Japan Day Two! :DDDD

Hello my friends and family! :)
This is my update for the second day of Grad Trip Japan 2013! :DD

So this morning I awoke at 7:00 and showered, got my stuff together, and took my breakfast with me to Jeff and the other guys hotel room.

Stuart awoke and got ready as well, and we were on time to have breakfast with the other guys at 8:00.

Donald and Victor were still sleeping so we teased them and told them to wake up, that Japan was awesome and they should jump up in excitement XD

My breakfast consisted of the following:

A croissant, sugar bread triangle thing, and a circular thing of buttery tasty bakery bread stuff :D

After eating we chilled for a while and watched some more funny Japanese commercials and stuff, made sure we had everything, and then we went down to the lobby.
We turned in our keys and went out to the front of the hotel to wait for our driver that we hired to take us to our new place for the night, a farm aptly named "Milk Land".

The driver showed up, and lo and behold my friends had hired a Chinese driver in Japan XD
He spoke mandarin, and my friends speak some mandarin (they are native cantonese speakers not mandarin I believe), and we got along okay :)
The driver seemed angry the whole time though o.O

Weirrddness lol.

The drive was really really long.
But the good news is that we were all so tired that we were happy to sleep xD

I fought it at first, and then realized the drive would seem shorter if I slept :PP

But we had good views a lot of the way, Japan is quite a beautiful country :)




Jeff was sitting in the front, but we were all chilling in the back :>

We had some good views:















The sights slowly became more and more rural, untill....









We arrived! :D
Hurray! Lol finally!! :)

Since we didn't know where to go we wandered down to the fields and saw the places that were where we were staying, and sent Donald out to ask around if we could check in our luggage and get lunch.



[On the left is the bathroom we hid near to stay out of the sunshine, and to the right is the leftmost place people can pay to stay in, we are in the one to the right of it. Easier to see in the pic below]



[Above: the guys charging ahead, wondering if they are heading the right way or if they can check in, etc..]

Well it was 1 p.m, and they said we couldn't check in until 3 p.m...
O_O yup, heavy luggage = OH NO!! D::
lol

So we asked around, and the manager of the place, who speaks English and apparently has visited Hong Kong 6 times, took us to our flat and let us in early :P





















There was a beautiful view from our porch sliding door area:











After that we went out to look for food and found that most of the places were closed D:
Except for the little raw resources stores, that sold meat, oil, butter, plants, fruit, etc...




[Above: the main area you first see when you arrive, where the stores are and a few restaurants that were all closed within the short period of time that we arrived and settled in. The pic is from when we first arrived :P]

So we bought raw materials for dinner, and the guys bought noodles.
I foolishly decided against buying noodles, since they were the kind I usually don't like, and ended up eating cereal and cheese pretzels, and peaches I bought, but it was okay :)

So after shopping we went back and ate some food and chilled.
Then we went out for ice cream and to pet the animals on the farm, as there is a petting zoo (freee :>) on the farm.

The animals were all super cute! :D

Here is betsy: (I nicknamed her that ;>)




There were a ton of cute creatures! :)
Tiny baby goats, a baby cow, ducks :DDD <3333





























Aww cute little goatsy smiled at me :>





[Lil hog guy sleeping above^]
There were even hogs and dogs XD









There even was a donkey! xD

Then we went and and got our ice cream :)

I got stawberry milk flavoured :P




It was super delicious :D

Then.. we went back to the flat thing, and Jeff and I played against each other with our DS's in Mario Kart, Mario Party DS, Co-Op in Contra, and against each other in Metroid Prime Hunters.
It was awesome XD
I got my but kicked most of the time though loll...

Then we made dinner! :D
Let me tell you, now that was a site to see and a thing to participate in! XD

Jeff cooked sausage and pork and meat on a giant grill thing, I made scrambled eggs, Victor Donald and Stuart helped facilitate and stirred eggs and whatnot, and then Donald and Stuart cooked noodles.




[Jeff cooking some sausages with his Asian ninja prowess and chopstick skillets]





[Donald cooking the second batch of noodles, as Stuart cooked the first]




[Noodle master Stuart at work lol :p]

The result of loong work and waiting?

As we went along it was like this:



And then like this:




And then like this:




And then like this:



And then finally like this:
(because we had to reheat the meat and eggs since it had taken so long to make everything, bit by bit at a time)



Needless to say, the sausage was delicious and everything was quite good :)
(although I thought the fish powder on the noodles was a bit gross... lol)

After dinner I chatted with my awesome mom and then did the dishes:









I don't have a photo of them cleaned, but rest assured they are clean now xD
I like to take my time, so it took a while to clean them lolll

Donald cleaned the grill used to cook the sausage and noodles for me though :)

After dinner everyone sat down to watch some TV, and I to write this blog post :)
Which has been very satisfying to write, but also a pain since we've done so many things to report XD

But it is good :)
This trip is awesome, and I am having a great time :D





Thanks for reading! :)
I am going to try and brush my teeth now, and I will update again tomorrow ;)





Good night, and thanks for reading! :D

Love you guys :)

Sincerely,

~James D.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPortal Mini

First Day in Japan

Hello Everyone! :D

This is a quick post on today's events :)

Today I awoke at 4:50 a.m got ready for Japan, and went to the airport. (all with an infinite amount of help from my wonderful momma :>)

Here we are before the flight:



Then my buds and I flew out to Japan, and we bussed to our hotel.



Naturally, we chilled for a while, and watched with fascination all he ludicrous and extremely entertaining Japanese advertisements on our TV.

We even saw Japanese anime in Japan! :P


Then we bussed over to the local mall, and wandered around looking at food for a while.
We ended up deciding on this restaurant later on:




Then we went to the "CAPCOM Plaza", where we wasted some Yen on some crane machines and arcade like things.
I spent 300 Y and then was like, I'm out man, I will not lose any more money to these machines..
(300 Y is about 3 USD)

After that we went shopping in a really bizarro store that was a lot like USA's Spencers, with weird little things for sale all over the place, and then we went into a bookstore.

You know, I never realized how hard it is to find a book in a store, even if you know what you are looking for, if you cannot read the language.
Being illiterate sucks! @.@ lol

Anyway, we also earlier went to some CD store and looked at the vocaloid music and other music that they had for sale.

Then we went for dinner.
I got some sort of deep fried breaded pork thing with eggs, rice, and a salad:







It was okay, but was like soaked in soy sauce.
(which I don't like very much... lol)

After that we went to a store with all sorts of cool stuff, DSI's 3DS's, games, manga, anime, dvds, cds, manga/anime model character thingies, and yes- even Yu Gi Oh cards XD

That was fun.
Only, I almost didn't get anything.
But I settled on an anime figurine.
Ill have to post the photo later, cuz she is packed away atm.

But she is awesome :D
Jeff convinced me to buy her, and he bought the other one of her.
(His is sexier, but mine is.. idk cute :>)

Then we left, went home, and...
We hung out at the other guys hotel room.
(Stuart and I share a room, and the other three guys share one.
Stuart is really chill so I am happy XD)

We played Yahtzee, ate weird food, laughed at weird commercials and weird shows, and even managed to encounter the real world.
Which, of course, as all good students do, we avoided :)









We then hung out for a while longer, and then said our goodbyes.
My model said goodbye to Jeff's, and Stuart and I headed back to our room.

We then prepared for bed, and now here I am writing this blog post on my phone using my bluetooth keyboard! XD







Which, btw, is connected to an ingenious converter rig designed, or conceived rather, by my mother as shown below:






All in all it has been an epic and amazing first day and I cannot wait for more! :D

I'll update you all soon!

Thanks for reading, and I hope my narrative recap wasn't too awful ;)

Love,

~James D.









^*The view from our hotel window
(we didnt look much, were out a lot xD \m/ but nice to have :>)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPortal Mini

Minecraft Modding, AP Examming, and Final Program Projecting?!?

Parallel Structure?! Naw not really XD

Yo wazzup mah peoples! =D

I promised I would update with my modding adventures, and so I am doing just that.
A while back, I don’t recall if I mentioned this in my last post, I was spawning Enderdragons in the overworld.
Now, I thought it would be a good idea to increase the spawn probability of the dragons so  I would see them faster…
(I was worried that since I had modded the Dragon’s class file that I had made it unspawnable)

I was right, it was unspawnable..
So I changed it back and saved, and then…
BOOM!
Millions of Enderdragons spawned everywhere! @O@!

The game slowed to a laggy crawl, and I myself crawled and slowly built a Nether portal to escape the madness.

Crazy indeed.

Thank the good lord I was on creative mode!! xD
And thank goodness I had modified the Enderdragon class so they can no longer destroy blocks upon contact.
(Let me tell you, if you spawn them in the overworld they will TERRAFORM your land.
And by terraform, I mean to imply that they will obliterate your landscapes.
Perhaps good for mining, but not really, since they destroy everything.
You’d have to be pretty good at killing them for that to be and effective measure. lol)

 

 

Here is my first encounter with spawning Enderdragons in the overworld.
(NOT the one where I spawned a billion of them on accident..)

 

As you can see, there were quite a few of them.
It was hard to capture them all in a pic!! xD

 

Here is an example of what happens when they dive in to attack you, the land is carved out like ‘twas nothing. O_O

 

 

Pure, uncontrollable CARNAGE!! lol
Yeah, so that is why I made it so Enderdragons can’t destroy these kinds of blocks XD

As for when a million spawned….

Spawning them isn’t hard, it’s killing them and stopping the lag that is the tricksy bit. –.-It

I tried changing their maximum health, but it still took too long to kill them, and they are so hard to catch. ;/

SO I tried changing their maximum health to zero and they all did the death animation simultaneously:

Which would have been nice if it had worked better!
Apparently this slowed down the game too, and I have no clue if any of it actually killed any of the dragons! @~@

I ended up just changing the code so when the Enderdragon is hit it sets itself to dead.

 

I ended up going hunting and killing all the rest of the dragons with awesome eggs.
Yeah, totally awesome eggs




Some of the other mods I was working on earlier, all base-class mods, were making it so cows and wolfs spawn in the Nether, making something I dubbed “CakeSeed” which you can tempt chickens with, which will make the chickens poop out golden nuggets instead of eggs for that moment you feed them cakeseed.

(…continuing talking about cakeseed…)
And, which can be harvested from cake, and can be planted as a cake.
And… yeah, it can be eaten when placed on the ground too, as it is just cake.
You can’t really tell the difference =P

^Chickens laying golden nuggets since I am feeding them cakeseed


^Some planted cakeseed. (notice the tilled ground underneath the cake, and the stone hoe in my hotbar)

 

 

I did, however, make a special graphic for the cakeseed :D
I couldn’t figure out how to include it in the source code, so I had to add into the .jar file manually after compiling.
(but I think I figured out what was wrong, I have to include the image in the jar/resources folder or whatever wherever it is)

^There is my graphic for cakeseed! :D
Isn’t it lovely? ;)
I think I had just destroyed a cake to see if it would drop cakeseed as I expected it to do, and I think it worked in that image. (I don’t quite remember, but I think that is true)

Aside from trying to spawn enderdragons, I also tried to spawn Ghasts :O

^Scenic Ghast picture, nice sunset and Ghast combo there ;p

Unfortunately, unlike Enderdragons, Ghasts just keep on flying… Upwards.. forever.
(I think)
They just kept going higher and higher, and I couldn’t get them to launch fireballs at me.
I don’t know if they are incapable in the overworld, if they need lava to do so, or what, but I couldn’t figure it out.
(Though, I suppose if I look at the code for a Ghast I could figure out something at least.)


 

The silly things just kept on flying away… like puffs in the wind, or clouds, or something.
IT was strange!! xD

I am also working on another mod, as these other ones were just for fun exploring what you can do with minecraft modding.
My current mod?

Well, it’s working already, but this is a small part of a major overhaul that I intend to draft out over the summer. (if I have time, which I might/should)

First thing I am doing and am halfway done with now?
Chicken eggs.
Yep, they spawn from Chickens all right.
But I have modded the game so that if you are holding a chicken egg in your hands (like it’s selected in your hotbar), then you take no fall damage and you fall in the same slow floating fashion as the chickens themselves do.
(yep! Awesome huh? :D)

I also made it so chicken eggs currently spawn lightning instead of baby chicklets, and do so 100% of the time rather than 1/8 of the time.
(This will be different in the final version of my mod)

The plan is as follows:

I will create a new Egg object that looks exactly like the normal egg object, and it will spawn rarely from chickens.
(The idea is that you won’t be able to tell if the chicken has spawned a rare egg that is a lightning egg or not)

This egg, not the other normal chicken eggs, WILL spawn lightning 100% of the time and WILL allow you to float like a chicken and take no fall damage.
(A very useful thing indeed.)

However, due to it’s rarity and usefulness in obliterating most mobs,
(Except creepers, pigs, and Endermen (well sometimes Enderment))
the player has to make a decision between using it as a weapon or as a tool.
(It is much more useful as a tool for floating down into ravines safely, or from the top of trees. Very useful for climbing trees, perhaps could even allow for new fortress designing mechanics, all based on the idea that members of the clan will ALWAYS carry an egg or two on them, so they can traverse the different sections of the fortress with ease.)

I do not have any ideas for other item mods or the like yet, but I will draft up some soon :>
OH WAIT! That is a tiny bit untrue.
I am working on making it so boats float in lava, and so they make you immune to fire while you ride them (else you’d catch on fire and your vision would be skewed with flames, very annoying and hard to navigate I’ll tell ya!))

The plan is to eventually replace the mod with an entire new Iron Boat, that is crafted from a normal boat, and which can be used in lava but will sink in water.
(okay, maybe it won’t sink in water, idk… I need to think about it :>
Lava is more dense than water, so the Iron boat would float more in Lava than water…)

I think if I can figure out how to do it, I want make a gigantic boat for a multiplayer server, a boat that can float on water and has a cockpit where one player can control it’s directions.
(And perhaps it will also have slots where crafted cannons can be placed, so one can build up an arsenal and load them with cannonballs.)

Speaking of which, it would make sense and it would be cool to make an extra large biome in which pirates spawn on their pirate ships, so a on a multiplayer server you can fight pirates and board THEIR ships and steal their loot, and then you can keep their ship as your own.

My true ambition is to create a meteorite that can crash into the minecraft world, and will scatter moonstone all over the land in the nearby biomes and oceans.
If you manage to collect enough moonstone you can create a portal to the moonrealm, where you will have to fight your way through the fortress there and defeat the boss.
Once defeated, you will earn yourself a space suit, which really is so you can dive underwater and not have the lack of oxygen kill you.
And so you can actually see what happens and is underwater.

I want to also add in a game mechanic whereby special chests spawn randomly underwater in the Ocean biome, chests that are nigh impossible to find if you don’t have the space suit from the moon realm.

Also, the moon realm will have it’s own special plants and biomes, and if you don’t defeat the boss and get the space suit within a certain span of time, you will begin to become infected and will slowly die.
(Like samus games kinda type genre)

Also, there will  be a secret uber hidden hard place to find on the moon realm, where you can find archaic symbols that give instructions on how to craft a moonstone crafting table, a table which allows you to craft special objects and the like from the native elements of the moon realm.
(Special potions, tools, etc)
These tools help on the moon realm specifically, and have some special applications down on earth too.
(Which I haven’t devised yet)

Only diamond tools are strong enough to mine the stones on the moon/planet, but once the other tools are crafted you can do much more and much more efficiently.

I am not sure how I want to design the portal, but I think it will require netherrack, obsidian, and moonstone…
And a torch pathway that leads to the portal.
The portal is ignited by placing a single torch at it’s doorstep.
When thus done, all the torches in a 50 km radius will disappear, and the day will instantaneously turn to night, and the portal will glow and swirl a chalky moonstone color.
The luminescence from the portal will be epic, I assure you :)

These are just my ideas.
Do I have what it takes to make these mods?
Currently no, but I do have the curiosity and desire to make them.

But like so many other hobbyists and noobs, I may not have the time to do all of this.
But I will report on what I do accomplish here, don’t worry :>
Thanks for reading! :D
I will update again soon (I think)!

Sincerely,

~James Dodon
(P.s. My final project in programming class is aiming to be a 2d minecraft like game…
I have a feeling game programming, even simple 2d game programming, is going to be a lot harder than I had anticipated… lol. But I have complete control over what happens, and can add in any features I wish. (Which is why I bought minecraft btw, because of the awesome modding scene. Totally unheard of in any other games ever)
As far as AP exams go, I have done Calculus and Chemistry, and now only have English (tomorrow morning) and Macroeconomics (next Thursday) left.
Chem sucked, Calc was pretty good, English will be okay (idk if I can get the 5 but I will try, it is possible), and Macro… well, we will see when I get there :)
That is all for now! XD
I will post my final project progress here as well,
Stay tuned! ;)

~James)