A month of Glitter Village (GV) - "It's an ironic name Mum."

A month in Glitter Village

Saff's (aka CaramelTiger) 2nd Minecraft Realm Glitter Village is a month old today. A realm is an easy way to play Minecraft with friends online as it doesn't require hosting a server or whitelisting and it has mini games too.

I have written several posts on this blog about Glitter Village and last night S gave me another tour.

""I have made a cork board advertising for roles in the play e.g. a kidnapper is needed. You can change your skin so that you look more suitable for the roles. Apply now! Audition!

The theatre receptionist is a ginger cat. This realm started out with me and my friend R but he has gone now and it is 18 people. 5 boys and 13 girls.

This is a new set for the theatre with tents. They are small ones made to fit on a stage. I have cut the mine open like a Doll's House back so people watching the play can see inside. I built trees not planted trees as I don't want them to grow on the set.

This is a cat. Every evil kidnapper needs a cat. The whole director thing is inspired by a server I like called creativefun.eu but on there it is way bigger than this. (RP is RolePlay)

We have built a jail and shops and L's shop is already decorated for Halloween with pumpkins and cobwebs and skeletons. It is a clothes shop. The clothes are made using armour stands and heads. 

A has a shop which comes to smooth out the terrain when you have TNTed a build that has gone wrong. 

The dragons have built a really big house really quickly with this neat pressure plate that makes it say 'Welcome' when you go in.

These are my potions - night vision, speed, water breathing. We all have mail boxes and you can post basically anything in them. Anything that will go in a chest can be posted. 

This is the fire pit version two point o surrounded with clay.

Oh yeah and I made this aeroplane with a flux capacitor and a hyperdrive. Those are some cool time travel movie references I added.

I've been making fireworks - if you put a diamond in the crafting recipe then they look more like fireworks do IRL."

~~~

We looked at some of the other realm features afterwards including the player activity log where you can see who has been on and for how long. It was really informative / interesting / alarming depending on your perspective. The data is represented as a bar chart and you can see who is on when , for who long and who with.

As S has made a new skin this week we also talked about our first adventures with Skindex in 2014 and how they coincided with April Fool's Day when Mojang decided to turn everyone's skin to villager!

This is Skindex

Wednesday 19th August

Quick wrap up of the trio's Minecraft projects as it is nearly a week since the last one.

Since my last post the trio have been whitelisted to play on a large home ed server. Suggested by a friend as a source of new contacts for S it has also been great for E and O.

E (8)

E said today "All the best mini games on my realm are designed by Seth Bling!"

E was really sad on Sunday when he was on the end of some griefing on cosmicpvp. Real tears! What a transformation from the boy who was always doing the damage a few months back. He appears to be turning into the diplomat! I hear him suggesting drinks and screen breaks to overwhelmed friends.

All forgiven and forgotten E  has made a skywars map with friends on his Realm. So quickly!

He has been learning about command blocks and watching popular MMOs to do so.

As we are pretty much hibernating during August he has been on MC lots - Today he has Skyped with around 10 people (not all at once!!) Meeting his socials needs without leaving the house.

S (10)

S has had her latest realm 3 days shy of a month. and what a month for her and Glitter Village! Initially she had one friend on there then invited two others but often really struggled with situations that weren't 1:1 Fast forward to today and her realm only has 2 free slots remaining from the 20 maximum!

She has built shops and jails and courtrooms and a theatre and is now moving in a new circle of people completely. It's really amazing to witness the transformation.

She is really enjoying the plays and talking about casting and directing - I can tell she 's really into a new zone as she has changed her skin. (using Skindex BlueGem)

Not all of S's new friends have Skype so she is doing way more typing.

O(6)

O has been joining in too thanks to the HE Server - tonight he helped out designing a plot inspired by bees which is cool as he is enjoyed the bees at Haslemere Museum last week. He used item frames filled with dandelion to represent the honey in the bee hives he built.

O also helped E and his friends build the Skywars map on E's realm

I wonder what the collective total of blocks placed since my last update is!

Minecraft - Thursday 18th August

Talking about the learning places Minecraft can take you I remembered this post from 2014 when we borrowed the obsidian from Haslemere Museum and went in search of diamonds and ocelots. That was back in the vanilla days. Now it's all about being a VIP on Hypixel and mods and technic launcher and, well, a whole nother level really.


Today has been a day of Minecraft. I could say it is because it has rained all day but actually atm sunny days are pretty similar!

When the lightning flashed the lights this morning I thought "Please no powercut!"

First thing this morning E asked me to investigate the idea of server hosting because although he extended his realm yesterday he really wants to play modded worlds with his friends and a server is the way to do that

This morning S and O played the mod pack "MInecraft comes alive" via technic launcher on the LAN - It is like Sims and you can have fairy lights!! O was finding the breeding really overwhelming and he said

"I've had enough of the family thing take these kids away."

He likes Minecraft comes alive because of the wardrobe options, deco craft and that you can have different kinds and colours of beds.

They play this on the two downstairs PCs

Later S played on her realm with her friend L decorating and making guest bedrooms. S's realm is amazing and really the culmination of years of learning - she seems fluent in redstone and command blocks and is always using the ideas from her YouTubers

E played on Cosmic PVP. I watched Preston Plays with E this morning (he is the co-owner of Cosmic) E likes to speculate how much money it earns him!

E also played on Cops and Crims since we looked at the leader board together he has taken a bigger interest in his stats.

I mentioned to someone today that O pretty much always stands up to play Minecraft.

E tried to play a new mod pack Bridge? but it was too big for all of our PCs

This afternoon E invited S to his Realm and they played with friend A building and enchanting. They have not played together is ages (months? maybe more) They also played a few rounds of build battle on Hypixel a server they like and where E is a VIP.

Minecraft Journal

Haven't posted on here since Tuesday. What's been happening in Minecraft land here during Augist Hibernation

S and O have been playing on Aphmau Minecraft Diaries S2 via technic launcher and when that crashed the LAN Minecraft Comes Alive - they like the weddings and babies. it is very Simsish. Technic Launcher doesn't run on S's new PC so it is cool that she has to come and use the downstairs PCs to play with O


E has been on CosmicPVP - still his fave  - here's a great description of Cosmic  - When he is on Solo I help him with the words and numbers but when he is with friends he prefers to play alone. He's also been on Hypixel. His realm expired a few days ago and as almost all the people he plays with now have a realm he has decided to wait a while before renewing it

Had a chunk of time with E on CosmicPVP (a Minecraft server) this morning. It's not my thing at all but he loves it - first he asked me to google "On cosmicpvp can you withdraw MCMO?" and this lead on to a whole big thread and me reading out the forum comments as others had suggested it to and the reasons why not. Then after helping him with some buying and selling he wanted to make a hopper so I wikied the crafting recipe (S made hoppers on her realm last week so I sort of knew about them) and we needed iron. 5 at $40 each and without missing a beat E said "I'm gonna need $200 for that"

So, we bought the stuff, followed the recipe and then it said hoppers were disabled on the server! And again we had a good chat as to why that was. Then Skypeland woke up and I was surplus!! Well sort of! He's learning from his friends too.

There's lots of other gaming too Harry Potter Wii for O and Skylanders for E - We hosted our first Skylanders club this week

Fave YouTubers

Squid - although for Ark Survial more

Preston Plays for Cosmic


i now follow all the YouTubers and servers on Twitter and sometimes. occasionally, I knw things before S and E do!

S's Minecraft Journal Tuesday

"Today on my realm I added balcony to my house because balconies are really fashionable now. I've been using anvils and we are still recruiting for a postman. I have made a hall way of art and all of the pets have a room. I discovered with my friends that like dinnerbone turns your pet upside down that naming your rabbit toast makes it be certain colours. I made a cork board using coarse dirt as a block and added a desk and a laptop and a canopy bed.
Since I discovered that if you put pigs in carts and then drive them I built a forecourt inspired by Harwoods.
I've also played on a new server today called MC beanblocks and I am in the bubbles. It is run my smallish beans and I made a faction on there. I have also done a few role plays (RPs) on creative fun.eu"

S (10) Minecraft Diaries

Minecraft Diaries - S specifically asked to do this last night and that's really cool.

"Today on Minecraft I have been working on a brewing room. It's deep underground. 35 blocks down. I use it to brew potions I give them to my friend R who has a potions shop on my realm.

I have added a dog house for when my dogs are naughty.

Ooh there is a letter in my postbox. We are recruiting for a postman.

I've done some more work on the road and street signs.

I've extended the dog trail area with some tents.

These are the fireworks my friend L has done.

I've made a archery range with an idea from a Stampy video and the idea for the chests I took as you were reading Harry Potter next door.

I've made a cat flap but I need to disable the pressure pads to work it.

My friend L has a clothes shop here called "Shop Til You Drop" and an assassination business too.

So far we have a laundrette, a redstone dude, a library, 2 x bakers, a chain restaurant, clothes shop, fireworks shop and a communal nether portal."

Minecraft Update August 3rd 2015

So I'm still not exactly sure now this new blog is going to evolve, mostly I need to learn how to store screen dumps from 3 different PCs centrally so I can upload them here, but anyway here's what's been happening on Minecraft since my last update

E (8) has become a VIP on Hypixel. Since I said it my first post that Minecraft is amazing VFM I realise that E especially is running with a number of "add ons" like ranks and realms but, that said, it still is. He has also won a round of build battles for the first time ever. We've been on the Hypixel forum together looking at the leader boards for the two games he likes Cops and Crims and Sky Wars and talking about how the numbers differ from his own.

O (6) asked me what the numerical value for the scoring was for each level on Hypixel build battle (super poop through to epic and legendary) and I expected to find a quick answer but it turns out the formula is a closely guarded secret!

For E (8) there has been a lot of learning from mistakes going on. Or so we thought! He wanted to spend some of his money on a new Heroic Diablo Kit for a server he likes called CosmicPVP. He's heavily invested in Cosmic. It's the kind of brand loyalty advertisers dream of! He watches the two owners of the server on YouTube everyday and has been playing on it since at least Easter as he has the Easter Kit. It is a factions server and only one of his friends likes factions.

So on Friday morning we bought the kit and when it didn't show as unlocked during the 5 minutes suggested we worried we had made a mistake. We emailed, tweeted and I joined the forum......but no luck. This lead to us talking about exchange rates, time differences.....(the server is in Canada) but for 3 days E has felt really upset, let down and cheated. Then, today it appeared as unlocked!!

Faith in Cosmic restored and he's all smiles again! Straight to AH (Auction House) which is like Cosmic's eBay to sell some of the unwanted bits. Lots of conversations about 000s!


The book in which I write E's server addresses and commands was looking really messy so I started a new one and was copying the commands over. As I was writing them E was saying "I know that one now without looking at the book so you don't need to write that one done."

E now has 15 people on his Realm. A mixture of real life local friends and some whom we've met via a Facebook group for Unschooling Minecrafters. He seems to manage them all okay. It's a dilemma for me as if I sit right by him he lets me do all the typing and reading whereas if I come away he really makes much more effort to try and do it self.

One of E's friends J now has a server of his own. E has been on there a few times but again his reading ability coupled with the many typos that come through the chat mean he often seems to miss the just!


There's a really good article about Screen Time here btw

S continues to find ideas for her Realm (population 4) from StacyPlayz and LDShadowlady on YouTube as they do lots of the stuff with pets and interiors and architect design she likes. 

On her realm she has built a cool dog walking trail and a spawn hut as the spawn is miles away from the centre of he world. She has also created a bookshop which might now be a library. A times she says the actual building takes second place to the negotiating that goes on. 

We've had some good chats about the pros and cons of Skyping versus Typing (you can't sleep if Monsters are nearby for eg but by the time you've typed that in the chat you might be dead as you can't type and fight!)

And Gamer tags.


You might think that kids learn about Minecraft by watching YouTube then play on line with their friends but my! The wrong YouTuber or the wrong Server ~ I hope that huge diversty of possible play is partly what these posts using three different children as examples illustrate.

For me the big adjustment has been that S and E now both have PCs in their bedrooms which are connected to Skype and Minecraft so physically separate in many ways. My challenge is to maintain the connection.