Space Force's First Season Struggles to Get Off the Ground

Courtesy: Netflix

General Mark Naird  wanted to run the air force, but instead he got stuck in an office. Such is the fate of just about every character in Netflix’s new series, “Space Force.” Nobody in it is anywhere close to where they want to be. This feeling of disappointment is best exemplified by the song “Spaceman” by Harry Nilsson, which plays in the first and last episodes. 

“Space Force” covers the trials and tribulations involved with Gen. Naird’s (played by Steve Carell) attempts at creating a new branch of the U.S. military, the titular Space Force. There’s a number of small details that make this show currently relevant. First, it’s very much inspired by the real-life Space Force that President Trump has ordered created. The show focuses on satirizing the concept, but it also more broadly satirizes the U.S. military in general. They don’t do much with it up until the last episode, but there they kind of fell flat on their faces.

If you were hoping this show would be like “The Office,” you’ll be disappointed. This show is a bit more grounded, a bit dryer in its humor, and doesn’t have quite the same “energy.” For example, if a character in the Office felt like they had been slighted, they might spend the entirety of an episode engaging in zany hijinks to get back at the offending party. Here, to use John Malkovich’s character Dr. Mallory as an example, well he’d just make a lot of dry quippy comments dressing down the offending party, and endeavor to stone-wall him or her for the rest of the episode. This is still able to be funny, it’s just not quite the same brand of humor.

Looked at as a whole, Space Force feels a bit dull and flat. The comedy is hit or miss for the first half of the season. But on the other hand, the show’s more dramatic can be quite engaging. A fine example of this comes at the end of the second episode: General Naird’s been up all night dealing with a crisis at SF command, while his daughter is at home freaking out because he was supposed to spend the evening helping her study trigonometry before he had to run back to base. When he finally gets home, at about 6 or 7 in the morning, he sees her asleep at the kitchen table with her homework. When she wakes up, he insists on helping her with her homework, despite being awake for over 24 hours, and the episode ends with a heartwarming zooming out shot of the two of them working on it.

Overall, it’s a worthwhile enough show to watch if you’re stuck at home with nothing to do. It’s not the best, but it’s not the worst, either. If you’re looking to try it out, then you should watch the first three episodes to gauge your interest level. If you want to keep watching after the third episode, then you’ll probably be fine with making it through all 10. And if you can’t get through the first episode, then the rest of the season probably wouldn’t do it for you either.

“Space Force” has some real heart deep down, and it has the potential to become something more than it is right now. But what it currently is at the end of the day is another forgettable comedy on Netflix. Albeit with a more unique premise, and with a bit more genuine sincerity than most.

At a Glance:

• “Space Force”

• Created by: Steve Carell and Greg Daniels

• Starring: Steve Carell, John Malkovich, and Noah Emerich

• Release Date: May 29, 2020

• Grade: 5.5/10, slightly above average

• Recommendation: Something to put on in the background while doing something else.

10 Questions With Deron Carter

Deron Carter, long-time Physical Science instructor at LBCC

In 2006, Deron Carter became the first full-time instructor to work in LBCC's Geoscience program, after working part-time for a year before that. As a teacher, Carter takes great pride in his students and their accomplishments, and is always eager to help them with problems and see them succeed at their careers.

For the last couple years he and OSU colleague Sean De Silva have organized a program called GeoBridge to help make each LB transfer student’s transition to OSU easier. The program is also meant to help these students form connections with colleagues and experts in whichever field they eventually enter into.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter has been one of countless instructors working to adapt his classes in a way that best suits students, and that includes his work on the GeoBridge program.

What made you decide on a career in physical science?

I actually started in college. I was an English major, and I was interested in Journalism. My advisor recommended I take a geology class to fulfill my science Gen Ed requirement. And I said, “What the heck is a geology class,” and I took it. She said, “We have a great department, I think you’ll like it.” It just really spoke to me, growing up I did a lot of hiking and cross-country skiing and it kind of spoke to how the landscapes formed that I’d always been recreating and playing in.

I took some time off between my undergrad and graduate school doing a lot of environmental education and kind of informal science teaching, and I decided I wanted to go back and get a master’s degree. In the process, I really enjoyed doing research, but I got an opportunity to be a teaching assistant for some labs, and I just really enjoyed that. Sort of chose that path of teaching over the path of research.

I think that’s a phenomenal thing about taking a variety of classes in college, like with the Gen Ed classes, you really get to explore places that you haven’t in the past, like maybe in high school.

For my undergraduate, I went to Whitman College, which is in Walla Walla, Washington. And then for graduate school, I went to Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington.



Which part of the physical science discipline do you like best?

Well, you know, the geosciences are really broad. They incorporate geology, Earth science, and oceanography. I’ve really enjoyed teaching all three of those classes So I do love geology, that’s kind of my background and where I got started.I really enjoy teaching oceanography because it’s really such an interdisciplinary course. It’s not really a science in itself, but you’re applying the other physical sciences, you’re applying physics, chemistry, geology, and even 0biology to understand the oceans.



What is the difference between geology and Earth sciences?

That’s a great question, and if you asked 10 different geologists you’d probably get 10 different answers. Geology, we often think more of looking at what we call just the Earth itself. The solid Earth. So the rocks and minerals, the processes like plate tectonics that are fueled by internal and surface processes, and kind of a history on the planet. Earth Sciences might also include geology, but also look at the oceans, look at the atmosphere, and even look at Earth’s place in the solar system, or in the universe.



I heard that you’ve recently received a faculty award. What was it in recognition of?

Yeah, that is the Pastega outstanding faculty award, and that’s an award given out every year to one faculty member at LBCC. You get nominated by your colleagues. And so it’s just that it was really a surprise and an honor to receive that award this year.



What would you say has been your greatest achievement?

Professionally, I think it’s not one single moment. But I was the first full-time faculty hired with a background in geosciences at LBCC. I’m wrapping up my 14th year teaching full-time, and I taught part-time for a year before that. I was also teaching at Western Oregon University in Monmouth before teaching at LB. And it’s just been awesome to see how the geoscience program has grown since I started.

It was really just an Earth science class when I started, and it’s really grown to where now, we teach a variety of classes in the department, six or seven different classes, and we have a geology major and environmental science major now. The environmental science major alone has, I think, well over 100 students that have chosen it as a major. So it’s just great to see that. To see that program expand and be able to serve students that are really interested in pursuing careers dealing with sustainability and how we manage the resources and the human impact on the Earth.

Personally, I mean, there’s lots of different ways I could go on. You know, since I’ve been teaching at LB I’ve become a father, and I have two kids, and you know that obviously has to be my biggest accomplishment. And as Rob (Priewe) might attest, I’ve also gotten into running a lot, running ultra marathons, and so Rob last year supported me in completing a 100-mile ultramarathon in Idaho. And you know, when I complete one of those that, of course, is a big moment, too.



What do you like best about being a teacher?

I like interacting with students, and I really like helping students succeed. I think community college is one of the few places in our society where there’s an opportunity for social mobility. You know, that could mean moving from a lower socio-economic class to a higher one. And I think, especially working at a place like LBCC, it’s really great to me having a career that can have a mission to it. To help students succeed, help people achieve what they want, reach their goals, meet their dreams, and just being part of that is really important to me. I also really appreciate the role that community colleges play in social justice, and those kinds of issues. I just feel so grateful and thankful for having a career where I can be part of that aspect of people’s lives as well as be an educator in terms of helping people learn about the Earth and learn about the importance of science in society and the scientific process, meaning, using evidence to make decisions.



Is there anyone that you’d say has been a large source of inspiration for you?

Well, of course I have to recognize my wife, Erin Chamberlain. She teaches biology at LBCC. Obviously a great friend and a wonderful colleague too. And you know, I certainly find inspiration from her. And I can’t really name one student, but just students in general. Every day I find inspiration from students overcoming barriers and just giving me hope for the future.





What are your thoughts on the quarantine we’re all experiencing?

Well, I’m happy that our leadership at the state level is using data, and using science and evidence to make informed decisions. Where we’re at, you know, it’s made a big change in my life and everyone’s life. It’s challenging to teach courses online. I think it also exposes inequities in education in general. You know, not all students have equal access to internet, and technology. And so that’s a challenge, just like anything. I’m working with it, I’m doing the best I can and trying to offer the best experiences I can in my classes, given the situation.



How have your classes adjusted to it? And how are labs working now that students do not have easy access to lab materials?

One challenge is just the short time that we had available to make the transition to online classes. I’m teaching all my classes asynchronously; I have a couple kind-of office hours/study sessions that I do over Zoom, but I’m recording all my lectures, because I know everybody’s life is different now that we’re stuck at home. I felt like that was an important way I could help students that maybe have kids at home or a new job, or just lost a job. Or having to be a caregiver.

As far as the labs go, yeah, that’s been a big challenge. I’ve adjusted some labs where students are using different programs, like Google Earth, to collect data, and make observations. Some of the more hands-on labs, I’ve actually done with my kids at home, videoed them, and then posted those. So, I’ve collected the data and then given it to the students. And then they have to kind of make sense of it.

If this has to continue on, I’m hopeful to have the summer to come up with more of a lab kit that students could get mailed to them, and have rock and mineral samples or fossil samples, to make it a little more hands-on.



I’ve done some reading on the GeoBridge project that you’re involved with. Where did this project originate, and what made you decide to take part in it?

So, it originated with the previous work I’d done with a colleague in OSU’s geosciences department, Sean De Silva. We’d collaborated on an earlier project that was called “Increasing Diversity in the Earth Sciences,” and this GeoBridge project is kind of an offshoot of that original project. So we had a pre-existing relationship and we saw a kind of call for proposals from the National Science Foundation, which was really interested in looking at new innovative and extracurricular ways that we could get students into the geosciences pipeline, meaning have it become their majors, and to train in the workforce. And also to help increase diversity in the Earth Sciences, because the Earth Sciences and geosciences are the least diverse out of all physical science disciplines. Community colleges just by their nature are generally more diverse than universities, and so we decided that we had an interesting idea, and made a pitch to the National Science Foundation, and we were fortunate enough to receive an award. We’re in the final year of the program right now, and we’ve been able to support about 13 LBCC students who have gone on to major in geology or some related discipline. The idea behind the program is it’s building a cohort of students in the summer before they start at OSU. This cohort would ideally support each other, socially and academically, in the transfer process.



A lot of the work students would be doing on the project seems very hands-on. Have you made any changes based on the quarantine, or will you just be delaying the field trips until it gets lifted?

We’ve been meeting over Zoom, and luckily we’d already collected a lot of data before the quarantine. So we’ve been just analyzing that data, and then we’re hoping that all of the research takes place at OSU and that things will open up enough that research can start up again this summer. Luckily the students work in pretty small groups and they’re paired with a mentor at OSU that’s in a lab.

This summer, we have a couple different projects. One student is going to be working in the ice core lab at OSU. These ice cores are collected from around the world to help us understand past climate change. Then there’s another student, this summer she’s going to be working on collecting samples out by Bend and studying ancient volcanic eruptions. There was a big eruption there, so studying that, and what the likelihood of that kind of eruption could be in the Cascades in the future.



Do you have any stories you’d like to share about your time working at LBCC?

Nothing specific really comes to mind off the top of my head, but what I can say in general is, teaching at LBCC is really my dream job, supporting students, having a job that has a mission around social justice and blending that with my passion for science and the Earth and helping students realize their potential and their science identity. Another thing is, I’ve been really fortunate getting to work with great colleagues, and just the friendships I’ve been able to develop, that aren’t just in the sciences but across campus, and finding colleagues that have a similar drive to the mission of the college.

But I do have one other story that I can remember. I do remember, right when Greg Hamann was hired. I met him, he knew I was a geologist, and was about to go climb Mount Adams and asked me about if I thought the avalanche danger there was going to be severe. I said, “No, it’s probably fine.” Then I went home and looked up the avalanche forecast, and it was really, um, not good. (Nervous laugh.) And so I emailed Greg and said, “Actually, you should take a look at this.” So for a few hours there, I was like, “Oh no, I just recommended that the president, our new president, go climb a mountain in an unsafe condition.” Greg and I still joke about that every once in a while.

Reflecting "On Writing"

“On Writing” by Stephen King is a very accessible book. King didn't write it like those overly wordy textbooks whose authors you'd swear were getting paid by the word, if not the letter. He advises people to write plainly and directly, and I'd say he definitely lives up to that here. In fact, my favorite part of this section, pages 103-137, would be the sample passage he wrote about how best to describe the scene of a rabbit in a cage that’s in turn on a table. In my notes, I actually transcribed the whole thing, and added his observations and my own after practically each sentence.

 King doesn't seek to instruct, so much as advise. In fact the whole section on "What Writing Is" could be seen as him covering a lengthy series of advice to become a better writer. The book overall feels like him telling people about the things he’s learned about writing, and that he wishes he’d known when he was first starting out. As for me, what I’ve learned is that “Practice makes perfect.” The impression I’ve gotten from the passage as a whole, and the “writing toolbox” section in particular, is that the best way to get better as a writer is to be constantly working on your writing. As opposed to just treating it as a day job.

Fallout 76: Surprisingly Playable

Src: fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Wastelanders

Meet Jack. Jack is your standard resident of Vault 76, a state-of-the-art fallout shelter built for the best and brightest that pre-war America had to offer. It looks like Jack had a few too many to drink at the Reclamation Day party last night, and he’s overslept. Now he needs to grab his things and leave the vault quickly, before the Mr. Handy robots seal the door and shut off the Vault’s life support. His day will only go downhill from there.

“Jack” is a character I created in Fallout 76, an MMORPG (Massively Multipler Online Role Playing Game) in the Fallout series by Bethesda. A new dowloadable content add-on just got released for it called “Wastelanders,” which fundamentally changed the game; It added in non-player characters, altered various locations throughout the game map, and even included a new main questline.

A lot of people in the Fallout community were looking forward to the release of “Wastelanders,” due to a less than favorable opinion of the game at launch. Many features fans have liked about the Fallout series were left out of the game, like having NPCs and settlements to interact with, and getting to make meaningful decisions concerning them. Those same people felt that the game was woefully lacking because of it, and this DLC promised to add those features to it.

Having not played the game before the DLC came out, I can’t speak of its quality then. As for “Fallout 76: Wastelanders,” I honestly didn’t mind it from a gameplay perspective. The combat mechanics were, at least, interesting, regardless of whether they could be seen as objectively good or bad.

Fallout veterans will likely remember the VATS system, used to temporarily pause combat and autotarget enemies. And as this game is always in real-time, any rational person would wonder how a combat-pausing system would work in it. Well, it’s gotten a lot simpler than it used to be: instead of targeting specific areas of an enemy’s body, this new system just targets an enemy as a whole and keeps your camera centered on them. The stat system was also pretty different from what I’m used to in an RPG; more on that later.

So, who would this game appeal to? Well, if you’re an RPG fan looking for something different it might be worth trying out just for that. As for Fallout fans: It’s not quite up to par with some of the past works in the series, but it is still an enjoyable ride. It’s somewhere between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 in terms of gameplay.

Now as for what the game’s actually about: The game starts you off in a post-nuclear fallout shelter called Vault 76. Its tutorial is extremely short; you have one corridor to walk down to get out of the vault, with tables set up that conveniently have supplies, equipment, and explanations on how it all works. It also gives you a "C.A.M.P" device (do you really need to know what an acronym like that means?) that does exactly what its name implies: You open it up in your main menu, plant it just about anywhere on the map you want, and then it gives you a certain area of land around it to build structures. You can build a Camp, a house, a restaraunt, or even a hotel for other players.

Once you leave the vault, you’re pretty much free to go wherever and do whatever you want. Though, since the vault doesn’t give you that many supplies, or even a weapon, it'd be a good idea to play through a bit of the main storyline a bit before you start properly exploring. There are two “main” questlines to go through: The game’s original one, and the new one added with Wastelanders. The original quest is, the Vault Overseer left on a secret mission, and she’s left you a mysterious trail to follow. Wastelanders’s is much of the same, only you’re on the trail of a mysterious treasure, and the people leaving you the breadcrumbs are a bunch of settlers that have recently moved to the region.

If you’re not sure which to do first, don’t worry because there’s a lot of overlap between them. For example, the first place the Overseer’s quest sends you to is her camp. While leaving the Vault entrance in its direction, you’ll just happen to run into two settlers who thought Vault 76 was the hiding place of that treasure. You can hit them up for exposition (literally if you feel so inclined), and even get a free starter weapon from them if you play your cards right. It’s just a machete, but beggars can’t be choosers. And you just became homeless.

The Treasure quest then sends you to a bar to get more information from its proprietor, Duchess. And wouldn’t you know it, said bar is right across the street from the Overseer’s camp. You definitely want to stop at said camp before you do anything else, too, because it has a LOT of supplies and building materials that you’re going to need.

If you go into the bar, you might be surprised to see a raider holding the proprietor up at gunpoint. Might be, depending on how genre-savvy you are. In true RPG fashion you have multiple options with the raider, depending on how high certain skills are. High charisma, you can talk him down. High strength, you can intimidate him. If you stopped at the farm on the way and looted the place, you can just shoot him. Once you’ve dealt with the situation however way you felt like, you can get filled in on what that guy’s deal was. After that your quest will be able to go in a couple directions. You can join in with the bartender’s plan to deal with the rest of his gang, continue following the trail of the Overseer, or just walk off into the sunset and see what the world of Fallout 76 has to offer. As with most RPGs published by Bethesda, there’s a lot of room to tell your own story.

So far, the best part of this game is its environment. Its forested landscape doesn't really seem like a good fit for a game set after a nuclear war, but is quite a sight to behold. It’s also big, though the developers did not sacrifice quality for quantity when it came to designing the world. Even in the couple of square miles immediately surrounding the vault, there's still hours worth of things to do. The combat mechanics are an improvement over the previous title, Fallout 4, and the same can be said for the camp-construction mechanics. The C.A.M.P. menu CAN be a bit hard to navigate at first, but that’s offset by giving you A LOT more options than you had in Fallout 4. Oh, and here’s one last little addition that all the previous games have lacked: One of many guilty pleasures you can have in the wasteland is to shoot the dilapidated nuclear-power cars that litter the road, then watching them explode in an awe-inspiring mushroom cloud. The past games didn’t give a good gauge of WHEN it was going to go off, leaving it up to you to guess when you should run for cover. This game gave them a health meter, removing the guesswork.

Now, what would a Bethesda game be without bugs? Although in this game, I haven’t run into much of any yet, of either the “technical issues with the game” or the “giant insects that want to eat you” variety. The only technical glitch I’ve run into is one that wouldn’t let me use the vendor shops at another player’s camp. I’d select things to buy, hit the button to finalize my purchase, and then get an error message.

So far, the biggest personal issue I have with the game is the way it handles its weight limit. Most games have some form of a penalty for carrying more items than your character’s weight limit allows. In the dark ages, the game wouldn’t let your character walk at all until you dropped some stuff. Games in recent years, like the last three Fallout titles before this one, just make you walk slower. This game lets you keep walking like normal, but slowly drains your character’s stamina meter if you go faster than a certain pace. When the meter runs out, then you have to walk slow until it fills back up. It’s not bad enough to be a major issue, but I do think it’s a little too forgiving in a hand-holding kind of way. Plus it’s honestly just more cumbersome than I think is needed, since they effectively force you to walk as slow as you normally would anyway if you wanted to preserve your stamina.

Speaking of hand-holding, this game’s stat system is a lot more streamlined than what you’d see in other games of its genre. Normally you have a small set of vital statistics, and a longer list of skills that those statistics affect, and that you get to increase when you level up. This game just gives you the small list of stats, and you can raise one of them by one point every time you level up. You can also choose one from a random set of perks, with whether or not you can take a perk being dependent on how high the stat related to it is. In previous games, you just got a full list of all the perks that were available depending on your level, stats, and skills. Like with the weight limit,I think it’s just a more cumbersome system than it needs to be. Though I admit that the system was SO different from what I’m used to, that I actually had a bit of fun just messing around with it to try and figure out how it works.

Though don’t take it from me; not everybody was fully satisfied with the changes brought on to the DLC. In his review, Ethan Gach of Kotaku was of the opinion that, while the game has improved, it’s not as much as it could have been, and even goes so far as to say that some of its attempts at adding depth to the game rang somewhat hollow. “Penelope [a person who’s mutated to the point of looking like a walking rotted corpse] is worried that the new world order you’re trying to build won’t have room for mutants like her,” he wrote. “Passing a +4 charisma check with her halfway through the quest doesn’t open up new doors or gain her trust. Instead, it reminds her that there’s a quicker way to fix [her drilling machine.] than she’d previously thought. ...You might as well be trying to hack into one of the hundreds of computer terminals scattered elsewhere in the world. I feel for Penelope. I wish we could share more than just a to-do list.”

Before release, Ferret Vaudion, the game’s lead designer, had expressed high hopes for both this new expansion, and the game as a whole moving forward. In an interview at Bethesda’s Pax East event, helpfully recorded by gamesindustry.biz, he went into what he felt did and didn’t work for the game at launch, and how that informed their decisions while making Wastelanders.
“There was quite a lot that worked at launch,” he said. “If you’re a person who liked exploration, for example, it was possibly one of the best worlds to explore that we’ve ever had. It was just huge, full of stories and stuff like that. But there was a large portion of our audience that wanted people.
They wanted an emotional connection. And if you know everyone is dead, and you come across a holotape from someone, it loses that hope that you might meet that person and help them out.
I think that what we learned from launch was htat core combat was fun, it was great to explore, there was a lot to do, but what we needed for a lot of our audience was to bring the humanity back.”

So yeah, fun game. Maybe bring your friends. I still think it’s worth trying out, even if it may end up not being as in-depth as had been promised. I mean, the map’s still huge, and there is still a lot of stuff to do in it.I can’t say too much about the multiplayer aspect, but I’ve heard the game’s a lot more fun with a party. My first experience with another player was to run away in terror because they walked up to me while I had my map out. I wish I was joking. There’s my last piece of advice: Don’t just stand there in the middle of the road looking at your menu or your map for minutes on end. Remember that the game does NOT pause, and you never know what might sneak up on you.

Before I wrap up, there IS another bug I ran into. But it's easy to forgive ones that make a game funny, which this definitely was. So, I’m walking up the road to a radio tower as part of the "Treasure" quest line, and I see a robot called a protectron walking up the road ahead of me. Apparently they can asexually reproduce, because a second one suddenly appeared in the exact same place the other one was walking. Now, keep in mind that both of them walk at the same pace. So imagine two identical robots standing so close together that their bodies overlap, walking at the same speed, making the same walking animation, and saying the same random phrases. And it gets weirder. Later they both just randomly died, from only one or two gunshots each. I have NO idea who did it, how, or why.


The full Kotaku article:
https://kotaku.com/fallout-76-wastelanders-the-kotaku-review-1843203130

Quote from Ferret Baudion of Bethesda:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-03-08-fallout-76-wants-to-bring-humanity-to-the-game-through-npcs

At a Glance:
Multiplayer Survival RPG developed by Bethesda Game Studios
Base Game price: ~ $40; All DLC, including Wastelanders, are free.
Base Game release date: Nov. 14, 2018
Wastelanders release: April 14, 2020
My Rating: ****/5

Minecraft Survival Guide, Part One: Welcome to Your New World

The horizon isn't a limit; In this game, it's a goal.

Miss the great outdoors? Desperate to “get away from it all?” Slowly losing your mind from boredom? What if I told you there was a game that could give you all the pros and cons of a good old-fashioned camping trip, from the comfort (and safety) of your own home? That game is none other than the smash hit, and ultimate time sink, “Minecraft." Since the game’s been out for a long time, and on the cheap side, I’m sure that a lot of the people reading are already familiar with it. For those that aren’t, this post, and all the ones after it, are meant to serve as a primer for all the basics you’ll need to master in order to play the game.

But what IS Minecraft? Well simply put, what isn’t Minecraft? At its most basic, it’s a game that lets you play around in a world made entirely of 1-cubic-meter blocks. These blocks vary wildly in terms of composition, with certain “biomes” having more of some than others. Desert biomes are mostly sand, the Jungle biome is a lot of trees, dirt, and sheer cliffs with rivers at the bottom, etc. You can gather these blocks through a wide variety of methods; You use them for the game’s core purpose: To build. And you can build,

ANYTHING.

By anything, I mean anything. Want to build a 1:1 scale model of the Starship Enterprise? Which one? Want to live in Minas Tirith? You’ll need a lot of marble, but it can be done. AND you can even get the local flavor of “barbarian raiders” to invade it if you feel like. The game has no limits. Well, almost; the ship can’t fly. And sailing ships won’t be able to leave the harbor, either, for that matter. But, you can still build them! Okay, when it comes to BUILDING THINGS, you can do anything. Aside from the game’s abridged version of the laws of physics, your only limits are your imagination, and your patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Romans had a multitude of “volunteers” to build it for them. All you’ll have is yourself, and any of your friends that you can rope into helping.

On that note, let’s talk about the game’s multiplayer. There are two kinds: Online, and Splitscreen. The first big downside to using splitscreen is that it’s not available on PCs, only consoles. Which actually makes sense if you think about it; Can you imagine trying to share a keyboard? On consoles, though, using splitscreen is pretty easy. All you need is up to 4 controllers. One person sets up the world, then the other three hit start and sign into the game. The caveat there is that each person will need to sign into, and by extension have, an account for whatever console you’re using and be signed into it.

Multiplayer is similarly easy, but each person will need their own copy of the game to use it. And they’ll all need to be on the friends list of the person setting the world up. Said person sends out invites to everyone, and then they just pop up like they do with splitsceen.

Now for a couple more downsides you should know about. First, to my knowledge cross-platform play isn’t possible. X box can only connect to X box, Playstation only to Playstation, etc. Finally, when the people who were invited go to leave the world, they’ll want to store their inventory in a secure chest before they sign out. I know that in splitscreen, they don’t keep their inventory since they’re basically just “guests.” What I don’t know is if that’s always the case, or if that’s the case with online multiplayer. Unfortunately, I can only tell you about what I’ve learned from my own personal experience. So, I advise erring on the side of caution, and testing things out for yourselves with items you’re okay with risking losing.

The next thing to do is to select the version of the game you want to play. My advice for beginners is the 360/PS3/Switch version. It provides you with virtually everything that’s available in the base game, and in my opinion the controls and mechanics are a lot easier to learn than the PS4/Xbox One version. As far as I know, the only downsides to playing the older version is that the newer one has biomes and texture packs that aren’t available on it, and that the graphics are slightly better. But regardless of which version you take up, I advise doing the tutorial to learn the controls. This guide is going to skip that part and just go straight into how to use those controls effectively.

As such: the rest of these posts from here on out will operate on the assumption that you know which button to use when the instructions say to do something; You’ve been warned!

Now, Minecraft comes in two play modes: Creative and Survival. The names are fairly self-explanatory: If all you’re interested in is building something awesome, without being limited by supply, hunger, things trying to kill you, or the laws of physics, then go creative. Let me explain that physics joke: They do apply to the things you build. They just don’t apply to you, if you go into hover mode. Very useful for building large structures on the sides of cliffs, for example. Creative gives you access to every single block in the game, including ones that you can’t mine/harvest in the regular game, and in unlimited supply. This is where your imagination being your sole limit comes in.

Now, if you want to have some fun and aren’t above things that could be considered “cheating,” you are capable of switching a creative-mode game to survival one from the main menu. So, if you wanted to add in some of those unobtainable blocks and use them for your survival game, you can. For example, there’s this thing called a spawner that appears in dungeons. True to the name, it spawns enemies. The way to win the fight against them is to break the spawner before too many spawn in. Unfortunately, there’s no way in regular survival to pack it up and take it with you. Plus the items you use to make it work, the spawn eggs, also aren’t available. So if you set one up and put an egg in it before making the switch, you can make it spawn any living or undead thing you want.

A more mundane use would, of course, be to give yourself a "competitive edge" by adding equipment to your inventory. Although some might consider it giving yourself a fighting chance. Where the line gets drawn is up to you, but I think we can all agree that there's a big difference between starting yourself off with a few things that can be hard to come by early on, like crops or an iron sword, and starting the game off with full diamond armor and a diamond sword. 

No, I can only justifiably condone you using this cheat for good: You might use a spawner to populate a village that you’ve built from scratch, for example. Or you may just want to go on a simple camping and/or fishing trip, and just want to skip the trouble of gathering the materials for a bed, fishing pole, "tent," etc. Which is fair; I mean, it’s not like you’d just march into the woods with nothing but the clothes on your back to go on a camping trip in real life.

As the name would suggest, survival is the more difficult option. What requires only a few hits of a button in creative can require hours of work in this mode. But the main reason why I prefer it is because of the added challenge. When you build a castle covering hundreds of square meters, I promise you'll love the sheer sense of pride that comes from knowing you did every step of building it yourself: You’ll have personally mined every square of cobblestone in its foundation, gathered all the wood needed for its doors and furniture, prepared the dyed wool and sticks for its ornate rugs and tapestries, braved the depths of hell itself to mine the quartz required for its marble floors, and even mundane things like growing the crops required to make sure you don’t starve to death while building it.  

Oh, I’m serious about that hell thing, by the way. Getting to the point where you can make a portal to the realm known as “The Nether” is practically a goal in and of itself, and as far as I know it’s the only place you can mine quartz. It’s about as pleasant as a realm modeled after the traditional fire-and-brimstone hell can be; You can literally walk right onto a burning magma block as soon as you step out of the portal, depending on where in the Nether the other end of said portal spawns in. And all but one of the mobs that spawn there actively want to kill you with a fervor typically seen in extremely hungry wolves. But as with all things in life, the harder something is, the more worthwhile the rewards tend to be. And the quartz is not nearly the best thing you can find there, if you survive.

Well, if you’ve read this far then hopefully I’ve sold you on it. If not, then it might be because I've left out one of the best parts (mostly) unique to this game: The worlds you make have no end. You know how in most games, there's either obstacles or an invisible wall in your way to keep you from going past a certain point? Yeah, there aren't any here. Okay, if you go millions of miles away from where you first spawn in, then the algorithms that make the environment generate in a way that makes sense will start to break down. Millions, though. Also I could be wrong but I think that only happens on the PS3/360 edition. Whether or not seeing that trippy landmass is a bad thing is up to you. 

The only other issue is that, the farther you go, and the more environment gets added to the world, the more space it'll take up in your console or PC's storage space. Beyond that, you can honestly just pick a direction, and keep on walking for pretty much ever. If you're interested, the game is only about $10, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to pick up. 

Part Two will cover all the basics you’ll need to get started on a survival playthrough. Posts that follow will be about more specific things, like a guide to surviving in each of the “main” biomes, building fortifications, making good furniture, how to not “Delve too deep” (and how to survive if you do), and, of course, The End.

On Writing - Pgs 1-50

There are a great many parts of "On Writing" worth remembering, and worth quoting. But by far the part of it that sticks out the most in my memory would have to be the time Stephen King and his brother performed a science experiment involving an electromagnet, a stripped power cord, and an outlet in their house. Sometimes you see, hear, or in this case read something that makes you go, "Wait, what?" And then you go back over it more slowly just to make sure you aren't missing anything. I had to read that whole section of the book out loud to myself just to make sure I was following what was going on. I knew full well where it was going, but I just had to gape in amazement that they didn't.

In terms of anecdotes that actually provided insight, I think the one that stood out most prominently to me was the early one about his baby sitter and all of the mean and anywhere from borderline to flat-out abusive things she did. Mainly in how dealing with all that made the criticisms he would later receive about his writing seem much less bad by comparison. I feel that one would help me keep things in perspective once I start getting feedback from people.

I feel that Stephen King is a person that takes a fairly laid-back approach when it comes to talking about writing, yet still treats it highly seriously. I feel that there are a lot of parts to his story that reflect my own insecurities about my own writing. Hell, going back what I just said about keeping things in perspective: Stephen King used to be a poor writer. I'm comfortable saying that because I think even he'd admit he was one when he first started. My point is, he struggled to get good at writing, and now he's so well-regarded of a writer that we're learning about him in college classes. I suppose then the main lesson I've taken away from this first part is that I don't need to worry about how good my writing ability is, but rather I should focus on being persistent with it. There's the rub though, how long did it take me to write this?

Spring Term 2020 Update

Some life updates:

To start, I know full well that there are people that currently have it a lot worse than me in this current situation we're all in, so I'll try to keep the entitled whining to a minimum.

That being said, I actually haven't had that bad of a time adapting to self-isolation. To be honest, I didn't really get out that much in the first place. Though it is kind of annoyingly ironic as to when the quarantining all started: See, I'd spent the last couple weeks of the winter 2019 term crunching like nobody's business in an effort to get caught up on all my work. About halfway through the last week before finals, I'd decided that I needed a vacation, and had planned to take a day trip to the beach once finals were done.

But the good news is I've got a nice little office space set up in my room now. Had nothing better to do after about halfway through the second week of Spring break.

Now as for my Feature Writing class: Well, if I was doing this for a living I'dve been fired years ago. I'll just say that up front. My room is basically a small library, with a game console and TV in one corner and a bed the other. And I am an avid reader, gamer, and "stupid-stuff-on-youtube" enthusiast. Imagine an alcoholic trying to work at a brewery. Yet perhaps in spite of that, I've actually managed to work on a much better time scale than last term, or ever. I've actually managed to make myself start writing some of my assignments the first week they were assigned, imagine that. I'm not even going to bother with the 3 goals this time; I'm just going to set myself one basic one for the term: "Learn to be a writer."

Where the Commuter's concerned, I'll refer you to the first sentence of my last paragraph. I conducted a few interviews for an article in the first week, and haven't touched a bit of it since. Been focusing on trying to get into a consistent work schedule for my course work, though I am trying make time for it. Think I'll try working on Commuter stuff on the weekends; I never get anything done then anyway.

I will say this about the class, though: The kind of things we're going to be covering are the exact kind of journalism I've been wanting to get into. Especially reviewing; egotistical though it may sound I've always kind of liked the idea of getting to put my thoughts on various topics into writing and seeing them get published.