What's everyone up to right now?

[Angrboda]

Finished my rounds for this morning, news, forum, and slack. Someone is coming over from my ILS agency to ask me some survey questions at noon, and then I'll play with my new Fire tablet. After that it's into the grind in an attempt to get a book read by the ninth of December. My philosophy group is relatively pokey by comparison, only reading a few chapters of a book every few weeks. Dedicated reading to chew through an entire book in short order is something I haven't had to do for quite a while.

[Sal]

Built a mob grinder in Minecraft. It's placed at y=200 for optimal spawning. It uses 4 water dispensers that funnel mobs in a 35x35 large dark room into a center diagonal 5x5 hole, with a 46 tick (dual) piston clock that powers the water dispensers and a 40 block drop (from y=240 to the y=200 platform) into a shitton of hoppers that funnel all the mobs drops into a horsejack design item elevator (using item droppers) that further funnel all the items from the mobs into a hopper "river" with 5 item sorters and 1 overflow drop-off. The sorted items are rotten flesh (from zombies), string (from spiders), gunpowder (from creepers) & and lastly bones & arrows (from skeletons). Those are the main mob drops, the overflow chests are for the random witches that spawn in the dark room.

I've been thinking about making the same design in the Nether, for zombie pigmen and get all that delicious gold from them. But will be considerably harder. I've built this on a survival server, btw.

[Angrboda]

I received my new Fire tablet a few days ago. I had needed to use my old tablet multiple times over the course of that time, and it seemed to be performing fine. So I was feeling a bit of remorse at having spent a bunch of money to replace something that didn't appear to be broken. All the same, I decided to keep the new Fire tablet and so I opened the package and proceeded to set up the Fire tablet earlier today. I got to a point at which I needed to synch my old tablet with Amazon Kindle to update my notes and place in a book. So I opened up the old tablet, and what do you know? It's back to its old tricks, slow operation, hanging all the time, and just generally being a pain to use.

I made the right call.

[Rev. Rye]

On the last Richard Attenborough documentary on my list, and I'll just give you this clip:





and tell you to try and sync it up with this version of "In the hall of the Mountain King."





And, by an extraordinary coincindence, the clip's length is the same length as this performance of "Hall of the Mountain King" (from the most acclaimed performance of the piece on Allmusic)

[Angrboda]

Just back from running errands. I went to fetch some craft baskets from a craft store. I'm planning on making gift baskets for Christmas filled with treats and cheeses and meats and such. So first step is to get the baskets. I got a bunch of nifty treats at the Global Market on Monday. The rest of the things I need are more local than the store I went to today, and can accomplish at my leisure.

Brewing a pot of decaf coffee and chatting in slack.

Oh, and I donated to Wikipedia and a local independent news source this afternoon. Small donations, but even small donations help. I read in the book I just finished that being aware that others are donating influences people's decision to give, so I'm letting you know. I'm sure if you're like me, money is tight around this time of year, but I encourage everybody to give if they can. Even if it's just a little.

[DodosAreDead]

Hurling insults at my orthodontist and promising to skin her alive once this is done... in my mind of course.

[energizer bunny]

Lots going on but not much of a desire to express anything. 

[Little lunch]

There are around about 150 fires burning through Queensland at the moment.
Almost my entire family are affected, in particular my cousins who live near Finch Hatton.
They could lose their homes and livestock.
Whole towns are being evacuated and there is so much history there, including my family's history for over a hundred years.
The event is unprecedented.
I can't help but fear the worst.
Meanwhile, Sydney received a months worth of rain over night.

[Cod]

There are around about 150 fires burning through Queensland at the moment.
Almost my entire family are affected, in particular my cousins who live near Finch Hatton.
They could lose their homes and livestock.
Whole towns are being evacuated and there is so much history there, including my family's history for over a hundred years.
The event is unprecedented.
I can't help but fear the worst.
Meanwhile, Sydney received a months worth of rain over night.

Sounds like a nightmare situation. I hope your family don't suffer too much loss.
Sods law that elsewhere it buckets down..

[ignoramus]

Yeah, been following it for a few days LL. Breaking so many heat records in QLD at the moment.
I really really hope everyone's OK...