Lunar Eclipse, 4/15/2014.

^Taken with my Sony Cyber-shot just now, right outside my apartment on campus.

I would have completely forgotten about the lunar eclipse, except that I needed to dash to my car to get some tax information (yes, I waited until the last minute). On my way back in, I noticed the moon was red. So I woke up Draya, who has to work at 5:30 AM, to come see it. She agreed it was worth it.

Anyway, I have a friend in Scottsbluff who can't see it through the clouds, and friends in Scotland who can't see it period because it's morning there. So here's the best of the pics I took.

How I Mine For Craft: The al-Ramadi Mosque and Mokattam Gardens

Welcome back! Last time, we saw the start of an Egyptian city, with ancient and medieval Egyptian characteristics.

Well, there's more.

Starting at the entrance to the bazaar and port under Mokattam Mountain, we will explore the al-Ramadi Mosque and Mokattam Gardens.

How I Mine For Craft?

I've taken up Minecraft.

I actually took up Minecraft a while back, but getting it on my laptop on Thursday night has guaranteed that my academic career is going to be sufficiently imperilled. So I might as well show you guys what's destroying my free time now!

Back when I was living with Caveman, I tried create this huge underground version of ancient Babylon, complete with artificial sunrise and everything. Making the cavern was really time-consuming, though, so I decided to not start there. Instead, I started in a desert area near a river, so I decided I was gonna rock ancient and medieval Egypt. (I say medieval because I wanna make bazaars and the Hanging Church and such.) It's not gonna be a literal copy; I'm not going to recreate the world map and such because that would be a bitch. But I'm going to make civilizations appropriate to each biome I come across, and I'm starting in Egypt.

Anyway, pics!

We're starting on the Wannabe Nile, looking at large statues of nondescript pharaohs carved into the side of a mountain. They each bear the crook and staff, symbols of royal Egyptian power, and they both have those pharaoh goatees going on.

What I'm listening to today, April 5th 2014 edition.

I never thought you could get psychedelic with a banjo. I'm suitably impressed.

LA face with a Chadron booty.

Nate and I were hanging out last night, rocking beyond reality, and this song came on the radio. I'm a fan of the Dandy Warhols, but I didn't recognize this song. The jangly guitars at the beginning are supes trippy, and were the perfect end to a very odd night.

Yeah, might as well talk about that night. The Sigma Tau Delta (OMG THAT SPELLS STD!!!) open mics at the Broker have been ongoing since I was an undergrad, but they've been wrecked lately by a particular group of teenagers. We can't actually forbid them from coming, or playing, but we've tried to figure out controls to filter out the worst. Everyone can only do two works now, no sign-ups are allowed after 9:00 PM, and as of last night that seems to have worked. There's a couple people that get up and sing a cappella rather badly, people that read truly shitty stories (," stated James), but it's not as bad as it was two weeks ago.

This is important, because two weeks ago it was bad. Like, if 75% of all the performers were Creepy Dave bad. It was so bad that Nate, Shanda and I had running MST3K-style commentary on Facebook about how bad it was. We also resolved that at the next one, we were all going to deliberately suck. Nate was going to read the lyrics from Rebecca Black's "Friday" in the style of William Shatner, and Shanda was going to read the lyrics from "Ice, Ice Baby." And I? I was going to perform "Baby Got Back," a la the Jonathan Coulton version: