Newsletter #38 for March 20th, 2023

Howdy folks!

It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!

Joe’s back from his social visit to London but it looks like his internet has yet to return! I’ll be your faithful reporter as always, so let’s get into the news!

2023 Q2 quarterly meeting

A not so brief overview

We are approaching that quarterly time of year! Folks joked around last meeting that I live for these meetings and that it’s what I look forward to all year. While highly exaggerated there is some truth to those jokes!

One of my biggest focuses as Community Liaison is making sure folks feel like they are connected to each other in this community, and for Joe to be connected to y’all as well.

For those who are new, every quarter year (or every 3 months) we hold a quarterly meeting to reflect on past changes, review current changes, and suggest upcoming changes.  Change can be a scary thing so we’ll go through it together as a community!

The meetings are available to join for all Patreon discord members and are livestreamed as well by myself. Minutes and a VOD are provided for folks who may miss it, and proxies are allowed to be sent in on behalf of other members.

We follow an agenda during these meetings to stay on topic and not stray too far from the point. If you would like to submit an agenda item request you may do so in Joe Hills Meta > #next-quarter-new-business-requests.  We also are still accepting requests in the #feedback-emoji and #feedback-more-channels channels to be considered at our next meeting.

Current 2023Q2 Agenda

  • Patreon tiers and community goals
  • Minecraft servers reset schedule and launches
  • Discord
    • Additional channels
    • Additional emotes

Great, but when is the meeting?!

Saturday, April 15th, at 1pm US Central time.

Mercy Road 4

Joe will be playing in one of the charity D&D games benefitting Child’s Play hosted by talented dungeon master Saucefire. His session will be Saturday April 1st, at 5pm US Central time!

Minecraft Server Events

Deep Slate Nine

Our March Van Gogh parade building contest was wonderful! The builds were gorgeous and I highly recommend checking out the VOD to see what the creative folks on our server built!

There was also our usual monthly petitions, Joe has written a summary and provided a VOD for folks over here.

Modded SMP

Server operator ToxxicGlitter held petitions as well, though we don’t have a VOD or any notes on it.

We would like to announce that Toxxic plans on restarting the Modded SMP!  We don’t have any official details on that yet, but the current plans are for a shorter term, higher intensity server that would run for 3-6 months.

Don’t worry about losing the current iteration just yet! The restart won’t come until the summer, likely around June. Toxxic is very open to feedback and suggestions, folks can put those in the #modded-feature-request channel. More details on this restart will come as it becomes available.

Vanillish SMP

Vanillish petitions are tomorrow, March 21st! Server operator Yirggzmb uses an asynchronous timing, so if you have a request submit it now in the #vanillish-petitions channel!

Everstorm Obituaries

No obituaries to report, phew!

As a reminder, the server will reset on Thursday, April 6, 2023.

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Week 8: No Good Gofers

Congrats to DarkHorseAsh!

1st: DarkHorseAsh 2nd: Mr_Hardluck. 3rd: Laxmi13. 4th: @JoeHills. 5th: NJCoffeeJunkie

Week 9: Medieval Madness

Congrats to Mr. Hardluck!

1st: Mr.Hardluck. 2nd: JoeHills. 3rd: DarkHorseAsh. 4th: Superstone. 5th: WrexVerdi. 6th: Forgantly. 7th: Drewbacca81

Week 10: Junkyard

If you’re interested in joining the pinball tournaments you can find information under activity-sign-ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges.

The pinball packs we play in FX3 are on sale on Steam until March 23rd, so now is a great time to hop in! I hope to see more folks claim their spot on the leaderboard!

Upcoming conventions

PlayOnCon 2023 sales are now open at http://www.playoncon.com/memberships!

  • July 6th–9th in Columbiana, AL: PlayOnCon

HermitCraft 9 Videos!

Check out Joe’s most recent episode if you want to see him talk about his trip to London!

Upcoming Streams

With Joe’s internet still working hard at hardly working, we don’t feel confident posting a stream schedule for this week, sorry about that!

So long for now…

Thanks for reading the newsletter! I look forward to bringing you more updates in the future, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!

This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.

See you around!

Newsletter #37 for March 6th, 2023

Howdy folks!

It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!

Some of you might be wondering why I’m bringing you this week’s newsletter. Well that’s cause Joe keeps trying to plan around acts of God, but God keeps laughing at him! For evidence of this, check out the status of Nashville’s electric service here!

For clarity, Joe’s been having internet issues thanks to a storm that’s been terrorizing the area, so I’m here as your faithful reporter!

Let’s get to the news!

Mario Kart wave 4 launch

I hope you’re ready for some kart racing action! With the new wave of Mario Kart DLC launching we have a Mario Kart stream to look forward to this week!

Not just any stream either! Featured guests will include ImpulseSV, Oli OrionSound, Martyn InTheLittleWood, Lizzie LDShadowLady, MythicalSausage, and Jimmy Solidarity!

You can tune in to that on the 9th, Thursday morning at 9am US Central Time.

Vacation time

Joe will be going on vacation next week! Some folks may see the word vacation and worry about the discord going into vacation mode again, but worry not! With the trial run of vacation mode being completed and the ModMail tutorial posted in the #actual-rules channel we feel confident in having all the channels stay open while Joe enjoys his trip!

In relation to that, we will not be posting a newsletter next week, so the next edition will be out on the following Monday, the 20th of March.

Upcoming Minecraft Server Events

Some of these have already been announced, but with the lack of a newsletter next week I think it’s good to have a refresher. Let’s see what folks have to look forward to!

  • Modded Petitions: March 11th at 11am Central
  • Deep Slate Nine Petitions: March 18th at 1pm Central
  • Van Gogh Parade: March 18th at 2pm Central
  • Vanillish Petitions: March 21st, asynchronous

Everstorm Obituaries

  • After completing its own dying wish, Void withered away among roses
  • Chefnutmeg fell into the fires of mount doom one block of obsidian shy of opening a portal to the nether realms
  • Centuritron met the same fate as John Fitzgerald Kennedy thanks to some skeletons
  • Rei died since metal spoons aren’t the incredibly inefficient weapons they’re advertised to be. especially when wielded by a baby

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Congratulations to Forgantly in a landslide victory!

Week 7: Tales From the Arabian Nights results

1st: forgantly. 2nd: Hoe Hills. 3rd: MrHardluck. 4th: queendarklady. 5th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 6th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 7th: DarkHorseAsh. 8th: marwood7. 9th: Laxmi13.

Week 8: No Good Gofers

This week’s tournament is only 5 days long so Joe will have time before his vacation to roll it over. Pinball while you can!

Find the details to join in Activity Sign Ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges

Upcoming conventions

Tennessee Game Days Spring has come and gone! I hope any folks who attended had a great time! If you missed the chance to go you can still catch Joe at PlayOnCon! 2023 Sales will open at http://www.playoncon.com/memberships on March 12 at 3PM Central.

  • July 6th–9th in Columbiana, AL: PlayOnCon

Notable streams

Normally we like to include a stream schedule, but with the uncertainty of the internet stability we don’t feel confident making a schedule this week. Should all be fine you can expect Joe at his usual streaming times, let’s hope we still get some bonus streams!

So long for now…

Thanks for reading the newsletter! If you made it this far your dedication for staying up to date and being in the know truly shines!
Or maybe you just skimmed the whole thing and have stumbled across this farewell anyhow. Either way, I hope you have a great week!

This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.

See you around!

Newsletter #36 for Feb 27th, 2023

A photo of the burned-out shell of McDougal's Chicken.

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, hoping you had a presidential Monday last week and that today is even better for you! I’m assisted today by our community liaison, ThatTommyboii!

Today’s featured image is a slice of a photo I took of the burned out shell of one of my favorite non-hot chicken restaurants just this afternoon. Time marches ever onward.

Draw4 Charity a success!

Thank y’all so much for ensuring our 2023 Draw4Charity campaign  was a success! We surpassed our $10,000 goal and raised $10,500 benefitting WorldBuilders!

Here’s the VOD of the HermitCraft TCG prize match segment I ran! I appreciate so many Hermits showing up to help raise money for a good cause.

I also appreciate the hard work of the other board members who organized this event!

Stepping down from the Draw4Charity Board.

Fans of this newsletter and my other miscellaneous work are likely aware that I’m regularly over-scheduled and over-extended as I attempt to balance life as a single parent with my obligations as an entertainer and small business owner. I regret that I’ve been unable to spend as much time behind-the-scenes planning, organizing, and coordinating the twice-yearly D4C charity streams as my other peers on the board.

Our chairman, Jack Mistretta (aka Pastability) offered to let me keep my title due to my early efforts helping him initially launch the event—but on reflection I feel the best way to respect the time of the others on the board and accurately convey my day-to-day level on involvement is to step down.

I formally resigned earlier this month, but continue to enjoy a positive relationship with everyone involved. I wish everyone at D4C the best, and I look forward to appearing as a guest at their future events.

Mercy Road 4: Save the Date for April 1st!

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be playing in one of the charity D&D games benefitting Child’s Play hosted by talented dungeon master Saucefire. The exact time of my session is TBD, so stay tuned for that detail.

Here’s the VOD of the Mercy Road 3 session played in alongside Quinn Murphy, Ryan North, Jack Packard, and Kat Welsford!

Mercy Road raised $8000 last year, and I’m excited to see what we accomplish later this spring!

Tommy wrote a ModMail tutorial!

If you are curious about what ModMail is on the Discord Server, Tommy has got you covered at: https://joehills.net/modmail-tutorial/

February Book Club Concludes with voice chat

I’ll be hosting a small-group voice chat discussion here about Tress of the Emerald Sea at 7pm US Central time tomorrow, February 28th. If you’ve read the book, please pop in!

If you haven’t, it’s about 12 hours on the audio book, and you can probably read the print one in half that. Good luck!

Upcoming Minecraft Server Events

  • Modded Petitions: March 11th at 11am Central
  • Deep Slate Nine Petitions: March 18th at 1pm Central
  • Van Gogh Parade: March 18th at 2pm Central

Everstorm

January Everstorm closes

Survivors of last month’s everstorm have shared their final reports:

  • NJ took a trip down memory lane and didn’t nearly burn down her barn this time.
  • SuperStone had fun exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization.
  • MJ enjoyed looting the shopping district and then mining some terracotta. Built some cubes at NJ’s farm. Shot a lot of skeleton riders … almost shot Ellas too!
  • Gaea started out on a nostalgia trip and then was immediately entranced by a mystery
  • TommyBoii met his love again but they were missing their other husband and their church.

Repent! Lenten everstorm opens

Okay, so this started out a bit more Eastery than intended, but put your “Hallelujahs” away. Uh… folks weren’t supposed to respawn when they logged out and back in, I had set the server property force-gamemode to true, and that had some, uh, life finds a way style consequences.

I’ve fixed that glitch, and we should be back on track in the meantime, here’s more obituaries than expected:

  • NJ tried to help SuperStone and Centuritron but a zombie wanted a hug instead.
  • Centuritron tried too hard to get spider powers
  • fancytoy was slain by a baby zombie whilst attempting to craft a pickaxe.
  • Qwarkeh fought off an invisible spider but succumbed to a drowned
  • MisterLantz fell in a 1×2 hole, a creeper was kind enough to expand the hole.
  • ChefNutmeg got stabbed in the back by a trident, while settling farm by the fishing dock.
  • Void went exploring and got ambushed by three skeletons
  • Ellas was lighting up a cave when they were cornered and murdered by a bone man
  • MJ, FOR SCIENCE – death by lightning
  • DottyMatrix donated her body to science.

Bonus Deaths! Doo doo doo doooo doot doo doo doo doo!

  • Centuritron after having their soul retrieved from the underworld, was smote by Zeus by request of Hades anyway
  • MJ, deaths 2-5 skeleton death loop
  • Void, Going up in flames for science

Discord Updates

I’ve archived the following channels:

  • #feb-mcyt-poll
  • #feb-12-mardi-gras-parade
  • #everstorm-january-2023

I’ve also created a #tbd-tcg channel for testing a self-hosted version of the HermitCraft TCG, which you can find on github at: https://github.com/martinkadlec0/hc-tcg

Please note that my self-hosted deployment of the TCG will not necessarily be updated daily like the one hosted by the developers.

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Congrats to Mr. Hardluck on two weeks of wins in a row! Can anyone take him down this week?!

Week 5: Hurricane

1st: MrHardluck. 2nd: forgantly. 3rd: SuperStone. 4th: DarkHorseAsh. 5th: CosmicGoddess. 6th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 7th: Laxmi13. 8th: WrexVerdi.9th: Qwarkeh 10th: JoeHills

Week 6: Cirqus Voltaire

1st: MrHardluck. 2nd: NJCoffeeJunkie. 3rd: JoeHills. 4th: DarkHorseAsh. 5th: Laxmi13

Week 7: Tales From the Arabian Nights

Join us for a seven day challenge that explores 1001 nights of stories!

Delight with scheherazadenfreuden as your friends fail to catch your high score!

Upcoming conventions

One of my favorite annual events, PlayOnCon just announced their Summer 2023 dates as July 6th–9th! Badges and rooms go on sale on March 12th at 3pm Central! They can sell out fast, so start planning now if you hope to hang out with my friends and I at a gaming convention on the lake!

Notable Streams

Until next time, y’all!

This has been Joe Hills with assistance from ThatTommyBoii!

Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #35 for Feb 13th, 2023

Howdy folks!

It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!

I hope you’re ready for an overuse of exclamation marks, Joe is currently in what he describes as “editing jail” along with “paperwork jail” so I’ll be bringing you this week’s newsletter!

Let’s begin!

Actually, Some of You May Be New Here!

With a new influx of patreon supporters and other folks who may be browsing this site I realize that not everybody may know what’s going on!

I’d like to welcome any folks who may be new with a brief summary of what the newsletter is. Every Monday morning Joe and I meet to write and publish this newsletter here on his site!

Part of my job as Community Liaison is to help establish a connection between all of you lovely folks and Joe, but also help Joe connect with y’all! I’m kind of like a bridge of sorts.

There’s a lot of information that needs to get passed between people in the community, and the easiest and best way for folks to stay up to date on everything going on is all right here in one place!

You can look forward to a new newsletter each week, barring holidays and any events that can cause delays. If you have any feedback we welcome that in the patreon discord at Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter

If you’re not already a member but are interested in joining you can check out Joe’s patreon page over here!

Now let’s start for real!

Tumblr Poll for MCYTblr Sexyman

This isn’t really what I thought I’d be reporting on when I first started writing the newsletter with Joe, but I’m excited nonetheless!

Round 6 has concluded, and in the match between ZombieCleo vs Joe Hills the winner is… Joe Hills!

I can’t say I’m surprised! With all the propaganda and support I’ve seen on tumblr as well as discord spaces, it’s no wonder he pulled through in such a tight race!

If you’re interested in more data you can view it at this site here, courtesy of this-glittering-world on tumblr.

The final poll, GoodTimesWithScar vs Joe Hills, will go up tomorrow, Tuesday the 14th. What a memorable way to celebrate Valentine’s day! You’ll be able to vote in that poll once it goes live at mcytblrsexymen.tumblr.com.

Draw4 Charity: February

It’s once again time for Draw4Charity! This charity event will be benefitting worldbuilders. You can visit their site for more information on what they do.

If you’d like to support the cause come attend the livestream event! It will be steamed from twitch.tv/Draw4Charity and is running from Friday February 17th, 6pm CST to Sunday February 19th, 6pm CST.

Joe will be popping in and out of this event all weekend, and will be hosting HermitCraft TCG on Saturday February 18th, 2pm US Central time.

He will also be hosting the Quake segment, on Sunday February 19th, 8am US Central time.

Vanillish SMP

February 14th is the date for this month’s Vanillish petitions! At the time this newsletter goes live, that means tomorrow! Make sure to have your requests submitted for our server operator Yirggzmb to review!

Modded SMP

The Cliffside Competition is over! Server operator ToxxicGlitter submitted the winners, so congratulations to Mantuamaker for winning Best Overall and Best Façade! Congratulations as well to MercurialVoid for Best Lair, and thank you to _R2D2 for your wonderful entry!

If you’d like to check out the judging and walk throughs of the builds, you can watch the VOD below!

Also, to better help folks who want to install the mods to play on the Modded SMP, Toxxic has created a handy channel with a list of the mods and some commons issues. You can find that in SMP: Modded 1.19 By ToxxicGlitter > #modded-setup-guide.

Everstorm Obituaries

  • Magenta fell out of this world while trying to escape an enderman

Deep Slate Nine parade float build contests

Celebrating Mardi Gras was superb on DS9 thanks to Team Lotus! Thank you to MeepedCubed for hosting the parade, and to all the entrants who built floats!

You can watch the VOD of the building and judging of this parade here!

Upcoming Parades

  • Van Gogh’s Birthday Parade on March 18th at 2pm Central. Hosted by Team Holland.
  • More to be announced!

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Week 5: Red and Ted’s Road Show results

The winner of this table is Mr. Hardluck! Congratulations!

1st: MrHardluck. 2nd: JoeHills. 3rd: DarkHorseAsh. 4th: forgantly. 5th: Cosmic Goddess. 6th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 7th: WrexVerdi. 8th: Qwarkeh.

9th: Laxmi13

Week 6: Hurricane

Join the tournament via our Patreon Discord in Activity-Sign-Ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges

Streams

Upcoming Streams

Normally Joe would place an orderly and time accurate schedule here, but I don’t have that. I can instead provide a vague summary of when to expect some streams. Sorry about that, but  I hope this will still be beneficial!

  • Morning Streams
    • Crafts with Cleo on Wednesday the 15th
    • In studio guest Quinn Hills on Thursday the 16th
    • Draw4 Quake stream on Sunday the 19th
  • Afternoon Streams
    • Draw4 Hermitcraft TCG on Saturday the 18th
  • Nighttime Streams
    • As per usual
  • Bonus Streams
    • Varied and dependent on Joe escaping “editing jail” and “paperwork jail”.

Notable Streams this week

Upcoming conventions

Registration and hotel booking are both now live for Tennessee Game Days Spring: March 3rd–5th, 2023 in Nashville, TN!

So long for now…

Thanks for reading the newsletter! It’s always a joy for me to write. I hope everyone has a happy valentine’s day!

This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.

See you around!

Newsletter #34 for Feb 6th, 2023

A screenshot of a Groundhog Day Parade in Minecraft depicting a groundhog emerging from a stump.

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, saying “fare thee well” to January and “well thee come” to February as I always do in Nashville, TN!

Our enterprising community liaison ThatTommyBoii is assisting as well! When asked if he has any special greetings for y’all, Tommy replied “not necessarily.”

Let’s jump right in!

February Book Club: Tress and the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

The book club is back with a shipboard adventure story that really impressed me!

I hope you’ll join me to discuss Tress and the Emerald Sea throughout the month of February in #bookclub text chat!

At the end of the month, I’ll host a discussion in Discord voice chat at 7pm US Central time on Tuesday, February 28th.

Tumblr Democracy in Action

There’s a series of polls this month on Tumblr I have been nominated for. I’m not really campaigning, just occasionally re-posting things I’ve done over the years, but if you’d like to participate, you can do so at https://www.tumblr.com/mcytblrsexymen

HermitCraft 9 Videos!

Vanillish SMP

The Winter Event comes to a close on Vanillish! Our server operator Yirggzmb has provided a prize wall for all participants in the winter event! Spend the points you earned on some fantastic prizes, and thanks again for playing!

The Vanillish server will also be holding petitions on Tuesday, February 14th. If you’re not familiar with the petitions on Vanillish, they are asynchronous! This means folks can submit their petition request in the #vanillish-petitions channel, and Yirggy will review those on the petition date.

Modded SMP

Toxxic’s Cliffside Competition is nearing its end! The judging will be Saturday, February 11th at 12pm central. There’s still time for last minute entries, you can find all the information in the #modded-cliffside-competition channel.

The next Modded petitions will be held sometime in March, details to come.

Everstorm Obituaries

  • Chefnutmeg fell from a high place in the shopping district.

Deep Slate Nine parade float build contests

GroundHog Day Parade

I appreciate  that Team Redstone (Kindalas) went all-out preparing his outpost to host this year’s Groundhog Day parade!

Thanks to everyone who showed up to create floats! Y’all had some really imaginative and fun builds!

Upcoming Parades

  • Mardi Gras Parade on February 12th at noon Central. Hosted by Team Lotus.
  • Van Gogh’s Birthday Parade on March 18th at 2pm Central. Hosted by Team Holland.

Deep Slate Nine petitions

Thanks to Tommy for writing up minutes for our January 2023 DS9 petitions at: https://joehills.net/petitions-january-2023/

Or watch the VOD below:

Policy update for one-shot Minecraft events

With discussion happening on future Patreon community goals some excellent points were brought up… points so excellent that we are updating a policy!

Henceforth, all one-shot minecraft events, such as cross-community UHCs, will be open to all discord community members, and not just the $10 minecraft tier patrons.

Draw4 Charity: February

I’ll be streaming as part of the Draw4Charity team on February 17th, 6pm CST – 19th, 6pm CST! Details to come!

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Week 3: The Champion Pub results

Congrats Forgantly for taking 1st on The Champion Pub!

Champion Pub Tournament Results. 1st: forgantly. 2nd: ToxxicGlitter. 3rd: JoeHills. 4th: Mr. Hardluck. 5th: WrexVerdi. 6th: SuperStone. 7th: MagentaAvocado. 8th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 9th: Laxmi13. 10th. Drewbacca81. 11th: samihiggins. 12th: Qwarkeh. 13th: DarkHorseAsh. 14th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 15th: Chefnutmeg25. 16th: Kindalas.

Week 4: Whitewater results

Whitewater tournament results: 1st: Joe Hills. 2nd: Mr_Hardluck. 3rd: CosmicGoddess. 4th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 5th: WrexVerdi. 6th: DarkHorseAsh. 7th: forgantly. 8th: superstone 9th: Qwarkeh. 10th: Laxmi13.

Week 5: Red and Ted’s Road Show

Join the tournament via our Patreon Discord in Activity-Sign-Ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges

Streams

Upcoming Stream Schedule

  • Monday, February 6th
    • 1pm: bonus HermitCraft stream, HHH
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Wednesday, February 7th
    • 8:30am: Crafts with Cleo
  • Thursday, February 9th
    • 8:30am: bonus HermitCraft stream with in-studio guest Quinn Hills
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Friday, February 10th
    • 8:30am: bonus HermitCraft stream with coffee
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Saturday, February 11th
    • noon: Modded Cliffside Competition
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Sunday, February 12th
    • noon: Mardi Gras Parade hosted by Team Lotus
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!

Notable Streams this week

Upcoming conventions

Registration and hotel booking are both now live for Tennessee Game Days Spring: March 3rd–5th, 2023 in Nashville, TN!

Until next time, y’all!

This is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN. Any final words, Tommy?

“Now I’m on the spot! You wrote when I said not neceesarily and now I feel like I have to match that kind of energy!”

Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #33 for January 23, 2023

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, TN!

I’m assisted today by our Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii.

It’s been a couple weeks since our last newsletter, and we just had our quarterly meeting, so we’ve got a lot to cover. Let’s jump in!

2023 Q1 quarterly meeting

I also appreciate  everyone in the community who submitted feedback in advance or attended live for shaping the discussion!

Some of the decisions made during the meeting went into effect immediately, others, like re-enabling images on all of the channels will occur as I have time to get to them this week.

Video On Demand

Thanks to Tommy for filming and streaming the meeting!

Minutes

I also appreciate Tommy for taking notes! His full minutes of the meeting are available now at: https://joehills.net/2023-q1-meeting-minutes/.

HermitFan UHC

Thanks to Blug, DaUltraMarine, and the other HermitCraft community and fan server admins for running the first HermitFan UHC event!

Our team of Kindalas, Maahes0, MercurialVoid, and Salem managed to live and die together and claimed 4th place out of eight teams representing different Hermits’ communities.

It was a lot of fun, and congrats to the winners (who I won’t spoil here, go watch the VOD of me flying around and commentating)!

Minecraft Servers

Deep Slate Nine petitions and parade this Sunday!

Petitions for January will be held on DS9 at 1pm Central on Jan 29th, followed by the Groundhog Day Parade!

Modded Server updates

I updated several mods last week, so if you try to connect and get weird errors, please pop into #modded-setup-help for the latest list.

January 2023 Everstorm launches!

This month’s Everstorm showcases the Seven of Mine Server at the crucial junction when I created a manual backup to migrate it from a Minecraft Realm to a dedicated server! Come witness a piece of community history… if you dare!

Obituaries… so far!

  • Laxmi13 was impaled to death because she forgot that evil water creatures were a thing.

2023 Pinball FX3 tournament progress

Results so far:

Congrats to Mr. Hardluck for taking 1st place on both of our tournaments so far this year!

Week 1: Fish Tales

Fish Tales tournament results: 1st: Mr. Hardluck. 2nd: forgantly. 3rd: WrexVerdi. 4th: @JoeHills. 5th: ButterflygirlKMC. 6th: DarkHorseAsh. 7th: superstone. 8th: magentaavocado 9th: RIX513. 10th: samihiggins. 11th: MissCanuck. 12th: kindalas. 13th: Parker. 14th: Chefnutmeg25. 15th: Qwarkeh. 16th: queendarklady. 17th: Laxmi13

Week 2: Theatre of Magic

Results of Joe Hills' Tournament. 1st: Mr_Hardluck. 2nd: WrexVerdi. 3rd: JoeHills. 4th: ToxxicGlitter. 5th: SuperStone. 6th: DarkHorseAsh. 7th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 8th: Laxmi13 9th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 10th: magentaAvocado. 11th: Qwarkeh. 12th: Parker. 13th: forgantly. 14th: ChefNutMeg. 15th: kindalas

Week 3: The Champion Pub

Lace up your boxing gloves and practice your Strongbad voice, because this week’s table is The Champion Pub!

See you in the ring!

Streams

Upcoming schedule

I expect to stream at my usual times this week, with a few bonus streams. All times US Central.

  • Tuesday, January 24th
    • 8:30am: bonus HermitCraft stream with in-studio guest Quinn Hills
  • Wednesday, January 25th
    • 8:30am: Crafts with Cleo
  • Thursday, January 26th
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Friday, January 27th
    • 8:30am: bonus HermitCraft stream with coffee
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Saturday, January 28th
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
  • Sunday, January 29th
    • 1pm: Petitions
    • 2pm: GroundHog Day build contest
    • 8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!

Notable streams recently

Dracula concludes

Crafts with Cleo

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Registration and hotel booking are both now live!

Until next time, y’all!

This is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN with much-appreciated assistance from ThatTommyBoii!

Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #32 for January 9, 2023

A screenshot of the game Minecraft showing a 2023 New Year's Parade occurring on a rainbow road. A Lego minifig of JoeHills presides with a trident.

Howdy, y’all!

Happy New Year! I’m launching into 2023 with help from our community Liaison ThatTommyBoii!

Final agenda for the Quarterly meeting

Our next Quarterly meeting is January 21st at 11am US Central time.

I will be on voice and screen-sharing on Discord, and Tommy will stream it on his channel as well. The VOD and minutes will be posted afterwards.

If anyone has feedback they’d like to ensure we see, please post it in the relevant channels in the #joe-hills-meta category.

  1. Creative work in 2023: episodes, streams, and songs
    1. Less freelance work, more creative energy
  2. Review patreon tiers and patreon community goals
  3. Vacation mode moving forward: how it will work and when to use it
  4. Minecraft Servers
    1. Long-term server reset schedule
    2. maintenance schedule – Brandon (netcropolis)
  5. Discord
    1. Image and embed functionality
      • Enable ability to share images in channels such as gaming-general and minecraft – Aviva
      • Text-only channels or categories
      • Spam channels clarification on posting non-user-created images.  – Tommy
    2. Channel culls and reintroductions
      • Follow-up: Review accessibility implications of screen readers and consolidated channels – Meep and Joe
      • Frequency of channel culling 
      • Adding channels back to discord 
    3. Review server emotes – Kindalas

New and returning channels under consideration

Here’s the current list of channel suggestions. If y’all have others you’d like to see considered, please share them between now and the Quarterly meeting in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-more-channels

  • #dwarf-fortress
  • #food
  • #pokemon
  • #space
  • #spam-things-you-wrote
  • #spam-work-you-commissioned

New Year, new Pinball FX3 tournament series!

I’d like as many folks as possible to enjoy our weekly pinball tournament, so I’m kicking off 2023 with Fish Tales, a free download for anyone with Steam on their PC.

I hope to see you on the leaderboard!

Minecraft servers

Deep Slate Nine petitions

Petitions for January will be held on DS9 at 1pm Central on Jan 29th, followed by the Groundhog Day Parade!

Modded Server cliffside build competition

Looking for a long-term build contest? ToxxicGlitter wants you!

Build a home, city, post-apocalyptic society, or whatever dwelling you deem fit, in one of the sheer cliffs around spawn.

At noon Central on February 11th, I will be streaming a visit to the modded server to judge y’all’s work! I’m looking forward to it!

Rules and info can be found in SMP 1.19 Modded by ToxxicGlitter > #modded-cliffside-competition

Parade float build contests

Groundhog Day!

It’s Groundhog day! Again!

Team Redstone will be hosting our next Parade Float Build Contest on January 29th at 2pm Central!

If you’d like to participate, please sign up in Activity Sign Ups >  #jan-29-groundhog-day-parade

New Year’s!

Thanks to Team Radical for hosting the 2023 New Year’s Parade Float Build Contest!

Congratulations to our winners SuperStone and Dahlia!

Notable streams recently

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring! They should have registration info going live soon, so keep an eye on their website this week!

Until next time, y’all!

This has been Joe Hills with the ever-appreciated assistance of ThatTommyBoii!

Happy 2023, and keep adventuring!

Newsletter #31 for December 19th, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, with help per usual from our community liaison ThatTommyBoii!

This will be our final newsletter of 2022!

I think that these have been really helpful for keeping me organized each week, and I hope you’re getting something out of them too!

Please leave any feedback you have in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter on our Patreon Discord!

Our first newsletter of 2023 will be on January 9th. We’ll be off the next week in observance of Martin Luther King Day,  and will resume our regular Monday publication schedule January 23rd.

Quarterly meeting for January 2023

Our next Quarterly meeting is January 21st at 11am US Central time.

More Discord channels

To ensure your idea gets added to the list to be considered at the meeting in mid-January, please post your suggestion with the following format.

[channel] Channel name
Overlap: justification for why this overlaps with my interests in a way that isn’t better left to be owned by a community member elsewhere
Plus: any other notes that can be read quickly during the meeting.

Channels submitted for consideration:

  • Dwarf Fortress
  • Food
  • Space
  • Spam things you wrote
  • Pokemon

Please add more!

The actual list will end up in the January 9th newsletter before the next Quartly Meeting, so please try to have your suggestions in by January 8th to Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-more-channels

Upcoming Community Events

December 28th: DS9 New Years Parade build contest

Team Radical will be hosting the Deep Slate Nine New Years build contest at noon US Central time on Wednesday, December 2022.

If you’d like a space on the parade route, please let us know in the Activity Sign-Ups >  #dec-28-new-years-parade channel.

December 29th: HermitFan UHC qualifiers

Our second and final HermitFan UHC qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.

More details about the HermitFan UHC can be found in issue #28 of this newsletter.

Upcoming Stream Schedule

Thanks for your patience with the uncertainties of holiday planning so far this season. I’m still attempting to maintain my regular five night-a-week schedule as best I can, but here’s a few things to note this holiday season:

  • Today’s HHH will not occur at the usual time due to an embargoed Zedvancement group recording
  • This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
    • Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time 
    • Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
    • Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
  • No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
  • No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.

One of the biggest take-aways from the Empires Crossover was the importance of streaming more when the Euro-crowd is awake, so I’ll be trying to do more bonus streams earlier in the day next year.

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Black Rose for December 2022

Congrats to Toxxic Glitter for his first win of 2022!

It’s also his final win of the year as week-long pinball tournaments have concluded for 2022.

1st: ToxxicGlitter. 2nd: Forgantly. 3rd: MagentaAvocado. 4th: Mr_Hardluck. 5th:WrexVerdi. 6th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 7th: Laxmi13. 8th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 9th: MisterLantz. 10th: Qwarkeh. 11th: Parker. 12th: Kindalas. 13th: DarkHorseAsh. 14: ChefNutmeg25. 15th: JoeHills.

2022 results

In 2022, Forgantly was our winningest competitor with 18 weekly wins!

Mr. Hardluck and Wrex Verdi tied for 2nd, with two weekly wins each!

Here’s the tables we played this year, and who won each. You’ll see some repetition as we played more games than there are tables.

  • Creature from the Black Lagoon: Parker
  • Monster Bash: Forgantly
  • Medieval Madness: Forgantly
  • Junk Yard: Kindalas
  • Getaway: High Speed II: Forgantly
  • Attack From Mars: Mr_Hardluck
  • Black Rose: MisterLantz
  • The Party Zone: Forgantly
  • Theatre of Magic: Forgantly
  • Champion Pub: Forgantly
  • Safe Cracker: Joe Hills
  • White Water: Forgantly
  • Hurricane: Forgantly
  • Red and Ted’s Road Show: Mr_Hardluck
  • Cirqus Voltaire: Forgantly
  • No Good Gofers: WrexVerdi
  • Tales of the Arabian Nights: Forgantly
  • Space Station: Forgantly
  • Doctor Dude and his Excellent Ray: Forgantly
  • FunHouse: Forgantly
  • Creature from the Black Lagoon: WrexVerdi
  • Monster Bash: Forgantly
  • Medieval Madness: Forgantly
  • Fish Tales: Forgantly
  • Junk Yard: Forgantly
  • Getaway: High Speed II: Forgantly
  • Attack from Mars: NJCoffeeJunkie
  • Black Rose: ToxxicGlitter

Pinball Tournaments in 2023

Our Pinball FX3 tournaments will resume the week of January 9th, 2023.

If folks have the chance to pick up the Williams Pinball FX3 packs cheap on the Steam Christmas sale, they can do so with confidence we won’t be switching over to the new mac-compatible Pinball FX for at least half a year.

Even if the new version’s steam launch surprises us by launching earlier, we’ll test its tournament-readiness with hour-long on-stream tourneys until the summer.

If it turns out that the new Pinball FX isn’t tournament ready by this summer, we’ll extend the Pinball FX3 tournament series deeper into the year and re-assess as appropriate.

Notable Streams this week

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next year, y’all!

Thanks so much for hanging out in 2022. I’m confident 2023 can only be an improvement!

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #30 for December 12th, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, TN!

We’re back on the HermitCraft server!

The HermitCraft Empires crossover continues as we welcome the Empires people onto our home turf!

Non-Denominational Lights event on Vanillish server

Ortsg, an NPC designed by Yirggzmb, is visiting Vanillish to host a Non-Denominational Lights event! Ortsg will have a simple task for folks to complete and earn points to get silly prizes!

More details can be found in SMP: Vanillish By Yirggzmb > vanillish-general

NJCoffeeJunkie wins Attack from Mars Tournament!

This week’s Attack from Mars was incredibly competitive, with 19 players joining us! Congrats to NJ on the win!

1st: NJCoffeeJunkie. 2nd: ToxxicGlitter. 3rd: Mr_Hardluck. 4th: JoeHills. 5th: WrexVerdi. 6th: Laxmi31. 7th: Qwarkeh. 8th: RIX5.139th: Forgantly. 10th: ChloeTGAP. 11th: DarkHorseAsh. 12th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 13th: magentaavocado. 14th: kindalas. 15th: Parker. 16th: EdgeOfTheWorld15.17th: Kingu. 18th: samihiggins. 19th: Chefnutmeg25

This week’s pinball tournament will be played on Black Rose!

DS9 Vanilla server updated to 1.19.3

Update your jars like it’s picking season, the new version of Minecraft is here on DS9!

HermitFan UHC qualifiers continue

Our second qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.

More details about the HermitFan UHC can be found in issue #28 of this newsletter.

Our first two contenders, Salem and Maahes0 were chosen in our first qualifying event! Congrats again to them!

Upcoming Stream Schedule

I’ll be attempting to maintain my regular five night-a-week schedule as best I can, but here’s a few things to note this holiday season:

  • No stream the evening of Saturday, December 17th due to family obligations
  • This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
    • Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
    • Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
  • No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
  • No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.

Notable streams from last week

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

Thanks again to our Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii for his help with this newsletter!

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep ho ho holidaying!

Newsletter #29 for December 5th, 2022

Ho, Ho, Howdy, y’all!

December has arrived, so let’s just all get into that holiday spirit and acknowledge that things are going to be a bit more wild than usual schedule-wise for the next few weeks…

Upcoming Stream Schedule Aberrations

Between randomly imposed embargoes as we portal hop through rifts, friends and family in town, and a bunch of evening events I’ll be taking my kid to, there may be quite a few changes to the streaming schedule made with relatively short notice.

This week

  • My HHH stream for today (Monday, Dec 5th) is cancelled due to a recording conflict
  • My stream tonight may need to be a game other than Minecraft for embargo reasons.
  • This week’s Craft Stream (Wednesday, December 7th) will be broadcast with JaneyLaney instead of ZombieCleo
  • This Friday night’s HermitCraft 9 Live stream will be moved earlier in the day to 8:30am US Central time due to an evening commitment with my kid

Later this month

  • No stream the evening of Saturday, December 17th due to family obligations
  • This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
    • Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
    • Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
  • No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
  • No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.

There’ll likely be other last-minute holiday changes to things as we go. Thanks for your patience!

HermitFan UHC Updates!

Thanks to ToxxicGlitter for organizing our first UHC qualifier on Saturday!

Congrats to our winners Salem and Maahes0w0, who have secured spots on the team that will represent our community in the January 22nd UHC!

Madelinesocks and Kindalas also were incredibly competitive, and have secured positions as fallbacks on our waitlist if any of our four contenders have an emergent conflict.

Our next qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.

More details about the HermitFan UHC can be found in issue #28 of this newsletter

Snapshot server updated to 1.19.3rc2!

Our community snapshot temp world server has been updated to the most futuristic release candidate of Minecraft yet! Details on 1.19.3 rc2 are available at https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-1-19-3-release-candidate-1?2.

Connection info for $10+/mo community members is available in Realms And Servers > #snapshot-tempworld

Weekly Pinball Tournament

Getaway: High Speed II results

Congratulations once again to Forgantly!

1st: forgantly. 2nd: ToxxicGlitter. 3rd: Mr_Hardluck. 4th: JoeHills. 5th: Qwarkeh. 6th:CurtisDoesADig. 7th:ButterflyGirlKMC. 8th: WrexVerdi9th: parker. 10th: Kindalas. 11th: Kingu. 12th: Chloe TGAP. 13th: Laxmi13. 14th: Drewbacca81. 15th: QueenDarkLady

This week: Attack From Mars!

Take the fight all the way to Mars with Attack From Mars in the Pinball FX3 Williams Volume 2 pack! Details in the #weekly-pinbally-challenge channel!

Big streams last week

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep adventuring!