I finished off the moderate songs yesterday, and did the first three challenging songs. I didn’t manage to 100% any of the moderate songs; some of them I’m fairly confident that I could get 100% on if I tried hard enough, but on many of them that’s not the case. In general, I’m finding songs at this level to be a lot of fun to play and learn: it’s hitting the sweet spot of being complex enough that I enjoy the music and enjoy the learning process while not overwhelming me.

I'm at rank 77 with 8,282,866 points

I’m up to rank 77 now, with a little over 8 million points; that’s up 19 positions and about 550,000 points compared to last week. That’s an average improvement of almost 70,000 points per song; if I can keep that up, I’ll end up somewhere in the mid 30’s. Which isn’t completely crazy—I’m in that area for a fair number of individual songs—but of course other people are improving as well. Still, hitting 50th place doesn’t seem as unachievable as it once did. If things go well, I could even conceivably get a score of ten million; we’ll see how close I end up, and if the answer is “very close” I’ll probably go for it.

When we were playing through London Calling a week and a half ago, Jonathan asked if I’d been paying attention to my fan count. I hadn’t been paying attention too closely at the time, but I quickly figured out why he was asking; Jonathan, I’m paying attention to my fan count now:

malvasia bianca 281,323,808; Academy of Dr X 277,149,520

My apologies for the crappy screenshot: I don’t see a way to get that leaderboard on the Rock Band website. Which is too bad, because that screen shot is out of date: I’m actually at 289,672,432 fans now. Though I imagine that Jonathan will pass me again soon: the main reason for my recent climb is that Liesl and I finished off the road challenges over the last two weekends (we still have gold medals to earn on some of them, but at least now we’ve completed everything), and that’s given me a nice bump. It looks like he’s going through songs on guitar and keys now; that should give him a convincing lead over me.

When we last left our intrepid ravine explorer, he’d discovered a waterfall with lava visible way down at the bottom. So I gingerly picked my way around the waterfall and started building stairs down to the lower level.

Going around the back of the waterfall

Partway down - there's lava on both sides!

And the bottom was even more exciting than I’d hoped. There was a decent sized rock area for me to land in, but the waterfall had lava on not just one but two sides.

Lava on one side of the waterfall

Lava on the other side of the waterfall

Even more exciting than that, though, was my first diamond!

My first diamond!

And in the fourth direction from the waterfall, the cave went further back, leading to (surprise surprise) more lava.

Lava at end of cavern

Not just lava there, too: there’s redstone, iron, and coal.

Redstone, iron, and coal

In fact, when I got closer to the lava, I saw redstone in lots of places: here’s another example, and an example of gold for good measure.

Closer to the lava, with more redstone

There's gold here, too

I wanted to explore more, but how? I ended up with a scheme that I’m quite happy about: I dug a passage in the walls one block away from the lava, and also removed the block at chest height right next to the lava so I could see what I was doing. I did this initially for pragmatic reasons, so I could make sure I was staying near the lava without putting myself at risk of falling in (and, as a bonus, it meant that I didn’t need torches), but I ended up really liking it for aesthetic reasons: it created a quite nice viewing gallery all around the lava.

Here are a few examples, which also show more of the redstone that was waiting to be found. In one of them, you’ll also see a chest: Miranda had recently had a bad experience with lava in her game, so she convinced me that I should build a chest to store the goodies that I’d been collecting.

Digging a gallery around the lava

At the end of one branch of the lava

Gallery on the far side of the lava

On the far side of the lava from where I started, there was another cave; I explored it, finding more lava, more redstone, and more gold. It wasn’t too big, though.

Another cave, with more gold

More lava, redstone, and coal

With that, I was finally done exploring the ravine: I’d expected it to be large, but not that large! Great to have so much redstone, too: in fact, right now what I really want is more iron ore, because I’m thinking that at some point I’m going to want to go on a minecart track building frenzy. (One of the ideas I’m toying with for the rest of my home mountain is hollowing out most of it to build a huge train station.)

I’m not entirely sure what my next project will be: if I do do the train station, it will be a while before it comes to fruition. I’ll definitely do some exploring above the surface, maybe that will inspire me further? (A pity that there’s no way to skip the night part – any way to get the game to keep going when I’m using another program?) Maybe I’ll spend time just grinding for iron ore, too.

I'm rank 96 with 7,735,307 points as of February 13, 2011

I had a lot of free time this weekend, a fair amount of which I spent working on Rock Band pro keys songs, and it’s paid off: I’ve reached my goal much faster than I expected! Specifically, as of today I’m rank 96, with a score of 7,735,307 points.

Which I am super excited about. And I’m nowhere near done: I’m only four songs into Moderate difficulty, which means that I have a full three and a half tiers of songs to improve my performance on. Which is just as well, I’m sure that by next weekend I’ll be under 100 again if I don’t do anything; but clearly I can do a lot better.

Right now I’d need about 9,100,000 points to reach 50th place; that would mean I’d need to improve my score by about 50,000 points on each of the remaining songs, which seems (barely) doable. Of course, by then the bar for 50th place will be higher, so I probably won’t ever reach it, but I should be able to put quite a bit of room between myself and 100th place. It’s certainly not uncommon for me to be somewhere in the 30s on individual song rank, though it’s also not uncommon for me to be quite a bit lower than that.

I’ve given up on the idea of getting 100% on most of the songs. I only managed it on two of the Apprentice songs and one of the Solid songs; I could get 100% on many more if I tried, but not all of them (there’s one Apprentice song (Humanoid) that I haven’t even gotten five stars on yet), and so far I’m not convinced that I’ll be able to get 100% on any of the Moderate songs even if I put in quite a bit more work than I have.

Judging by my ranks on individual songs, my skill set seems quite a bit different from many of my competitors’. I’m still not particularly good on songs that are fast and repetitive, so even when I feel like I’m doing well on those my rank is in the three-digit range. Conversely, with songs that are more melodic or that have what seem to me to be completely natural chord progressions, I’ll find myself in the mid 30’s after not very many attempts, even though I miss a few notes that I know I’m capable of hitting. It makes me feel better about my guitar scores – I feel that I’m a pretty decent Rock Band guitarist, but I’m not nearly as good at the really hard fast songs as many people seem to be, so I’m happy that, while their skills seem to transfer to some extent to pro keys, having a solid piano/harpsichord background is more helpful.

After finishing my house (at least for the time being), I decided to head back to the bottom of the ravine, and see how big the cave system is there.

Here we go!

There’s a river right at the bottom; in the other direction is darkness plus some coal.

A river over here

I wonder what's on this side?

And that dark area is quite big, it turns out. Here are some sample pictures, there are a lot more where they came from.

More cave

Still more cave

Yup, you guessed it: more cave

If you look up in this direction, you can barely see light from a torch from an upper part of the ravine

I wish iron were a bit more abundant...

In one direction, there’s what looks like a gravel wall: there is a gap in the wall, however, and behind it, you guessed it, more cave.

Gravel wall

More cave behind the gravel

Hidden cave behind coal seam

That last section was one of the few places where I had to dig to uncover the next bit of cave: I mined a bit of coal, and found an opening behind it. (Though I think that I eventually found a place where it connected back to the rest of the cave system.) With that possible exception aside, this is all one huge natural cave system, connecting back to the surface through natural passageways; now that I’ve put in torches, I wouldn’t be surprised if I run into sheep and cows down here the next time I visit.

I can still find my way around the cave system, but only just barely. At some point, I should put up signs to help me navigate the key points, because without that it’s very easy to go in circles.

Cave behind coal seam

A long, steep waterfall, with lava visible through it down at the bottom

I’d been amazed at the size of the caves so far, but the geography hadn’t been particularly striking until that last bit. That’s when I found a waterfall going down a hole in the side of a cave; looking through the water, it went quite a way further down, and ran into lava beneath. Exciting! But how am I going to get down there to explore it?

After my interludes of mining and exploring, I decided it was time to finish off my house. I’d left space for a fourth floor, so I just had to figure out what to put there.

It was noticeably smaller than the previous floors, and I decided to just put it as one big room. It mostly fit fairly naturally into a rectangle; one corner didn’t quite work that way, and if I extended the floor there, then it made the third floor balcony too dark, so I put an indentation on that corner. (But, unlike the second and third floors, the indentation was square instead of jagged.)

Left side of fourth floor

Middle of fourth floor

Right side of fourth floor

The big difference between the three floors is how they interact with the arch: the second floor is just barely below the arch, the third floor is right up against the bulk of the arch, and the fourth floor is mostly above the arch. I put a door on the fourth floor leading out to the top of the arch: if you look through it, you have a lovely view of the waterfall spire that I’d recently explored.

View of waterfall through the fourth floor arch door

I put a very small balcony outside the indented area on the left.

Small fourth floor balcony

You’ll notice a gap in the railing there. Originally, there was railing on all the edges; but then, at one point, I entered the fourth floor and noticed that a guest had somehow dropped down onto the balcony.

Cow on balcony

Because of the railing, it was stuck. So I removed the railing, hoping that the cow would jump down through that (I didn’t want to lead it through my house); it was reluctant, so I gave it a shove. Unfortunately, when I went down to the ground, I found that there was a reason why it was reluctant to make that leap:

Cow, R.I.P.

I still don’t have a solution to this; I’m hoping that not too many other animals will drop down onto the balcony.

On a lark, I also put some stairs going up from the back of the room. They lead to the top of the mountain, with a view of the desert containing my spawn point below.

Stairs leading up from back of fourth floor

View of desert and spawn point from top of stairs

That’s all the work I’m planning to do on the house for now. (With the possible exception of doing something with the pantry area; also, once I’ve grown more sugarcane, I’ll probably put in some bookshelves.) It makes a coherent chunk; there is quite a bit more mountain behind it to hollow out, but I want to think for a bit before putting something there. So, for now, I’ll get back to my mining and do some more exploration. (And possibly combine the two, while coming to terms with the ravine!)

After my last round of mining, I thought it was time to explore above ground a bit more. (Especially since I now had a compass, so I knew I wouldn’t get lost!) When working on the rooftop, I’d gotten curious about what was north of the house, past the arch and body of water that I’m on the edge of.

First, though, a picture of the outside of the house: you can see the arch I keep talking about, the second and third floor windows, the third floor balcony:

Looking up at my house from outside.

And here’s the bay that I wanted to travel across:

View north, across the bay

After going a bit further, I could see the spire with a waterfall streaming down from it that had caught my eye earlier: here’s a dim view of it. I love the spit of land in the foreground, too, with the hill and the single tree on top of it.

Dim view of waterfall with spit of land in foreground

Here’s a somewhat closer view of the waterfall: this was taken from the right side of the spit of land in the previous question. Notice also the dirt/grass block floating in midair: that’s the world’s fault, I didn’t put it there.

Closer view of waterfall, complete with floating dirt block

Here’s a look back at the spit of land (which turns out to have a second tree growing on the end). What I really like about this one, though, is the water to the right of the spit of land: it looks like ruins from a former city there underwater.

Underwater ruins next to the spit of land

Here are two more views of the waterfall; the sheep surveillance police are here as well, keeping tabs on me.

The waterfall really is majestic up close

Hello, sheep

Looking on, we have another spire, and a more substantial floating island; not sure where those floating islands are coming from, but I find them rather charming somehow.

Another spire further down, complete with floating island

Floating island, from below

Really, every picture at this point is beautiful. Here’s a view back at the waterfall spire:

Looking back at the waterfall spire

and two views of how the game generates trees, one a valley filled with trees and the other a single tree standing proudly alone.

A tree-filled valley

A single, proud tree

I turned around at this point, and headed back on the other side of the waterfall spire. I ran into a lake surrounded by mountains which, when I investigated, turned out to contain the first sugarcane that I’ve seen. (Which I grabbed the top parts of for farming purposes back home.)

A lake surrounded by mountains

Sugarcane!

I ran into a single square of water around here; Miranda encouraged me to pick it up to create a spring from, but for now I’ve left it alone.

A single square of water

Here’s a view of an expanse of water on the way back, dotted with tree islands:

Water with tree islands

And finally, I reached familiar territory. At this point, I was on the other side of my arch, near the ravine. I’d sort of forgotten that, when I initially exited that ravine, I climbed up a hill and built walkways to cross over to some nearby trees; but they’re still there, floating in midair.

These floating walkways were my fault

And here’s the back of my home arch, with the second and third floor windows visible.

The back of my home arch

A neat trip, with some lovely scenery: it makes me want to explore the area more but not actually build anything there, because I’m afraid that whatever I build would mar what is there now.

I’d gotten a little overwhelmed by the size of the cave I found the last time I went mining, but after my recent house work, I decided it was time to head back down to the mines. (Among other things because I wanted access to more ores – I hadn’t found any gold, redstone, or diamond.) So I went down to the basement of my house, and started digging in a different direction.

Second stairs down from basement

After a bit, I hollowed out a workroom, and then kept going.

A workroom I built partway down the stairs

MOAR STAIRS!

Eventually, I hit a natural cave, and put a workroom there as well:

Natural cave at bottom of stairs

Workroom in natural cave at bottom of stairs

In that second picture, you’ll see what looks like a hole in the back of the wall. I didn’t put that there: it was a natural window looking out onto another pre-existing cave. And when I wandered over to look through it, this is what I saw:

What's that waterfall cave doing here?

Purely by chance, even though I hadn’t paying any attention to where I was digging, I’d ended up at a cave that had a view of the earlier waterfall cave! I’ll have to admit, it was very odd to look through that window and see torches there: I’d thought I was digging through new terrain.

It was odd, and it was also a little frustrating: the whole point of this digging was to do mining in a way that ran into less overwhelming caves. So I did a U-turn and started digging from that room in the opposite direction, back under where I’d come from.

Turn around and dig some more

After going not too far, I hit a nice little lava flow:

A small cave with a lava flow

And then a large natural cave:

A large natural cave

If I’m remembering correctly (I wasn’t in the habit of taking pictures at this time), this is where I found my first gold! And it was a large cave, large enough that I didn’t end up exploring it all: instead, I went back to where I’d been digging stairs and continued doing so.

Down, down, down

Eventually (you can imagine another long stairs picture here), I hit redstone! Again, no picture of the stone, but here’s where I mined it out:

Here's where I found redstone

And, a little ways beyond that, I hit bedrock:

We're at bedrock

So: success! I still haven’t found diamond, but redstone and gold meant that I could build a compass and a watch, which were the two main items that I wanted. And that view of the earlier waterfall cave, was really something: I can’t imagine having created a view like that if I’d planned it myself, yet the world just gave it to me.

I’d been in a Rock Band drought during the job search, but that’s changed this week: I got in a bit of pro keys practice over the weekend, I had a very pleasant Monday evening playing Rock Band with some soon-to-be former coworkers, and this week’s VGHVI game was a playthrough of The Clash’s album London Calling.

And wow, what an album, and what a way to experience it. The VGHVI gaming sessions have been going on for over two years now, and Jonathan, Roger, and I have been there for almost every one. This is our eleventh time playing Rock Band together (we go by the band name Μῆνιν Ἄειδε), I really enjoy playing with the two of them, and it’s a very good way to experience albums in particular.

Somewhat reluctantly, I played the drums this time, but it turned out to be a great choice. I could go through the whole album on Hard, most of the time it was challenging but not stressful, and there were definitely moments when I was proud of myself. Really, I should embrace the notion of playing drums on VGHVI Rock Band nights: I wish I were better at drums, and it’s a low-pressure way to experiment (especially because other people are there to provide extra star power and to save me if necessary).

Which isn’t to say that I’m not looking forward to playing the album on other instruments! Liesl and I will probably go through it this weekend, which will give me a chance to try it on guitar, and I imagine I’ll find time to do it on bass eventually, too. Singing, who knows; and the few “keyboard” parts that I tried the other day turned out to be not very interesting horn parts.

After finishing the third floor, I wasn’t sure how the shape of the hill above me would work, so I decided to build up to the top of the hill before going back and putting in a fourth floor. (If, indeed, there was room for a fourth floor at all!)

Steps up from the third floor

You’ll see a glass enclosure at the top of the steps: if I went straight in that direction until I hit the outside, there really wasn’t room to put a door, but I also didn’t want to turn left and up too early. After some experimentations (the placement of the door took some work, in particular), I ended up with a glass enclosure that I’m rather happy with. Here’s a view looking down into it (the stairs from before are off to the right, just barely blocked from view)

Looking back at the glass enclosure

and here’s an explanation of why I care about enclosures and doors so much:

Sheep are everywhere

Here’s the door in question, leading out to the rooftop area:

Heading out to the roof

And the rooftop itself:

Rooftop, complete with tree

I’m really happy with that. I leveled it out a bit, but left it rough around the edges, and I planted the tree. In fact, I experimented with planting multiple trees, but eventually decided that a single tree was better. (Strong Centers.)

In the other direction, here’s the top of the arch that had been blocking windows on the second and third floors. It’s a lot narrower here – it’s that green path snaking to the sand.

Looking out over the arch

Looking out over that water also got me curious about the hills I could see in the distance; eventually I went exploring in that direction, but that’s a later blog post.

Also from a later time, but I’ll mention it now: it turns out that the top of this hill is visible and even accessible from my spawn point, and indeed from fairly far in every direction. So I built a pillar with torches on top, to be able to find my way back here from a distance.

Lights on the top of the hill

Now on to the third floor. As before, I put light on two sides of the entrance room:

Entrance room of to third floor

This time, however, the arch was blocking most of one side; I ended up solving that by having a long wide hall with windows at both ends and more torches than normal.

A long, wide hall; the arch would be on the left

I also created a workroom, which is currently my primary storage and smelting area. (I’m running out of chest space, though, I should put in some more.)

Third floor workroom

You may have noticed a balcony in that first picture: now I’m starting to craft my surrounding landscape a little more explicitly.

Looking down over the tree farm from the balcony

Viewing the sunset from the balcony window

That crafting hasn’t been entirely successful: in particular, the balcony blocked the view from the second floor window more than I would have liked. Inspired by Stanford’s outside stairs, I decided to add some going up on the outside from the balcony:

Stairs up from the balcony

If you go all the way up the stairs and look in the right direction, you can see where my spawn point was in the desert.

Hello, spawn point down there!