bits of fourth

 It's the Fourth of July.  I have the day off from the office job, but still have 'double duty' postal route tomorrow so I don't know if we are going to try to go do anything late night tonight.   We're still waiting for the HVAC company to get the equipment and come install it, probably next week.  I've written a little bit on a few books but I've taken up teaching E some work skills like inventory management, spreadsheets and table formatting.  She is going to help me set up a printer today.  I told her we also need to work on some phone skills, and of course, preparing more for her driving test.  We need to focus on getting her a car to drive - but the HVAC was unexpected and we've had to do that first.  Next week we go and make sure she has all the classes she needs to graduate this year, as there have been some changeups required.

 

I've wondered what other online courses I could get her to take that might be of use for her, certificates etc.  I took that financial literacy course with her late last year, but haven't been chomping at the bit to take any more on that site, either.  But she is appreciating learning more about computer skills that I actually use daily at work, and her school experience has pretty much thrown her out into word processors and spreadsheets and said 'go do something with it' without giving her anything useful to do with it or any instruction.  It's a far cry from when we had entire classes in typing and ten-key (which she had never heard that term before), computer programming and word processing.

 

I've been studying French and Welsh - both of those are advanced level stuff so it's not as easy as just playing around in low level Japanese or Czech, but still not as annoying as  trying to keep Spanish separate in my head, and started a different world in the Minetest to see how I adapt to building now with knowing how everything works and how to survive in each environment.   And that isn't getting any more books released.  I've just put a lot on my plate right now and some of it - like E's extra computer lessons - are things I probably should have been doing for a good while.

bits and kick

 

It's been a tough couple of weeks -our air conditioner has went out, and we have to find out still what we can do to replace it - so we have been dealing with the hot temperatures and the floor sweating downstairs with the humidity - the repairman said the current unit cannot be fixed.  We also need to replace our washing machine - although I knew that a few months ago it took time to come around to consensus on that and perhaps tomorrow we will actually go and get something done.

The air conditioner is a harder thing -the estimate for a new unit is really expensive

Esme finally asked me for some help with cleaning her room - it's been years that I've been backing off as I was told I was too overbearing on the subject .. but now she wants help and doesn't know why I was holding back.  I told her I should have been more forceful too, instead of just listening to the other advice, but I wanted to avoid fights and that is not always the right thing, either.

 So, while we try to decide how to repair things, I kicked my little sketch I did in my notebook off into a Kandinsky/ J Ward style?(Mark calls it that) style drawing to try to get some juices flowing.

Lots of work - so far this has been my 16th day on between the two jobs, although the day after my birthday was just a few hours. 

bits - kick my tail, imaginary time

had some reflective 'I should kick my own tail' thoughts today that I have several more small stories and books and I just haven't been able to drag myself to work on them but then I go and spend a few hours here and there in Minecraft building a huge empire that doesn't exist - which imaginary world is more productive? It is all 'imaginary time', like dreams, but a bit more tangible.

 

I have another Mikki story I had half-realized - and several others, and then a few more popped into my head today and I captured an iota of it... and yet I sit here staring at what I sent myself on my lunch break and saying 'Do I really want to work on that or do I want to go build a road to nowhere in the game' again...

 

Both past times can be done at midnight or 3 am...

only one of them will ever amount to something in my publish queue....

 

  

 

Mikki Mack - the quite pretty small grey cat with the glorious long fluffy tail 

 

I worked on a few simple illustrations and thoughts for that story.  And I thought about tomorrow, which is the Solstice.  I have to work tomorrow, and it will be early.  What if, instead of walking all the way up to the road and watching the first light and walking all the way back down, I made coffee and an egg and watched the red day lilies light up in the garden?  I think that would be good.  And Saturday will perhaps be a hard day, starting late at the post office and as long as it takes to get it done - and not a route I run often.  There won't be a lot of time the next few days to do much leisure / thought process.  Sunday I have not volunteered, though - and I hope it won't be a call in situation, so we can all go to the store.

 

bits, japanese forest village in Minetest

 

Not much, studying Finnish on both platforms, working at clearing a large area for a village in the Japanese forest in Minetest, which is difficult, as the trees are so close together and it is slow going to clear all the bits to make the leaves fall.  The one nice feature of the Japanese forest is that the leaves are good for fuel - and you get stacks and stacks of the leaves when you try to clear it out.  I've been burning the bricks and clay and making bread with the full stacks of leaves and not had to use much coal or wood for that.  Another nice feature is there is plenty of sashimi and racine to cook and eat that you naturally pick up along the way.

Plus, this is another of those long narrow islands, and leveling enough for several houses is a second challenge. It is in the other picture,  behind me here the land goes UP, and there are several deposits of interesting minerals but I will have to climb for them.  And behind the travertine brick house is a very deep deep cave, which I spent a good amount of time in pulling out that travertine and a few other minerals, lots of clay, and the blue granite which is the first I have ever found in this world.

 

 I had found grey granite, black granite, green granite, white granite and red granite but had only seen the blue in the resources guide.  
 

 

It is my birthday in a few days, although I have to work at the post office that day.

reminder : they opened up a new bookstore/cafe in town, but I am not sure when I could ever get to it.. at least they are open until 5 pm, so there is a chance. 

from here the land goes UP.  I've been to that little spot on the right there that is tallest, and there are three different minerals right there at the peak.  I came back down to empty my inventory and will have to go back up and get them - jade, serpentine and blue limestone.  There is also some sodalite down by the shore there that I didn't get a chance to mine out yet as it is beneath a layer of grey granite.

the bits and spelunking in Minetest

 

 

a sort of 'townhouse' in the middle of the jungle near the cave system

 

Another whole week went by, it doesn't seem like it was that much time... but we've been busy.   Esme made meatloaf last weekend, and it turned into lasagna spaghetti in the midweek, and we ate up all the leftovers.  I've made some ramen and stir fry as well, and used all of my sushi rice and adzuki beans taking bento boxes to lunch.   

I've been studying Spanish, French and Japanese - and actually got to use some of the Spanish at my job this week several times.  I still find it much harder to get my brain to switch into Spanish gear - even trying to remember thank you (so simple, you would think)  the German or the French gets in the way and I have this awkward pause where my brain is saying 'danke schon' and I am actually saying nothing until I can remember 'gracias'.  

 

Why is Spanish so hard for me?  I even remembered some Czech one day first (dekuji) instead of the Spanish - it's like having eight cards for everything you want to say and having to throw away the first four until you get to the right language.  It's not a problem exactly of too many languages - but that Spanish is that far down my 'queue'.  C'est la vie, que sera, right?  They say it climbs up that queue the more you actually have use for it.  We'll see.  

We're thinking still about getting a new outdoor shelter for the goat and cats (beyond the ones they already have, which are several), but haven't went down and looked at it in person yet.  I still have postal route tomorrow, and it is going to rain all day.  I've also had poison ivy on my arm for days and it is getting to be quite annoying.  I've been trying to get myself to sleep every night before I actually want to fall over, and have been waking up even a tad bit earlier in the mornings.

 

In Minetest, I've somehow wandered all the way from my northern almost tundra alpine climate area down to the south jungle again where the cocoa farm is.  I don't know why - I hung around the cocoa farm for a long time and built five more houses and roads in all directions, and the cocoa still did not grow.  And then, when I thought maybe I'd go and get tomatoes and papyrus and bring them all across the southern continent in a development sweep - I fell into a cavern in the jungle, and discovered an absolute rabbit warren of natural caves, full of clay and other minerals (no ores, though), and have been popping out of this entrance or that one like whack-a-mole for several days, bringing up hundreds and hundreds of blocks of moonstone, silver sand, limestones, amber, amethyst and more.  

Every time I think I've found all the little holes in the landscape where this cave comes to the surface - I find more - and I say 'Hey, I can see (name of site) from here.  I can see my house from here!'.  I made one true base for the cave system where it comes out into the ocean on the shore near another major jungle site - and I have been collecting up the resources there - and trying a different little building style as well.  After a bit longer, I will go off back to one of my cities across the ocean from this and see if I can pick up the tomatoes and papyrus. 

 

 with the papyrus and tomatoes (still growing)

 

bits

 My mail truck was not fixable, so at 338,000 miles, it was done for.  It's been a week at work that was shortened by Memorial Day, but feels like it should have already been Friday today.  Getting things done, but my anxiety is up a little.  The dentist came back with information for me and an estimate - it will be a big thing to get my entire top denture done and it still feels like I'm not ready for that - but there are four big teeth to pull before that, too.  I need to schedule for the first half of those to happen sometime soon  - the estimate is to work on it over the course of a year - I'm sure that is their financial idea and they actually intend me to do it much quicker, but with my reduced healing, it might be wise to take it slow, maybe not that slow, but slow.

 

Doing Japanese, and French-to-Spanish.  Studying small bits more of Japanese cookery.  Needing to get myself to bed so I can do work and get the animal feed and something for Mark on the way home tomorrow.  

 

but I want to rant a moment on motivation, and how that relates to 'reality' 

I've heard others talk about how hard it is to get out of bed at all in the morning - how they want to stay in bed and call in sick.  They say this like a joke.  And I'm always doing my alarms in the morning so I can turn my hips and knees and shoulders over and eventually get them centered and feel right to get up and not jar anything.  Some days I feel that much more fragile than others - and sometimes I am so focused on what a dog is barking about that I get up anyway without doing that... and pay for it for a while afterward.  But no, I don't think about calling in sick.  I think about moving my body forward and making it do the things it has to do - and seeing if it cooperates and what must be done to make it do so. 

What I've found works really best, besides the turning back and forth a few times - is to imagine what time it is, and what an hour or an hour and a half from now should look like.  Where should I be?  I imagine that future me looking back at this me and saying 'hey, we're here because you got your a** in gear and did the things it takes to get here', and then I lay out what those things are, superfast, like a trail leading me to that future if I just make all the hops and hoops.  And then usually that visualization - which I often call 'kick my tail', or 'hike my tail', is enough to get me to do the next things, and the next.. until it really is an hour and a half later and I am driving, or sitting at my desk, and saying 'yep, did that, check...'  

This is especially helpful on mornings like this morning, when I've had intense vivid dreams that were not reality the night before and it is so hard to break out of what was unfinished etc.. but it's not real, it was the past, or a conglomeration of multiple bits of my past (oh how fun the 'you don't remember your login and you work at a place that calls itself something familiar but is a conglomeration of three places at once, joy - fun - take a few minutes working out what detail is from what and what the simulation has in store to try to stress you with!  Will this be a dream where nothing works right no matter how hard you try, or one where you can circumvent the laws of physics to solve the problem, or both?)..., or a different dream like Aladdin's Cave or etc..  Aladdin's Cave is a common dream of mine as well, the Cave of Wonders - a store or a house or a library, some place that is full of interesting things for sale or for the exploration etc etc.. and I feel I can choose this or that or nothing at all, and I wonder where all of those things come from that I see so intricate and detailed in those dreams, the books with titles and stories that do not exist, necklaces, contraption machines, statues, clothes, trinkets, maps, globes, dishes, stones and minerals and other artifacts etc etc...   

The helpful bit - and my reason for ranting on - is that my visualization of what will really happen in real time can come true - I can look back and see myself in the real past from the real future.  When I am in those dreams and attempt that - I realize that it is futile, and that the dream is fleeting and immaterial, and that I cannot plan a future within it or see it's past.  

 

The only exception to this are the 'million miles' dreams, where, for some period of time in the dream, I am in 'another world' - still not real, but it is lucid to a point much greater than Aladdin's Cave, or the Great Library, or wandering through supermarkets or such... but those dreams also slip through my fingers and most of the million miles dreams -dreams of another life down to the toothbrushing and dish washing etc, fade away with only impressions that remain afterward, but when I am in within it I can think of what I did 'yesterday' in that place and what I might do 'tomorrow' in that place, if I remain there - and usually at about those times that I am thinking deeply about that, I realize that the time is still illusory there and that I do not belong to that world, somethings are just slightly not real enough, the memories are not quite complete enough - and someone pulls the weft out of the weave and it begins to fall apart - I am capturing only a few images of myself on my fingers - that self - but maybe still remembering the map of the city, the way the room looked, the textures of the fabrics, the iron railing at the window, the fireplace, climbing those stairs in the city and looking down again at the sidewalk, those 'tastes' remain and sometimes return, days, months, years later - I will be in that place again, but not that self.  

I call these 'million miles' dreams because I wake up feeling like I've traveled, lived days and weeks and months away, and then suddenly it is only the next morning here, in reality, and I am not older, perhaps not wiser, but I do appreciate a lot of things more, for the feeling of 'having been away'.

 

But in the real world, the real real world, I kick my tail, and turn off the alarms, and crack my unruly knees and put my feet into slippers to gather all my clothes and pick my way down the stairs one by one, each second following each other one in correct order - until the hour turns around again and I look back at myself and say 'Well we did that one, on to the next'

some random

 I made adzuki beans from dry beans yesterday, and it took forever, but it was worth it.  I also made sushi rice with the sugar and rice vinegar and white sesame seeds mixed in.  More on the adzuki beans in a minute.

Today, I just made some spicy egg salad, to go with the leftovers from yesterday.  I haven't been out to the garden and really expected it to rain all day today - like it did yesterday - it has been overcast and cold, but not much rain.  Everybody is playing on their games, and I intend to do Japanese on one profile and French-to-Spanish on the other sometime today.

The egg salad : 4 to five eggs, boiled and peeled.  A tablespoon of real mayonnaise, a big squirt of brown mustard, a half? teaspoon of paprika, and whatever other seasonings I wanted today (I used garlic parmesan seasoning this time), and a little extra salt. 

One of our chickens has been laying huge double-yolk eggs - it is one of the green eggs, and it is almost double the size of the others.  Poor girl!  This is the third time we've gotten one of them, and they've all been green, double-yolked and very good inside.

The problem I've had in the past with the adzuki beans was :

Last time, I had let that other bag sit for a very long time before using them, which made it more difficult to bring them back from being older and drier?  I can't really control that, as there is only a single place around here that even sells them and it is an hour drive to Camden.   Because this is a forseeable problem with it, and I had some in the cupboard left, I decided yesterday was a good time to attempt the endeavor, which ended up taking me about three hours total.  

I had not thought about it the night before, and I did not soak them overnight.  This makes them take longer, when I have not thought about it beforehand.  I compromised and soaked them for about an hour and a half on the stove, thinking I would take a look at them and decide if they were going to be cooked in the afternoon or the evening.  I chose the afternoon, and a longer cooking time.

 After you've soaked them (or forgot) and drained the water, then cover them with new water and bring it to a boil, then let to rest for a little bit, and then bring the pot back to a boil and turned to a simmer for about 40 minutes.  If they have not been soaked beforehand, this could be much longer - more than an hour.  That makes for a very long prep time.  

I put a tad bit of baking soda in the water this time for the first boil and rest - which I had read could help break them down.  When I brought them back to the second boil, I put in a teaspoon or so of the rice vinegar, and that turned the water a different color immediately - so something was going on there.  They turned out really good this time - I took one out every once in a while and smashed it on a plate with a spoon until I found that they were well-cooked, then drained and smashed them all up into the paste with a bit of mirin and a small spoon of brown sugar mixed in.  Then I layered it hot into my glass dish and smeared a little bit of salt with a spoon all over the top of it.  Since I am intending to put this in the center of rice bowls for the week - it works really well. 

 The harbor outpost with the railroad started.  I didn't have enough to make powered rail, but by sitting in the cart and hitting the ground it will go up small bumps enough that I can make it from this harbor to the inland place where the road splits to to of the other cities.  It is the first railroad I've made in the game.  The other thing I had to look up was to push the left shift and the left mouse button to pick up the cart instead of just hitting it and making it move.  That took a few tries to get it right!

I had intended to move in Minetest from the small outpost I had made on the sea, near three other farms I had made before that were a bit further inland - two of them which did not have harbors - and then make my way to where the cocoa farm is and see if I can hang around long enough to make it produce.  But I never made it to the cocoa farm today.

I had this bright idea that I would dig down and collect some stone and coal for a little bit, harvest the garden there a few times in between, and then go on my merry way.   And then I broke into a cavern that was a geological wonder - three geodes (huge glass/crystal rooms surrounded by three layers of different material in a spherical fashion, and lots and lots of iron, copper AND tin scattered everywhere.  That pretty much pushed my 'only 100 ingots of iron in the entire world' to over 500 - and now the world is definitely in the 'Iron Age'.  

So I spent most of the morning there, and then played with the railroad a little, as I had made enough iron, and then made a second outpost nearby that was needed on the map between two points, and had a bit of a mining expedition there, too - but not for any of the ores, just lots of different minerals in a huge network of above-ground caves that I explored there.  I ferried a lot of crops and saplings from the one mining place to the other and got them both working very well so that I can spend a good long time there making food, lumber, paper and other things in between mining expeditions.

 

The minimal mining post - all around in these hills (and the ones behind me) are small caves that have a multitude of different minerals in them - I've filled a chest's worth of slots already with small amounts of different things.  Sygilite, Ivite, Howlite, Covolite, Chrysophase, Yellow Travertine, White granite, Black Granite, Grey Granite, Lapis Lazuli, Pyrite, Chalconthite, Crocoite, Jade, Tuff, Pumice, Columnar Basalt, Quartz, Smokey Quartz and so much more.
 

 I also found something called 'glow ruby' and 'glow ruby ore' but there are no recipes using them - and I think it is just one of those hanging loose end 'pretty' things someone put in the game.  They were in the caves underneath the volcanic sulfur environment - although I hadn't meant to dig that far underneath there from the place I was.  There was also a 'mold' environment there underground, and I just poked at it and said 'no thank you' and left all that stuff there.

 I verified that sand, stone and ores all burn at a ratio of 13 of the item to 1 coal.  I don't know why I hadn't thought to check that before, and it is the sort of thing I just check out instead of going to look up.

 

 

Fire slimes!

 

This was me saying 'no thank you' to the fire slime.  I think they are attracted to torches - it would make sense.  I did a small test and held a torch out and it turned towards me and started coming towards me - but stopped when I held up something else.  I put out a few torches and it followed them down the sand - leaving fire in it's wake.  I climbed out of the mine back the way I had come and came back later - and the torches were gone and the slime was back to playing in the lava flow.  I smacked one a couple of times with the iron sword and it didn't faze it, so I ran away.  That worked well on the bears, btw. the iron sword over the stone sword.  I might have to avoid these for a while, even though I'm armored up now.

 

 

 

On types of sites

 First off, in real life, I have two days off for the first time since Christmas/New Year's... and I'm still up at 3 am.  Hmm.  I went and did the dishes and scrubbed the sink and made some coconut flavored coffee.  I've been enjoying making some more Japanese type dishes, after finding mirin in the store, and buying new rice wine vinegar, and some very tasty seaweed strips with chili in them.  I've got some new stir fry noodles, and some dashi and wakame are coming in the mail as part of my birthday present (which is early, but I decided the big birthday present could be part Mother's Day, and it is a garden item, so why wait).  I've been studying Japanese and one half of the French-to-Spanish set.  The Greek was short-lived review, but good for the week or so I did that.  

 

Oh, that's dark in the alpine night.... but pretty

This was Rimanta, an alpine place I built a farm and then on another mountaintop nearby, a warehouse development center.   There were so many islands around this that had minerals in them I spent a long time fighting bears, collecting wood and minerals, beets, potatoes and carrots and it quickly turned into a place that will be a development center for the entire area around it.  There was over 500 blocks of black granite and I'm not done with a few of those veins.  Not too far away was the place I had first found the salt - Strabo, and it remains a 'farm' but it will likely trade materials and crops with Rimanta until they both have everything the other does.

Volcanic sulfur 'forsaken tundra' biome.  The white and brown blocks are 'volcanic lava rock' and there are yellow blocks that are sulfur.  The ground smokes. Nothing here was particularly harmful, although I used caution walking through and around it.

These blue spots in some of the rocks is 'etherium dust', which is a magic reagent I have collected some of, but haven't used yet.  One of the things that uses it is a flight potion.

 

 I was musing to myself, over waiting for the coffee pot, about the two hundred and fifty some locations that are now in my Minetest world.  Mark has asked me 'well, really though, how many of those are you ever going back to?'  The answer is, not all but quite a few of them.  And they break down (geekily) into a couple of categories.  To mention geekery - I've started up a spreadsheet in LibreCalc about what places have what things, so yes, it's getting to a point where I'm using a map AND a spreadsheet.... it's extensive.

The categories, not that they matter to anyone else, are this:

 

Waypoints : Usually just a spire, three or more easily-identifiable blocks that are not natural to the environment, with a sign and a torch to tell me I'm going from one place to another.  I might actually pass by these frequently, but there aren't sufficient resources or reason to make them into anything else.  Not every waypoint is counted on the map.  A waypoint might turn into something bigger later, after I continue to pass by it again and again - like a set of little islands I kept passing by and then saw a bunch of minerals on one side of it and set up a small farm / mining outpost there which pulled out 1400 blocks of jade.

Harbor :  A waypoint that is on the ocean that I make a specific docking area for a boat, with a spire and torches that can be seen when sailing by.  There might be a chest and a furnace - and I have recorded it on the map.  This might become an outpost or a farm almost immediately, but it's still a harbor because I was sailing along and said 'that looks like a good spot to tie up for a minute and bounce around'.

 

an outpost, up on the flat part of an otherwise quite vertical island, the only things I found on the whole island were a kiwi bush, rye, peppers and a cotton plant
 

Outposts : A simple house with a foursquare interior, chest and a furnace.  These are map points that were important enough to make note of them and build a structure and ensure simple survival (small garden).  I might not ever return here - and yet, there is something to remark upon that might bring me back.  

 Farm : This place is an outpost that has multiplied food resources in several gardens around it, a house with a furnace and multiple chests, and maybe some fences and other homey features.  I've usually lived here for a while- and there was enough resources of some sort or other nearby to keep me busy for that time.  I might have found a wayfarer chest that had interesting things or brought resources from other places, papyrus, cotton, trees of certain types, blueberry bushes, whatever was important, to this place over time, and intend to return here in the future.

 

Owontic Development center.  Those are non native red acacia trees and jack pines that I brought in to provide enough wood to continue making gardens and mining the caves nearby.  There is a small harbor behind me, and the road continues off to the West to the place I crossed a large canyon to get here  - which required a lot of stone but after building the canyon bridge, I thought I had to make something worthwhile nearby and this place seemed right.
 

 Development Center :  This is a farm, or an extra larger building right near a farm, that I have expanded and has enough resources that it now supplies extra materials to other farms in the area - it has many gardens and chests and most importantly I use these places to multiply and/or collect resources to bring to other places. This might say 'Warehouse' on it or development center, depending on what I'm up to.   The first development center was a place I brought six types of saplings with me to see what would grow there and multiply.  I have others specifically for papyrus, or coffee, or cotton - because it grew so well there I made huge fields of it.

 Another harbor, began as a passage through while sailing - but the only thing that is growing fast here are onions - the cotton is twice as slow as the place nearby.  The rye is almost as slow.  I've imported some jack pine tree saplings that are easier to chop down than the native redwoods.  There are some good mining options nearby and because of the geography this is the easiest place to pass from one ocean into a major river - but not without bumping up on the land there first.

 

Mining Outpost : Not enough of anything to be a development center, but has lots of mining opportunities that I want to return to.  Some of these don't even have houses, but I do intend to return here maybe bringing enough external resources to make it liveable in order to make it a development center and mine out the resources I've scouted.

Cities : I have several cities - and the main point here is that they have many, five or more, buildings and specialized storage centers and production.  There might even be a library, blacksmith, research center or city hall or such, depending on how long I lived there.

 Castle : Basically a farm that became a building project and I built something huge there and began to specialize the rooms inside after I built it.  I might not intend to spend much more time there after I finished the building, or might use it as a development center for nearby areas.

 

 

It's the Forsaken Desert, and the living ain't easy

 

Well, it's possible, though - as long as you bring your own dirt and seeds, a fishing rod, and some tree saplings.  I was bouncing through this Forsaken Desert area when I found a hamper (wayfarer chest) that had a kiwi bush and a beetroot seed in it.  So I thought, let's see if this stuff grows here.  It does.  I fished for a few meals, and grew and replanted that kiwi bush a few times.  Kiwis are hard:  eventually, it always seems you get less and less in return from the sapling over time, and then end up with none.  

 

I brought some apple tree saplings, some cotton seed, watermelon, papyrus, and happened upon another hamper with pumpkin seed and corn and grapes in it.  I used my inventory with red granite in it to make a little base house, and the furnace was on the shore as I had been cooking the fish in it.  I've had the trees grow in the little dirt squares that I made for them - vs. 'dry ocean dirt' which is there naturally, and forsaken desert sand, which is the pink stuff.  

 

I knew I'd need the cotton later for making the string for more fishing rods.  The fishing is odd, too, here in this biome.  I am getting all the regular fish, but there is also an 'other' category, usually broken swords, bottles, bits of building materials etc etc. and tnt sticks, among other things.  The percentage of 'other' seems to be a bit higher here than I've had elsewhere.

 

And I'll include a picture of the desert gate not too far from this base - it is a cool design.   I have not gotten up the courage yet to go worldgating - although with the coordinate system I think I'd do okay now in finding my way back?  Maybe.  I have over 200 locations now networked and mapped - so I really don't want to lose that and end up so far away I never get back.  Maybe make another little world at some time, and test it... maybe just be happy with my map.

 

I had also made a 'road to nowhere' that I stumbled across while making some north / south journeys.  I began cutting down the lemon trees to complete that road (and replanting all the saplings) and ended up with a huge lemon tree grove - and finding other things there, watermelons, coffee, etc etc... so I brought some of the papyrus there and started making lemonade.  That place has now become a huge base surrounded by useful trees, and roads up and down to ruins and places to mine out interesting rocks - all started from intersecting it again and again - until it made sense to build a real outpost there. 

In real life:  I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow morning.  Somehow, because I wanted to 'turn back on' the part of my brain, I'm back to studying Greek for the past few days, with bits of  Japanese thrown in.  My Greek level is pretty low - maybe 13? compared to 20 in Japanese, and I'm doing it on my phone atm, which is actually even lower than that and most likely counts as simple review.

columnar basalt in the Outback

 Finally found a place full of the columnar basalt - although it is underground.  It is slightly harder to dig through than the cobblestone around it, but it doesn't shift like sand when it is dug - which I had half expected.  There was lapis lazuli and pyrite right next to this, as well.  I had a few questions I had asked myself about - will gardens grow in the Enverness area, if you bring in regular dirt?  Yes, just like in the marsh and savannah/desert areas if you put water and regular soil, it will grow. 

 

I was exploring more of the jars and the chests that are under the water in the almost endless Enverness pools - lots of weird things there.  Trying to get around and through those areas was a big thing earlier in the game, because there was no food there and I didn't want to hang out.  Now, I'm geared up more and have lots of bases with food, so I'm exploring them a bit more.  Even just running through some of the earlier places I had been in the game, now that I know so much more about surviving there and have built up resources, I'm seeing those old bases with new eyes.

Don't eat the raw calamari it's poisonous! I keep reading that you can catch different fish in different biomes, but so far I am only catching the same types everywhere.  It might be the fishing rod?  I have seen some about an ice fishing rod, as well - will have to check that out when I return to the place that I finally found the ice.  Having a fishing rod and edible fish was one of the things I had missed in the other type of Luanti I had played for a few months - Asuna having that, animals and so much more farming and biomes really pleased me and has kept me playing this modpack.

  a savannah/mesa 'outback' biome home with a garden

near some very good mining locations

I have expanded my network of world locations to almost two hundred - not all of them connected by roads, many with 'pointing' spires like described before, where continue to go in that direction along that x or z axis and you end up in the next location.  I'm using the online Desmos graphic calculator to give myself a rough bare bones map, entering the x and z coordinates from the f5 information window that I finally saw the other day - I don't know why that took me so long to find, but once I do stumble on something to make the mapping easier I will use it.  Although, I may not continue seeking easier and more advanced mapping - once I have something that works.

Mark was looking at all of the graphic user interface (GUI) utilities out there and wanting me to go use one of those, that is his interest, technical programs and utilities and forums to extend the game experience -  but this is 'good enough' and I actually kind of like making myself 'true navigate' like some ancient Viking and keep an idea in my head where I'm going with the Desmos map being almost like a hand-drawn pirate map.  It's part of the fun for me.  I was using the sunrise / sunset and lines of sight and landmarks before finding the coordinate system, so hey - I'm high-tech now, compared to that!  I'm almost ready to exit the Stone Age, right?  And yes, I'm still using mostly stone pickaxes, even though I found some iron in one place I haven't been back there to use more of it in a while, as exploring and working my way through the world and new biomes is more interesting than having a faster working pick axe.  I'll explore more of the technology naturally as I run out of other interesting things.

Going back through the new Alpine and desert areas to build more bases now where it is logical and collect supplies and interesting rocks to transfer along the network.  Mark had been thinking to start playing in the same world with me, but then he got caught up in the politics he is seeing on forum posts and for some reason that makes him not want to play - even just the two of us in the game.  He said that participating in forums about games is really important to him, while I just like to play the game.  I'm having fun with it though, discovering all the things, post here a little when I finally figure something out.  

That is another main draw for me in games, besides the number one thing of being able to really build a little bit at a time, over time and keep inventory/maps etc - is having lots of things I have to figure out for myself (but not a bunch of enemies and deadly bits, more just curious bits, potions to use, herbs etc.), and not a big wiki base that has every answer, so there are things I have to ponder and bash the rocks together so to say, until I find the answer for myself.  I've been told that is 'the hard way'.  I often do make notes, like here on this site, though - so someone else might stumble against at least a little Eureka and then go back and work on the things that have been puzzling them.

Still studying Greek and Japanese, French-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-French.  Mark was wondering if we could buy a small outside shelter soon for the little blind goat and the cats and a hay crib to go in it - we've been thinking about it for a while, and watching a few more farm videos he saw something at an online store that he thought might work. 

Luanti Asuna Minetest - the two kinds of rice, and the two kinds of salt and sugar

 I am still quite enjoying the Asuna mod pack for Luanti Minetest.  There is still a LOT that I have yet to explore.  I've spent the past month or so looking for the 'other' kind of salt and the 'other' kind of rice - and finally, found them, or at least, part of the puzzle.

 I could find nothing about the other kind of rice for a very long time - then I realized that it wasn't just 'Asuna', it was probably part of the X Farming or the Farming Redo.  One of the rice forms is from one, and the other from another - maybe even one of the biome packs.  So, they clash a bit and it is hard to tell what comes from what.

 The one rice is a white seed that comes from jungle grass, when it doesn't break into cotton, it breaks into rice seed.  This rice is easy to harvest and easy to replant.  It is a 'normal' crop.  It can be used with a raw fish to make sushi, or can be mixed with green beans and tomatoes and a few other things to make chili etc.

 The other rice I have not found the actual source biome or location for, but I finally found a few of the grains in a hamper (wayfarer chest) in a jungle environment, and then went on a trek to figure out how to plant and harvest it.  After some vain attempts to plant it in regular dirt, or dirt under water, or dirt surrounded by water etc etc... I found by accident the 'silt loam' block, which says on the description, used to grow rice!  The silt loam block can be made with a block of clay (4 clay lumps on the crafting grid), a block of any Enverness sand or dirt, and a block of any regular type of soil / dirt.  Those three things together make the silt loam block.  Then, those blocks can be planted underneath a layer of water, and the new rice grains can be planted in it.  They take about five stages to grow, but then they can be harvested and will yield the rice sheaf and also more seed.  The sheaf can be put in the oven to make it into cooked rice - which can be used with kelp, fish and other things to make more food.

 

 how to make silt loam soil used for farming rice

It must be placed one block under the water in order to plant

 

 a rice to the left that is almost, but not ripe - two rice seeds just planted on silt loam soil blocks under the water

Finding out about this, I also found info about Palm Wax and candles - which had not come up before, and also about more potions, including flight potion, requiring etherium dust and a fire flower powder (those flowers in the ethereal red desert that bite when you hit them, still haven't harvested one yet).  The etherium dust is found in some desert environments inside blocks, showing up as bluish purple dots in the block.

 

 

this is the second or third stage of growth right here - it begins underneath the water

It does not grow well when you are absent, you have to stick around.   Some crops grow while you are absent in Minetest, and some are greatly accelerated or only grow when you are present in that area.

 

 

 

 

This is the final stage of the growth of the sheaf rice 

Notes on the two kinds of sugar : one comes from Stevia, which is found growing wild in highland grassland near jungles, and it is made by putting four Stevia sheafs on the crafting grid.  It is used with fruits and flours and soy milk to make baked goods.  The other kind of sugar only comes from burning papyrus, and is not used in recipes, but can be made into a block.

 

The first kind of salt comes from putting a bucket of water in a furnace.  The other kind is made by using a mortar and pestle on salt crystals, which come from the ice tundra regions near Alpine areas.  Watch out in Alpine areas, the bears bite (and take a good amount of hearts away when they do).

In real life?  Rolling along.  Planting in the garden some more, beans and nasturtiums and cucumbers are coming up, along with the kale, arugula, summer squash and mizuna.  Some marigolds are coming up in a pot that I had thought definitely wouldn't - having been planted weeks ago.  I'm bouncing between the Spanish-to-French and French-to-Spanish and picking up some Japanese and even some Greek lessons here and there.  Other than that - trying to get enough sleep and not eat junk.  

 

 

bits

 cucumbers came up in the seedling pots, put them in the garden, bought some tomato plants and put those in the garden, getting a few strawberries every day, the kale and arugula have grown to the point where I can tell them apart at a glance now, which is good

 

Found this 'forsaken desert' biome today, very odd hollow trees - and in the distance there was a three story house with a chest at the top, but not much in it.  There is another biome next to this called an 'ethereal desert' and it has red grass and a strange red wood bush.  It also has flowers that bite you back when you try to hit them with a pickaxe, and obsidian and lava here and there.  There are a LOT of rocks / ores and minerals in the desert - and I've put up two posts simply for the mining opportunities, so I can get back there and pick up the minerals that I couldn't fit in my inventory.

Reached over ninety named positions on my Minetest map, and used an online platform called 'Desmos' graphing calculator to put in all the coordinates and make myself a good map.  Why did it take me so long to find out that F5 showed the coordinates?  Mark said you know - there are graphical programs made for Minecraft / Minetest that will take your save file and do that for you, nicely in graphics and everything.  If you used one of those, would it take away all the fun or something?  I don't know, my response was that I don't need other people to draw the Last Supper for me with a stub pencil, but for some reason, it's fun when I do it that way.  

I took this picture to show Mark and Esme where I fell off a cliff so 'unexpectedly' the other day - and now I've put up a fence.  I was up on the top of the mountain only 86 blocks up, acc. to the coordinates, feels like more - and looked down and saw the little fence and said 'oh yea, that is the place'... 

I was growing five types of trees here and starting a 'lumber and development company', along with a mining shack further down by the water.  It actually took me a very long time to add this to the map because it is in the middle of an area I was doing a lot in - but I just hadn't been back through the middle or recorded much of it.  Once I was doing the map, I had a good idea where it 'should' be and eventually found it again.
 

Using my map I found the 'Northwest Passage' around the dead Enverness biome that has no food, just 'miles and miles' of dead white stone, enverness sand and pools with an occasional house / temple and empty pottery jars.  It was tough to get around/through that but now that I have done that I've made several more connections and harbors and can get around pretty easily between the places I want to go.  I have coffee beans planted at one place and they are multiplying, but I need to hang around the place where I have cocoa longer if I want that to ripen.  Another task I might want to do is sail up and down more of the rivers - as I've found a few more travel routes that way that I hadn't really thought too hard about before.

Also, related, drawing the other night I realized I don't have the endurance that I once did in my hands to draw for so long - and I used to, I used to make engraving like drawings with little Micron pens over huge sheets of paper.  It is just that I don't get the practice anymore.

I want to remember that I bought that book about the retired mobster that buys a little cottage with a garden and then learns how to take care of it.  I haven't read past the first chapter because it is an online book and I keep forgetting about it.

Need to get to sleep, and remember to take the clothes out of the dryer in the morning...  We did Grandma's big grocery run today, and it was raining off and on and colder than it had been.  Have been doing the Spanish-to-French and French-to-Spanish still, although I'm thinking I might switch and do Japanese for a day or so.. will see what I think tomorrow. 

the run by posting

 

 

I planted nasturtiums today.  I had planted some in the other garden weeks ago and there was no sign that any of them came up, that seed was older, but unopened.  The strawberries are working on being in full swing, except that it is forecasted to be raining a lot the next few days.  I'm picking and eating what I get, which has been two to four berries a day.  Waiting for other things to come up. 

 We went shopping after I got home from work today, the family got snacks and we replenished the things that we needed to.  Completely forgot the potatoes.  We had cannelini beans, tomato, yellow summer squash, onions and a chopped up porkchop as a dinner tonight alongside Italian bread with butter.  Mark had just a porkchop and the bread.  

 Yesterday I made a fruit thing to go beside dinner and it was five strawberries from the garden chopped up into some pre-chopped and frozen apple I had put in the freezer months ago, then with a few brazil nuts chopped fine into some sugar in the food processor and a little butter cut up and scattered into it - put aluminum foil on it and put it in beside our porkchops to bake.  It was a miniscule flourless crumble type thing, and the brazil nuts were Mark's idea and they really did go well with it.   It was a bit moist - because I didn't use any flour, but it tasted wonderful for 'finding something to do with what we have'.  I had constantly pushed that container with the apple to the side in the freezer, almost had forgotten what it was - and I didn't want it to go to waste.  The tomato in tonight's dish was the same, I had chopped and frozen it before it went bad in the fridge - and was trying to get myself to use it in a recipe.

 I put one of my colored pencil tin kits by the bed headboard with the notebook that is there and have drawn a page two nights in a row.  I can tell my hands don't have the endurance they had built up before when I would draw for 25 minutes straight and not feel it.  Now I feel it.  Eight thirty is very late for me now, and I am ready to fall into bed.  And then I stayed up until 9:15 drawing that house we saw on the way to the store - the one with the 'magnificent' tree in the back, that Mark pointed out to Esme.

 We've finished the discs of Red Dwarf that we had.  I read online while rec. it to someone else there were more seasons that we don't have.  Did French-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-French today.  Bounced around just one area of my little Minetest world and gathered four more locations that I had made previously, and built two tiny houses (just 4 square floors inside each) to house some supplies on two more that I added in between a point A and point B (and I saw lots of orange calcite there).

 

 

bits

 Bits of real life stuff, got some eggplant, mizuna and basil seeds in the mail, and have planted the basil in the garden along with lettuce, amaranth spinach (new, trying it) and two types of beans.  Started cucumber and the eggplant in a few cups inside - hope they will germinate.  Very likely going to buy a tomato plant or two or three.  I haven't seen any movement on the cucumber, turnip greens or carrots that I planted outside, although I have watered them here and there.  I have to figure out where to put the green mizuna - I bought red mizuna a few months ago and it is already planted and coming up, along with kale and arugula. 

 I harvested strawberries, kale and dandelion (a variety of the dandelion that I had planted last year from an Italian variety packet).  I also accidentally pulled up one of the Hamburg Parsley, and processed that and put it in with my arugula that was left because it is so spicy.  That parsley has been growing out there year after year for three or four years now from the first time I planted it.

Something bit me on the shoulder while I was out there and it puffed up quite a bit - but it has gone down now with some anti-itch stuff put on it.  

I hope that we can get the semi trucks to show up at work - so many of them are just bailing on their appointments it is terrible.  It might just because they have chosen not to work Mondays but I really wish they would tell me that on Friday instead of saying 'sure we'll be there' and then cancelling at 9 am on Monday.  This is the second Monday in a row that multiple companies have bailed - I thought it was about Easter, and now I'm thinking it is just that over the weekend they get time to either find a better bid to go on or they just don't want to get up and do anything yet until Tuesday.

 Charlotte had found herself something in the woods and rolled in it - got herself the second bath in as many weeks.  My sense of smell is oversensitive after being out in the garden and digging things up.  I dislodged a large frog and a large more-sluggish-than-usual skink type salamander.  I saw some morning glory coming up there, and maybe some of last year's packet of zinnia that I had scattered.  There is a blackberry cane in the middle of the garden - in a place I don't till up anymore, and it is covered in flowers - I think I'll let it go to fruit.  But I'll have to trim it out and a few small trees that are started as well.  I couldn't find the red-veined sorrel at all, where it had been coming up for a few years in a row.

Studying French-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-French.  Made kale, yellow summer squash, cabbage and onions for a vegetable side-dish tonight, with olive oil and Tuscan seasoning in it.  Before I went to sleep yesterday I had recorded coordinates on sixty named/marked points in the Minetest Luanti Asuna world - and there are quite a few more I hadn't gotten around to yet.  I've already gotten quite tired tonight, though, and am headed off to bed.

bits of notes

 Just bits of notes (to be updated later)

 

I found a very large savannah today, on the edge of jungle, mesa, desert and dominion biomes.  So I've found a lot of new things, as I've had bits of these biomes show up here and there but not a savannah as large as this.

Rye seed comes from the savannah grass, where there are also pumpkins, sunflowers, corn, cotton (and probably more) naturally spawning.  I found that out the other day.  I broke a lot of grass though and only ever got rye seed there.  In the plains and sakura environments, the grass breaks to wheat and oat seed, randomly.  In the jungle environments, the jungle grass specifically breaks to rice or cotton seed, randomly.  AND I finally did find the barley growing wild in the Savannah, much like a corn plant.  In the savannah, the dirt can be tilled with a hoe without needing to be replaced (which you must do in dominion and marsh environments before the hoe will work).  The tree saplings that would grow in regular jungle and grasslands do grow here.  A single piece of coal, in a furnace, will toast 4 quantity of sunflower seeds, and there are 5 seeds from every head.

 

 You know how long I've looked for that?  But this is only the third time I've been through a savannah, and this one is a bit larger than the others.  So, it must not be a high spawn rate in them.

I did finally find some cocoa beans in a wayfarer chest (the hampers) and am trying to grow that on a jungle tree.  I keep looking for the new biomes, I know by the achievement list that I haven't found them all.  I haven't even seen a tundra biome yet, or seen the Giant's Causeway basalt flats that I've seen pictures of.

 

 

 

An interesting 'dungeon' brick formation in the Savannah, and some pinkish-red stone called 'Sconia' that I was impelled to go mine

 

 

On Slimes : I'm gonna tell you, in the Savannah environment the slimes are VERY hard to see, compared to the grass ones the color of the slimes here are almost exactly the same as the grass - and in the dark, it's almost impossible to see them.  That could be because my color vision sees more greens and blues - but I've noticed it again and again.  You CAN eat the savannah slime, as you can the grass slime - but not the purple ones.  Also, while I'm on the subject, the purple slimes can climb trees, which in a jungle environment, is pretty far up - I've been way up in a tree not even thinking about that - the noise in other biomes is usually that they are near, but down on the ground and can't get you.  Nope - purple slime come right behind me through the leaves and start attacking.  Purple slimes leave a purple poison trail as well - and if you touch it before it dries it also gives you a hit.  There are also Dark slimes, which I'm not sure if you can eat that - but they aren't much worse than the others.  Mineral slimes are red, and deep underground.  They aren't aggressive (that I've seen, Dark slimes are, they are gray and also tough to see where they live), which is good, because they are TOUGH compared to the others.  You can eat mineral slime.  Anything that was that tough to kill I took that to a house with some food and tried it out in case it was poison.

 

The Sconia rock apparently produces red dye, as well.  I mined all of it.  I went into the brick cave and saw this.  The dunegon was a bust, as the only chest in it had dirt and a stick.  However, the whole dungeon is made of travertine brick - which I may come back and get some if I can remember that.

 

Magenta dye comes from thistles, lilacs and a 'Chiana' purple celosia-looking flower that is actually purple.  Irises give blue dye.  Plantago gives brown dye.  There is a 'Savannah Flowergrass' that also gives a brown dye.  Some of the other magenta-colored flowers come out to pink dye.  Magenta glazed / fired clay is interesting looking, but not so much that I will want a lot of it.  I prefer the orange, white and blue clays.  I am wondering if I should go back and find the dark gray dye (basalt, and slate, I think?) and see if that makes a glazed clay. 

Mesa and Savannah biomes meeting up, Eucalyptus trees and something I haven't yet experienced there on the left.

and yet another one - Eudalite?  It is very pretty.

The colored granites have been hard to find - just a smatter of blue and red so far in the entire world - but I found a whole hoard of green granite today.  I really like the 'lots of rocks' mod that is included with this Luanti Minetest package 'Asuna'.  There are so many things I'm poking around and say 'oo, what's that' and then go dig out the entire vein.  Amber, Amethyst, Vivianite, Covelite (blue), Lapis Lazuli, Sygilite (purple) and much more...  There is a bright pink stone that is scattered in ones and threes where I have found it - but I can't remember the name of it.  Then there are other just interesting things like the blue limestone, slate, shale, amazonite (bright blue-green), chysophase (bright green-blue), travertines and calcites.  I found some orange calcite the other day and although it wasn't enough to make anything big out of - it made a pretty and unique spire for the place. 

 

 Did I find Calcifer, or what?  I think it must be some sort of burning bush.  It went away when I hit it with a pickaxe.  The black block to the right of it is coal dust.  I hadn't found that before, either.  This was in a desert cavern.

 

My spire mapping technique is working exceptionally well.  And I've settled another large quadrant of the world.  I'm using the term 'vast' for when I have an area that is all homogeneous and no good reason to call the cross-point anything else - but I really don't want to build a lot there.  It isn't wasted space, but it is a vast open area that I just have a road through, where four or five cities could have been built, but I don't see any reason to.  

 

update : Oh my, I just found out that F5 brings up a debug window that shows you your coordinates - so now I'm going back to each spire and recording the coordinates there in a notebook.  It was a different key in the original Minecraft.  When I noted this to my daughter she said 'you didn't know about debug?'  Well, apparently not.  It will not replace getting around on the road network, but it will be interesting to see the actual distances.  The first seven coordinate locations that were all supposed to be on the same z were all within 30 paces of the same line - most of them within 10, but apparently that one had a big cliff-face I had to avoid and didn't get quite back to the same z.  I'll also have to go back to the place I called 'Kappa High Point' and record the y.

I've wondered if the fish are specific to the biomes or if they are just entirely luck.  I haven't found anything to suggest they are not just random.  I'd like to find out where the jellyfish are, or if it just a very very random lucky guess.  I got a stick of TNT fishing today - which was unexpected.

Jade pyramids, tree farming and spire mapping

 

This is basically because I found 1400 blocks of jade in an island near here - and well, what do you do with that much jade? The pyramid was built over a cavern entrance and still didn't use up even half of my new stash of jade.  So, I started seeing what else I could make with the blocks.

 They are sort of like ziggurats, more than pyramids - but the little house ones were an interesting puzzle to solve.  I had never had REASON to make glass stairs before, but having seen some in a loot chest a while back, I had a light bulb that they could work really well to put a window in each of these little houses.

 

   

The little pyramids are fully viable houses in their own right, with furnaces and chests in them, each having a window and a door.  The floor is sunken one block inside with a stair from the door - although it didn't have to be it made it feel more like the regular house size inside.  The regular house is in the background above.

  

the inside of the small jade pyramid houses

Aspen farming : when you don't have enough trees, similar to this that had been a treeless plain full of vegetable plants and animals - aspens are a great go to.   Each one will drop 2 to 6 saplings, more likely 4 to 6.  Acacias are pretty prolific, as well, but a bit harder to plant near each other as they spread out more.  Cherry (sakura) trees also have that sideways sprawl.  Aspens grow most always straight up, and only require about 4 to 6 spaces between them to drop full saplings when you cut them down. (no leaf overlap, which can cause problems with some trees).  Silver birch trees grow straight up, and quite tall, but the leaf overlap means you might have to cut down three or four of them before they begin to drop their leaves into saplings.  Juniper trees are a great wood type - and drop lots and lots of saplings, you'll have stacks and stacks of saplings, but the trees only have 3 to 4 blocks of wood in each one so you have to really want juniper wood as your material.  Lemon, orange and banana trees do not grow well in some biomes.  You can quickly turn an area into a forest if you work at it with the right kind of saplings, and have plenty of wood for any project that you might need, pick axe handles, torches, bean and grape supports etc etc.  Since there had been no wood in this location when I arrived - I made the house here with dirt, and a willow wood roof that I had left over blocks from the last place.  

Island life and the living is easy...

 I kept passing these three little islands grouped together, and the largest of the three had a lot of minerals showing all over the sides of it as I zoomed around it in my boat.  This was a mid-point between four other places, so eventually I gave it a name and a spire with the directions indicated just so I could remember that yes- this is the place.  Then I saw the minerals, and pulled the 1400 blocks of jade out of just one of the sides of the caverns - along with seven other minerals in different amounts, and there is even more in there.

I made a little 'island life and the living is easy - the sea is full of fish' base and decided it didn't even need a full house - just a roof and a small garden.

 

How the spire mapping system works :

When you get to a really interesting place it gets a spire, 4 to 12 blocks high, with a torch on top hopefully, and then a sign with a unique name on it.  The sign on the spire that faces the actual feature, where a house might be built, has the name of the place on it.. for example 'Shurl Island'.  The sign on the opposite side says both the name of the place and 'cross (Place)' with the name for the place that is exactly opposite.  IE: If you see the sign, turn around and go straight in the other direction - you end up in Place.  And of course, the other two sides of the spire are also 'cross (Place)' for where you would end up if you walked / boated in that direction.  

 

Building an actual road between the places is the best - but sometimes the terrain is such that you cannot easily build roads and bridges, or you do not have enough resources to build a road between two good points but still need a good way of navigating a long distance between them.  This spire system helps you not get completely and totally lost while exploring the known Universe - everything has some sort of constellation relation to each other like breadcrumbs, and you can track your way back or realize you've somehow gone in a circle.  Some spires have all directions marked with 'cross' as well as the location name - and it gets really useful when you do lose your way and have no idea where you are, but then pass a cliffside with a spire on it that was founded on the other side.   Ah, that is where I am - but how did I get here?  And then you can complete the circles and know how to get from one place to another easier.                                      

In this world, I came across blindly from three different established places and hit the same long narrow island with jungle trees.  I did not know that the Tidaris island was so large - and had started two different houses with small farms and mines.  But, because I had a spire with a torch on top in the second location - I saw it when I climbed up the roof on the other house and was able to realize that it was all the same place, and yet, still large enough for both locations to exist (one with a good mountain to mine and harbor straight across from the city, the other with resources of bamboo and clay and a flat inland route that led through to another biome).

Some places will also have signs with arrows that indicate a string of places that are in that direction, in the order of appearance.  This particular world has maybe seventy named places, not all of them with full towns and gardens in them.  This little island itself was a rarity in that it was a named place for a very long time, that I came through often, but had not seen any reason to settle it - until I saw inside one of the caves on the back island and saw a whole shelf of blue covelite (which looks like lapis lazuli).  Then I saw a jut of purple sygilite, and some silver sand (which makes lovely silver sandstone), and the jade, and blue limestone and a wall of coal and a wall of shale etc etc..