Tag Archives: Geeky Stuff

Minecraft Monday- Animal Farming

Hey! It’s Nerdalicious again! Just the other day I was asking my younger brother what he always wanted to know when he started playing Minecraft. He said how to shear and dye sheep, it may sound amateur, but it gave me a great idea to do a beginner’s guide to animal farming in Minecraft. Plain and simple.

Ok, the first thing you’re going to want to do when you begin farming is getting lots and lots of fences, of course, that’s only if you’re in survival. It’s easier to write this post assuming you’re in creative. So that’s exactly what I’ll do. So, like I said, you’re gonna need fence, and fence gates, to create enclosures for your animals. There are of course, much more elaborate, and effective ways of doing this. But this one is much easier, and it keeps the animals in. So this is the one I use. 

Now onto the animals. I have decided to talk about the most common farm animals in Minecraft. I am speaking of course of pigs, cows, chickens, and sheep. I will address each of these animals in turn and give a brief summary of their use.

Sheep

Sheep are extremely useful farm animals because they are multi purpose. You can shear them, for wool, or kill them, for meat. When you shear a sheep, you obviously have to have shears in your hand, and all you have to do is right click it, it will usually drop 1-3 pieces of wool. When you kill a sheep, well, you kill it. Obviously, you can’t use it again, it will usually drop 1 piece of wool and 1-3 pieces of mutton. Oh, one other cool thing you can do with sheep, you can dye them! This is extremely useful, cause you use 1 dye and them whenever you shear the sheep it drops dyed wool instead of plain. Also when you mate 2 dyed sheep, say yellow and red, you get an orange baby! However when you mate two colors that don’t mix, say pink and light blue, the baby will be either pink or light blue.

Cows

Cows are also very useful, cause they are also multipurpose. You can milk them, or of course, you can kill them. When you milk a cow you simply right click it with a bucket, and it fills with milk. Milk is very useful as both a poison antidote and a crafting item. When you kill a cow, it will usually drop 1-3  pieces of beef, and sometimes 1 piece of leather.

Chickens

Chickens can be useful, but you should usually have them in large quantities. Because they are so easy to kill. They give you eggs, and if you kill them they will usually give you 1 feather and 1 chicken.

Pigs

Pigs are not very useful other than the fact that you can ride them using a saddle and a carrot on a stick, and you can kill them to get 1-3 pork chops. I mostly keep them around because, in my opinion, they are the cutest Minecraft farm animal; next to the baby chicken. 🙂

Thank you for reading this article, I hope you liked it.

-Nerdalicious

Minecraft Monday- Cactus Farming

Minecraft_Monday_Cactus_Farming

Hey! Today I’m going to teach you about cactus farming. Now, efficient cactus farming is a little tricky, because to do it correctly you need to build a special type of farm. It’s not very complex, but it is hard to explain. So I’ll try to explain it the best I can. Just so you know, it might take a little while to work out all the kinks, and everyone does it a little differently. 

First, you’ll want to make a sort of shell by digging out a hole big enough to make enough space for cacti, you’re gonna want to place the cactus at least 1 block apart, and then fill the hole with water. Next, you’re going to make a row of a block on 1 side, and behind a row that’s 2 blocks high. Then put a piston on the 1 block row behind each cactus, and on the 2 block row put a lever behind each piston. 

When you want to harvest the cactus you simply right click the lever to push the piston and cat off the second block of the cactus. See, when something touches the cactus it will destroy it and every cactus block on top of it; and since you put it on the row of blocks except for the bottom. Then the cactus will begin it’s growing cycle again, and you won’t even have to replant.

Thanks for reading this, I hope you liked it!

-Nerdalicious

Minecraft Monday is Back!

Minecraft_Minday_is_Back
Ta-da! Minecraft Monday is back! I am Nerdalicious, a fan of Minecraft Monday, and friend of the Nerd Family. Anyway, I thought for my first post, I’d just do an intro to Minecraft- surviving the first night. Plain and simple. I’m sure Nerdpie did something of the sort, but it is my belief that everyone does things a little differently. So I hope you find this article informational.

Ok, when I play survival I generally play with the All Biomes setting, you can do this by entering advanced world settings, and selecting custom. Not that hard. After I enter the world, I usually make my way to a Savanah biome, although any biome with hills or mountains will work, as my preferred house is in the side of the mountain, it is convenient, and you get materials out of it. Of course for this house, you will need a pickaxe of some form, which requires basic materials and a crafting table. Once I make my house, I generally look for sheep to get wool for a bed. After that, you’re pretty much set for the first night, but if you have more time, you might want to get some basic necessities. 

I hope you liked it!

-Nerdalicious

 

 

House M.D.: Critical Cases

One of the most addicting aspects of Facebook has to be the games. I mean, I am not the only one right?  I fall into the copious amounts of free, fun games that are all over Facebook. But with so many games you really only hear about the ones your friends play and there are so many more to choose from. The developers of these Facebook games have gone beyond developers that only develop for Facebook and apps. Now real game companies like Ubisoft are designing these Facebook games!

One such game is House M.D.: Critical Cases! This is based on the ever popular show House M.D., which I have loved for years! You come in as an intern and become part of House’s team. That means you will get all the dirty work! Be it searching through garbage, wheeling patients to tests or running a code blue! There are speed tests and logic games as tasks to help get information to help heal your patient. You earn money to pay for the treatments and gain experience to climb the ranks.

It is one of those great games that you can play for just a little bit or play for quite a while. I must admit, it is a bit addicting… The graphics are cute but detailed and the game play is very smooth. Everything you need to know is on one screen and it even has a map set up on screen that you maneuver through. All and all it is a neat little game. I haven’t played for hours yet but it does seem to be missing the most annoying part of many Facebook games, you don’t need to get or give gifts to your friends in order to play!!!

So what are you doing here still reading? Go, play House M.D.: Critical Cases and relax!!!

 

Thank you to Ubisoft for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own. #UbiChamps #CleverMD

 

Ruckus Reader Giveaway

Ok, we all know how much I love my tech with my tablets and apps. Well, I can’t be totally selfish. I occasionally will share with my kids. And if I am going to share my toys they will be learning something (homeschooling mantra;)! But I haven’t found a lot of the reading apps to be very educational. But I love Ruckus Media and their apps so I was very stoked to get a chance to review the Ruckus Reader Apps for iPad with my 5 year old (as of yesterday), NerdPud.

As I said, I am a bit of a reading app cynic. I tend to find them to be extremely easy or extremely hard and neither is something that will actually help my last child to learn how to fluently read. But I thought if nothing else she would have fun. Well, I am very happy to have been wrong. She loves it and she is learning!!!!

The first time we cracked open any of the Ruckus Reader apps was at the dentist. We opened up the My Little Pony level 1 book while we were waiting for the other kids to get done with their cleanings. She starts giggling in anticipation and frankly, who doesn’t love that giggle;)? We chose to have it read to her but she still got an opportunity to do word recognition and a reading too. The art is great and book choices are phenomenal! There are just enough activities for the kids to do within the story so that they never become bored and tune out. And every time we are using any of the Ruckus Reader apps her older siblings (who all read well) want to come watch instead of reading their own books they picked out.

The fact you can choose either to have the app read the story to you or not really helps make this a very versatile app. My 6 year old really enjoyed reading and playing the Transformers level 3 book but didn’t need it to read it to him. I also love the fact that you can record some one else reading the story. I would do more of that if I actually left my iPad when I traveled (but alas, I am not that nice;).

Of course part of the perks of reviewing an app is that I usually get all the paid features. And there are some good ones that come with the paid iLibrary subscription. I really like the Reading Meter reports that I get emailed to me! It means that I can allow the kids to play with the app without having to completely hover over them to see how much they get right or understand. It gives them a little space but leaves me in the position to be fully aware, the best of both worlds. I also like having access to all the books. And both those things come with the paid iLibrary subscription.

A review wouldn’t be balanced without some cons. The one I really see it that I wish there was some books that are a little more simple, like bob books. Because these are all character driven some of the names are hard and even the level 1 books are challenging to a new reader. It isn’t a horrible thing but something I feel the apps could use. Since NerdPud has been reading the Bob books I thought she would do a little better with the level 1 books but with the Transformers and the like, she didn’t do very well in reading along. She did ok at the activities but I was hoping for the actually reading to be easier. It isn’t a deal breaker but not everything can be perfect;).

On the whole if you are looking for a premium app for reading I would definitely recommend Ruckus Reader. And on that note…..

I have some subscriptions to giveaway!!!! The folks over at Ruckus Media have graciously decided to giveaway 1 six month iLibrary subscription and 2 one month iLibrary subscriptions!

To enter you must register for free with Ruckus Reader then come back and let me know that you have done it by leaving me a comment! Make sure you leave your email so I can contact you if you win.

After you register there are some things you can do for extra entries! Leave a separate comment for each one that you do.

This giveaway will close on June 26, 2012 and the winners will have 24 hours to respond.

(Disclosure: I did receive the Ruckus Reader app and iLbrary subscription from Ruckus Media to review. All opinions and words are mine and mine alone!)

Beamz & Beaming Kids

A great surprise in the mail!

My kids love getting surprise boxes in the mail!!! (ok, so I knew it was coming;) I first saw Beamz at CES back in January this year and thought was great! Beamz is a light based interface that lets you play musical instruments along with a song on a computer. I was stoked when I got a chance to review one with my kids.

Just take it out of the box and you are almost ready to go!

It is super easy to set up and play! You take Beams out of the box and plug it into your PC via a mini usb cable. Then pop in the cd, click to install and then add the libraries to your computer. You are ready to play!

On board controls

You can change songs, switch instruments, start and stop songs, etc very easily. You can control it on the computer using a mouse or using the on board controls. The kids found it very easy to control using the on board controls. And you don’t have to figure out what they are because you get a legend with the Beamz.

There are so many song choices in Beamz and there are new ones being added all the time! You can go through and chose songs by genre, including a kids genre with Old MacDonald. There are also multiple instruments that you can play with each song. It just takes a button push to change instruments and tempo. The kids also like recording their creation and then dancing to it on play back!

So much fun!!!!

It is so much fun that they can play it together! What you don’t see it their 2 sisters dancing;).

(“This product has been provided as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. While they provided the subject, all opinions are purely mine! #CBias)

Who?Comics App

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates

As you all know, I am a big fan of reading and an even bigger fan of learning! So you can just imagine how excited I was to  receive the opportunity to use the who?Comics app on my iPad with my kids!

Who?Comics is a free app and it comes with 2 books. There are 27 other books available for purchase. Some are sold individually but there are also packs available.  Which of course, are a better deal;). So I got the Scientists pack (surprise, surprise;).  Right off we checked out Marie Curie and Thomas Edison!

Here is a little detail you should know going in. These comics are not the super quick, over view type comics. There are 150 pages of details about the subject’s personal life. Which means it isn’t a quick read! I was very familiar with Marie Curie and I learned so much! NerdPie and I even cried at 2 different spots.

So what is my overall feel? Well, I love the idea of having these on the iPad for easy access! The art is clear and the story line moves at a good clip. This isn’t going to be a situation where you can read the whole thing in the doctor’s waiting room and that can be a good thing. This app was developed over seas and so there are a few translation issues. Due to that and the fact that these really deal with real life situations, I would make sure you child is near you when they read them. I had to explain about certain illnesses and certain historical events that were mentioned in the books we read. There was an assumption that the kids understood everything but mine had quite gotten there yet. (For example, why and how Poland was being occupied By Russia and how they weren’t supposed to speak Polish.)

My kids thoroughly enjoyed these comics! My kids are even asking for books from the library so they can learn even more! Both about the people in the stories and the science they discovered!

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon

My Shopping List…

 NerdDad and I have decided that we need a new desktop computer. We haven’t bought a computer since Windows Vista and that was about 3 years ago.

I have to say that I am a bit overwhelmed at all the choices that out there! I usually love Dell computers but I want to make sure that I am getting the most for my money but… I don’t want to settle for something that will be buggy later. If we aren’t shopping with Dell we usually shop reconditioned at CompUSA but we tend to have little issues with those later. This will be a computer we will keep for a while because it will probably become a media computer in a few years or a kid computer;).

So what are we looking for?

  1. A Windows machine (No, I am not buying an Apple. Period)
  2. Under $700
  3. Probably at least an i3 but probably more
  4. We want to run 2 screens!
  5. I want to Skype and stream video for a possible Web show.
  6. Want to play video games
  7. Blogging, of course but that is such a small resource demand
  8. Running a Virtual Machine for NerdDad’s projects
  9. Run VNC well (again, not a huge demand)
  10. Want it to run fairly quietly & cool (previous issues)
That isn’t really all that much. The challenge is knowing what is over kill versus a little room to grow. How much Ram should I get? How many cores? A little SSD? What level of a graphics card?
Ugh! So much research to do! Anyone have any wisdom?