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MineHa.us Creative Update: New Creative Server + Textures

by stifflered November 15, 2021 Leave a Comment

This week’s update is all about being creative. With new textures and a Creative Flatworld Server, I hope you’ll find some inspiration to get started and tell stories!

by stifflered November 15, 2021 Leave a Comment

Minecraft is all about being creative and imaginative, so lately I’ve been working on adding more creative features to the mineha.us network. Providing new features that both spark imaginative ideas and allow players to act on those ideas is important to the creative process, so that’s what today’s update is all about. I’m not a big fan of doing the same thing as every other server, though, so I’m approaching these new features with a plan to keep simplicity in mind while still being unique. I want to get out of the way of players and give them freedom to explore their ideas, and then I’ll make other updates in the future to match their desires. As with the previous updates, this one all about laying strong foundations. New (Old) Textures, Items, and Recipes Back in the day when I ran the Villagered SMP and TreeCrafters servers, we had a number of different items and custom recipes to make life…

Life

Not Small In Effort, Just Small In Scope

by stifflered November 12, 2021 Leave a Comment

In my efforts to continue to keep my content minimal, I’ve also been launching projects that are small in scope. Is this a good thing?

by stifflered November 12, 2021 Leave a Comment

If you’ve read my blog before, you may have noticed a past article I published about how I’ve been reworking my online presence with minimalism in mind. So far, that effort has been paying off well! And I’m glad to share some lessons I’m learning along the way. When it comes to minimalism, it’s easy to take the wrong approach and believe that means putting in low effort or thinking small in scale, but neither of those could be further from the truth. Minimalism isn’t about reducing the quality of the efforts you put into your work – it’s about maximizing the impact those efforts have in bite-sized pieces. Lately, I’ve been playing around more with releasing content publicly that I promote very little (or not at all) through my main “brand”. This has allowed me to experiment with some unique, small ideas, and the results have been eye-opening for me. Rather than trying to create massive projects with a…

MineHa.us Server

MineHa.us Voices Update: Spatial Voice, Emojis, and More

by stifflered October 25, 2021 2 Comments

In today’s update I’m adding new ways to make money, custom items, chat emojis, and support for spacial voice chat to the MineHa.us server network!

by stifflered October 25, 2021 2 Comments

There has been a lot that’s happened over the last few weeks with the MineHa.us survival server network. Lots of small updates, and a few pretty major ones, too! This blog post isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list (you’ll need to join the Discord server for that), but I do want to try and cover all of the major new features that you might want to know about to increase your fun times on the server. Spatial Voice Chat (for Forge and Fabric users) Players are not required to use voice chat, and if they don’t a small icon will appear above their head for mod users. Since the MineHa.us server is currently focused on gameplay for VR players (even though non-VR players are more than welcome to join), I wanted to bring voice chat to the game. This is a follow-up on the previous update that added ways to interact with the world without using commands, because text…

Minecraft, MineHa.us Server

MineHa.us Server Update: Protection Stones and Waystones

by stifflered October 16, 2021 Leave a Comment

Part of the challenge of running a Minecraft server for VR players is finding ways to add helpful features without making them type commands. Today’s update accomplishes that.

by stifflered October 16, 2021 Leave a Comment

There are two main features on a Survival Minecraft Server that are practically required: Grief ProtectionTeleports/Warps Both of these are easy for your standard Java Edition player, who has a keyboard at hand that they can use to type commands with. That’s not so useful for the MineHa.us Survival Server, though, since it’s built for Minecraft VR. That means we need a different solution that doesn’t rely on commands. Today, I’m adding those two features to the server using simple methods that are easy for Java Edition, Bedrock, and even VR players to use. Let’s check them out: Protection Stones When you first arrive on the VR server and turn around to leave the front door, you will now see a button that says, “Don’t forget your FREE Protection Stone!” Clicking on this button will give you a Medium Protection Stone, the only one you’ll get for free, which is good for protecting a 64×64 region in the world. You…

Life

How Minimalism Always Draws Me Back

by stifflered October 14, 2021 2 Comments

Life is full of cycles. I start off with minimalism in mind, then later get grandiose ideas for things to improve, only to eventually restart with minimalism again. Welcome to another lap.

by stifflered October 14, 2021 2 Comments

When I was younger, I would recreate my website about once every 4-6 months. I was never really very satisfied with the designs or directions, but that was OK. I was learning a lot, practicing my skills, and slowly figuring out who I wanted to be online. But, as I aged, that process slowed down. These days the refreshes only come once every year or two, which is nice for my sanity. Unfortunately, I tend to keep to some similar old habits that I grew into in my younger years. I am a visionary. That can mean different things for different people, but for me it’s about a constant desire to find and execute on improvements. I seek out change, growth, and development. I’m always getting new ideas for how to make things “better”, and I don’t often stop scratching at those improvements until I’m satisfied. The trouble is, this hasn’t ever really been conducive for the type of person…

Minecraft

Ask “Why?” and “How?” When Building Creatively in Minecraft

by stifflered October 14, 2021 Leave a Comment

If you ever find yourself wondering why your builds aren’t feeling quite “alive” enough, asking these two questions can lead to more depth and unique ideas that can help you along the way.

by stifflered October 14, 2021 Leave a Comment

Years ago, I read an article by sci-fi author John Scalzi that mentioned one of his strategies for writing a great novel. It was a short comment, but it’s stuck with me over a decade later: Whenever he’s finished with a section of the story he’s telling, he goes back through and he asks “Why?” and “How?” something works the way it does. Whether it’s a character’s decision to go to a meeting, the way a spaceship’s engine works, or why two neighbors don’t like each other, he asks those questions. And when he comes up with an answer, he asks those questions again. Like a toddler that just learned that those two words even exist. He does this at least two layers deep, and if the answers are satisfactory he keeps them in the story (well, I’m sure there are exceptions). An Example of How This Works Story point: The enderman stepped through his front door and hit his…

Life

Is Integrity Antiquated?

by stifflered October 13, 2021 Leave a Comment

It can be difficult to navigate the complexities of life, especially when the world is dominated by controversies. Knowing who we are as individuals and what we stand for is a great first step.

by stifflered October 13, 2021 Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend about your typical controversial topics like vaccines and the government. He’s that type of friend that I can enjoy sparring with on tough topics: Even though I think he’s a fool sometimes (and he rightly believes I am as well), at least we have a mutual respect during our conversations. I genuinely have love for the guy. After some time during that chat, though, I realized that he wasn’t being entirely honest. There’s a lot of context that I’ll skip over, but put simply he believed that the government was evil because it was mandating COVID vaccines that Pfizer, Moderna, and other companies could make money off of. On the other hand, my friend believed that Rand Paul should be applauded for finding a way to use his position in the government to make money off of COVID remdesivir treatments. When this dissonance was brought to his attention he simply…