by Stone Marshall | Dec 30, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Now may be the time to jump back into Minecraft as new rounds of free content and deals are launched for the holidays. Players can now obtain the new adventure map Catastrophic Pandamonium for free from the Minecraft Marketplace which showcases the newest update features including pandas, cat designs, scaffolding, the latest mob, and more.
Also available now are new Holiday Bundles that offer discounts and deals on many items in the Minecraft Marketplace. Finally, on December 25th, players can get a free Winter Gifts Bundle that includes free maps, skins, and worlds, so don't forget to sign in for all of this content.
All offers expire January 4th at 10:00 AM PST and are only available on these versions of Minecraft–Xbox One, Windows 10 Edition, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch.
by Stone Marshall | Dec 29, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Though my ten-year-old’s obsession with Minecraft first took hold three years ago—back when Minecraft was all the rage—I have to hand it to him. He’s sticking with it, despite the imperialist hegemony of Fortnite. What’s more, he’s not a fan of the newer game. “Too much violence,” he says, despite his affection for Nerf guns and laser tag.
The Minecraft connection began when some of my friends came by with an iPad and a teenager. “While we catch up,” my friends said, “Henry [their kid] can show Gus [my kid] all the stuff he’s building in Minecraft.”
It sounded innocent enough—not like the kind of thing that would destroy the very fabric of our family.
“Hey dad,” Gus asked the next day. “Can I download an app? It’s only $4.99.”
Coincidentally, his aunt had just sent him an iTunes gift card, so who was I to say no?
Five minutes later, he was laughing at the iPad. I felt good. For once I had done the right thing. I had allowed him his freedom. Little did I know that would be the last normal conversation my son and I would share before I lost him forever, literally down a mineshaft.
Hours later, he remained unmoved on the couch, still chuckling at the device.
“What are you watching now?” I asked.
“Still playing Minecraft!” he shouted over the din in his earbuds.
I choked on my coffee. What would my wife do when she caught wind of this? We had not discussed whether or not downloading Minecraft was okay.
I began formulating my arguments. My first line of defense would be to deny culpability: “I didn’t know what he was downloading!” No good. What parent lets his kid download something without knowing what it is?
Better to play the nostalgia card. “Let’s not overreact here,” I’d mansplain. “Don’t forget—you had an Atari 2600 growing up. And when I was seven, I had some weird triangular Coleco thing. I spent my childhood days rotating a giant knob in order to hit a green square with a rectangle. And I turned out fine!”
As is often encouraged in parenting books that I’ve read the jackets of while waiting for my family at the mall, it’s best to show some interest in your children’s activities. So I took a seat next to Gus on the sofa.
“Wow!” I said, “Looks cool. Kind of pixellated and retro-y. Yet futuristic.”
“Want to see my house?” Gus said. “That’s my bed…”
A bed? In a video game? How raunchy does this game get?
“Why do you need a bed?”
“Duh. So I can sleep.”
This explained nothing.
“Do you have to make the bed? Wash the sheets?”
“Of course not, dad!”
That’s when I realized something. Even though this was his first solo game of Minecraft, he seemed to know everything about it.
“Gus,” I asked, not wishing to appear dumber than I already did. “Didn’t you just download Minecraft this morning? How do you know all this stuff?”
“Reading, dad! They have books in the library. Plus, we play it at Noah’s.”
I breathed a big sigh of relief. The fault was not entirely mine! I could pin the rap on the Damaskes—a family so adorable nobody could ever stay mad at them for anything.
“So, what’s your score?” I asked him.
“There is no score.”
“How do you know who’s winning?”
“Nobody wins in creative. You just play.”
“How many lives do you have left?”
“I said I’m in creative!”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you just build stuff!”
“How many blocks do you get?”
“As many as you want. Want to play?” he asked.
Truth be told, I did want to play. But I held back. Because, like a professional gambler or an obsessive collector (my grandfather and father, respectively), I had stopped playing video games after I flunked out of med school thanks to Prince of Persia (Mac version, 1993).
Friends with similarly addicted children have tried to be reassuring. “It’s not as bad as other games,” they say. “It’s social, at least. Sort of. And… creative!”
Our house is now full of Minecraft paraphernalia—books, Legos, night lights, swords, and stuffed animals. One stuffed animal just looks like a giant green erection, testicles and all. Thousands of years from now, the plastic action figures will be dug up by future archaeologists who will rack their brains trying to unravel their significance.
It’s overwhelming—and I haven’t even mentioned the videos.
One morning, Gus was using the iPad when a new voice filled the room—an Englishman’s voice. I got a creepy feeling.
The horror…
Enlarge / The horror…
“Guys?” I asked from the kitchen, “Are you, like, playing Minecraft over the Internet?”
“I’m watching a video.”
“A video… of Minecraft?”
“Yeah, this guy’s awesome! His name is DanTDM.”
Actually, DanTDM is apparently so awesome that if you type “Da” in the YouTube Search Bar what you see first is “DanTDM.” I clicked, a sinking feeling rising from my bowels, and read:
“The Diamond Minecart. 1,706 videos. 9,251,825 subscribers.”
“Holy f**k!” I said reflexively. “Minecraft | 5 Secrets About DanTDM!! has 21 MILLION views! How the hell did he get 21 million views?”
“By being awesome, that’s how!”
“Sorry, I just. I can’t. I don’t. I’m not sure how to process this.”
I looked back on everything I’d done and suddenly realized my life was nothing more than a series of thwarted efforts: getting thrown out of medical school, moving to LA, getting laid off by the National Lampoon, then moving back to Boston and finding six years of digital comedy wiped clean from the website, as if it never existed. When all I ever had to do was play video games!
So here’s the big question: is my boy technically “addicted” to Minecraft? Let’s look at the risk factors, as enumerated by Medical News Today.
1. Person takes the substance and cannot stop. Things have gotten so bad that our only effective punishment is withdrawal of Minecraft. Such threats result in everything that occurs with addiction: “moodiness, bad temper, poor focus, a feeling of being depressed and empty, frustration, anger, bitterness and resentment.”
2. Symptoms of insomnia accompany withdrawal. On weekends, Gus wakes up before sunrise to play Minecraft or watch Minecraft videos.
3. Addiction continues despite health problem. Gus’s thumb is blistered and sore as a result of playing. Nevertheless, he chooses to suffer.
4. Social and/or recreational sacrifices accompany addiction. The other night Gus stated he would much rather stay home by himself playing Minecraft than see his sister perform at their school—though this should come as no surprise to anyone.
5. User diligently maintains a good supply. Gus is hyper-vigilant about plugging the iPad in at night to ensure it will be fully charged come morning.
6. User takes risks to acquire substance. The boy frequently steals the iPad, without asking, to sneak in a game of Minecraft.
7. User needs substance to deal with problems. Gus’ happiness is directly proportional to the time spent playing Minecraft.
8. Obsession with substance. It’s all he talks about. He literally counts down the minutes to the time he’s finally allowed to play: “Ten minutes till Minecraft!”
9. User seeks solitude and acts in secrecy. On more than one occasion, Gus has hidden beneath a blanket, secretly indulging in Minecraft. Given a choice, I feel confident he would much rather hang out with Minecraft than with either one of his parents (though, again, this should come as no surprise to anybody).
10. User denies having a problem. Far from being a problem, Gus sees Minecraft as a solution. Perhaps the solution… to boredom, interpersonal relationships, you name it.
In fact, Gus is better equipped to survive in the Minecraft world than in the real one. Which leads me to my latest theory: some sort of higher power is behind all this—some alien presence or non-physical entity who is totally in charge and who knows exactly what’s going on. And these virtual worlds are training camps for the youth, preparing them for the day when the planet becomes uninhabitable. When this time comes, the physical world will be replaced by a virtual one… and everyone will live in individual Life Pods™, where all our basic biological needs will be taken care of: nutrients and water and oxygen in, waste and CO2 out.
Immobility will be the trade-off for immortality. These kids will be the last generation to inhabit the Earth—since no one will be able to have actual sex—but they will live forever, together in their addictive virtual kingdom, just like in Minecraft creative.
by Stone Marshall | Dec 29, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Following an announcement earlier this year, Microsoft and Mojang have followed through on bad news for owners of Minecraft on older game systems. Yesterday marked the end of development on the popular game's “legacy” branch.
That means if you still play Minecraft on the game's first-ever console port platform, the Xbox 360, this week's 1.83 patch is the last one you can expect to ever receive. The same goes for owners of the game on PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PlayStation Vita.
Most of the game's modern versions, ranging from iOS and Android to PC and “current-gen” consoles, were unified in a shared-codebase manner by primary developer Mojang earlier this year. This version originated from a “Pocket Edition” codebase and later became known as the “Bedrock” edition. The aforementioned legacy platforms, on the other hand, remained in the development hands of independent Scottish studio 4J. Microsoft's relationship with 4J began in the Xbox 360 era with ports of classic Rare games Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark (which were ported from their original N64 versions, owing to Microsoft's current ownership of those franchises).
4J confirmed the final-patch news on Tuesday morning by posting an image of its older-console development kits unplugged and arranged against a wall. “As we pack up our Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita, and Wii U development kits, we're getting all nostalgic,” the tweet read.
This patch includes the same new “mob” characters that can randomly appear in Bedrock versions of the game (including cats and pandas) along with other bug fixes. Thus, this appears to be the last time anyone can expect feature parity between current-gen and last-gen versions of Minecraft.
4J has not announced whether it will continue supporting the Minecraft franchise as a developer, and neither the studio nor Microsoft immediately replied to requests for clarification. Sources indicated to Ars Technica that 4J's relationship with Minecraft will continue but did not elaborate.
This is the second major branch of the game to be shut down by Microsoft, following the shuttering of its Windows Phone and Windows Mobile versions in 2017.
We can estimate up to 4.5 million Minecraft players will be left in the cold by this update, based on information provided by Mojang's original announcement. At that time, the developer indicated that “less than 5 percent” of players play on these platforms, and the game is currently up to roughly 91 million monthly players.
Minecraft's original early access period included a “buy it once, own it forever” promise, and that persists, thanks to back-end work at Mojang's site to support the game's original buyers between 2009-11… but only if they redeemed a permanent voucher for a version on Windows 10. Buyers of the game's Xbox 360 version originally had a free-upgrade path to claiming the game's license for use on Xbox One, but that temporary upgrade offer has since expired. And the current-gen version supports cross-play on nearly every platform imaginable, save one.
by Stone Marshall | Dec 28, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Gamevice, the makers of industry-leading mobile controllers, announced today that a special Gamevice Minecraft Bundle for iPhone is now available for $89.95 on Amazon.com and select retail stores in North America. The Gamevice Minecraft Bundle includes a special edition carrying case and a code to download Minecraft on iOS. Gamevice enhances the Minecraft mobile gaming experience, bringing console control to your mobile device. The Gamevice controller creates seamless cross platform gameplay between iOS, PC and consoles, as it enhances the experience on your iPhone.
“Minecraft is one of the greatest games of all time and playing Minecraft with Gamevice puts mobile players on equal ground with PC and console players. said Phillip Hyun, CEO, Gamevice. “Gamevice offers low latency and precision control, delivering a console quality experience to more than one thousand different games including Mojang’s masterpiece.”
The Gamevice Minecraft Bundle is available for iPhone X, iPhone 8/8 Plus, iPhone 7/7 Plus, iPhone 6s/6s Plus, and iPhone 6/6 Plus and is now available for $89.95 on, Amazon.com and select retail stores in North America.
Gamevice gives players latency-free control over their mobile experience, along with console precision, highly responsive buttons and joysticks in a comfortable and ergonomic design. Gamevice is an all-in-one entertainment hub that works as a controller for more than 1,000 mobile games, DJI’s Spark drone, and Sphero’s SPRK+ and Star Wars Droids, and is now available at Gamevice.com or select retailers.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 28, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
The developers of Minecraft are planning a refresh of the textures in Minecraft, and have just released version 3.3 for those who wish to try it. The new textures give the game a slightly more natural look, thanks to its lead designer Jasper Boerstra.
Minecraft textures are getting a refresh to give it a more natural look.
While the post doesn’t tell us what all is changed with version 3.3, the textures are available to download for anyone running the Java edition of Minecraft. Mojang also plans to release the textures on the Minecraft Marketplace for anyone running the Bedrock edition.
Minecraft’s new textures are available on the Java Edition now, with Bedrock Edition coming soon.
For those unfamiliar, the Java Edition is the original edition of Minecraft, playable on any computer running Windows, macOS, or Linux with Java installed. Microsoft later released the Bedrock Edition for Windows 10, Xbox One, and even the Nintendo Switch, which bring cross-platform multiplayer to Minecraft players on Android and iOS.
Boerstra says that the new textures will eventually replace the default ones in Minecraft, while the older version 2 textures will still be available for free for those who might feel a bit nostalgic. If you’re interested in trying the new ones, Mojang has written step-by-step instructions on how to download and apply them in the Java Edition.
by Stone Marshall | Dec 27, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
With a host of innovations launched this year, it’s an exciting time for Taiwan, a country known for efficiency and production. The opening of Amazon’s latest innovation center in Taipei this past August, combined with the country’s tech-savvy spirit, have created an invigorating atmosphere for product designers and manufacturers.
Some of the best new innovations in information and communications technologies will be showcased at CES 2019 through the efforts of Taiwan Excellence. CES attendees visiting the booth — LVCC, South Hall 1 #20636 — will see the latest advancements in smart transportation, smart home, smart healthcare, and gaming.
Highlights of the Taiwan Excellence Pavilion
When it comes to mobile gaming, the ROG phone gets all the glory. Developed by multinational Taiwanese company ASUS, the ROG phone takes gaming performance to the next level. Incorporating the world’s fastest 2.96GHz speed-binned Qualcomm® SDM845, and an innovative GameCool vapor-chamber cooling system, the ROG Phone gives you the edge you need for total domination.
And then there’s the MSI Optix Gaming Monitor. Want to check your ammo, health, or power stats? No problem. This monitor is housed in a beautiful 27” curved VA display for maximum viewing pleasure, with built-in RGB LED’s on the front and support of SteelSeries GameSense.
Ever seen an “underwater drone”? You can with the Seadragon XLR. It’s an ROV system that utilizes interchangeable, modular components residing on a single, intelligent network. It provides a flexibility that sets the Mission Specialist ROV series apart from current technology in the Remotely Operated Vehicle industry.
Need amplified listening and noise reduction to identify subtle heartbeat abnormalities? This new Digital Stethoscope provides detailed sound recordings, amplifications, and visuals. The POCT Analyzer includes an embedded mobile device that transmits data to the cloud and point-of-care facilities enabling advanced data management.
See what Taiwan ICT Industry has in store for 2019
And before CES begins, Taiwan Excellence will host a press conference — “The Future is Smart: Taiwan Innovations for 2019 & Beyond” — at the Mandalay Bay South Convention Center, Level 2, Lagoon K, in Las Vegas from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, January 7th, 2019. The event provides early access to some of Taiwan’s most innovative companies’ spokespeople and their products, as well as the opportunity to hear from senior officials from TAITRA. Media representatives are encouraged to register in advance or to request for one-on-one media interviews here.
Four Taiwan Excellence award-winner companies will present the latest technology and products — from high-tech retailing to IoT smart devices.
Cyberlink will introduce “FaceMe — the world’s top cross-platform AI facial recognition engine”
ELECLEAN will present “Directly turn water into sanitizer — the world’s first green disinfectant generator”
Innolux will share “New Display, New Retail,” an electronic shelf display
Thunder Tiger Corporation will showcase its underwater drone, the Seadragon XLR underwater ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle)
Each product showcased at CES is a recipient of the Taiwan Excellence Award. This Award was established in 1992 by Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs to recognize and honor both innovation and value among Taiwanese products. It recognizes exceptional products for their robust performance in the following areas: R&D, design, quality, and international marketing. The award winners epitomize Taiwan’s unique ability in using innovation to create added value in the design and manufacture of cutting-edge products.
Whether you’re in Taiwan, the U.S., or anywhere else in the world, Taiwanese representatives are always looking for smart, driven companies that seek partnerships and alliances to forge new growth opportunities.
The government of Taiwan is supporting the country’s new innovative ecosystem by encouraging entrepreneurship and startups, assisting universities and researchers to secure funding, building relationships with R&D innovation circles globally, and building a culture of innovation among children with programs like those found at Hsinchu Science Park or kids’ innovation contests at the new Taiwan Design Center.
Taiwan Excellence will showcase this leadership at CES, January 8-11, 2019, bringing the country’s latest innovations to the booth for leaders in the tech and electronics space to see and interact with. Attendees can visit Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 1, #20636. Learn more here.
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