y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2017/04-April/20.xhtml

<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'The local Dollar Tree <strong>*does*</strong> sometimes carry soy milk!',
	'body' => <<<END
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I took a trip to the Dollar Tree for more lime juice, a trip I&apos;d planned to make yesterday after I finished my coursework, but I was too lazy to get much of anything done.
		There, I found the soy milk the checker said they didn&apos;t get at this location.
		The lime juice took precedence though, especially considering how much almond and soy milk I have in my pantry right now.
		I&apos;ll have to keep watching for it though, once the Dollar Tree runs out of lime juice.
	</p>
	<p>
		Google locked me out of my account again, I think about a week ago.
		I finally got to trying to get back in.
		I had them let me back in no less than five times, but they kept locking me back out right away.
		Something is seriously wrong on Google&apos;s end.
		Finally, Google did manage to let stay in, at least for now.
	</p>
	<p>
		ThomasMonroe on the <a href="ircs://freenodeok2gncmy.onion:6697/%23Minetest">#Minetest</a> suggested that I use tool repair as one of the bonuses offered by <code>minequest</code>.
		I was very reluctant to touch tool wear, as it&apos;s not something I&apos;m particularly happy with.
		I don&apos;t like that you make tools out of finite resources, then they just disappear on you after they&apos;ve been used a while.
		I&apos;ve been reluctant to touch this part of the game out of fear that my changes would be perceived as ... ruining the game.
		While I don&apos;t like tool wear and want it gone, it&apos;s unquestionably one of the main aspects of mining.
		However, I do need more bonuses and it was someone else that suggested it ...
		I&apos;m putting this bonus on the bronze pick in the iron slot though.
		What that means is that other iron-based abilities can&apos;t also be used.
		These other abilities include personal warp points and extra inventory space.
		Lack of tool wear is powerful and requires sacrifice of other powerful abilities.
	</p>
	<p>
		With <code>minequest</code> having a way to negate tool wear, my <code>diamese</code> mod has become redundant.
		And without my <code>diamese</code> mod, there&apos;s not enough reason for my <code>storage</code> mod to exist either, as <code>storage</code>&apos;s main purpose was to give me nodes dense enough to use as materials for building unbreakable tools.
		And without <code>storage</code>, my <code>rarecrafts</code> mod no longer has the materials it needs.
		That&apos;s three mods gone!
		Adding this capability to <code>minequest</code> even makes the process of getting unbreaking tools more difficult I think, and at least 1000000 iron ores will need to be harvested before tool wear is completely negated, assuming I don&apos;t make it even more challenging.
		For reference, that&apos;s enough iron lumps to form 35 locked chests, fill them each with as many steel blocks as they&apos;ll hold, and still have iron to spare.
		Seriously.
		That number is no small challenge to reach.
		Additionally, there&apos;s the fact that it can&apos;t be combined with other steel-based bonuses.
		You can try swapping back and forth, but it won&apos;t work out so well.
		If you use the inventory space bonus, you&apos;ll have to empty your extended inventory before swapping.
		If you use the warp point bonus, you&apos;ll lose your warp points every time you switch back to the anti-wear bonus.
		That is to say, your warp points will be deleted every time, not just made temporarily inaccessible.
		Hmm. I like the <code>diamese</code> mod&apos;s concept much better, actually.
		And that&apos;s exactly why I think adding this as a bonus to <code>minequest</code> is more likely than the <code>diamese</code> mod not to make people think it makes the game too easy.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;d previously decided to include both gravel-based and flint-based items in the gravel/flint bonus slot of <code>minequest</code>.
		That added further variety for players to choose from.
		However, I&apos;m finding it very difficult to come up with enough bonuses for all the mineral-based items, so I&apos;ve ended plans to use gravel-based items for now.
		That drops the number of bonuses I need to come up with by three.
		It also means that the flint slot can only hold one of two items, as flint can only be crafted into one thing.
		That got me thinking.
		One bonus for the flint slot, the one given by flint and steel, is the ability to fill nearby air with fire nodes.
		It&apos;s destructive and not at all useful.
		That means any sensible player will go with the other bonus.
		So what bonus do I think all players should have?
		Additionally, gravel doesn&apos;t change into flint every time you mine it, so this will be a low-growth stat for most players.
		What bonus is nonvital, helpful for everyone, doesn&apos;t need much levelling to be helpful, and not overly powerful?
		Furthermore, it&apos;s got to actually be related to flint in some way.
		I considered moving the custom name tag bonus to the flint, but that&apos;s something you write to and that others read.
		The obvious choice of items for that bonus is the steel sign.
	</p>
	<p>
		Hmm.
		I wonder ...
		Would some sort of guide be a good option?
		Maybe the bonus for flint would be an explanation of the other bonuses?
		On the one hand, I like the idea of an in-game way to read how the bonuses work.
		But on the other hand, I want them to be something players have to experiment with and discover on their own.
		Or maybe ...
		Flint can be used to temporarily transfer your flint-based levels to another bonus.
		That&apos;d be flint-related, as flint combines with steel to form flint and steel.
		Without combining it, flint is utterly useless.
		And without sending your levels to another bonus, your flint bonus would be useless.
		This seems like it opens the door to potential for a lot of abuse though.
		I for one would transfer all my levels to the steel slot in an attempt to slow down tool wear faster.
		Speaking of the steel slot, it has a few bonuses that shouldn&apos;t reach beyond their normal limits.
		For one, the tool wear bonus comes to mind.
		Levelled too high, digging will heal your tools faster than they ever got damaged.
		Additionally, there should never be more warp points than the expected limit.
		Each warp point will have a button in a menu, so adding extra buttons that haven&apos;t been given locations might make them inaccessible or worse.
		The extra inventory bonus shouldn&apos;t have more inventory slots than expected either.
		Hmm...
		Perhaps flint levels can be transferred individually, not only as a full set, and can&apos;t be used to boost levels beyond the level cap?
		One problem still remains though, and that&apos;s that I know for a fact that bonus would be abused.
		I don&apos;t know every way it&apos;d be abused, but I know how I personally would abuse the mechanic.
		With only 100 iron and 1000 flint mined, as opposed to 1000000 iron mined, I could have tools that never break on me.
		I&apos;d of course aim for more iron later (iron is the main thing I collect in Minetest), but this would be enough to get me started.
		I&apos;d find a large gravel-bed ocean and rip it to shreds.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		The reading assignment in <span title="Programming 1">CS 1102</span> for the week is as follows:
	</p>
	<ul>
		<li>
			<a href="https://www.tutorialspoint.com/java/java_exceptions.htm">Java Exceptions</a>
		</li>
		<li>
			<a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu./~hasti/cs368/JavaTutorial/NOTES/Exceptions.html">JAVA EXCEPTIONS</a>
		</li>
		<li>
			<a href="https://docs.oracle.com./javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/index.html">Lesson: Exceptions (The Java™ Tutorials &gt; Essential Classes)</a>
		</li>
		<li>
			<a href="http://math.hws.edu./javanotes/c3/index.html">Javanotes 7.0, Chapter 3 -- Programming in the Small II: Control</a>
		</li>
		<li>
			<a href="https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=EW4ojXopsJY">CS1102 Programming 1 (Java) Unit 3 Lecture 1 - YouTube</a>
		</li>
	</ul>
	<p>
		I both started and completed the <a href="/en/coursework/CS1102/Unit3.java.xhtml">programming assignment</a> as well, though I can&apos;t figure out what we actually accomplished, if anything.
		We used a provided class file to read and parse another file, then we worked with the output.
		Reading and parsing was the only even somewhat challenging part though, so we didn&apos;t really <strong>*do*</strong> anything ourselves of value.
	</p>
</section>
END
);