I'm getting better with designing buildings. It's actually pretty cool to see how I've improved in that respect. I went from building cube, mundane things to the beginnings of varied colors and complex shapes. In my main save, if I ever get back to it, I can see my base having a cylindrical main room with little cube rooms branching off over and behind it. I practiced making a better looking house in a Classic world and I didn't do too bad for how much of it I got done. I've realized that planks and furnaces would be good approximations for kitchen counters and stoves. And cabinets too, although chests may be better suited there.
The latest update hasn't been overly exciting for me although to be fair I haven't look much into it. Notch's blog, http://notch.tumblr.com, shows what's been added. I like the squids. I closing one in and getting it out of water but I killed it. I sort of question the system for dyes. I can see sheep having white, gray, and black fur. However, outside of that, the dye system is rather illogical. Sixteen dyes possible and they come from so many sources: cacti, flowers, an ore found deep underground, etc. Some of them require bone meal, which is gained from crafting bones dropped by skeletons. Someone mentioned a simpler system and I agree.
Why not start with the three basic colors - red, blue, and yellow - and go from there? Red and yellow can be gained from flowers while lapis lazuli can give blue. I guess you can use bone meal to generate dyes when crafted with them, although since bone meal is also a fertilizer ink sacs may be smarter. Then mix them to get green, purple and orange. Although, there are still ten other colors this system doesn't account for. Maybe that's where the hodgepodge of crafting recipes come in.
I haven't made any music boxes or dispensers yet, but I can see some practical use for both of those. Dispensers seemed a little overpowered to me at first but I've warmed up to them.
Anyway, back to the Minecraft World. I've done more exploring and I must say, a world of nations would fit nicely on it. Some day, I'll have to post a map of it on here. Something that bugs me, though, is this: Why? Why do I want to make a world of nations? For the fun of it? Making houses over and over would get boring eventually. For the fame? This idea probably won't generate that much interest, and would eventually be forgotten. I wish I could do this in multiplayer, but I wouldn't be able to connect to most servers. Although I could use my computer as a server, Minecraft would need me to port forward, and I don't want to mess with my parents' router.
Also, I never got started on another project I wanted to do: the Elohim class battleship. That's a Classic project which I briefly had a team set up to carry out but we never got started and the host server looks like it's doomed to be shut down. So I have three projects: the Elohim, the Minecraft World, and my main save base. I need to decide which I will do and how I will do them.
