I thought it would be somewhat interesting and maybe fun to write a series of questions for myself to answer in 10 years. (Yeah, over half of them are Minecraft questions. Silly, I know.) I’ll come back to answer the questions in this article on March 22, 2031.
Surely, Java Edition data packs have the ability to add custom blocks and items now, right?
Vanilla better have lavalogging by now, and Java Edition in particular must have had snowlogging ported over from Bedrock, right? Java Edition also has waterlogging for flowing water now, right?
Mojang has continued to say no to vertical slabs, right? But what about windowlogging?
Does vanilla have buildable vehicles similar to Plato’s Transporters? What about rotating/spinning platforms like Create?
Glow squids give off actual light now, right? And surely iceologers have been added by now.
Are polar bears useful yet? Are pigs still redundant?
The second combat update was generally well-received, right?
Ray-tracing came to Java Edition, right? Is it the modern equivalent of “fancy” or “fabulous” graphics?
Quasi-connectivity was eventually removed, wasn’t it? How did Mojang soften the blow? Pushable block entities?
What did the fletching table’s functionality end up being?
Netherite and the smithing table was the start of a new branching upgrade tree for end game armor, right? I’m guessing one of the netherite alternatives involves materials from The End?
I’m guessing that The End has green-colored biomes now?
There’s a firework workstation now, right?
Mods
Did you start using behavioral mods on your singleplayer world? If so, how did that turn out?
I think Fabric might get really big after the release of 1.17. Did it ever come to equal Forge in popularity? Does Forge even still exist?
Did Modrinth overtake CurseForge as the primary mod repository?
Has OptiFine died yet? If it did, was it the CaffeineMC mods (Sodium, Lithium, Phosphor, etc.) that replaced it, or something else?
Does Quark still exist? What about the Team Abnormals mods? I don’t like their “visible source” licenses. Did that ever change? Have true open source mods taken their place?
What’s the current successor to the Too Many Items legacy called? At the moment it seems like Roughly Enough Items could be the next primary one if Fabric takes off.
Youtubers
Is your singleplayer series still going? If so, why?
Did Dream ever admit to cheating in those 1.16 speedruns?
Is Etho’s singleplayer series still going? Whatever happened to that museum/lab project?
Is Stampy still making the occasional Lovely World video?
Other
MinecraftOnline still exists right? You did finish the landscaping around the house, right? The lag is fixed now, right? Did they stack the old nether above/below the new one when updating to 1.16+? What did they do for 1.17+?
What about Crazy Fools UK? 2b2t? Hypixel?
How big was Hytale?
Does Minetest feel like a legitimate game instead of a bootleg now? Did you ever contribute to Minetest, or did you end up creating your own MC clone?
WordPress
Gutenberg Full Site Editing became popular, right?
Does Gutenberg still use a sidebar for the block inspector and/or document settings, or did it switch to popovers/modals?
Is Divi still around? Did it ever switch to using blocks? How about Oxygen, Elementor, and Beaver Builder?
Coding
Did Crank take off?
How big is Rust these days?
Does PHP have generic types yet?
Does vanilla JS have any form of typing similar to TypeScript yet?
Did the year of the Linux desktop finally happen?
How many people still use Arch, btw?
Has Audacity become better to use, or has something replaced Audacity?
LEGO
How left-wing did LEGO go? Did they start introducing LGBTXYZ characters into their themes/shows?
Did Bionicle ever come back again?
Does TTV still exist?
Is Ninjago still going? Was Seabound good? Are they still doing those 2D animated episodes, and did they ever stop looking kinda janky? Did Way of the Departed ever become canon or at least referenced in-show?
Did Monkie Kid get better with each season? Did it ever reach Ninjago-level quality?
Music
Are The Beach Boys still your favorite band?
What’s your opinion on SMiLE these days?
Did the Bicycle Rider chorus ever get a better official stereo mix? What about Child Is Father of the Man?
Did your interest in writing music ever go anywhere?
Did you learn to play the piano?
Miscellaneous
I bet Trump’s social network never took off. Did I guess correctly?
How big is Gab these days?
Did Texas secede? I have no clue whether that will happen.
Louis finally released that AGI demo, didn’t he?
How did “the project” go? You’ll know what I’m talking about.
Do you have a VR kit yet? Does it have foot-tracking so you can actually kick the rats? Do you even remember what I’m referencing? (It was on the 21st, by the way.)
Are you married yet?
Do you think writing this article was a good idea in hindsight?
Most scientists follow the philosophy known as materialism: the belief that the physical universe is all that there is. According to materialism, everything can be reduced to particles interacting with each other. All that you are is nothing more than a bunch of particles interacting with each other according to the laws of physics.
Perhaps you think this makes perfect sense right now. But I believe materialism is actually fundamentally, logically incorrect. In fact, I know it is incorrect. It goes without saying that this is a very bold claim. If one follows scientific reasoning, then one should not make this sort of claim without hard evidence to back it up. And that is exactly what I am about to do. In this article, I shall destroy the concept of materialism with facts and logic.
Complexity and consciousness
A simple machine
Picture this: a crank connected to a gear, connected to another gear, connected to a wheel. This is a machine. A simple machine, but a machine nonetheless. It takes input through its crank, which could be considered a very basic sort of sensor. The crank “senses” input when it is turned, which causes it to turn the gears. These gears eventually give an output: a turning wheel, in this case.
This machine is extremely simple. Between the input and the output is nothing but a few gears. Actually, the gears themselves could be considered part of either the output or the input. The movement of one gear is the output of the crank, and this gear acts as a sort of rotation sensor, which then affects its output: the second gear. And that is all there is to it. It is just a bunch of parts that take an input and give an output. The machine is certainly not conscious of anything. How could it be? It is just a bunch of parts moving together.
Adding more gears only increases complexity
But what if we make the machine more complex? We could add more inputs. We could also add more gears. More outputs. We could add all sorts of mechanical parts. With some patience and some clever engineering, you could turn the simple machine into a mechanical calculator. But it is still just a machine.
Electrical is still a form of mechanical
How about using electric components instead of mechanical ones? Does that make a difference? Nope. An electric computer is still a form of mechanical calculator. We have simply traded the clunky large-scale mechanics of gears for the small-scale mechanics of electrons. My laptop, in spite of its complexity, is still a machine that takes input and produces an output with nothing but a bunch of interacting particles in the middle. It is still nothing but a machine. No consciousness.
Machine learning does not create consciousness
But what if we make the machine learn stuff? Maybe that is the key to consciousness! Well, consider this: all forms of “learning” in computers can be reduced to basic concepts of logic. If A then do B, otherwise if C and D then do E. The machine may store data from past interactions, but that data is nothing more than particles charged and arranged in a particular way. There is still nothing more to the machine than what you can observe.
Randomness does not create consciousness
How about randomness? Does that change anything? No, not really. Random input is just random input. Ultimately, the randomness is derived from the physical mechanics of how the universe works.
Complexity can not create consciousness
No matter what you do, no matter how complex your machine gets, it is still nothing more than a bunch of particles interacting with each other according the laws of the physical universe. The only thing you can do is add more complexity. But that won’t magically make your machine conscious. And besides, science does not believe in magic.
The brain is a computer
Hang on, what about the human brain? Is it different from other machines? Well, it’s certainly quite complex. It’s got a lot of stuff going on inside it. But it’s still just something that takes input and produces output, with a bunch of neurons in between. In a way, the neurons are not that different from the gears mentioned earlier. So by reason of pure logic, one can deduce that the brain cannot be the source of consciousness. After all, it is just another machine.
But wait… according to materialism, consciousness can be explained with physical phenomena. We have a problem here. The reasoning of materialism forces us to believe that consciousness must be reducible to physics, yet there is no way to explain where consciousness comes from.
Well, maybe consciousness just isn’t real, then. That seems like a sensible answer. Until of course you realize that you are conscious.
Consciousness and materialism
I am
As I write this, I look around myself. I see my hands typing on the keyboard and the laptop screen in front of me. I see a whole world all around me. But where does this picture come from? My eyes are only sending electrical signals to my brain. And once they reach the brain… uh… that’s it. At no point does the image I see in front of me exist. It’s just a bunch of particle interactions.
So how is it that I am seeing? How is it that I am hearing? How is it that I am… wait a minute…
I am. I am?How can it be that I am? How am I?
I exist. I am myself, but I am not that which I observe. Everything that I observe is not me. Clearly, my brain is the center of my connection to the physical universe, yet the brain itself can not be me, for the brain is just another part of the world I observe.
The fatal flaw of materialism
Materialism ultimately forces you to believe that there is no such thing as consciousness. But to believe that means that you are nothing but a machine. At the base level you are controlled by the physical laws of the universe. You have no free will. There is no right and wrong. There is really no you. You could jump off a cliff right now and it would not matter. Nothing matters. It is all just a bunch of particles interacting with each other, according to materialism.
And yet… that contradicts reality. The thing about humans is that we think. And if you think about it, thinking is not something that can be entirely explained with physics. Sure, the brain stores info, but that info is just a bunch of particles organized in a certain way. Particles don’t think. And your brain is nothing but a bunch of particles. As we already discovered, more particles and more complexity does not create consciousness. According to materialism, there is nothing there but the particles. And yet here I am. And there you are.
Conclusion
The spiritual is scientific
Finally, reason and logic will take you to the only possible resolution: materialism is incorrect. Logically, there must be another side to the universe that is separate from the physical, yet is able to interact with it somehow. Most people call this the spiritual. In an ironic twist, true science does not deny the existence of the spiritual, but instead confirms its existence. In hindsight, this fact is rather simple to prove. But it seems that some of the most powerful truths are simple.
Why I wrote this article
I would be a fool to think that I am the first to point this out. You can bet I won’t be the last, either. I don’t expect this article to change the minds of the mainstream scientific community. In fact, I don’t think the word “scientific” accurately describes them. If they actually followed scientific reasoning, they would have abandoned materialism long ago. Materialism is their religion, and anyone who dares to question it is labeled a crackpot.
I am writing this for the people with open minds. Those who are on the fence on whether or not the spiritual is real or not. Those who actually follow the scientific method. I fully believe that the existence of a spiritual side to the universe can be proven to exist via pure reason and logic. I hope that this article demonstrates that.
Summary
So, to summarize: materialism is incorrect because the laws of the physical universe cannot explain consciousness, and consciousness can be proven to exist by the fact that you are conscious. This proves that the universe must have a non-physical side, otherwise known as the spiritual.
Until next time, this has been Zebulan, and I thank you all for reading.
WordPress is getting a new editor, and I’m getting a bit worried. The plan to introduce the new editor, Gutenberg, into core WordPress in the 5.0 update has been stirring up all sorts of emotions ranging from excitement and joy to confusion and frustration. I think most people agree that WordPress needs a new editor, but many have criticized the current state of the Gutenberg project and its management. Personally, I feel somewhat conflicted over the whole situation, both believing that Gutenberg is the future of WordPress while simultaneously feeling concerned over the management of the project. This article provides an overview of what Gutenberg is, the issues and controversy surrounding it, and my own opinion of the project.
What Gutenberg is
Project background and goals
Gutenberg is a long-term project to overhaul WordPress post and page creation, starting with the planned introduction of the Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5.0. The editor is currently available as a plugin. At the , Matt Mullenweg, co-founder and lead developer of WordPress, described the goal of the editor as follows:
The editor will endeavour to create a new page and post building experience that makes writing rich posts effortless, and has “blocks” to make it easy what today might take shortcodes, custom HTML, or “mystery meat” embed discovery.
The customizer will help out the editor at first, then shift to bring those fundamental building blocks into something that could allow customization “outside of the box” of post_content, including sidebars and possibly even an entire theme.
Phased approach
The project is being developed in phases, with the first phase resulting in the bulk of the WordPress 5.0 update. The second phase will likely come in WordPress 5.1. Quoting Mr. Mullenweg again:
Phase 1 of Gutenberg has been about upgrading the writing and editing experience of WordPress, across posts, pages, and the delightful things people do with post types. The block framework will allow us to drastically simplify the various concepts and user interfaces across WordPress, including widgets, TinyMCE magic sections, and shortcodes.
Phase 2 is about thinking outside the box, namely the post and page box, to allow Gutenberg to handle entire-site layouts. We will replace widgets with blocks, so any block will be able to be used in any registered “sidebar” for legacy themes, and we will upgrade “menus” to a navigation block.
Phase 2 will be led by @alexislloyd on the design and product side, and @youknowriad on the technical side. Please join me in welcoming these two and sharing your thoughts on Phase 2.
I’ll propose and discuss Phases 3 and 4 of Gutenberg at WordCamp US in December.
Gutenberg is a project that has far-reaching and long-term potential for WordPress. Perhaps the most obvious benefit is the introduction of a more WYSIWYG editing interface. In the editor, unselected blocks should look as similar to the front-end as possible. While selected, they may optimize their appearance for editing (like a caption field appearing when you select an Image block) and reveal various other editing controls in the block toolbar and inspector. Currently, themes must specifically declare styles for the editor, since current technical restrictions (the lack of widespread browser support for Shadow DOM, for example) prevent the front-end theme styles from being used directly by the editor. The long-term hope/goal, however, is for the editor to use the same stylesheet as the front-end, once the necessary technical prerequisites are met.
Blocks everywhere
The block concept supersedes WordPress widgets, page builder widgets/modules (such as those found in Beaver Builder or Divi Builder), and some (but not all) use-cases of shortcodes and meta boxes. One of the goals is to provide a single way to add content to a page, whether that content be text, images, videos, embeds, galleries, accordions, columns, or whatever else you can think of.
One possibility is that page builder plugins could adapt to use the block APIs for their modules/widgets. These blocks could then be made independent of any particular page builder plugin, helping to avoid the issue of vendor lock-in. Page builder plugins could become more modular, with the visual interface being one plugin, the functionality extensions being another, and the blocks being yet another separate plugin, ensuring optimum compatibility with other plugins and reduced dependency on monolithic all-in-one solutions that lock you in to a particular ecosystem.
Usage outside of WordPress
Speaking of avoiding vendor lock-in, Gutenberg itself has potential even outside of WordPress. The block concept, the block APIs, and even the entire Gutenberg editor could be adapted for usage within other content management systems or even standalone applications. Actually, there is already an implementation of this: Drupal Gutenberg. There is even already an online library of blocks that can used in both WordPress and Drupal called Gutenberg Cloud.
The issues and controversy of Gutenberg
Variety of opinions
There are a variety of opinions regarding Gutenberg. Some folks dislike the concept of Gutenberg entirely, perceiving it as a flawed attempt to compete with Squarespace and Wix. Others like the concept but are disappointed with how various issues have (or have not) been handled. Additionally, some are concerned by potential backwards compatibility issues with existing sites. And then there are those who are simply confused entirely by Gutenberg. Just check out the comments on this article to see what I mean.
Overall, it is hard to tell whether the reception of the editor has been mostly positive, mostly negative, or somewhere in between. Do high active plugin installation numbers mean people are happy with the new editor? Or does it mean that people are leaving it installed because they feel forced to learn the new editor? Do installation numbers for the Classic Editor plugin signal a wide disapproval of the new editor? Or is the case simply that people are taking precautions to ensure compatibility with old plugins? Are the negative reviews of the Gutenberg plugin just a loud minority? Would a WordPress 5.0 release right now be disastrous, or are people just overreacting? The rapid development of Gutenberg throughout the year has only made this more difficult. Feedback from last year or even 6 months ago may be completely obsolete, or it may still be as relevant as ever.
ClassicPress
Believing that WordPress was moving away from serving the business needs of its users with the introduction of Gutenberg, Scott Bowler created a business-focused fork of WordPress called ClassicPress. Right now, the only significant difference from WordPress is the lack of Gutenberg. Because of this, the fork is currently rather redundant since the Classic Editor plugin exists and will be supported until at least . Presumably, though, the fork will develop in its own unique direction apart from WordPress as time goes on. I have no idea if this fork has any lasting power, but I suppose we shall find out within the following couple of years. (Fun fact: WordPress is itself a fork of b2/cafelog.)
Usability and accessibility
General usability
Many people have expressed concern over the usability of the editor, both for the average user and for those with disabilities. WordPress plugin developer John James Jacoby cleverly used a post created in Gutenberg to demonstrate his less-than-ideal experience with the editor. WordPress Tavern founder Jeff Chandler expressed his difficulty in figuring out how to float images next to text, despite the process technically being possible in fewer steps compared to the current editor (retroactively named the classic editor).
Accessibility
Controversy
Accessibility in particular has been the source of much controversy. WordPress accessibility team lead Rian Rietveld resigned on due to how the development of Gutenberg was handled with regard to accessibility. , the WordPress accessibility team posted a Report on the Accessibility Status of Gutenberg, concluding with this statement:
The accessibility team will continue to work to support Gutenberg to the best of our ability. However, based on its current status, we cannot recommend that anybody who has a need for assistive technology allow it to be in use on any sites they need to use at this time.
As you can imagine, both the resignation and the report sparked a lot of discussion, both civil and not-so-civil. Recently, on , Matt Mullenweg wrote the following in a Gutenberg FAQ:
We’ve had some important discussions about accessibility over the past few weeks and I am grateful for those who have helped raise these questions in the community.
Accessibility has been core to WordPress from the very beginning. It’s part of why we started – the adoption of web standards and accessibility.
But where I think we fell down was with project management — specifically, we had a team of volunteers that felt like they were disconnected from the rapid development that was happening with Gutenberg. We need to improve that. In the future I don’t know if it makes sense to have accessibility as a separate kind of process from the core development. It needs to be integrated at every single stage.
Audits
Notably, WPCampus is currently seeking funding to conduct an audit of Gutenberg accessibility. Automattic will also be funding a separate study of the accessibility of not only Gutenberg, but WordPress as a whole.
Finally, Automattic will be funding an accessibility study of WordPress, Gutenberg, and an evaluation of best practices across the web, to ensure WordPress is fully accessible and setting new standards for the web overall.
Release schedule
Prior schedule
Naturally, there has been much discussion over when WordPress 5.0 should be released. A proposal in suggested . Although the Gutenberg project had already stretched on for longer than initially planned, even supporters of the project (including myself) were unhappy with this date. Yoast founder Joost de Valk posted his thoughts on the current proposal on his blog, noting his appreciation for the new editor but also his concerns regarding accessibility and stability.
Let me begin by stating that I love Gutenberg. It’s the best thing since sliced bread as far as content editing is concerned. I’m writing this post in Gutenberg. I started writing it on my iPhone. It rocks. But it also still has numerous bugs. In fact, the editor broke on me during writing this post and failed to autosave all the contents.
Mark Root-Wiley of MRW Web Design also expressed concern over the planned November release:
Bottom line: The editor is where most users spend most (90%+?) of their time. I know there will be bugs, but it should be way harder to find them than this. #WordPress 5.0 feels a long way from ready.
Various members of the WordPress community shared similar sentiments, with several pushing for a January release. As the proposed release date neared, the developers worked at an impressive speed to try and fix as many issues as possible. Ultimately, however, they could not resolve all the blocking issues in time. They tried pushing the release to the first fallback date: but soon realized they were unable to meet this date either. The first release candidate did come out on the , however.
Current schedule
The initial proposal gave as a second fallback date. Despite this, the project leads decided to drop the proposed schedule altogether. They decided that the release date should simply be dependent on the feedback received on the release candidates. Matt Mullenweg posted this explanation in his Gutenberg FAQ:
The stability and open issues in the release candidates thus far makes me optimistic we can release soon, but as before the primary driver will be the stability and quality of the underlying software. We made the mistake prior of announcing dates when lots of code was still changing, and had to delay because of regressions and bugs. Now that things aren’t changing, we’re approaching a time we can commit to a date soon.
The current release candidate is WordPress 5.0 RC3. The current plan is to release WordPress 5.0 on . Notably, this is the expected release date of PHP 7.3. WordPress 5.0 includes some fixes to make it compatible with that version of PHP. The release may be delayed if any new blocking issues are found. If such issues arise, a quick 4.9.9 release with backported PHP 7.3 fixes may be released. But at the moment, it looks like the next major WordPress update is right around the corner.
There is also a series of bi-weekly 5.0.x updates planned to come out after the initial 5.0 release. These releases will focus on fixing various minor bugs (or newly discovered major bugs) and small improvements.
My thoughts on Gutenberg
Things I like
For the most part, I really like Gutenberg. In fact, I wrote this article (and all the previous ones since ) in Gutenberg. I’ve been testing and using the editor since around this time last year. Rather than echo the obvious pros like WYSIWYG editing, contextual controls, and other stuff that everybody else talks about, this section will point out some things I am personally happy about in my own experience.
Blocks
I am a big fan of the block concept. I have always enjoyed modular, customizable systems. My favorite toy is LEGO. My favorite game is Minecraft. The block concept is a bit like those.
I even like the decision to have each paragraph be a separate block. In fact, if you prefer having all paragraphs or even all text in a single block, there is nothing stopping you from creating a custom freeform text block that does exactly that. Actually, the core Classic block already does nearly the same thing, albeit tailored for backwards compatibility needs.
I like that blocks fallback more gracefully than shortcodes. I also like that the block API provides a common format that page builder plugins could all share in a way they never could with widgets. One of the biggest issues with most existing page builder plugins is their usage of shortcodes. Trying to move to another page builder is a hassle, since the content is not directly transferable. Disabling the page builder results in a mess of unparsed shortcodes all over your site. Blocks could fix both of these problems.
Block-level HTML editing
One feature that I immediately liked was the Edit as HTML option, which let you edit the HTML of a block right there in the editor. Back in the classic editor, if you wanted to edit the HTML, you had to view the entire post markup. This meant having to find the section you were working on every time you switched back and forth. But with this new Gutenberg feature, only the block you were working on would switch to an HTML view. This made tweaking markup way easier. I had previously heard some people suggest that Gutenberg was dumbing things down at the expense of advanced users. But contrary to that idea, I found that Gutenberg made it easier for me to do advanced stuff with HTML.
Reusable blocks
One neat feature of Gutenberg is reusable blocks. You can save content and reuse it anywhere on your site, and changes sync across all instances of the block. I’ve already found a neat way to use this feature on my website. All my blog posts that I originally posted on SuperGeniusZeb.com now use this reusable block at the end:
If I ever want to update the wording of this notice, I can do it once and every post that uses it will be affected.
You can also convert an instance of a reusable block into a standard block. This allows you to use reusable blocks as templates. For example, you could create a call to action (CTA) template from existing blocks. This would allow you to quickly make a CTA and avoid building it from scratch.
I imagine that in the future, website headers and footers could be made with reusable blocks as well.
Cleaner content
Despite its faults, I often enjoy using Gutenberg. I also enjoy using Divi Builder. I have never enjoyed using the classic editor. There are a couple reasons for that, but the most prominent is that the classic editor always felt messy to me.
Things like autop have annoyed me since I started using WordPress back in 2009. On the one hand, the automatic creation of paragraphs made sense for people using the visual mode of the editor. But I was often using the text (HTML) mode, and it made no sense to me at the time that my line breaks were being turned into paragraphs on the front-end. I couldn’t see any <p> tags; they were just being magically added behind the scenes. And how could I forget the mysterious s that would appear after trying to format the HTML myself?
The same kind of issue occurred to a lesser degree with the other ways that WordPress cleaned up HTML. You could install plugins to disable the cleanup, but it would affect either your entire site or at least your entire post. What if I wanted WordPress to sanitize my code in some cases but not in others?
When I started using Gutenberg last year, I noticed one thing very quickly. The paragraph tags were no longer invisible. I could actually see them in Code Editor mode. Additionally, it was now very clear where the start and end of a paragraph was. Semantic mistakes like lists nested in paragraphs were no longer possible. But if I wanted to do something special and avoid the automatic cleanup, there was now a Custom HTML block that I could use! Overall, Gutenberg felt both cleaner and more flexible.
Thinks I dislike
Gutenberg has improved dramatically since its first release, but there are still many things that are less than ideal. In this section I will talk about some of the things that bother me.
Writing flow issues
Issues that interrupt a person’s writing flow may be the worst kind of issue for an editor. Unfortunately, Gutenberg still has several of these kinds of issues. Of course, not all writing flow issues are as serious as others. Some are common, while some occur only in specific edge cases. Some are quirky bugs, such as this issue with HTML entities and the link interface that I found while writing this article. Others are simply oversights in the design process, such as the keyboard navigation issues of the Quote block. Personally, I am willing to put up with most of these issues for now, but I worry that others may not be so forgiving.
Nested block UX
One essential feature of Gutenberg is that blocks can be nested. This is useful for things such as columns, sections, accordions, and other advanced blocks. Unfortunately, the UX for interacting with nested blocks is far from perfect. The most notable issue is trying to select a block that contains child blocks. If the parent block is barely larger than its children, the clickable area to select the parent is often quite small. Things only get worse when you start having multiple levels of nesting.
The Block Navigation menu introduced in Gutenberg 4.1 partially resolves this issue, but I think both it and the general nested block UI can still be improved. I think that the Block Navigation menu should let you drag and drop blocks from within the menu, as well as delete them. Another improvement would be to turn the Block Navigation menu into a sidebar and use the plugin API. This would allow you to unpin the feature from the main editor bar if you never used it. (I think the Document Outline should also use the plugin API for the same reason.)
One suggestion I have heard is to expand the padding of a block in the editor when you select it or its children. I think that could definitely make interacting with nested blocks easier. I particularly like this idea since it fits in with Gutenberg’s methodology of adapting selected blocks for editing.
As Gutenberg moves further into page building territory, interaction with blocks using nesting will become more common. Hopefully, this will result in more refinement of the editor UX around nested blocks.
Release schedule
The current release date worries me somewhat. Though I personally am fine with using Gutenberg right now, I don’t think everyone is as tolerant of bugs and quirks as I am. I know a lot of small improvements and bug fixes are coming in the bi-weekly 5.0.x updates. However, it seems strange that they are planning to release 5.0 while already working on a follow-up bug fix release. To be fair, most of these 5.0.x fixes are minor issues. But there are a few things like performance enhancements and writing flow fixes that, in my opinion, belong in the initial release. I fear that releasing now could mean a lot of bad first impressions. Despite being delayed multiple times, the release still feels premature.
But maybe there is no reason to worry. People are often slow to update their software. Thanks to that and the bi-weekly 5.0.x updates, most people may never see the bugs on release day. Perhaps I just notice bugs more because I like to play around with features. It will definitely be very interesting to see the public reaction after the release of WordPress 5.0. All I know is that if I was the release lead, I would have delayed Gutenberg until at least January. Even if it wasn’t actually necessary, it might at least help ease some of the tensions in the community.
An obscure and complicated but still annoying bug which will probably not be fixed before 5.0.
Conclusion
The Gutenberg project has great potential, both within WordPress and outside of it. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of controversy surrounding it. Opinions on Gutenberg vary greatly, both among its supporters and its opposition.
Is Gutenberg ready? I don’t know. I clearly find it ready enough for my own use. It’s other people I’m worried about. It is hard to tell if the complaints you see on the internet foretell a larger reaction, or if, as Mr. Mullenweg suggests, this will end up being the most anti-climactic release in WordPress history. Ultimately, nobody can know for sure until it actually happens. And it looks like it is about to happen.
In the end, I want Gutenberg to be a success. In the long run, Gutenberg could benefit everyone who uses WordPress. I just hope it doesn’t trip and fall at the start of that run.
, I wrote a blog post about what I used to make my videos. But now that article is outdated, since I’ve changed a lot of the software and some of the equipment I use. So here’s an updated version of that article. If you’re looking to start making videos and were wondering how I did it, then here you go…
Equipment
I’m still using the same laptop that I was back in . It’s a Samsung NP350V5C-A01US laptop. Its specs are as follows:
The headset I was wearing broke, so I’m now using just earbuds and a YouMic lapel microphone, which has allowed me to record decent-enough audio.
For video storage, I’m currently using OneDrive cloud storage, though I would like to switch to a self-hosted server at some point – partially to not be dependent on Microsoft (and Google), and partially because I want to be able to make my videos available on DTube permanently without having to pay others to host my videos on their nodes.
Software
Operating system
My primary and favorite OS on my computer is Linux (or GNU+Linux, whatever you want to call it). My distro is Arch Linux, which I chose partially because I wanted a challenge for installing it, partially because I wanted to learn more about Linux, and partially because of the AUR (Arch User Repository).
Recording
When it comes to microphone audio recording on Linux, one neat feature I’ve discovered is that PulseAudio has an echo-cancelation module you can turn on. At least in my experience, this feature works great, and by using it and some tweaked settings in OBS, I’ve been able to get some surprisingly good audio out of my mic when recording on Linux. (My most-recent, and unfortunately also only example of this audio quality so far is “Looking Back on 2017”.)
And speaking of OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), that’s my main video/audio recording tool on Linux. It’s a rather fantastic app for both recording and livestreaming. Unfortunately, I can’t actually use it to record most of my gameplay videos – not because of a fault in the software, but rather because of my mediocre hardware.
My laptop lacks a dedicated graphics card, and so I only have integrated graphics (Intel HD Graphics 4000) provided by the processor. So how do I record my videos? Well, the processor has a feature called Quick Sync Video, which allows for quick video processing, but unfortunately there’s not much support for the feature on Linux. So in order to record videos with a decent framerate while playing a resource-intensive game like Minecraft, I have to use the other operating system installed on my laptop: Windows 10.
On Windows 10, I usually just use the built-in Xbox Game DVR feature to record gaming videos. It works well enough for most cases, though sometimes it can be a bit confusing and/or tricky to know when I have started recording since the game bar doesn’t appear while playing Minecraft in fullscreen mode.
Editing
After recording all the footage for a video, it’s time to edit it. I use Kdenlive as my video editor, since it’s both kinds of free (libre and gratis), surprisingly powerful, and it runs on Linux (and Windows), unlike my previous two video editors. For music in my videos I usually use Kevin MacLeod music, since he licenses his music under the open/libre Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. I usually export my videos in WebM format using the open VP9 codec, though I hope to start using AV1 in the future once that format is completed and support for it becomes more widespread.
When making video thumbnails, I use the built-in screenshot function of VLC Media Player to capture frames from my videos, and I use GIMP to edit them and create the thumbnails for my videos. For a series, I just re-use the same project file for the thumbnail of every episode and modify it to use the screenshot, title, and episode number of the one I’m currently working on. I then export the result as a PNG image, and that’s it!
Conclusion
Overall, I think my setup has improved from the last time I posted about it. I wish I had a laptop with more graphical power, and I also wish I had proper headphones and a better mic, but in terms of software, I’m quite satisfied with what I’m using right now. I would definitely recommend using OBS, Kdenlive, and GIMP if you’re wanting to do video production. I wish I had been using these tools when I first started making videos.
For now, that’s all there is to say about the tools I use to make my videos, but after the next 2 years have passed, I’ll probably end up doing another one of these posts, in which case I’ll add a link to it here. I hope this post has been helpful and informative to you!
Quite recently, someone commented on the third episode of my StarMade series, asking what I used to record my videos. I enthusiastically began typing out an answer… a probably longer-than-necessary answer with lots of detail. While writing that comment, it occurred to me that I could make a blog post about it, and so for those of you wondering how I make my videos and how you can make your own YouTube gaming videos, here’s how I currently do it and what I would recommend if you’re going to do it.
Equipment
The computer I use to record, edit, and upload my videos (as well as everything else since it’s my only computer) is a Samsung laptop from around 2013 which was running Windows 8 initially, though I have since upgraded it to Windows 10. It has about 500 GB of hard drive space, 6 GB of RAM, and an Intel i5-3210M CPU with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000. It handles Minecraft fairly well, though it can get laggy when recording and running other programs in the background. I intend to buy a much more powerful laptop in the future when I can afford it, but for now my current laptop serves me pretty well. If you’re looking for a gaming computer I would not recommend buying anything over 3 years old, and a dual-core i5 and 6 GB of RAM is about the minimum specs to have a comfortable gameplay-and-recording experience. For a very nice recording experience, I would recommend getting a computer with a recent i7 processor, a separate graphics card, and 8 GB of RAM. I don’t have very much experience when it comes to the different computer manufacturers, but so far Samsung’s products seem to be some of the best.
I definitely don’t have the best of voice-recording devices, but right now I use a Logitech USB H540 headset (which costs about $30 on Amazon) for recording my voice in my videos. It has some annoying microphone problems, such as the volume level starting off quiet and then auto-adjusting and get louder as you continue to speak. I’m thinking about making a homemade noise filter for the mic to help fix some of the noise-popping, but at least it’s better than the headset I use to have, which was just utterly horrible. (Watch some of my earlier videos to see what I mean.) The speakers on the headset are pretty decent, though. If you’re going to make videos about playing games, always record the game while wearing a headset/headphones, so the game’s sound won’t be picked up by your microphone, as that just sounds terrible. To record the game’s sound, use software on your computer like Fraps or the Windows 10 Xbox Game DVR to record it directly, instead of placing a mic next to your computer’s speakers, like some beginners do. It’s a simple, but extremely important rule for videogame recording. In the future I want to buy a professional headset or separate microphone, thought at the moment I’m not sure which one I want, as I haven’t really done very much research on it yet. (If you know about any good ones, let me know in the comments!)
For storing my videos, I quickly ran out of space on my computer (HD videos eat up disk space!), so I’ve started storing them on an external hard drive. I would recommend recording to an external hard drive rather than the main drive on your computer, as it frees up the main hard drive so it can handle other things (like saving your game files and other background processes), and helps prevent lag. I would recommend an external drive with at least 100 GB of space, as videos (especially uncompressed ones) just eat up tons of space, and you’re going to want to have enough space to last you for some time. I highly recommend keeping copies of your videos on an external hard drive, so you’re ready in the event that your YouTube channel gets hacked/taken-down and all your videos get deleted or something like that.
Recording Software
For recording games, I use the Windows 10 built-in Xbox Game DVR (which is free, assuming you are running Windows 10) to record my gameplay, or Fraps (which costs $37) if it doesn’t work with a particular game (such as StarMade). Both have the ability to record both the computer sound and my voice-audio at the same time, allowing me to not worry about recording both and then syncing them in editing. The Windows 10 Xbox Game DVR is built-in to the Windows 10 Xbox app, which, if I remember correctly, is pre-installed on new Windows 10 computers and newly-upgraded computers. (I would recommend going into the settings, turning on external microphone recording, and creating a custom keyboard shortcut for starting/stopping recording. I use Alt+R. (The default is Win+Alt+R.) It will record most things without a problem… in fact, you can even screen-record non-game things like your internet browser, for example. For some games though (such as StarMade), you may need to use Fraps instead as the Xbox Game DVR doesn’t seem to work with it, or at least not when you’re playing the game in fullscreen.
Editing Software
For editing, I use CyberLink PowerDirector 14 Ultra, which I got for a discounted price during their Thanksgiving/Black Friday sale . When I first started out I was using VSDC Free Video Editor, but the options on that program were pretty limited and it was rather buggy and sometimes frustrating to use. If you’re going to buy video-editing software I would recommend waiting until it goes on sale, especially holiday sales, as you can get the software for up to half-cost and sometimes get bonus free software (such as CyberLink AudioDirector 6) in my case. When recording footage with Fraps, you’ll want to convert the AVI video files it produces to a smaller and more compressed format such as MP4, using a program like Handbrake. If you set up the settings right, you can reduce the footage’s file sizes without losing hardly any quality.
I hope this article was helpful to anyone looking to start their own YouTube channel and record gameplay videos!
