Ah, to be on the beach with crystal-clear blue waters and a light breeze. Instead, I am stuck inside on a hot, sweltering August day. Processing photos and paying bills.
The only thing that bothers me about this photo is how it is split with the horizon line in the middle of the frame.
My normal routine is to document my real-world travels around the globe. I'm lucky enough to have traveled to most of our continents and well over a hundred different countries, taking lots of photos along the way.
Lately I've been in some downtime with travel, hanging at home and working on my photography collection. And I've been spending a great deal of time on the computer. My most recent obsession is Minecraft, a game that's mostly played by kids. But as a curious adult, I decided to give it a try.
At first, not so interesting.
But then I discovered the maps. There is apparently a massive Minecraft subculture built around creating and sharing Minecraft maps. These maps take all shapes, forms, and sizes and can be simple obstacle course maps or elaborate adventure maps and scenes. There's really no end to it all. I was blown away by just how much time you can spend exploring them all.
I started with a good collection of the best Minecraft maps I could find but soon I was hungry for more. As a real-world explorer at heart, I wasn't going to be satisfied until I could see everything that was out there.
Turns out this is impossible. But I did find some great sources for Minecraft maps, along with plenty of communities and guides for downloading, installing and even creating your own maps.
Let's start with the obvious place to go. MinecraftMaps.com. This is a comprehensive catalog of thousands of maps that are available. It has a very handy list of the top rated maps available so that you don't have to waste your time downloading junk. Some of the top maps for Minecraft include Rail World, Future City, and World of Worlds.
Another good site to visit is MinecraftSix, which also has a collection of high quality maps.
If you want to try your hand at creating your own Minecraft maps, then you should look at MC Edit. It's one of the best tools for making maps. It has a steep learning curve, but with a little practice you'll be creating your own worlds for exploration in no time at all. There's even a great user community for MC Edit on Reddit.
Want some more pointers? Curse Gaming has a list of the most downloaded Minecraft Maps. And here's a video of one map that makes the lofty claim of being the "Best Minecraft Map Ever." You can be the judge.
Spent the weekend exploring Vancouver, British Columbia. It is an outdoor paradise with no end to the amount of activity you can pursue in nature. There's simply too much to do in a single weekend, so for the most part I stuck to the basics and toured around the city on foot and on bike.
I did get out of the city limits to explore the surroundings on Sunday. Such a beautiful place and I hope to return when I have even more time to explore.
San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world to visit. It has such incredible life and charm. Most people like to visit in the Spring or Fall (the Summer is too cold!) but my favorite time in San Francisco is the Winter.
The Golden Gate Bridge is the most famous landmark in San Francisco, and is possibly the most famous bridge in the World. But I secretly like the Bay Bridge much more. Here it is in its majesty on a cold winter morning as the sun rises over the San Francisco Bay.
