Now I may be non-religious by trade, but for this entry, I will operate under the assumption that God exists. Specifically the Christian God. The main reason for this entry is the eternal question by Christians; 'where was God?' in reference to horrible tragedies (such as terror attacks, massacres, natural disasters and other terrible things).

To this I would like to tell you my most favourite modern Christian tale:

A man lives in a village by a river. On the radio is a broadcast that a huge flood is coming and the village will be flooded. The man's neighbour comes by and offers his car for transportation out of town, but the man refuses. He says, 'I am a praying man, I pray to God, God will save me'.

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Yeah, I probably have. I sort of mention it most days. Not here, but elsewhere, yeah. But perhaps the most amusing part is that it was not always so. Partly because I was young and naïve, but also because I hadn't truly understood what a film should be. Although, by Episode III it did occur to me it was all stupid.

But it would not be until the famous Harry S. Plinkett review of Episode I that I figured out that they actually did bother me. That the Star Wars prequels actually came along and sucked out all the magic of the original trilogy. All the myths about the Force, the Clone Wars and so on became not only concrete, but uninteresting and very uninspiring.

But even I remember watching Episode I: The Phantom Menace originally being quite confused about the plot and moreover what the title meant. Previous Star Wars had at least been easily understandable by young non-native English speakers like me. I could easily understand 'A New Hope', 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi', but 'The Phantom Menace'; what does that even mean!?

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Now that I am on a roll with my Minecraft-related entries, I think it might not be a bad idea to start discussing my greatest annoyances in Minecraft: the water mechanics. Not that I don't like the inclusion of water in Minecraft, in fact I love it, but there are some fundamental problems with the water and how it works, which creates several annoyances.

Are they fixable? I certainly believe so, even if the solution is not as obvious as you might think.

Continuing my hot air considerations for Minecraft, a new idea has occurred to me; indoor plumbing. You should probably already be appreciating this innovation, for it provides many benefits in modern day housing. But does it make sense in Minecraft?

I remember constructing a sewer in a small town I build in multiplayer some months back, but what bothered me about the sewer was that it always felt more like a sight rather than an actual use. I tried to make water flow down from houses, but it never felt... real.

I think something would solve this would be a concept of 'pipes'. A pipe is placed like ladders are all ready, but they would function like redstone, but on walls. Think of pipes as a vertical redstone system, in a way. There would then have to be 'entrances' and 'exits' for these pipes, where the water can flow in and out.

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What is a game might be important to establish before discussing whether mazes can be considered game design. To me - and to most people I suspect - a game is choice resulting in either reward or punishment for the player. One of the simplest games is Prisoner's Dilemma, where two players have the same two choices. After each player makes their choice, the game ends and a winner (or losers) are found. Prisoner's Dilemma is more about game theory than being an enjoyable game to play.

But an important part of this game is that you know the possible results of each choice. This is the most important part of game design; knowing the difference between choices. Consider then a hedge maze; how will you know that going left or right is then the correct choice? You have no way of knowing. A hedge maze is thus not a game, but an obstacle. In fact, the basic idea of a maze is to ensure people who are not welcome get lost and people who know the way do not. Like a complicated moat so to speak.

Notch, creator of Minecraft, wrote in a article about creating fear in games about why he dislikes mazes in games for this very reason. But he seems to forget that mazes does not just have to be a hedge maze.

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Minecraft is another one of those things that comes along and changes our perspective of what something should supposedly look like. Perhaps saying that it is changing the video game industry is a bit of a mouth full, particularly considering that the video game industry seems to be pretty content with its current model. But I am a fan.

But there is one thing that has always bothered me in Minecraft; particularly in Multiplayer (and I worry it may even be a more prominent issue in the Adventure Update): economy. Now hear me out, I am not talking about debt crisis in Minecraft. Notch has yet to implement politics (although if he does, he should probably write a paper on the matter, since that would be award worthy). I am particularly talking about currency, or lack thereof.

I am sure a lot of people will say 'well, you can just use gold bars or tools or other items for exchange'. But that is old fashioned! This is why we invented currency to begin with; to avoid fluctuation and inflation of 'currency'. How many gold bars is a diamond pickaxe worth? But uhm... I can just get more gold bars and that tends to ruin the value of a currency if anyone can introduce new 'coins' into circulation.

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No. That's the short answer. If that satisfy you, you can move on. If not, read on! I want to make a clear point first, when I say 'effectively', I mean affecting crime at a rate where people who once felt unsafe can feel safe.

There are two types of criminals; those who have to do it and those who want to do it. The latter is hard to reason with, since they either like destruction, are crazies or something of that sort. But these are a minority. The truth majority of criminals are those who have to. When the decision between stealing an apple or not is the same as deciding between getting food that day or not, then do they truly care what the punishment is if they are caught?

Indeed not. I doubt criminals think 'oh no, if I do this crime again, I might get 6 months more if I am caught than if I got caught a few months ago', but rather 'let's avoid getting caught'. Punishments hardly scares the most people off. It only costs society a lot more money, because it doesn't fix the real issue.

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There are a lot of people, both informal and seriously, whom predict that eventually, payments like credit cards, online transactions and even via mobile phones will take over cash's position and eventually create a cashless economy. It's only natural, some say, it's the future.

And while the future will certainly hold more advance methods of payment including improving convenience, cash will never cease to exist. The first and foremost drawback of digital transactions is that they are traceable. While some highlight this as a feature of credit cards and certainly allows some convenience for customers and bankers, it also raises privacy issues.

But surely, people not engaged in criminal stuff have nothing to hide, right? Or so ignorant politicians would argue without much regard for basic human rights. But let's assume - for the sake of argument - that all cash is made illegal and thus not legal tender any longer. Will it stop people from using cash? Nope. It will only start an underground industry focused on maintaining a system of cash uncontrolled by the government (as it is not legal in its eyes) and force rampant increase in police efforts to track down these activities.

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Now that He has come and gone. Or rather, neither of those things. What remains is all we left yesterday evening; all our Earthly possessions (unless we sold them believing the end was neigh). Sure, it is easy to ridicule these believers, whom today - on the 22nd of May 2011 - must be utterly disappointed, but why bother? They are not our foes and they have been mislead by a lack of critical thinking.

While non-religious myself, I value critical thinking highly, but critical thinking is not exclusive to non-religious people. Christians have a long history of being critical thinkers. While they would not doubt the words of the Bible, they would raise eyebrows about Judgement Day and Apocalypse predictions. And even this time around, many other Christians had distanced themselves from Harold Camping, the author of the prediction and Family Radio, his non-profit Christian radio organisation, believing them to be utterly false and misguided. These Christians have made it clear that Mr Camping is not an evangelist nor a minister, but an entrepreneur and an engineer.

While reading articles, reflecting on the aftermath, I stumble upon one with an Atheist who cannot understand why these people would believe Mr Camping's predictions so passionately, that they would use their life savings for the advertisement campaign, quit their jobs and/or sell their homes. And I ask of you - my only reader - can you understand why these otherwise functioning people would use thousands of their own money on this campaign?

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Have you been reading tech news within the past year or more, you've probably heard about the cloud. Wait, you know what, even if you've just paid attention to regular news, commercials, etc., you've probably heard about it. And even if you haven't heard about it, you have probably used it or used a cloud-based service. Have you used Google Docs? Played using Steam? Xbox Live? PSN (though currently down)?

In short, the cloud is the new buzzword in the tech world. And I know what you are already thinking, 'wait, if it is a new thing, why has it basically existed for so long?' The change is that you can now outsource your own hardware to the cloud. Say if you are a small or medium-sized company. And it's supposedly cheaper than paying for the hardware itself. Think of it as 'leasing hardware', basically.

While this is not a bad idea; in fact a lot of companies could use the extra cost savings made from using the cloud instead. However, a coincidence of the cloud is the overconfidence in it. And more importantly what it means for regular users who are not companies. You see, when you use a service provided by a company, what if that company decides to use a cloud service provided by another company, then you are suddenly using two companies' services! And this scenario is not entirely unusual these days.

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