Whales Can't Craft

Recently, Mizzy shot me a request to make a Minecraft server for you fellow Whales.

But that's not the real beauty. The real beauty was how we tried to communicate this.
It was extremely difficult to read his first request since he used some kind of weird squiggly symbols requiring me to *READ*.

Now as a Whale, I can do many things. My favorite is making large ships beach themselves and do hairpin turns to maintain the legal required distance of 1/4 mile between you and a whale.
I guess they didn't figure on a whale actually having FUN with this. Reading, on the other hand, is... not exactly my strong point.

So I trained my parrot to ask Mizzy to repeat his request, and a homing pigeon to lead the parrot to Mizzy's treehouse. Parrots poop a LOT, but apparently make great self-transporting tape recorders.

Pros of a Parrot:
    * Records short voice segments
    * Recalls the recorded segments on command
    * Fairly large bird, so can carry heavy objects
    * Is generally an awesome looking exotic bird
    * Can fly

Cons of a Parrot:
    * Can bite
    * One parrot produces more poop than an entire cattle yard combined
    * Also recalls the recorded segments whenever it feels like it (say, 3:17 AM)
    * Is difficult to record a different message

I waited a few hours before I heard the sound of a hacked off parrot landing on my balcony. It would seem that Mizzy was unable to reprogram My Autonomous Voice Recorder [MAVD], and instead attached a data disk to the MAVD's leg. I connected it to my computer only to find my screen turn black as my computer starts to speak:

    "Hello, my name is Microsoft Sam. I am here today to relay Mizzy's request: to make a Minecraft server for all Whales. You should ask everyone else what they want out of it.
    It will need to be up 27/8, 372 days a year.  I take that back, I seem to error I am. I will run a self test and reassure myself that 1 + 1 is.... 47.2341892 + 17.47i.
   
    Well, f..."

   


My mission is clear: Build Minecraft before Mizzy sends Microsoft Anna to finish the job. And ask what kind of things you want out of your server.

I will be using Bukkit, a Minecraft server allowing plugins to be added. The main thing I like about Bukkit is the client does not need mods installed. They can just connect without having to know how to do that. It also makes maintenance easier since only the server admin has to update their plugins, as opposed to Forge-based ones requiring EVERYONE update at the same time.

These mods are usually either always on (eg, ToughBoat's indestructible boats), activated via a tool (like the universe altering WorldEdit), or via a command (eg, Essentials' laundry list of extremely useful commands)

The ones I like to use are:

• Essentials (mostly makes Op's life easier - monitoring chat, moving spawn, and giving starting kits are but a few things this can do)
• NoLagg (when you set off 4,000 blocks of TNT, this prevents my computer from going with it)
• MagicChest (automatically sorting chests - never do that manually ever again!)
• WorldEdit (think an absurdly powerful Photoshop that can change the landscape)
• WorldGuard (protect areas from griefing, block explosions in certain areas, invincibility in certain areas, etc)
• CoreProtect (records placing of blocks, removing of blocks, things that are spawned, things that are killed, basically the NSA - annnnd can recall this later at any time)
• ToughBoats (boats don't disintegrate if you so much as LOOK at them wrong)
• OldDays (can re-enable features found in older versions of Minecraft. I only use it to turn off Baby Zombies.)

I'd recommend the Whales staff mosey over to http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/ and see if anything else strikes your eyes. Some Google searches for Bukkit plugins can't hurt either.