Knitting + Nerdery + Christmas = Awesome Ornaments

Most of November and December was spent completing orders and making Christmas gifts, but now that things have started to wind down for the year, I've had time to work on personal stuff. A friend of mine mentioned making knitted Christmas ornaments and I really liked the idea. The only problem was that the usual Christmas decor didn't seem right for Mr Morrgan and me. It didn't take long for a suitable idea to pop into my head, though. What better theme for a pair of long-time gaming nerds than old school gaming geekery!

The first imagery to come to mind was an old classic; the aliens from Space Invaders. It's as if these guys were designed to dance around in a circle in ornament form. And no, I'm not quite old enough to have played this back in the day, though I have some vague memories of having played a remake at some point.

Doom 2, however, I did play back when it came out. We didn't have a PC at home at the time, so I spent many, many school breaks playing it on one of the school computers. Ahh, fun times. Mr Morrgan played (and still plays) it way more than me though, and it was he who suggested I make this guy. He's called Coco the Cacodemon and he's a bit grumpy because I left out his ability to shoot lightning balls when I made him. Thought it'd be safer that way. Don't want a tree on fire for Christmas!

Next up will be another familiar floating face from Doom 2, the pain elemental, possibly a few of his lost soul buddies and finally a bit of D&D nerdery in the form of a Beholder. Then we'll have the most awesome tree in the neighbourhood!

(Note to self: need a tree.)

A shiny new look for the blog!

Well lo and behold, the Morrgan's Creatures blog has a completely new look! What do you think?

Originally I just wanted some of those neat easy-to-share-in-one-click buttons on every post. However, my old blog template was really, really, REALLY old, so getting them to work required a template change. Once I committed to that I decided I may as well do a complete overhaul. It was about time and I wanted to make the blog neater, prettier and easier to navigate.

I may have been a bit silly though. I could have sworn I made a backup of the old blog template before I began the changes, but now that file is nowhere to be found. So, dear readers, I need your help. I have tried to add all the relevant features and links my old blog had, but can't be sure I got it all right.

Is there anything you really liked about the old blog that's missing from the new design? Or maybe there's a completely new feature you'd like to see? If so, please let me know!

Minecraft

Now for something a bit different than the usual posts on this blog. Today I bring you a game recommendation! The indie game in question is Minecraft and it has given me more excitement and intense adventures than most games I've played recently.

Oh my, look at those huge caverns. Who knows what riches and dangers await inside.

You start off with nothing in a randomly generated HUGE world (apparently the surface area is about 8 times larger than earth) and your goal is simply to survive. It's a bright day and everything is peaceful, maybe with some cows, chickens and such wandering around. However, at night when it's dark, monsters will come out and it's a bad idea to be out in the open at this time. In order to live through it, you'll have to gather some resources and make a few basic tools, so that you can build a shelter lit by torches (light equals safety). You'll want a safe place that the monsters can't get into. Once you have one and have made more tools (including a weapon) and gathered supplies, it's time to start exploring!

Some worlds are snowy ones. Behold my house built on a cliff by the seaside. On the right you can barely see my greenhouse, growing crops for food.

For me, the appeal is two-fold - creative creation and danger-filled exploration. First of all, everything that you have in the game are things you've made yourself. There's a certain pride and satisfaction you get from that, even in a game. You can build a house (or a fort, or a mansion, or an underground lair with a moat of lava...) for yourself, in any shape you wish. You can use a variety of materials and decorate the place with things like paintings and bookshelves. For example, you can collect sand and clay to make glass for windows and bricks for walls, respectively, by heating them in a furnace. Use your imagination to your heart's content. How about a rollercoaster?

The scary scary dark night. The greenhouse is on the left and on the right is a big lighthouse I built because it seemed like a cool idea. I'm also hoping it will help me find my way back as I explore the surroundings. But mostly I built it just because it seemed like a cool idea.

Actually, there's a nostalgic element to this too. The blocky look of the game reminds me of building secret bases and such out of Lego when I was a kid. Back then I'd always run out of pieces before I was finished, but in Minecraft I can go out into the huge world and find more. Awesome.

Mr Morrgan enjoys the game too. Here's his house by the sea, complete with a manmade stream and planted trees and flowers.

Second, the world is full of cool caverns and cave systems to explore and mine for useful things like iron ore. The deeper you go, the better materials you find for making better quality tools, weapons and armor. It's dangerous, as these are dark places and monsters could be anywhere, but oh so exciting. I have had several great adventures in such places.

These waterfalls lead into dark caves below. Dare you go in and explore?

And after a scary adventure in the deep, it's a big relief to get back to your house by nightfall. Then you are safe in your home while zombies and other creepy things roam the land outside, and you can fry some bacon for dinner and work on more tools and weapons for your next expedition while you wait for morning.

Darkness falls and the moon rises as I return to my house just in time before the monsters come out. What a welcome sight.

Well, these are just some examples of the things you can do. If you're interested in the game, you can go to the Minecraft website to get the Alpha version that I have (a beta version should be available soon - yes, the game is actually still unfinished). There's also the older but free Classic version you can try out to see if this is your thing.

Inside Mr Morrgan's house.

You can also check out this series of Minecraft gameplay videos to get a better idea of the experience.

The view from the balcony of my cliffside house.

My Creative Space: Django Ponies and Captain's Chairs

Mr Morrgan is a web developer and spends all his day with things like Django and Python. He's been rather excited about it and after showing me a picture of Django's unofficial magic pony mascot, I was excited too. Who wouldn't be excited about a flying, magical pink pony? About instantly I decided Mr Morrgan needed his own magical Django pony to help him out at work.

If you haven't heard of these terms before, perhaps this explanation may be of use. Mr Morrgan has tried several times to explain Django to me and I have also tried googling it, with little success. (Frameworks? High-level pythons? What?) This morning over coffee, however, he explained it to me beautifully with the help of Lego. It went something like this: if C is the plastic, metal and rubber used to make Lego, Python is the basic Lego pieces and Django the fancy, moulded special bits you can use to make neato space stations. Et voilà, it made perfect sense to me, who spent her childhood making über-cool secret bases, robots and said space stations out of Lego.

Onwards to the point! Meet Dee, Mr Morrgan's magic Django pony! She's knitted and crocheted from a wool blend, using the pattern for Hubert for the body. The wings are the part I'm really proud of, though. When I started on the first one, I still had no idea how to do them. But it all came almost automatically as I was working and they turned out even better than I had hoped. Joy!

By the way, the chair in the photos is one of my favourite places to sit and knit and is also where I made most of Dee. I think it's a fantastic piece of furniture. Look at the shape! The gorgeous red colour! Best of all, it spins and rocks and adjusts! Awesome!

Mr Morrgan doesn't agree, however. He thinks it looks like a prop from Star Trek of the 60s - hence we call it the Captain's Chair (we joke that I should get a Captain's Log to go with it). He wasn't too happy when I spotted it in a 2nd hand place just as they brought it in, but I vetoed his opinion. This chair is MINE and perfectly illustrates why I love going hunting for finds in 2nd hand shops.

I now await with trepidation when he'll use his veto right on my opinion of a piece of home decor, but it was worth it.


Want to see the creative spaces of others? Head on over to Kootoyoo's blog for a look!

I hate computers

Dear silly developers of various applications like Chrome, Firefox and iTunes.

Yes, I'm a Finn, born and raised in Finland, and have lived here all my life. However, my 1st language isn't Finnish. Plus I like to do my computer stuff in English. My Windows is in English and my browser is set to English.

This means I want to do my internetting (yay, a new word) in English. It means I DO NOT want all your installers and webpages in Finnish. Especially if your installer installs only the same language version as the installer itself (I'm looking at YOU, Google Chrome). Would you kindly check what language I'm using for my internetting, not my location.

That is all.


(As you may have guessed, I'm in the process of switching computers and have been installing apps all weekend. As a result, I feel like strangling something and have to let out steam before the computer flies out the window.)

(Also, Mr Morrgan had the same sorts of trouble after relocating here from New Zealand. It was great fun watching him at the time. Now I understand his frustration only too well.)

Tuesday Finds: Recyclable Geekery

Last week was full of computer-related panic, as my hard drive decided it was time to die. It's happened many times before (they just die on me out of spite, I swear), at semi-regular intervals even, which is why I'm still kicking myself for not being smart enough to make backups of EVERYTHING. In the end however, after days of many nervous moments copying files while waiting for the next crash, all was saved. Also, the hard drive is still under warranty so this turned out as mostly a nuisance, fortunately, and not a real disaster.

I had seen clocks made out of old hard drives on Etsy before and while poking around a bit more now, I found lots of other ways to recycle computer bits. So, inspired by my poor dead hard drive, here's a few of them for this week's Tuesday Finds.

Starting things off is the hard drive clock I mentioned earlier, made from an old network server hard drive and available from Geek Gear. Rather stylish, don't you think?
($34.99, GeekGear.etsy.com)

Olden computery parts can also be worn, it seems. This blue resistor necklace is one of many jewelry designs found at digiBling, along with other accessories made from electronic components.
($16, digiBling.etsy.com)

For some reason I still have floppy disks lying around, just taking up space, even though it's been years since I actually had a floppy drive. Contexto puts them to much better use by making them into floppy books.
($7, contexto.etsy.com)