) every number of ticks. In order to disable this new feature (why oh why??) all you need to do is to set it to 0.

Link to Release
Link to Download

[How-to] Get Bukkit release and news feed

The website over at bukkit.org is very nice, the landing page is a news section with all of the news about the latest release of the server. But if you are like me, and many other people you don't want to have to visit the website just to check if there is a new bukkit release. Now the way that most websites fix this is with RSS feeds. And on first look it looks like the page does have a RSS feed, as indicated by the logo at the bottom of the page. But on closer inspection of the feed that it brings you to, it appears to be a feed of the "latest happenings" at the forums. This is alot more than what most people want, most people only want the RSS feed of the main page and the releases. The way that I found it was to inspect the source code, using firebug (firefox extension) and search through the document looking for "RSS". I found it in a javascript function, it was the second one listed.

http://dl.bukkit.org/downloads/craftbukkit/feeds/latest-rb.rss

ANVILS! (Minecraft 12w41a/b)

This weeks weekly chunk brings EXCITING new features to the minecraft 1.4 Pretty Scary Update! New in this feature is the Anvil, the anvil like its name would suggest is used for the repair of items like armour and pickaxes in minecraft. In addition to the repair features of the anvil, you are also about to "name" your items, if you wanted to you could rename your sword "Hrunting" (Beowulf  reference!) and it also allows for the combination of the different enchantments that are on two items. Of course to make anvil you'll need alot of iron, 55 ingots. And the anvil has a damage value, it appears to be a random feature at  the moment and has three different stages of decay. In order to use the anvil you need ALOT of experience. The anvil also has some more classic effects, it drops much like other blocks in the game, sand and gravel, but if it hits a player or mob it causes damage! This gives for a kind of ACME effect :D. Besides the anvil there aren't that many new features in this snapshot, nearing the release date (October 24th) much of the time is spent of bug fixing and getting ready for the final release.

Crafting Recipe (thanks to minecraftwiki.net)

Direct Link
Weekly Chunk

Changelog:

• Added a new Anvil block for repairing, merging & naming items
• Added an option for cape-owners to hide their capes ingame
• Effects given by the Beacon will be less intrusive on the screen
• Level-up sound now only plays every 5 levels
• More bugfixes & tweaks!

0x10c Website update!

The newest game from Notch (Markus Persson, original creator of minecraft) 0x10c's website has received a nice new website! The website went from being general about the game to a word press blog format. On the new site, updated October 13, there are two new and exciting posts that will stir up alot of excitement among many of the 0x10c enthusists and shows that Notch has actually been doing lots of hard work.
The first post is a video of some gameplay of the current version of the game. The majority of it is just the player running around the ship shooting the laser. The video really shows off more of the lighting features of the engine that Notch is using than anything else. It does also show some of the features that the ship will have, asuming that the ship will be the same for ever. The video also shows some of features, like the 3d model of a person standing off to the side at the beginning of the video, it is unclear if this person will be in game on the ship or if it is supposed to be the player character model, considering the relatively high res and complicated 3d model (compared to minecraft) one can assume that this might be the player model. One other thing that I noticed about the model is that it looks like something out of TF2.

Some of the ship features shown off during the video include what is supposed to be the main component of the game, the DCPU-16 computers. The first one seen has lots of text of the screen, there is a year on the screen, it reads 1984. This could be seen as a reference to any number of things. The screen also reads as having a total of 64 kilobytes of ram with only 40 kilobytes being free. (right at the beginning of the video 0:01) He leaves the room and goes to what appears to be the stern of the ship (related to what appears to be the bridge, shown later) and shoots at what I assume to be either the power generator on the ship or the engine, there is no interaction with the object tho, shots fired go right through it.  Next the video goes to a window and shows what appears to be a planet with rings and at least one moon (both purple). The next part is the exciting part, he head to the bridge and begins to show off some of the more complicated features that are planned for the game. Throughout the video he looks up at what appear to be hatches in the roof, perhaps hinting at a ventelation or jefferies (Star Trek!) system through out the ship. The hatch in the bridge has a light hanging in it that shows off some of the very cool shader and lighting features that are currently in the game. He goes to the right most computer on the "bridge" and types in the command "crash" which does just what you would expect, it crashes all the computers, not just the one that it was typed into. The crash visual is just lots of random colors with different characters. The light given off by the monitors as the computers crash is, in my opinion, a very realistic effect. At the very end of the video the player gets caught in a pit at the bridge and shows off the jumping of the current engine, but is unable to escape the pit.

The next post, on the same day as the video is about the way that notch has decided to design the game, unlike minecraft he has decided to include the server portion of the engine with the single player from the beginning of the game. He goes on to talk about some of the latency and the problems and other things that he has encountered working on the multiplayer component of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYojT0Xgt9Y&feature=player_embedded

Website

Computer Craft 1.43

New Features:

• Added Printed Pages (bind several Printed Page items into one with string)
• Added Printed Books (add a leather cover to the above)
• Labelled Turtles now keep their fuel when broken
• Fixed incompatibility with Forge 275 and above

Website
Download (From Website)

Minecraft Archive 12w40a

Changelog below:

• Added Swamp Hut structures, for Witches to spawn in^[2]
• Added superflat preset "Redstone Ready" with a 52 layers of sandstone, 3 layers of stone, and 1 layer of bedrock
• Flatworld configuration now allows you to generate trees, strongholds etc
  • Now pumpkins, tall grass, flowers, trees, mineshafts, dungeons, strongholds, lakes, desert wells, ravines and ores will spawn on superflat maps^[3]
• Custom Item naming NBT tags (intended for custom map makers)^[4]
  • Using the NBT, it is possible to add custom names to items, as well as a lore list for that item
• Better inventory management
  • The pick block action now works on items
  • Pressing the 1-9 hotkeys while hovering over an item will put that item into the inventory bar
  • In creative mode, you can now shift-click items from the hotbar to the survival inventory screen
• The left-click action will no longer open doors, pull levers, push buttons or open trapdoors. Use the right mouse button!
• Firespread has been slightly nerfed again to prevent infinitely spreading fires
• Beacon Texture altered, as well as the beam.
• Eye of Ender can now be used in superflat worlds. (only if stronghold generation is enabled)
• Slimes now spawn in Swamp biomes at low light level.

Download (Mojang)

Download (Mediafire)

Banshee 2.6.0

Today brings another release in what is one of my favorite and most over populated areas on Linux, the music player. Banshee has been around for longer than most, with it's initial release being all the way back in 2005. This new release brings many new features and bug fixes to the popular cross-platform music player.

An important part of this release are the features that have been added for Banshee's newest platform, Mac OS, in 2.6.0 they have added:

•  Hardware support for USB mass storage devices
• Handle opening files directly in Finder.
• Use native file chooser dialogs for importing files.
• Improve keyboard shortcuts.
• Fix various volume issues and inconsistencies.
• Switch to gtk-mac-integration and move to cocoa API.
• Add debug and logging facility to OS X launcher. 

Some other notable features include the addition of Last.fm scrobbling support for recently played songs on iDevices (or compatible).

To install you can either compile from the source provided (ftp), or you can add the Banshee team ppa for Ubuntu compatible systems.

To install via ppa:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa 
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install banshee




[How-to] Install FFmpeg 1.0 via tarball

Read more about the FFmpeg 1.0 major version release here.
This guide is for Ubuntu/Debian

1. Download the "Angel" tarball
2. Extract
3. cd to the directory and run "./configure"
4. make
5. make installBe warned that this will probably break most of your packages if you do so as root, most are dependant on 0.1

FFmpeg 1.0 Release

Yes you read that right, after being in development for god knows how long the 1.0 version of the software is finally being released. Some notable programs that use the FFmpeg software include, but are not limited to the popular VideoLan Corp's VLC, Google's Google Chrome web browser, Youtube, mplayer and the 3d rendering software blender.

Website

Changelog

- INI and flat output in ffprobe
- Scene detection in libavfilter
- Indeo Audio decoder
- channelsplit audio filter
- setnsamples audio filter
- atempo filter
- ffprobe -show_data option
- RTMPT protocol support
- iLBC encoding/decoding via libilbc
- Microsoft Screen 1 decoder
- join audio filter
- audio channel mapping filter
- Microsoft ATC Screen decoder
- RTSP listen mode
- TechSmith Screen Codec 2 decoder
- AAC encoding via libfdk-aac
- Microsoft Expression Encoder Screen decoder
- RTMPS protocol support
- RTMPTS protocol support
- RTMPE protocol support
- RTMPTE protocol support
- showwaves and showspectrum filter
- LucasArts SMUSH playback support
- SAMI, RealText and SubViewer demuxers and decoders
- Heart Of Darkness PAF playback support
- iec61883 device
- asettb filter
- new option: -progress
- 3GPP Timed Text encoder/decoder
- GeoTIFF decoder support
- ffmpeg -(no)stdin option
- Opus decoder using libopus
- caca output device using libcaca
- alphaextract and alphamerge filters
- concat filter
- flite filter
- Canopus Lossless Codec decoder
- bitmap subtitles in filters (experimental and temporary)
- MP2 encoding via TwoLAME
- bmp parser
- smptebars source
- asetpts filter
- hue filter
- ICO muxer
- SubRip encoder and decoder without embedded timing
- edge detection filter
- framestep filter
- ffmpeg -shortest option is now per-output file
  -pass and -passlogfile are now per-output stream
- volume measurement filter
- Ut Video encoder
- Microsoft Screen 2 decoder
- Matroska demuxer now identifies SRT subtitles as AV_CODEC_ID_SUBRIP
  instead of AV_CODEC_ID_TEXT
- smartblur filter ported from MPlayer
- CPiA decoder
- decimate filter ported from MPlayer
- RTP depacketization of JPEG
- Smooth Streaming live segmenter muxer
- F4V muxer
- sendcmd and asendcmd filters
- WebVTT demuxer and decoder (simple tags supported)
- RTP packetization of JPEG
- faststart option in the MOV/MP4 muxer
- Several security fixes

My GitHub Page

Octocat

Github, the social coding platform is a pretty cool website. The idea of the website is to make it much easier to have a open source life collaboration over the internet with complete strangers. It's free as long as you don't mind having the rest of the world able to look at what you put on there, though more often than not it's just individuals using it for their own projects version control.

The official mascot of the website is the "octocat" (pictured right).

The Github system is based on git (DUH) and is quite easy to learn and use, even for newbies. Here is a tutorial that I found useful.

Github hosts some really cool programs, they host the source code for the popular internet site reddit, they also host the up-coming Project Hawkthorne the side scroller game based on an episode of the NBC sitcom Community.

My Page

I have several side projects running at the current time, I have started work on a ALEKS competitor, as previously mentioned. I also am starting to download the source of projects hosted on others sites, like dwm over on suckless, and put them onto github. I'm doing this because I think that out of all the version control services git/github is the best (in my experience). The last thing that I am working on at the moment is a Box.com client for the Linux desktop. The idea behind this client is that instead of doing the traditional WebDavFS approach it would be written using only the offical Box.com APIS.

ALEKS Competitor

ALEKS Competitor

Today I started work on making a ALEKS competitor. Why? Because it needed to be done, they have ignored my complaints (and those of others) for too long, they need to know that we don't need them. This project that I have started on does not yet have a name, over on github I just used one of the randomly suggested names, that might end up being the name just for fun.

Features

So far I have made many features, the main site will be written in PHP and the questions and answers will be stored in XML format. The XML will be stored server side, and protected from the general public so that they can't just download the file and get all the anwsers. As of right now there are only 2 types of questions supported, multiple choice and fill in the blank, these can either be delivered all at once, 5 at a time or one by one, depending on how you write the delivery. There will eventually be a API, there sorta is one already taking shape for displaying the questions.

Planned Features

I plan to add everything that ALEKS has, all in good time right now I'm concentrating on the way that the questions will be written and delivered, the XML already has a format that for now serves it's purposes quite well.

There is no download but just cloning the repository into a php server directory with the php simplexml module installed and going to the "index.php" page should work about the same for you as it does for me.

Computer Craft 1.42

Changelog:

• Ported to Minecraft 1.3.2 and the Forge mod system
• Added Printers
• Floppy Disks can now be dyed different colours
• Wireless Crafty Turtles can now be crafted
• All new textures
• New Forge config file
• Various tweaks and bug fixes

Download (mediafire)

Ubuntu One for Android Update [1.2.5]

Now with new icons!

Preferences

Undo

Share

Upload

 Download APK (from launchpad)

Download on Google Play (not yet updated!)

Changelog!
1.2.5

- Share multiple files at once to Ubuntu One.

- Better quality thumbnails.

- Fixed directory download.

- Fixed Turkish locale.

- Fixed sign in crashes.

- Fixed detection of WiMAX connection.

- WiMAX connection treated as unmetered.

12w39a Minecraft Archive

Changelog below:

• Lighting system overhauled.
• Lots of blocks interact correctly with lighting now (stairs, slabs)
• Few sound tweaks
• Fixed witch being white for some
• More bugfixes & slight tweaks!

Some bugs have been reported and there might be another "b" release soon... according to @Dinnerbone:
"So farmland is broken. Okay, that's a start! Yay mass testing. Also stairs are darker than you'd expect but that's three characters to fix."

Official Mojang Download

Rehosted (Mediafire)

[How-to] Solve different base logs

This is going to be the first of many (hopefully) articles about how to do ALEKS and general math topics, both for you and for me, hopefully it will make me remember it longer... I'll fill these out as I come to them so if there is one you need feel free to contact me.

log₅9
This is asking for the logarithm, not going to explain what that is..., in base 5, if it is not notated with a different number it is assumed to be asking for base 10. For both base 10 and base n (where n is any number) this can be done on a calculator.

                               log₅9 =

 log₅9 = 1.365...

Also on wolframalpha you can solve this type of problem by formatting it like this:

log base 5 of 9


I hopefully will find a better way to do the fraction notation, it's either do it in pictures or x/y, neither of which look all that good.

Comments, questions, or suggestions? Leave them below!

[How-to] ALEKS on Ubuntu

Having to do ALEKS for my classes was one of the major hindrances that was stopping me from making the full switch to the (in my opinion) far superior GNU/Linux platform. But now I have found a solution to the problem, that is much better than their "streaming" option or the instructions that they have on their website for GNU/Linux, which still refer to netscape!

1. Install (if you haven't already) the appropriate java package for you GNU/Linux distribution. In my case I believe it was just the wrapper package "default-java"
2. Download the aleksPack10.jar 
3. Copy it (with sudo or root perms) to "/usr/lib/jvm/default-java/jre/lib/ext
4. Do your ALEKS!

 If this helped you and you are (understandably) mad about the ALEKS Corporation's lack of support please take the time to fill out a support ticket complaining about the lack of  GNU/Linux support that they offer you. I like to file the "technical problems" as it seems that they will get back to you sooner, even if it is only to say that it's not officially supported.



Comments, questions or suggestions? Leave them below!

Minitube 1.9 (Youtube fixes)

Minitube, the 1.9 release fixes many things, including the new youtube changes that have been implemented over the past few days, making all (as far as I have seen) youtube videos unwatchable with earlier versions.
Major changes include;

•  adding spelling suggestions

• sort by ratings function
• new search filter interface
  
  Click this to get to the new search interface:
  

Download (for linux)

Download (for Mac OS X)

Download (for Windows)




Oops!
When I first launched the app it gave me this:
"A new minitube version is available (1.8)"

12w38b Minecraft Archive

Changlog Below:

• Updated sound engine and fixed wrong sounds
  • Added minecart sounds
  • Changed level-up sound
  • Changed fall-damage sound
  • Changed the new block placing sounds (implemented in 12w38a) back to original sounds
  • New cave sound
  • The fire charge makes the same sound as flint and steel when used
• A few tweaks to the witch mob.
  • Can't hurt themselves now.
  • Texture changed slightly.
  • New drops
    • Misc potion ingredients
    • Sticks
    • Chance to drop what they're holding at the time of death
• New creeper fall mechanics
  • Creepers will explode if they fall on you from a certain height.^[2]  

Offical Mojang Download
Rehosted (Mediafire)

12w38a Minecraft Archive

Change Log below:

• The Nether loads faster when going through a portal
  • In Creative mode, teleportation is instantaneous^[5]
• The water overlay is more saturated blue.
• Updated and added new sounds by C418
  • New footstep sounds: sand, gravel, soul sand, grass block, ladders, snow, and stone
  • New block-placing sounds: wood, stone, plants, sand, gravel and torch. New sounds are unintended and are the same as in the Pocket Edition^[6]
  • New block breaking sounds: wood, snow, glass
  • New mob sounds: cow, chickens, pigs, Enderman (watched/observed, attacked, etc.), zombie, spiders, skeleton, and slime
  • New tool sounds: flint and steel, shears (when shearing sheep) and hoe when you till dirt
  • Lava and flowing water now have constant noise
  • Added level up sound, but will be changed later for a shorter one ^[7]
  • Added sound when Withers break blocks.
• Added a passive mob (bat)
  • Spawns in dark caves
  • Spawns in Peaceful mode
  • Sleeps during the day
  • Hangs on the ceiling when idle, starts flying when players come near
• Added a hostile mob (witch)
  • Their nose slowly bobs up and down when not hostile.
  • Throws splash potions of poison, slowness, weakness and instant damage at you
  • Regenerate health over time
  • Hold an empty bottle and raise their noses when attacking
  • Drink potions of instant health and fire resistance to defend themselves in combat
  • Rarely drop potions of instant health and fire resistance
  • Is immune to some splash potions^{[more information needed]}
  • Does not spawn naturally (yet), but a spawn egg exists for it in Creative mode
• Command block target parameters have been upgraded
• Beacon artwork was changed
  • The beam of light was changed
  • The texture of bedrock under the beacon is removed.
• Wood blocks have a different rotation algorithm. Instead of using the player’s position, they rotate based on the face they are placed upon, like a lever (this is mainly a test).
• Stone monster egg blocks (which spawn Silverfish) will rarely generate underground in Extreme Hills biomes.^[8]

**NOTE that a "12w38b" was released shortly after to fix the /say command in the servers

Official Mojang Download
Rehosted (Mediafire)

12w37a Minecraft Archive

Change log below:

• Tweaks to the Wither.
  • It creates an explosion around itself once it is done regenerating from spawning.
• Added "Re-Create" option to the World selection menu.
  • Allows you to edit a world as if you are creating a new one without changing the existing world, e.g. bonus chest, cheats, world type.
• 'Carrots' are now 'Carrot'.
• Added Pumpkin Pie.
• Tweaks to a couple of item sprites.
  • Bread, Raw Chicken, Cooked Chicken, Raw Beef, Steak, Raw Porkchop, Cooked Porkchop, Red Apple, and Nether Star no longer have a dark outline.
  • Golden Carrot now matches Carrot.
  • Heads are now correctly centered.
  • Baked Potatoes don't have fume anymore.
• Leather armor now has a non-dyed layer.
• Time of the redstone signal of the wooden/stone button extended from 9 to 12 redstone ticks
• Superflat customization GUI:
  • Comes with 7 presets: Classic Flat, Tunnelers' Dream, Water World, Overworld, Snowy Kingdom, Bottomless Pit (Broken^[2]), and Desert.
  • Custom starts off with Classic Flat with three options: Add Layer, Edit Layer, Remove Layer. Adding and editing are NYI.
    • You can customize superflat without add/edit layer option using the "seed" in the preset list.
• You now get XP for fishing.
• Pigs are now able to jump when players ride on them.
• Added /clear command to empty the inventory.
• Evil mobs are now a little bit more fearless in hard difficulty.
• Various bug fixes.

Official Mojang Download Link

Rehosted Download Link (Mediafire)

12w36a Minecraft Archive

 

Brief change log below:

• A new scary decoration block
• The “secret” from previous snapshots is now spawnable
• A new mob variant in the Nether
• Minor changes to the leather dyeing (the colors will attempt to maintain intensity and not dilute as much)
• The “work in progress block” is now called “Beacon” and can be crafted
• Carrot on a stick!

Official Mojang Download Link 

Rehosted minecraft.jar File (mediafire)

1.3.2 Minecraft Archive

This post is obviously a bit out dated, this is just to start a series of what I'm going to call my Minecraft Archives, for every major release (maybe snapshots too) I'll post one of these with a link to both Mojang's official download link and one hosted on mediafire or the like.

Official Mojang Download Link

Rehosted minecraft.jar file (mediafire)

Exclusive Cubby Invite

Well the title says it all, send me a email or leave a comment and I will send you an invite (only 5 available)

Cubby

From LogMeIn.com allows a dropbox like service with all of the same features except one, a Linux client which for me and many others makes it for the most part quite unusable. You can't even get to the website version of the service wihtout first logging in on the desktop one. Running the .exe under wine does not work either, there are problems with the way that it connects and authenticates to the cubby.com servers as far as I can tell. Since it's in beta there is no publicly available API for people to make their own clients like with Box.com.

Download Any Youtube Video

There are many online sites that claim to offer the same functionality as youtube-dl but many of them are currently broken either due to neglect or youtube has fixed the exploits that they are using.

youtube-dl

youtube-dl is a python based Youtube downloader. It's cross platform and all it requires is python 2.(x>6). After downloading the latest file you have to open a command line and there are many options for the program but you only have to paste the video url and it will download the file in the highest possible quality.

youtube-dl -t http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR7Fyn-KPck

In the case above the -t option will name the file using the page title, in this case it would be "More_Theatre_of_Life_Breaking_Bad_Spoiler-tR7Fyn-KPck.mp4". 

Questions? Comments? Leave them below! Would you want a GUI version? Here's one that I found.

Best Cloud Storage

Mediafire

This is a classic file locker turned "legit" file hosting service after the megaupload.com fiasco. Recently they have also been trying to get into the whole Google Drive section of the market, online hosted file editing and creation, with support (right now) for Documents, text files, Spreadsheets and presentations.

Pros:

They offer a nice desktop client for all platforms (including Linux!) and give 50 GB free to start.

Cons:

No mobile client for the moment. Associated with seedy (punny!)  files. I've seen more than one person refuse to download anything from the site because it was Mediafire. Will stop downloads due to too much bandwidth usage.

Dropbox

Probably the most popular from what I've seen, has lots of good features.

Pros:

Features a cross platform client, for both desktop and mobile.  Makes getting more storage fun. For every 500MB of pictures uploaded from mobile they'll give you 500 more for up to 16 GB. But 500MB is A LOT of pictures. Respectable well known name.

Cons: 

Starts with a measly 2GB of storage space.

Box

Definitely the most professionally targeting, has well document APIs and many different subscription plans suitable for large corporations. 

Pros:

Sometimes offers awesome specials, like installing the Android app a month after launch gave you 50GB of storage for free! Starts with 5GB for free account and up from there. Also has mobile clients.

Cons: 

NO LINUX CLIENT.

Ubuntu One

From the popular Ubuntu operating system comes Ubuntu One cloud storage, which has features like streaming music from the cloud straight to your phone! (for paid accounts)

Pros:

Starts with 5GB. Also has feature to gain storage from friend sign up referrals. Linux support (obviously) along with Windows, there is no official one for Mac OS X but many unofficial. Mobile client.

Cons:

No Mac OS X support. Written using Qt so it stands out in comparison with the rest of the apps on a Ubuntu desktop


Did this article help you? Need any more help/advice? Feel free to comment below, I promise to get back to you as soon as possible. Think I left one out? Tell me! I only wrote about some of the most popular and the one that I find to be the most useful.

The Wonders of Optifine

What is Optifine?

Optifine is a mod for minecraft that is aimed at making the game more effiecent when it comes to the amount of CPU and GPU power that it takes to render the game. In other words, it makes your game run faster and look better. On it's forum page, it's said to generally almost double the FPS for anyone, for me it brought them from 20-30 up to 50-70, and it makes the game sooooooo much better. Whoever made this mod needs serious props, and I would recommend this to any one who has a older model computer that can't keep up or just wants to squeeze more FPS out of minecraft.

Installing

The mod is included in several mod packs, like technic but the mod can be installed solo with vanilla minecraft. Download the file from the forum page and follow the instructions (on here or the fourm).

• Open the archive with 7zip (or whatever)
• Open the minecraft.jar file in your %appdata%\.minecraft (I think haven't used windows in a while) 
• Copy the contents on the optifine.zip into the minecraft.jar file
• DELETE the folder named "META-INF" in the minecraft.jar file

Then just launch the game as normal and when you press F3 button in game there should be a optifine version number in the upper left hand corner.

Download 1.3.2 with optifine installed

Some people just don't like to do any work, it's a fact of life, for those people I have made a vanilla 1.3.2 minecraft+optifine file that you can download, copy, paste and run!

Have any problems? Tell me in the comments, I'll try to respond as fast as possible.

[How-To] Install Adobe AIR 2.6 Ubuntu 12.04

Adobe Air:

The Adobe® AIR® runtime enables developers to package the same code into native apps for iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, and other Android™ devices, reaching the mobile app stores for over 500 million devices. (From adobe website)

This is obviously not true as they stopped support for the product on Linux platforms back a 2.6 (3.2 latest currently)

Installing

Adobe AIR is no longer hosted on canonical servers for ubuntu, you now have to manually download it from adobe. After downloading it you'll want to make it exectuable and then run it.
chmod +x ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

If the installer gives you a error about not having GNOME-Keyring installed when you actually do then there are some extra steps involved;
 For 32-bit computers:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/

For 64-bit computers:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/



 Did this help you? Feel free to comment below!

 

Online Music Streaming Services

In this field I see that there are really 4 competitors,

1. Pandora
2. Spotify
3. Grooveshark
4. Last.fm 

There certiantly are more than that but the other notable ones are only by pay services and, well, I've never been one to pay for music, anyway anyhow. My personal favorite out of these is the Pandora service, I've been using it for quite a few years and has been quite good and the music never gets old for me. There are always new songs on the stations etc.

Pandora

My favorite, has a nice site, even though it still uses Adobe Flash (the horror!) for the music playing. Also has a free to use Android and iOS app which makes streaming away from the computer convient and easy. As far as desktop apps go Pandora has 'em beat when it comes to linux desktop clients. For linux there is Pithos, which supports most if not all of the main features of the website. In addition with pithos there are no ads! Like I usually say if you really do support what the company is doing than you should show them by buying their services.

Spotify

 Spotify, arrived in the US to much fanfare, but I like many others was disappointed by the requirement of having to have a facebook account to register with spotify. In addition to this facebook has now integrated what you play and what other people play so that everyone can see what you have been listening to. This is not so much a matter of that I don't want other people to know what kind of music I listen to but another unecessary and trival thing that will fill my facebook feed. The desktop client is as good as any, it like many other things these days is trying to become more "social". For mobile Spotify is on par with most of the other services; they offer the "radio" feature for non-premium users.

Grooveshark

With their recently reinstated mobile app grooveshark looks like most of the other players listed here. Like others here the website version of this service uses Adobe's Flash player. But there is a html5 beta version that you can try. It's basically just the mobile version of the site. There is a desktop version, I have never used I personally so I can't talk.

Last.fm

  Last.fm definetly focuses more on the radio and the exploring new artist than just the listening to what you want. Last.fm is also about the live shows; it will try and sell you tickets to a concert of a band that you are listening to if you are in the area. This can be a good or a bad thing, it depends on who you are.

Ubuntu on USB Drive

There are many reasons that you might want to put a distro, like Ubuntu, onto a portable medium like a flash drive that will allow you to run it even on computers that have no or a non functional CD-ROM drive. There are many different ways to do so, many covered when you download one of the images from ubuntu.com.

Windows

On windows there are a few options for making a bootable USB flash drive, here are the ones that I personally prefer. When on windows I always opt for the graphical way of doing things. The way that is recommended by Ubuntu is to use USB Installer from pendrivelinux.com. There are a multitude of other options to try if this does not work.

 

Linux

On Linux my preferred way to make a bootable USB drive is to use the terminal command dd. dd is a program that should be installed on most if not all of the standard packages for modern Linux distributions. To use it you will need to know 2 things, the name of the ISO file that you are trying to burn and the exact location of the USB drive in your computer. By this I mean the name given to it in /dev/. As a short explanation: everything on in the Linux system is seen as a file, all of the physical devices are represented by files in the /dev directory in your file system. Usually flash drives are something like sdX where the X could be any alpha character. To determine this location I use the program gparted which will list all of the drives that are currently plugged in to the computer. The command to write the ISO to the USB is as follows: dd if=/home/sam/Downloads/<name of ISO file> of=/dev/sdX. On many distributions, like Ubuntu it will be necessary to use sudo when executing this command because of the safety  restrictions installed on the system.

Best Web Browser

There are really 5 different browsers that are potential compeititors to be the best browser there is Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and last (also least) Internet Explorer by Microsoft. There are other notable browsers, like GNOME's newly rebranded "Web". The minor players on the browser scene aren't covered here.

 

Opera

Opera is a hipster browser if I've ever seen one, it's been around for longer than any of the other browser and when it was originally launched you had to actually pay to get a copy of the browser. Opera has some of the coolest built-in features, like a built-in torrent manager/downloader, a chat client that supports IRC and other popular chat protocols. Opera is also well known for it's email client that works nice and looks even better.

Google Chrome (also Chromium)

Google Chrome is by far the best out of all the browsers that I have ever used. But recently it has been maxing out in the CPU usage area, to the point where it is impossible to get anything else done with it running. I have tried to fix the problem but nothing seems to help, I think that it is just that my current computer is too old for the new features that Google is putting into Chrome. Chrome is as of right now the only browser that is using Google's new Pepper Flash which is on the way to replace Adobe Flash for platforms, like Linux, on which the Flash brand has been discontinued.

 

Safari

I have personally never used safari for that long because they do not have a Linux client, but it seems to work well enough for most people so there is nothing bad I can say about this one. That said it is from Apple...

 

Firefox

I like firefox, and I would rate it as 2nd only when compared to Google Chrome, but Google Chrome on a relatively new computer. Firefox is a really great browser, with the most add-ons of any of the other browsers, the add-ons also have a wide range of API's which gives the developer more access to change and improve on the features of the browser.

 

Internet Explorer

Internet explorer is obviously limited for a lot of reasons. It's reputation has never really recovered from the security disaster that was IE 6, being the butt of every browser joke has not helped it's reputation. Another thing that doesn't help is that the browser is only for the Windows platform, especially with Google Chrome being available on almost every platform imaginable.

How to start a Minecraft Server

One of the best parts about minecraft, besides the mods, is the multiplayer aspect. Nothing cooler than being able to share all of your creations with your friends online. To do this you first need to be able to set up a server. The server can be setup on anything from a VPS (virutal private server) to a old desktop computer that you happened to have laying around the house.

Different Types of Servers

Craftbukkit

Craftbukkit is my personal favourite  when it comes to the different types of servers, the mod server are of course fun but after a while they just get boring. Craftbukkit is basically a vanilla server (which means that there are no mods installed on the client) with lots of plugins that enhance the functionality of the server.

Vanilla

My personal opinion of a vanilla server is that if you are going to go vanilla with out mods you might as well make it easier to admin (and harder to grief) with craftbukkit. But anyway, you can download the standard minecraft server straight from minecraft.net. For the purposes of this article I would recommend downloading the jar file opposed to the windows .exe.

Mod Servers (tekkit)

There aren't that many mod servers of note, many are customized to the preferneces of the people who are hosting them. But the one that is most used (in my experience) is the tekkit server. Tekkit is a mod pack with many fun mods.

How to setup the Server

I would recommend installing a linux server distrobution to run the server on but thats your own choice.
Starting the server is easy; java -jar minecraft_server.jar will start the server. Once the server has finished creating all of the files you can then stop it by typing "stop" in the server command line. In the folder that the jar is located in there should now be some files that were created by the server. The one that you want is "server.properties" in that file you can configure the different options, like offline mode, firespreading, and mob spawns. 

How to start a server with a seed

In the directory with the minecraft server file you will want to create a "server.properties" file in that file put the line "seed=<yourseednumberhere>
" If you want to use a word as a seed what you would have to do is to put "" around the text. (I think I'm not really sure about that in all honesty)

Minecraft for Nothing

 Searching "how to get minecraft free" will turn up nothing but spam and scams to try and get you to fill out a survey. Sure maybe there is one or two out there that actually do what they say that they do but I doubt it. But there is one way that you can use that will get you what you need to play minecraft, both on "offline servers" and on Single Player mode.

Vanilla

That is Mineshafter. Mineshafter, is basically a proxy application for the minecraft.jar file that convinces it that you have logged into the minecraft servers successfully. It will download all of the files that you need. As they say on the mineshafter website, if you really do enjoy playing the game then you ought to support it and what better way to do that than to buy the game straight from Mojang.

Mods

But wait, what if you want to play one of the many different mods that are out there? Well some one fixed that problem too. Welcome to Mineshafter Squared the way it works is the same it allows you to login through their servers and not mojangs. With mineshaftersquared you can download the 2 of the most popular minecraft mod launchers, Spout and Technic

Again this will NOT allow you on to the majority of the servers that are out there, there are some servers, like BitLegend that run in the offline mode and allow you to login without a account but there are not many.

About

About this Blog

I have previously tried to start writing a blog but have eventually let it decline and stopped writing, I hope that this time will be different. In this blog I will write about whatever it is I want, be that about Linux, current events or anything else that I have an opinion about. I hopefully plan to write about one post a day (ha that won't last long) or at the very least have one idea for a post a day.

About Me

I am a Senior in high school (as of August 2012) and am planning to go into either computer engineering or Computer Science as a major in college. I am currently taking a AP Computer Science class in my high school and have already taken a Honors Computer Science class last year. I have been personally using Linux as a desktop OS for about 2.5 years as of the post date. I am by no means an expert in Linux but know my way around the wheel. I have never spent much time on any social networking sites like twitter or facebook, they all seem to be much ado about nothing in my opinion. I have run Cross Country on my school's team for all of my time at high school, I have never ever been any good at it but it's still something to do.

 My time on the Interwebs

There are basically 5-6 websites that I go to on a semi-regular basis.

1. Facebook - I only go into the "Secret" and "Closed" groups to post, I don't make anything public. I also don't post any pictures of myself, I usually just use a picture of RMS :D
2. Imgur - Been using it longer than most, and introduced it at my High School where it has become quite a "thing"
3. 4chan - Mostly a lurker, I find that I laugh at some of the things on that website much more than I should. I frequent the /b/ /g/ and /wg/ sections.
4. OMG!UBUNTU! - Great website to get news on Ubuntu and Linux in general. I honestly check this website about 2-3 times a day. There usually aren't that many posts (especially on weekends).
5. Youtube - I have tried to start a video channel here many time but never ended up sticking with it. I watch RoosterTeeth and alot of the KassemG stuff and related channels, one of my favorites is elithecomputerguy, I used to always watch his "daily blobs" but then school started...