August is Vehicle Month!

Hello everyone,

I wanted to announce that August is Vehicle month. All month long we are doing contests with vehicles. Its going to be split up into 3 weeks:

• Aug. 8 - 14 Aircraft Week. Build the most spectacular flying machine ever built. It's not limited to a specific type of aircraft.
• Aug. 15 - 21 Car Week. Build the coolest car. 
• Aug. 22 - 29 Boat Week. Build the slickest boat. Can be a one man submarine or the Titanic!

Now for some rules and regulations:

1. No mutant vehicles. Ex. No flying boats or cars.
2. No griefing, of course.
3. The judging of all the contests will take place at 1 P.M. on the day the contest ends.
4. You can build them wherever you want (I don't mean build them in a guy's backyard. Be reasonable!)
5. There will be no stretching the time for the contests whatsoever.

Have fun building! I can't wait to judge!

Oh, and the reason that there's not going to be a contest the first week in August is because I'm going to be on a boat; in Alaska. I'll probably be able to get internet on the boat. But, I'm putting off the contests just in case...

Happy building,

- Aidan

New Painterly Pack and Customized John Smith Pack Up for Download!

Hey everyone,

I noticed that Painterly Pack had a update 5 days ago. Sorry if anyone was waiting on it. I use John Smith's texture pack now, but I still customize and put up a customized Painterly Pack because some people may prefer it.

So, my new Painterly Pack has been updated for all of the mods that Painterly Pack supports. And, like I said above, I'm putting my customized John Smith pack up for download as well. Here they are:

John Smith: http://db.tt/RhEFpsx
Painterly Pack: http://db.tt/GvYxBvP

Note: Since John Smith is a HD texture pack, I was disappointed to find out it didn't have an HD font. So, I found a font from another texture pack and put that in there so now it's totally HD! Plus, remember to use this MC Patcher for Johnny's Pack: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1021&t=252531. All credit goes to John! All I did is copy and paste! Here's his page on the forums: http://bit.ly/nDv32J. Go there to customize your own pack!

Enjoy,

- Aidan

Statistics

Hi everyone,

I just thought some people would like to know some statistics and milestones on my Youtube channel and the server. Here they are:

Server

• The world folder (Not the entire server folder) is up to almost 1.4 GB!
• Thimble Lake City has joined our server (which probably got us up to that file size). I really enjoy not seeing just Moog City all the time. Thanks to Emilio Gutierrez for his amazing work on that city and thanks for letting me steal it (:
• In June, we transitioned from a regular Minecraft Server to a Bukkit one. It's been amazing. I love Bukkit! (Run a regular server? Get Bukkit here: bukkit.org)
• We have been griefed three or four times *Sarcastic "Yay"*
• I think we have registered about 10 people on the server... I really wish I had more. Please contact me if you want to be on the server.
• I launched a survival server (not many people have noticed though)! You can join this server if you want too. Its a bare bones regular Minecraft server.

Youtube

• One of the reasons I decided to write this post is because we recently passed... 15,000 total video views on all of my videos. It's a start.
• Almost half of those views is How to Build an Automated Boat Dock which has 7 ½ thousand views. 
• An interestion tidbit is that over 60% of my viewers are from outside the U.S. The country who has the most views other the the U.S. is the Netherlands. Interesting...
• And we have 22 subscribers.

Plans for the Future 0_o

• I'm thinking about maybe doing some time lapse videos of some big structures.
• Maybe tutorials... (On what though!?!)
• I was also thinking about maybe doing some videos of me playing some Minecraft songs. Sebastian Wolff (http://sebastianwolff.info/) hasn't made any more sheet music for Minecraft yet... Maybe I could possible conjure up some of my own. Maybe I could even create a whole different channel for piano in the future. (By the way, if you play piano and video games, Sebastion has tons of sheet music for you to play. He has Portal music too)

Or maybe I'm just tired and making up weird ideas.

Anyway, hope you like this post,

- Aidan

New Contest: The Ugliest House!

Hi everyone,

So today I thought of a wonderful idea: to make a contest! And the best part: It's a contest to see who can build the ugliest house! I want it to be even uglier then that guys house up there! Here are the rules and guidelines:

1. You must make it out of at least two materials. The more the uglier.
2. The houses will be made in the middle of nowhere (The spot will be determined by me). After the contest is finished, I'll film all the houses and film blowing them up. Then, I'll post the video on Youtube!
3. No griefing (of course).

Suggestions:

1. Use lots of materials!
2. Use too much lighting.
3. Make ugly redstone contraptions.
4. Make it random!

There will be a 1st and a 2nd place winner. The contest ends July 31 at 2 P.M. Happy ugly building.

By the way, I would give you more time. But, I'm going on vacation on the 1st and I want to be able to make and post the video.

- Aidan

New Voice Chatting Service for the Servers

Hello everyone,

I have set up a server on a voice chatting service called Imvox. You can find the client download at their website here: http://www.ayalogic.com/.  You have to set up an account (You can make one when you start up the client) and connect to the server. The name of the server is "Through the Mines Server". You need a password. Just come on while I'm on and I'll tell you the password (If you get the password from me you can tell it to only other people who are on the server).

I hope this works...

- Aidan

Server will be Down for at the Most 3 hours for System Update!

Hi everyone,

The day is finally here (for me at least), for the next operating system, OSX Lion, is here to download. Since I want this to go as quickly as possible, I've decided to shut down the servers to get peak download speed (since I'm downloading a 3.5 GB file). But, like I said, they should be up in three hours at the most (It will most likely be two). Thanks for being patient everyone and if you have a compatible Mac, go download it right now!

- Aidan


Edit: It just finished downloading. The installation should take a little more then 30 minutes.

Edit 2: Wow, this took a lot faster then I thought. It should be only 40 minutes before the server's back up!

Edit 3:  And it's done! You can get both servers now. Plus now I can access server files again. Yay!