I'm still alive! Just so very busy lately.

Minecon was a blast, I met lots of interesting people (some of which wanted my photo or signature, for some reason. I think they're PIs in disguise.) and had lots of fun! We held a small 1-hour long panel for people to come learn a little more about us, and you can check out the recorded videos of that over here.

We're all working hard trying to get an RB out for Minecraft 1.0.0 ASAP, and it should hopefully be very soon now! I've been losing so much sleep over it trying to get everything fixed and perfect, but it'll all be worth it in the end.

In other news, it happens to be the same month as Christmas! And by jolly tradition at this time of year, today I found out that I have exactly -£21.58 in my bank account. Oops. I'll probably have to borrow some money to pay for my rent again, which really isn't so fun - especially at this time of year :(

That's all for this post, back to working on bukkit!

Somehow I'm now engaged to Ola. That is all.

(Yay!)

So RedditGifts are trying to break the Guinness world record for the largest online Secret Santa. I figured this year I should join in! It should be lots of fun, and I encourage other people to come join in for random love and gifts. You might get me, in which case please be nice! Or I might get you, and I promise it'll be something cool.

Come join in!

So I got back from my trip to Blizzcon last week. It was lots of fun, I met most of the curse peeps, and the rest of the bukkit team were there too so we all met for the first time in person!

The flights were rather bad, I managed to get my name on some kind of blacklist somehow which got me a long random security check before I even checked in for my first flight! They asked me a bunch of random questions, such as if I had any letters from the bank as proof of address on me (why would I bring that to a holiday :(), and took my luggage to a special screening area with half a dozen employees watching the baggage screening monitor closely like it's about to explode. Personally, I'm blaming my new beard.

After some long meetings with Curse, we took a trip out to Disney Land for teambuilding. I managed to break my phone pretty early on, not quite sure how yet but I think I must have crushed it. It was ok at first, just a cracked screen but worked, however it's pretty much dead now and I think I'll wait for the Nexus Galaxy and buy that when it's out.

I managed to get sick pretty early on, and I lost my voice for blizzcon so I didn't get to spend much time there - I decided to just sleep it in. I did meet Gabe Newell though! Invited him to the Curse afterparty, he said sure but didn't come :( Ola met with Richard A. Knaak + Christie Golden and she was really excited about that!

The Curse party was excellent, lots of people there - famous and cool - and it was pretty fun. Unfortunately, loud ...

Yay, it's almost that time of year again! Where I spend over a full day travelling to meet some friends at blizzcon and waste all my money :D

I'm getting my flights, hotel and blizzcon tickets paid for by Curse, so this year that's a huge load off my mind. I got my flight info through yesterday... doesn't look so good. 3 stops both ways, and each one is in US :( I don't like being manhandled by US customs!

Unfortunately only a couple of my friends from MMO-Champion will be there this year, but I should see a bunch of other people whom I know and it should be a lot of fun. Any of you guys going too? :D

I won't be working on Bukkit while I'm out... unless mojang release while we're out and then I'll have to. But let's hope it doesn't come to that. I go on holidays to avoid work, not to find new scenery to work in :(

Speaking of, I have a nasty feeling that Notch wants to release Minecraft live at Minecon in november. The entire Bukkit team will be there, so it may look like we're all going to have to work together in person to get that some. Should be... interesting!

1.9 should hit us fairly soon, and we've been doing everything we can to prep for it. It shouldn't be as large of an update as 1.8 was, but it's still fairly big in terms of code changed. I managed to get a build of Bukkit working on 1.9 pre-1 but I decided instead to work on optimizing our deobfuscation stuff, which means I have to redo 1.9 pre-1 but it ...

I has a pig! :D

Ok, there's a story to this I promise. It's not just because I love fluffy toys. That only had a small part in it!

Back when we were house hunting, you may remember that we found a house that came with its very own pig. A toy pig, mind, but a pig none the less. We didn't get the house, and this was a great loss - who can go back to regular houses after something like that? We need a pig with our house now!

So the good chap Grum, another one of the bukkit team, realised this and decided to send us our very own piggy. He also bought one for himself too, because piggies. It came from an Amazon seller somewhere in England; I live in England and Grum lives in Netherlands.

This was about 3 weeks ago. His came almost instantly, from England to Netherlands. Mine never came at all. After many yellings at the sellers, he got a refund a few days ago and bought one off ebay instead - and here it is!

Yay piggy! Thanks Grum :D

So, we at Bukkit made a huge announcement a few days ago: We're now with Curse, and through them we've managed to launch the ultimate Minecraft modding site. It's quite an exciting time for us, and we're hoping to expand onto this in the future with some much bigger plans.

Purely incidental, this happens to also mean that I now have a job! I'm now contracting my time out through my own company, which sounds more fun than it is. I have no idea how to run a company :( I need to find an accountant. Tax scares me, and I can't pay myself yet because of it. :(

I've paid this months bills (rent/etc) so I'm safe again, so a huge thanks to everyone who donated and put up with the adverts. I'm not out of the woods yet until I manage to figure out how to pay myself through my company, though :(

In completely unrelated news, I'm doodling basic ideas for a game in my free time. I need to learn opengl + 3d math and make a start on this, I think it could have potential. The math is going over my head though, so far :( 3D math vs taxes; eep!

Okay, Ola is here and we're having lots of fun, but it's time to get back to work.

I'll be making some more Bukkit tutorials starting tonight, finishing up on the carpet plugin and maybe going into something a little more adventurous (if you have any suggestions, leave a comment! I'll be glad to do anything that's helpful!)

We've managed to get enough money to pay our bills and rent and stuff, thank you all for your support! I got £80 from donations and (some day, when google let's go) £50 from ad money. Much more than I expected! Huge thanks to the three people who donated (v1sper, jrtc27 and FlayaN), iChingPow for his kind words and everyone else for putting up with the adverts! :D

I'm currently planning out some big changes for Bukkit stuff soon, including researching a possible new security system (let's be honest; allowing any plugin to do whatever it likes without you knowing... it's not good), Material enum aliases (with a twist; you'll see!) and hopefully a better Configuration class.

It's a good time to wear a bukkit on your head!

In 5 hours, I will set out to the airport to pick up Ola. That is all.

(Yay!)

In other news, £28~ in Adsense stuff since yesterday, and a very generous £20 donation from a reader. Huge thanks! Shame I can't get the adsense money until a month or so, could really use some kinda expedite method in it. But I'm not complaining, huge thanks to you all for putting up with the adverts and double thanks to FlayaN for his donation!

To the airport! :D

Those of you who are brave enough to browse the internet without blocking adverts (be honest, none of you :D) will have noticed there's now an advert on the right-side menu on my blog. Last resort, but I kinda need the cash.

Turns out, due to legal trouble and taxes and stuff, I won't have any sort of income until it's too late. I have rent in a week and already being slapped with many bills for water/etc, and I only have enough to pay the rent for that month and nothing else. Long story short, I don't have enough money to live. I will soon, hopefully, but not now. I don't even want to think about shopping :D

Please feel free to help a bone out and hit me with a donation (or, equally as valuable to me, a hug). It'd really help me, but you don't have to!

In better news, my beautiful Ola is moving in with me on Monday. I'll be leaving to pick her up at 4am on monday, so that's going to be fun. But yay, we'll be living together!