Of Servers and Starships

When I last mentioned the Elohim, I believe I was discussing making the model for the third deck of the ship. Originally it was going to be a wide deck:

But I discovered that the top two decks would not fit on it. In addition I had no room laid out for the computer core. So my solution was to rotate the officers' quarters so that the deck would be much longer than wider:

That looked much better. I added the officers' lounge at the rear after I took this picture. Then I began calculating where to put decks 1-2. Originally I wanted to have them centered on top of the deck but due to turbolift shaft placement, I had to offset it by a few blocks so that it would go into the hallway and not an officer's bedroom. I added some roofing for deck 3 and made a rough outline of deck 2 on top of the model. I made an error and miscalculated the size of deck 2 when checking to see if it'll all fit but it's minor enough that I can correct it and not have it hanging off the side:

Observe how the ship now has a sort of nose at the front. I wanted to add the ship's name in all capitals using 5x3 size characters but the total amount of space needed for the name was more than the nose's width so now it's there, just behind the nose. In the next post hopefully I'll have that in a screenshot. I also want to make a post about this project on the Minecraft forum since it's clear I have some level of dedication to this going on.

 In non-Classic news, I have found a SMP server which I can call my home away from home in Minecraft. It's an RPG server and my role there is theologian/astronomer (which basically sounds like an astrologer but there's a big difference). I currently live in a little hole in the side of a mountain. Iron is proving itself to be quite difficult to procure. It has room for 10 people and has about 15 regulars from what I count.

Enterprise Has Seen Some Better Days [Pics]

I'm sure many people know that there was a model of the Enterprise-A (which was seen in Star Trek IV-VI) made in Alpha. This is different from the Enterprise-D which was made in Classic. Although definitely not a real-size replica, it still stands at some 70 meters tall by 100 meters long and 40 meters wide at the saucer. It has nine decks, and it takes some experience to get used to understand the layout. Well I'm sure it took a long time to build and was quite fun to complete. You know what else was quite fun, and much quicker?

Destroying it.

Using SSP commands and copious amounts of TNT I set out to destroy the ship to my heart's delight. Ironically, the warp core (according to the movies) should have been the most explosive part. But because the Minecraft model uses lava and obsidian for it, that's the most durable component. Let's view some pics, starting from the back of the ship. I took several images that seemed to be the most interesting and destructive.

This is the port warp nacelle, blown to shards:

The outside of the rear half of the Enterprise, not looking too good.

Formerly the warp core, now a lavafall:

These were the impulse engines...

The saucer section as viewed from above:

Another shot of the saucer. This view is directly below it and meant to reveal more detail of the damage:

As the title implies, the Enterprise has certainly seen better days. Even a couple Klingon birds of prey didn't do as much damage as a bored nerd with a lot of TNT:

I'd like to give shout outs to Mozzie who brought the Enterprise into Minecraft. You can see Mozzie's thread here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=52011 Thanks for letting me play on (and destroy) your ship!