Have a look in my mine, the entrance is near the middle of my wall. The pattern I use in that is apparently the most efficient for covering a particular area, i.e. the minimum number of tunnels needed to uncover all potential mineral nodes, with the least amount of travel. I'll try to make a diagram of it, if it isn't clear from walking around inside it.

 

As for the grafting thing, it definitely affects what you try to build if you know you'd have to collect all the materials first. I wouldn't have been able to build a valley in the sea if I'd had to collect all the wool first.

 

(wool for putting in place of the water source blocks, of which every block of sea is one. Replace water, burn wool, voila, instant hole-in-the-sea)

Must be richer seams in different places. When I started strip mining near Xen's citadel I found all sorts of stuff there, now I'm mining around the hole and am finding lots of redstone/iron ore but not much else. :C

That is true. I like the idea of the full graphical inventory rather than having to remember the item codes.

I'm lazy like that.

Very lazy. Just get your pickaxe out and get mining!

My underwater lair is now complete! Mwhahaha!!

Underground now goes to the Citadel. Could do with linking it to the main circuit there too.

And the entrance/exit for that bit is a bit mental.

I'll try it out tomorrow, never even made it back to my base today to see how it links up.

Here is a video I made illustrating the mining pattern I was talking about:


It's a kind of inside-out view, in that it shows what tunnels you need to excavate, rather than an end result. If that makes sense.

very pleased to have no clouds now :)

Aye, it's a must when you're building up at that height :D

For any who haven't heard, Minecraft 1.8 has been 'leaked': http://www.justpushstart.com/2011/09/09/minecraft-beta-1-8-leaked-by-mojang/

(it's clearly not a leak, it's a beta release. Mojang piss me off sometimes. But yes, it sounds good. I've not tried it)

Yeah I've heard about the leak. Apparently Bukkit and other server coders got it early to sort their releases. I think I'll wait till official.

Aye, wise. I might try it out in SP if I can be arsed but... probably not. I go through phases with Minecraft.

Really? I never would've guessed!

 

To be fair I've not been on much lately. Mainly due to being busy at work :$

A beta release of an update for beta software? What is the world coming to?

 

I'll wait till the official one's out, I think.

If the noise coming from certain corners of the net is to be believed this is best avoided until the official release.

There's such a huge number of changes in 1.8, I reckon it's not going to work correctly until at least 1.8.4.

People I'm talking to are loving it though.

Aye, it really does look good. It's just got a couple of, unfortunately quite significant, problems.

Yeah, definitely not ready for multiplayering.