Update on #Minecraft with my sister: told her about how you can hold things in your off-hand by pressing F.
I also told her not to go in my mine because she could accidentally mess it up, but actually because it will only fuel her theory that I am autistic. This is called "branch mining" and it is a long-established technique for efficiently finding diamonds, thank you very much.
@nev Also known as grid searching. These days I use a Mekanism digital miner, bring up the entire chunk, and sift through it for useful materials. You'll get a better yield if you make your mine 3 blocks high instead of 2. Yes, it wears out your pick that much sooner, but in the long run it's worth it.
@WanderingBeekeeper I generally play pretty vanilla and on a server that wouldn't allow that kind of thing, so I do it old style! I also like keeping it 2 blocks high so Endermen can't spawn in (and 1-wide tunnels mean slimes can't either, in slime chunks).
