Also, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to announce that we are probably going to allow flying soon!
Well, damn. I was hoping of having more concrete results from my SCIENCE before I told 'em about this little idea. I'd hate to have to deny them this after they GET HYPE. So far, so good though. The remainder of my experiments will need to be conducted after the update.

On that note, I've been watching for progress from the Bukkit bros quite feverishly so that we can get the 1.4 update underway. As of yesterday, they've released a Beta build, which looks nice. Not quite at the point where I'm comfortable updating the server, but it seems that we're getting close. Perhaps this Beta will help some of our
other plugin manufacturers get their work done. As always, we'll let you know once it is time. I don't believe that we have much time left now. (Strafe? optimism? Weird, isn't it? :V)
While we wait, I figured that I'd share my concern about the Wither. New boss with a rare (and useful) loot? Cool. You can summon by "building" the boss like a golem? Cool. Boss blows up a sizeable chunk of land after being summoned AND fires bullets that destroy terrain?
NOT GOOD. Yeah, you can see where I'm going with this. I
really am not comfortable with the Wither existing in our main world, or even Flatworld for very obvious reasons. After the update, I will be looking into blocking the Wither from being summoned in those two worlds. The Nether, The End, and Adventure World are all fair game though. More on this once I see how things go.
This is another reason that I'm not conducting the update with these new Bukkit builds quite yet. I've got my eye on the progress of a couple of our key plugins as well. They're rather important, in my estimation..