Tuesday 31 January 2012

Another evening on Minecraft

Tonight a group of friends and I continued our play through of a map called Spellbound Caves.
The map contains a series of dungeons which are full or traps and monsters. The aim to to travel through these dungeons collecting coloured wool blocks and placing them on a monument. There are 16 wool blocks plus 3 other blocks to be placed to complete the map.

It was great fun, it appears the map designer (who has made lots of these maps) has been learning to use some new types of trap. I'm not 100% certain but, by the way things kept blowing up on us, I think he's included traps which sense when a player is near and cause explosions.

Afterwards I was watching a video from another person who plays minecraft. They have a well established world is which they have build a really cool base. I noticed he had put a download of the map in the link so I decided to have a run around in his world. Well my OCD really came out to play. I have spent most of the last hour running around squaring off everything. He's built his base in a natural cave system and has mostly left the natural walls intact. I can't stand to see so many blocks out of place! Still, it's sort of fun to 'fix'.

Sunday 29 January 2012

Something I enjoy

After the last post I decided to write about something I enjoy. That thing is minecraft.

It's a brilliant game, likened to lego and an OCD simulator. I can spend many hours playing it, building new constructs, circuitry, traps etc. Or, I can spend hours fighting off creatures of the darkness while exploring huge cave networks. Or I can combine both! ^_^

Last night my housemate and I spent the evening playing competitive team maps with a group of people from across western Europe. We were playing a type of map where two teams compete to be the first to collect three wool blocks from dungeons and place them in a monument.

The first map we played was one my housemate and I have been building. It went really well, just a few more tweaks and it should be ready for release :D
The second map was one which has been used in a recent reddit tournament. It meant that people knew exactly what needed to be done and so we could see how different people played. Our plan is to form 2/3 teams who train together to enter upcoming competitions.

One of my current projects is a huge mansion, I'm building it 'organically' which means I play for short periods of time, building what ever i get a sudden idea for.
Here's a couple of photos of what I've been up to.





A little about what's up at the moment. (Warning: This is a long ramble)

Hi,

Those who know me will know that I've spent the past few years fighting with some problems while trying to get a degree. The course material has been great, life however has been less so.

About 2 years ago now I injured my back. We're not quite sure how but a couple of my ribs popped out of place. I spent a lot of money getting it treated by a chiropractor and for a while things were good. Unfortunately, when a bus i was travelling on did an emergency stop I hit the seat in front of me and felt my ribs pop out again.

It's slowly been getting worse and now I'm unable to continue with my studies due to the pain. I was barely coping by taking ibuprofen in lectures and codeine while at home, but the ibuprofen caused me to get ill and I had to stop taking it. Now I'm stuck with the only effective painkiller I have being codeine, which leaves me feeling very fuzzy.

This leaves me unable to study or work. If I'm sat for more than an hour I'm in extreme agony. The only way I manage to visit friends is to take a lot of codeine and sit in a lot of pain. I try not to let it show when I'm with people but the pain is unreal. I feel like i need to leave the room and find somewhere quiet to cry it hurts so much.

So now, my life is in a sort of limbo. I have no reason to get up each day and often find myself in tears i'm in so much pain. I don't seem to have anything to fill my days with. There are several activities I like, but many reasons why I can't while away the hours doing them.

I love to read, however between the codeine and my dyslexia I find that I can't focus on the words very well.
I also love to knit, but I have developed problems with my knuckles which pop out of place as I work causing a lot of pain and making it hard to grip the needles.
Crochet isn't so bad, it puts less strain on my knuckles so I can do it for longer stretches. However, on days when my back is really playing up, my ribs press on my shoulder which puts it out of place and causes inflammation to flare up down my arm so I can barely use my right hand some days.

It's hard to find words which explain just how painful it can be, my back hurts constantly and spikes with every breath. My shoulders are always a slowly building pain which then explodes when the joint cracks before calming down to begin the process anew. On the worst days it doesn't calm with the crack and just gets worse and worse. The pain radiates down my arm, I get a deep pain in the middle of my upper arm, which any movement or pressure really exacerbates. My elbow feels like the bones are coated in sandpaper as I move it and my wrist feels like someone has injected acid into it. It feels so swollen and the pain burns. These days are getting more common and they are lasting longer.

I hate taking codeine because of the way it makes my head feel. I don't take it everyday, I can't stand the stronger drugs so I'm trying to just develop a higher pain tolerance so that the codeine is more effective on bad days. I find that I take more codeine at night than any other time as laying on my back is unbelievably painful. Laying on my front is the least painful position, but also one which is impossible to sleep in. Every other position fills me with pain.

So yeah, I'm struggling quite a bit at the moment. Just got to wait and see what happens, hopefully I'll have housing benefit and ESA soon to help me live while I hope to get better and get back into life.

I just wish the NHS didn't treat me like a statistic. Either telling me "At your age it's unlikely your ribs have problems" or "it's because you're a student so 'obviously' have bad posture causing the problem" without even examining me to find out what's going on. I spent long enough getting someone to believe me I had problems with my knees. After having both operated on I still get medical people telling me that people my age don't have knee problems. I'm not a damn number on a computer and I can only hope that some day soon I'll find someone who doesn't treat me like one.

Saturday 28 January 2012

Same name - new blog

My life has taken a bit of an unexpected turn recently, so i decided to start a fresh blog.Of course, every name i could think of was already taken. So I decided to delete every post on here and start anew.

It's 6am so I'm not going to get into things right now, but tomorrow I plan to get started with blogging.

(Tomorrow of course meaning- A] after I've slept and/or B] after the sun has risen.)