Instances of misspelling or improper punctuation/capitalization are all intentional.
Day 44 (continued)
I've just been lying in bed; haven't really done anything in, what, couple of hours now? Anything, except for feeding Wolfy some raw steak. Maybe I can teach him some dog tricks, besides what he already knows? Maybe turn him into a shepherd hound?
Nah, who am I kidding? I've seen how he looks at animal pens. Would probably be a real mess – not worth it.
shit. A better idea would be getting some new clothes sorted – its just past midday and I am already feeling slightly chilly. need to see what options I got..
Not a whole lot of options sadly. Fixing my jeans and Pumpkin Pete hoodie's gonna take a lot of effort. I'm less worried about the jeans – they were a bargain anyway, but I grinded hard for those fifty P-Pete lunchboxes, dammit! It's torn up real bad though, and unless I can find out how to get my hands on some cotton, my best bet is to use some sort of wool-based patch to stitch the damage up and not make it look butt-ugly in the end.
Looking through the crafting stuff for any replacements, I was able to find only one – a really thick tanned-leather jacket. Leather's in abundance, but from the looks of it that jacket will be too thick to properly fit under armor. Think its size implies it's kind of protective itself, but I doubt that'll be enough.
Alternatively, I could ignore the recipes and try improvising with some wool and leather – something like a simple garb, like some of the villagefolk fancy. Might be enough to keep me warm and be slim enough to slip under armor.
Decisions, decisions.
Figures working with leather wouldn't be so simple. Using it as-is doesnt work – the guide clearly tells me it needs to be tanned in a cauldron in boiling saltwater first. And the closest source of water to me – the river – is fresh water. Obviously I am glad for that, because free drinking water. But I swear this place is out to get me every time I try to do something. What am I supposed to do now? Leather jacket is off the tablet, and my jeans wont hold themselves together much longer without some patching.
MAYBE I can get away with just strutting round in my shirt but my pants situation leaves a lot to be desired.
There were some bodies of water right by Eastside and Westside, where it could possibly be salty enough for me to use, but at the same time I would be risking appearing before townsfolk butt-naked – literally. My ego needs some relief right now, not more battering.
This isn't just a wardrobe malfunction – it's a real wardrobe disaster.
Okay. Disaster averted. Somewhat. I tried doing a bit of animal care – clean up the pens, see what was going on, give a few quick pets and so on - but since it's evening right now, I was freezing my ass off. So I said "Screw it" and decided to try and freestyle-sew myself a cloak or even just a blanket out of wool I had had – anything to cover myself up. So, while looking for my little sewing kit through all of my chests, I found a pair of leather pants! Really beat up ones, but an intact pair nonethless.
All is well, right? Except, I started wondering where exactly would they come from, since I couldn't have made them myself. But then they started stinking of death pretty bad and I did guess right that I had picked them up from a dead zombie some time ago. Really not the best choice to wear, but it's not like I got any more.
Dust. I guess I'm going to have to wash them inside out with several buckets of lava-heated water and hope that it's enough to run out the smell, or at least prevent me from getting some sort of ultra-bad zombie rash.
Maybe damned if I do, definitely damned if I don't.
this shit is getting out of hand. I was sleeping when something started banging on one of my house doors really loudly. I tried to grab my sword but before I could do anything one of those little rotting baby motherfuckers broke off the bottom part of the door and rushed for me.
someone explain to me how these bastards hit so hard (it felt like I was getting kicked out by a grown adult) while having negligible freaking body mass and being, oh idk, a BABY!
I ran outside where Wolfy was already on full alarm. Kicked the tiny shit on my tail, it fell over and my "vigilant" companion chomped on it really hard. Good riddance, except where was this vigor when my door was getting very loudly broken in?
Speaking of being broken in, I started looking around for clues as to how exactly the little zombie bastard got in. I come to one of my gates, closest to the broken door, and what do I see? The gate is also broken. Finished. Left wide open with the lock smasher off. I mean, I knew that these fence gates were a very temporary measure, but to have them broken by a fucking baby? I need a more solid alternative and fast.
For this night, I've gone and blocked off all of my exits completely with cobblestone. Will start looking in the morning, assuming I get any sleep now, cause this stuff gave me a real scare.
Case-in-point of this place doing anything in its power to get to me.
Couldn't sleep, so I went looking for possible more permanent solutions to this new headache. Looking through the schematics, found some for a solid iron door. Looks promising.
Okay, crisis averted I think.
I was initially not that sure about the iron door, because, according to schematic, it was to be made of several iron-cast segments joined together; but then I actually watched to the end and found out that those joint points were to be welded together with some liquid-hot iron anyways. Oops. The final result? Looked really sturdy, but also kind of ugly, with all the scorch and weld marks and whatnot, but whatever, it passes for my first attempt.
The most unique part of this design were the hinges - on both sides, and powered by Redstone. In order for the door to actually function as a door, it'd need a Redstone current, cause otherwise it's just a big ugly hunk of iron that's impossible to move without a pickaxe - I've tried. I took the lever used for the stonecutter and did a few tests. First, I erected a small plank pillar to act as a doorframe and a lever mount (the levers do actually stick to vertical surfaces!); then placed the door. A bit of a hiccup occured when I was figuring out how to actually connect the Redstone in the door's hinges on the lever side to the lever itself, but that was wasted effort: apparently, the dust has a bit of a wireless property to it, since the lever I pulled out of frustration activated something anyway, despite being a good half block away from the door.
The way this door works is that, with a Redstone current, one pair of the hinges loosens up (some parts of them slide out) and allows you to move the door from that side, while the other pair of door hinges serves as intended. Then, once the door is moved back to its initial position (aligned with the unlocked hinges) and the Redstone signal is cut, the hinges get secured again and the door is locked. And yes, this works that way on both pairs of hinges and both sides of the door as well. I went and crafted another lever to see if the door would break if both sets were powered at once. Thankfully not - with one pair unlocked, the other one stays solid, Redstone signal or no. And all of this without any need for an actual lock, or a key! Really impressive design, I have to say.
Too bad it's got one glaring flaw I almost busted by head trying to fix: if the door had to be in its "locking" position at the moment of Redstone signal cutting off, then how could I both lock it and disable the current from the lever? If I was to pull the lever, then lock the door, then it wouldn't lock completely, because the hinges were locked out; and obviously I couldn't just do anything with the lever on the other side of the door once it was in position. Tried putting a lever on the opposite side of the planks, but it seemed like the 2nd source of current was being overwritten by the 1st, and nothing was happening.
If I wanted to make this work, I'd have to look for something else as a source of power. Looked through the entire "Redstone" category; there were so many freaking schematics I just skimmed through barely paying attention. Ended up with two contestants: pressure plates and buttons. Made a simplistic wooden plate first, just to see what it was like. You step on it, the pressure activates the Redstone Dust below the plate (have to put that separately), Redstone Dust activates whatever is within the range. After about a second of of stepping off the plate, it returns to the original position and Redstone is no longer active.
Wooden plate didn't work out because:
a) One second is too short of a timespan for me to open the door, go through, and close it in the exact same position before the signal goes out.
b) I have all reasons to believe that I wouldn't be the only one who'd be able to trigger the plate. And it's not like, say, a zombie has to worry about closing the door on time, right? It only has to worry about opening it.
Buttons were my last hope at this point. Those turned out to be little more than little rectangular-shaped pieces of wood or stone (pick your poison), hollowed out and filled with some Redstone. There were also "sticky" variants for both, but I didn't bother because neither did I have "slime" needed for that, nor saw any need: if levers could get stuck to walls, they should've been able too, right?
A big left in my face - they couldn't. I ended up needing to carve out an approximate cavity in the planks to fit that one button in. But I'm not complaining too much, because this turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle: activate Redstone within by pushing the button into the cavity, and the button actually slowly slides back out completely on its own - that takes up to two seconds, assuming it's pushed all the way in. Two seconds is more than enough for me to unlock, go through and lock the door, especially considering how I can just hold the button while opening it to buy myself some extra time; and it's not on the ground, so no Creepers or other mobs are going to be stepping on it and accidentally unlocking anything they shouldn't (they might press up against the button, sure, but it's a whole lot less likely). Basically, best of both worlds!
The sun's about to rise, so that's another sleepless night to add to the record; but at least it's been massively productive. I'm going to start forging parts for the other doors now; should be somewhere by sunrise - exactly when all the filth burns away for me to start working on installing them.
Remember how I said that I'd disappear in January? The sad thing is, this month was nothing but free time for me. BUT! monkey brain procrastinate. If breathing was manual, I guarantee you I'd be too lazy to do it.
