Minecraft is not damaged and should not be moved to the Trash

by

I will usually dismiss most applications that claim to work across Macs/Windows/Linux as not worth downloading to take a look at as they are usually written with Java and so they will be slow and clunky and ugly. [wikipop]Minecraft[/wikipop] is the exception that proves the rule.

It seems a fairly common problem on a Mac that Minecraft refuses to run reporting that it is damaged and needs to be Trashed…

Minecraft damaged warning window

Although my son has had it running on his own account on this Mac (OS X 10.8.3 / Java version 1.7.0_07) it has never worked for me. The official fix suggests that it is related to the Mac’s Gatekeeper and you should right click on the Minecraft icon, select Open from the menu and then Open again in the warning window. This did not work for me.

There are various fixes suggested on various forums but none seemed relevant to my problem. Mac apps, beneath the single icon, are bundles of all the various bits and pieces that the app requires. I went mining into the app with a right click and selecting Show Package Content….

Show Package Contents

and I found the Java (.jar) file to launch Mincraft… MinecraftLauncher.jar which was in the Java folder which was in the Resources folder which was in the Content folder
(or in the order of opening … Content > Resources > Java > MinecraftLauncher.jar)

Double clicking the MinecraftLauncher.jar file opens the Minecraft window, and you can log in, and it downloads the bits it needs, and then… it crashes 🙁

Looking through the crash log there was mention of LWJGL (Lightweight Java Game Library) files and so they were updated from the LWJGL site.

These need to go into the Application Support within the Library. Select Go from the Finder menu and then Library (if you do not see Library listed hold down the Alt key). From the Library folder select..

Application Support > Minecraft > bin

and pop the lwjgl.jar and lwjgl_util.jar files into there. Then in the Natives folder add your other lwjgl files.

Now double clicking the Minecraft icon opens a window… that informs you that Minecraft is damaged and should be dumped in the Trash… but double clicking the MinecraftLauncher.jar icon opens the Minecraft window and away you go 🙂

MInecraft working

To save digging down to the launcher everytime I right clicked on it and selected “Make Alias” to make a shortcut icon that I dragged onto the Desktop.

Home Education Errata

by

Whilst one should try not to gawp at the car crash that “home education” (whatever that is) has become…

A popular meme amongst the faithful followers is the quote “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” which is often attributed to [wikipop search=”W. B. Yeats”]William Butler Yates[/wikipop].

According to the Quote Investigator the quote should be attributed to [wikipop]Plutarch[/wikipop]

Ray Collins

by

Ray Collins November 19, 1936 – December 24, 2012

raycollins

Once upon a time there was a band called The Soul Giants. After their guitar player quit the band’s vocalist, [wikipop search=”Ray Collins (rock musician)”]Ray Collins[/wikipop], asked a guy called [wikipop]Frank Zappa[/wikipop] to join the band. The band’s name was subsequently changed to [wikipop]The Mothers[/wikipop] and the rest is history…

Collins had been working as a vocalist during the late 1950s and early 1960s adding his high backing vocals to I Remember Linda by Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers…

He had featured on recordings made by Paul Buff at his [wikipop]Pal Recording Studio[/wikipop] which Buff would later sell to Zappa, who renamed it Studio Z, and the rest is history…

Here is Collins singing Deserie…

…which he would later record with The Mothers (having frequently been in and out of the band) for Cruising with Ruben and The Jets…

It was the How’s Your Bird that he recorded as Baby Ray and The Ferns…

that Zappa was promoting with his performance on bicycle on [wikipop]The Steve Allen Show[/wikipop] in 1963…