Mindcraft FTB modpack comparison

I am in the process of setting up a Feed The Beast (FTB) server, and in doing so I am required to choose which edition of the pack I want to use. The FTB site has a comparison page, and from that I've assembled a quick comparison between the Direwolf20 and MindCrack packs (the two that seemed most interesting to me).

First, the mods included in both packs:

Buildcraft 3	Thermal Expansion	Chickenbones Core
ChickenChunks	Ender Storage	Not Enough Items
Wireless Redstone CBE	ComputerCraft	MiscPeripherals
ExtrabiomesXL	Factorization	Forestry
IndustrialCraft 2	GraviSuite	MFFS
Nuclear Control	Inventory Tweaks	Iron Chests
Obsidian Pressure Plates	OmniTools	Portal Gun
Railcraft	RedPower 2	Rei's Minimap
Soul Shards	Steve's Carts 2	Thaumcraft 3

Now the mods only included in the MindCrack pack:

Extra Bees *	Advanced Machines	Advanced Solar Panels
GregTech	Petrogen	Traincraft
Twilight Forest **	VoxelMenu	XyCraft ***

* Extra Bees is due to be added to the Direwolf20 pack in v5.
** Twilight Forest is due to be added to the Direwolf20 pack in v5.
*** XyCraft is not listed for the Direwolf20 pack on the comparison page, but is listed on the wiki page for the pack itself.

The mods only included in the Direwolf20 pack:

NEI Plugins	Equivalent Exchange 3	Gravity Gun
Compact Solars	Mystcraft

And (for completeness) the mods mentioned on the page but included in neither:

Forge IRC	Logistics Pipes	Minecraft Forge *
Music Box	YUNoMakeGoodMap

* Minecraft Forge is not listed for the DireWolf20 pack on the comparison page, but is listed in the pack's forum thread.

Is this enough information to figure out which is the best FTB modpack? Probably not, as it depends entirely on your definition of "best", but hopefully someone will find reading these tables a little easier than scrolling up and down the big comparison list on the site.

Moving on from Ubuntu

After receiving the suggestion from several people I know, I finally made the plunge and installed Mint at home to replace Ubuntu. I'm very glad I did - I'd almost forgot what it was like not to have to fight against your OS. Looking back, I can't believe what I came to accept as "normal".

I've found the experience with Mint to be much smoother than with what Ubuntu has become. Even the install was easier than I expected. It took a moment to get used to the new package management and updating tools, but I didn't find any problems there. The only issue I've had is that you have to remember not to do a dist-upgrade from the terminal - if you have the Ubuntu repository enabled then it'll pull in things that you don't want (Mint relies on variations of a few core Ubuntu packages, but the Ubuntu versions are seen as newer).

Maybe over time my opinion will change, but for now I would definitely recommend Mint over Ubuntu.

Minecraft and regressions

So I know Notch publicly stated that he hadn't written tests for the Minecraft code and didn't intend to because it's too hard to do, but the problem (other than your mind blowing when you read things like that) is that every release introduces the most stupid regressions possible. Let's take the recent 1.2 set of releases as the example here:

1.2.1: After a lot of preview builds, we have a whole mess of bugs. Fair enough, there are a lot of changes. One of these is that big trees are far rarer than they're supposed to be.

1.2.2: Big tree generation is fixed. The game now crashes if you look upwards at the sky, and mobs don't burn in sunlight anymore.

1.2.3: Mobs burn in sunlight again. Silk touch no longer works on glass.

These aren't even related things. I can't imagine there being any shared code between the thing being fixed and the thing that gets broken. At least Jeb is actually trying to improve the game, but seriously man... get some regression testing implemented. Let this be a lesson to you all.

Obscure problems

This has happened to me so many times.

Overheard and unexpected

Unexpected thing to hear when passing a computing lecture:

"41 took their own lives."

Come on now, Oneiric wasn't that bad, was it?

Why I might be buying a Kindle

In a previous post I gave my reasons for not buying a Kindle. As it turns out, I may have been hasty. I know how to admit I'm wrong though, so here it is. The new Kindle being sold in the UK is the one without adverts, costing £89 as previous mentioned. However, the cheap American model is the one bundled with adverts, so the comparison wasn't like-for-like. The equivalent model without adverts costs $109 on the American Amazon site, which is around £68. Adding on the 20% VAT brings that to £81.60. Even I can forgive £7 :)

Mini Server Power Draw

Previously, I showed my new home server build and mentioned that I would give some power draw figures. I have since managed to borrow a Plogg device from work and taken some (quite non-scientific) measurements.

It turns out that, with all hardware set up as it is by default, the server draws around 25 Watts when idle and around 40 Watts when under load. To put this into perspective, my desktop PC draws around 90 Watts when idle and around 145 Watts when I'm gaming. Thus, my server isn't incredibly low power as it stands (though this is partly because I designed it to be able to provide some decent number-crunching ability when needed). The total draw over a year will be around 219 kWh, which should cost in the region of £25 or so if my maths is correct.

Bonus power draws:

• 21" LCD screen: 40 Watts
• External hard drive: 10 Watts
• Speakers (silent): 5 Watts

I will update this post in the near future with power draw figures with alternate configurations (such as running the CPU with a single core).