Lord of the Famine Adventure Map - Download Now!

Hello everyone,

Me and my friends are finished working on an adventure map called Lord of the Famine. Go to the forum post here: http://bit.ly/n6wXyl

Direct download here: http://db.tt/KUFQsOK

Enjoy!

- Aidan

Longer Youtube Videos Ahead!

Good news everyone!

While I was uploading a video through Youtube's website, (iMovie wasn't working for some reason) I got a message at the top that said

"Congratulations! Your account is now enabled for uploads longer than 15 minutes. Click the Upload button below to select a video."

I was completely caught off guard because I believed that you had to be a Youtube partner in order to upload videos longer then 15 minutes.

I looked it up and here's what Youtube posted on their blog (Posted in Dec. of 2010):

"Your creativity isn’t bound by a time limit, so why should your video uploads be? Back in July we raised the upload limit to 15 minutes for all users. Starting today, we’ll begin allowing selected users with a history of complying with the YouTube Community Guidelines and our copyright rules to upload videos that are longer than 15 minutes.

So go find that movie you wrote and filmed last year and share it with the world! Or upload your son’s championship high school basketball game or the insightful lecture you just gave on the emerging economics of green tech. As long as it’s your original content, it’s fair game regardless of length.

This launch has been made possible in part by the continued advances in our state-of-the-art Content ID system, as well as our other powerful tools for copyright owners. Over 1000 global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube, including every major U.S. movie studio and music label. We remain as dedicated as ever to building and improving the most sophisticated technology in the world to help copyright owners protect their rights"

(Full post here: http://bit.ly/qz13rI)

The only question now is: How long can they be? I think I can do a 1 hour, 20 min. video because a 40 minute video that I recorded was 10 GB, and the file size limit (When uploading it with the Java software thing that Youtube's got) is 20 GB. I probably won't be doing that. But, it's nice to know I can (:

Thanks Youtube for opening a lot more opportunities for me,

- Aidan 

(Edit: It seems as though you can't have "<" or ">" in your descriptions... That would've been nice to know...)

Preparing for 1.8 (Edited)

Hi everyone,

I relized that I haven't posted for a while. I've been too busy preparing for school and making videos, and of course... Minecraft. Which is what I'm going to be talking about (Surprise).


1.8 is coming out very soon, most likely early next week. From Notch's livestream and a video of someone filming 1.8, we know most of what will be in the new update. One of those features is the creative/surivival option. Wouldn't be great if Ops were to be able to have the creative mode while non ops got regular survival? I doubt that's going to happen (perhaps with a Bukkit plugin). But if there isn't a way to do half and half, I will probably stick with survival mainly becase the whole reason there is non-ops is so that they don't go on a lava/TNT spree. But, I am hopeful that a plugin will come along that enables a half and half funtionality.

Bukkit is usually good about updating very quickly (Example: They launched a version for 1.7 is just 15 min.!). But, with 1.8 being such a big update, they might be a day or two. So, if they are not quick, we will play on a regular Minecraft server for the time being (Read: No Mods). So don't come on the server and expect Bukit right of the bat.

That's all I really have to say. Just wanted to let you know. Here are the videos I was talking about from earlier.

PAX Livestream (With Notch playing + It's 52 min.)

An HD Look at the New Update (Only 3 min.)

1.8!

- Aidan

Edit: I have figured out that ops will be able to switch between creative and regular survival mode. Thanks to Notch for adding this. It's just what I needed!

I'm Back!

Hello everyone,

I am on the way home from Alaska and I think the server's down. I don't know how long it's been down, but I'll ask someone soon.

The new contest started yesterday and this week is aircraft week. Build the best aircraft of any size or type. I look forward to many awesome entries. See my other post for more details on the contest.


- Aidan

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!

Painterly Pack Updated for 1.7!

1.7 is out!

Although it isn't the 1.8 we hoped for, I have a customized Painterly Pack available for download. Download it here: http://db.tt/GvYxBvP

And if you don't know what's in the new update, here's the list copied from Notch's blog:

+ Added pistons
+ Fire or redstone is now required to trigger TNT
+ Fences can be stacked
+ Added shears
+ Shears can be used to pick up leaf blocks
+ Shears can be used to shear sheep without hurting them
* Sheep no longer drop wool from being punched
- Removed Herobrine


Have fun with 1.7 everyone!


- Aidan

New Video (Kind of) + New Painterly Pack + Moog/Thimble Schematics

Hey everyone,

There is lots of stuff in this blog post.

First, I uploaded a video like 6 hours ago and it still hasn't showed up on Youtube. When I get up in the morning I'll check to see if it's there or not. I'll try uploading it again if it's not. The new video is about the new stuff in Moog City (of course) as well as a tour of Thimble Lake city, a city that my friend created and that has been moved into the same world as Moog City. Edit: It still hasn't shown up. I have just started re-uploading it to see if that works. Edit 2: The video is up! http://bit.ly/j4e6c8

Painterly Pack had a major update on my birthday (the 24th). It now has texture support for lots of mods (none of which I use). Nonetheless, I have updated my texture pack with textures that I like for all the supported mods so you can have those sweet Painterly textures for your mods. Download it here: http://db.tt/GvYxBvP.

Finally, I've decided to put up major buildings in both cities as MCEDit .schematic files so if you have MCEDit, you can put them in your single/multiplayer worlds. I do have one request. If any of the schematics are shown in a video/picture, I would ask that you'd link to either here, or my Youtube channel (youtube.com/users/throughthemines). You can link to the Through the Mines website when it's finished. I'll let you know when that is. Here is the download: http://db.tt/wPiJTVC

Summer Checklist:
- Finish Flickr Photos
- Upload High Resolution Photos
- Put some High Res photos on minecraftwallpapers.com
- Create a different type of video (I can't just keep showing you Moog city!)
- Finish Through the Mines website.

Did I miss something?

- Aidan

Painterly Pack Updated + Video Soon!

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. School is almost over and I've been studying for finals. But tomorrow school lets out and I'll be working more on Through the Mines and Moog City.

First is a new Painterly Pack update. I've decided to only update my Painterly Pack when a new version of Minecraft come out that includes new blocks/items or when Painterly Pack has a major update. That way you won't always have to keep up with frequent updates.

Also, I'm working on a Through the Mines website (It's a cheapo Google Sites website though). It will have server info, a video hub, and possibly a blog hookup so you can see blog posts on the website.

The next video will be a Moog City video (again). I'll try to add some new stuff though.

Can't wait till tomorrow,

- Aidan

Painterly Pack Updated for 1.6!

Hey everyone,

What a great Friday this is, for new Painterly Pack textures are available for the new blocks/items in Minecraft. I've updated my pack  and you can download it on any one of my Youtube videos or on this blog.

Happy Downloading/Friday,

- Aidan

Painterly Pack Updated: New Textures, New Download Method

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I guess I've been busy playing Minecraft...

Anyway, of course more textures have been moved around. I'm going to have to change stuff again soon, though, because 1.6 is coming this week! (Those new hatch textures are going to be sweet...). Along with new textures, I also have noticed that along with Windows users, Mac users (Like myself) couldn't get the pack to work when downloading it from Dropbox (Which is what hosted the download). I think it may be something to do with two folders being zipped up into the same file (One of them was a folder called something like "MAC OS X" or something like that. It's probably equivalent to the trash folders on Windows thumbdrives). So, here are the steps needed to obtain my Painterly Pack (These steps are updated on all of my Youtube videos):


Want to download my custom Painterly Pack?: http://db.tt/nTUQeNb (.txt File)
Password Input Page: http://bit.ly/mJx6dM
How to download the actual .zip file:
1. Download and open the .txt file above
2. Copy all of the characters in that file
3. Go to the "Password Input Page" above
4. Paste the characters into the text box and click "Load this Pack!"
5. A page should come up with all my custom textures. You can either:
a) Continue to the bottom of the page and click "Create my Painterly Pack!"
b) Edit my textures and further customize it yourself. Then you can follow step "A"
6. After the pack has downloaded, move it into the folder for your operating system (Make sure Minecraft isn't open!):
Windows XP/Vista/7: %AppData%\.minecraft\texturepacks
Linux: ~/.minecraft/texturepacks
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/texturepacks
(Courtesy of Minecraft Wiki, Link Below)
7. Start up Minecraft, click on "Mods and Texture Packs" and select my pack from the list. Enjoy!


I'll work more on those high-res pictures now,

- Aidan

Updated Painterly Pack!

Hey everyone,

There's not much to say. I just moved a couple textures around is all. Download link is here: http://db.tt/TWVZ2eG.

Cheers,

- Aidan

New Video Including Moog City Metro and Pixel Art

Hey everyone,

There's a new Youtube video out (http://bit.ly/k5zKqG) that includes topics such as the Moog City Metro and a pixel art statue of Mario. See that and more by visiting the link.

Be sure to check it out,

- Aidan

New Photos and Painterly Pack

Hey everyone,

I've uploaded new photos, most of them are skyline shots of Moog City (With lots of rain!). I'm going to make a video today as well as get started on the high-resolution pictures (Which are 1920 x 1200 by the way). I also have homework to do...

Sigh,

- Aidan

Painterly Pack Windows Users Help

Hello everyone,

Over this weekend, I've been over at my cousins house and we tried numerous times to try to get my Painterly Pack working on his system. Luckily, I figured out a way and I'm going to share it with you in case your in this situation. I've updated all of my Youtube descriptions with this explanation:

"I have recognized that Windows users may have a tough time getting this pack to work. In this case follow these steps:
"1. Open the zip file and find the folder that has all of the textures in it.
2. Open the file that's called "password.txt."
3. Copy all the characters you see.
4. Go to painterlypack.net and click on the box that says "Share"
5. In the text box that appears on the page, paste the characters that you copied earlier and click "Load this pack!".
6. A page will pop up with all my custom textures in it. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click "Create my Painterly Pack!".
7. Once the file downloads DON'T OPEN IT. Drag the zip file into the texturepack folder. This folder can be found by opening Minecraft, clicking on "Mods and Texture Packs", and click "Open Texture Pack Folder".
8. Start up Minecraft, click "Mods and Texture Packs", and select my pack from the list. Enjoy!"

I hope this helps you,

- Aidan

Metro, Video, Photos, Oh my!

Hey everyone,

I've been working on something called the Moog City Metro (MCM for short). It's a metro that will connect all of Moog City, even the most far out of reach places. It was planned to do that anyway. It's all underground and will consist of "lines" like a ordinary metro. I've already made about four stations. They're not that glamorous yet (They don't have shops, waiting areas, etc.). But, they're functional for the most part.  One part of the line even has a tunnel that goes underwater (You do not know how long it took me to make that)! This metro was all made possible by the recent 1.5 update.

When it's finished it's going to be epic.

Expect a video on the metro coming up (Possibly even this weekend) as well as new Flickr photos showing the metro as well as other things.

I just remembered I have to put up the full resolution pictures for you guys!

So many things to do,

- Aidan