Author: kirabug

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Twain’s Treasure (Phantom File’s #1) by William B. Wolfe

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Alex, the protagonist of Twain’s Treasure, is a liar. And if I could see ghosts and they constantly got me in trouble I would be a liar too. After all, who believes a kid who says he can see ghosts? We’ve got medication and counseling and all kinds of other ways to deal with supposed paranormal sightings.

The only problem is that Alex’s best and only friend in town, Bones, is crazy for paranormal activity stories, shows, books, even conventions. And Alex has been lying about his ability to see ghosts for a long long time, even to his best friend.

Alex might have gotten away with his lies if it weren’t for one Samuel Clemens, supreme haunt of the library in Hannibal MO.

This book was ten times more delightful than I expected, and was chock full of facts about Mark Twain and the town of Hannibal. It reminded me Richard Peck’s The Ghost Belonged to Me only updated and, honestly, a bit more interesting. Definitely one to recommend to middle grades (and old fogies like me still reading them in their 40s).

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Day 498: weird red rock burns

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 498:

Remember when I said the other day that I might try burning the red rock to see what happens?

Ok, so my thinking was that the rock has a texture a lot like the coal I dig up – kind of porous and shiny, easily capturing oxygen and the like from the air.

And all my torches are pretty much giant matches – sticks with ground coal dust that i mixed with a very tiny amount of clay so they’d stick to the sticks, thus making torch like thingies.

(This also qualifies under my “this shouldn’t work like this, why won’t I just wake up already?” clause from the other day.)

So I thought “what the heck, let’s make torches out of the red rock too.”

(The fact that I’d accidentally gotten some of them mixed up together — the coal dust and the red rock dust i mean — might have something to do with this decision.)

Turns out the red rock does burn, and when it does, it shoots little sparks of electricity in all directions like one of those horrible science experiments from physics class where everyone’s hair stood on end even more than usual. (My physics class was in a low-g classroom.)

So that was painful.

But also revealing, because if I can make some wire I can probably capture the sparks and run them to the gold rails.

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Day 497: Taking a day off

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 497:

Did some fishing and pet some duckens and rested my weary head for the day. Sometimes I get stuck on a problem and this is the best way to fix it that won’t get me blown to the next asteroid belt.

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Day 496: power and automation

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 496:

So it turns out I can build a small length of golden rail, a longer length of plain rail, and another small length of golden rail, with a nice earthworks at each end to keep the cart on the rails. And if I reach down and whack the red rock it’ll get me from one end to the other

So now I’m trying to figure out how I can do it without whacking things with a hammer because, well, that’s more work than I want to do having spent all day with a pickaxe to begin with.

I haven’t tried applying fire to the red rock yet but I might experiment…

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Day 495: boom

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 495:

Figured out the right ratio of red rock to cart after multiple experiments, most of which involved blowing the cart so far down the rails so fast that it took me an hour to pick up the pieces.

Also, carts: not as durable as I thought.

Glad I already made helmets because I’d be making them now otherwise.