Finally went and fiddled with it. Oddly, its pretty entertaining as a game...
First night I scrambled around with the uh first night "OMG FIND A PLACE TO HIDE AND MAKE LIGHTS" scramble. I ended up getting plopped on a half desert, half forest area (but predominately desert). Trees ad cacti were not so hard to find, but when I found coal the sun was setting down. I proceeded to burrow right into the wall where I found the coal some and block the entry off.
Burrowed a little bit in, made a divet in the wall and dropped the workbench to make things with. It wasn't a bad place at all, the doorway had a nice overhang and it was almost a cliff, making it hard for things to get to the door.
Decided however to expand a little bit as this may make a useful base of operations. One thing that had been bothering me is the array of monster-related noise from all sides. So I tunneled a bit to the right after they ceased to investigate why there was so much noise from this one side.
Eep.
I broke into a cave system, finding that I was living over a very large drop into a pit of death (or you could call it a mine). Proceeded to seal it up post haste as I was unsure what was out in the dark.
I did find the entrance to the mine and bravely trudged forward making sure to torch the place as brightly as I could. Was getting tired of nearing noises down there and wanted to see what I could dig up. Consequently was pin cushioned by a skeleton, and had to run back for my stuff.
Next day I figured out how to make a furnace, and consequently also figured out how to make my near limitless supply of sand into glass. Added windows, and window-fied my cavern view. Of course this is great because it makes a strange difference when you have windows. Its quite nice. The downside is I turned around the next night to find a creeper had made that one in a million jump and thankfully hadn't noticed me yet on the other side of the glass. More occasions netted me cases of monsters pressing their faces flat on the glass absentmindedly.
That wasn't a particularily good morning either, as the front door was camped by a pack of three creepers and many spiders. Spent the day very carefully excavating through my teetering deathtrap home to make a back door.
... Then I discovered how to make doors and was pleased. Each end got a door so I would no longer have to scramble to block up the holes I used as doors and worry about getting camped inside by some crazy critter.
Its now much more home-looking, I've made a nice ceiling and its got more than enough window. Torches are all over it outside, I can see it from a good distance off. While I can technically no longer dig to expand as I've basically burrowed out the hillside (carefully!), I think perhaps I still can expand by trying to create a path into the cavern system below, or build upwards for new levels to create a tower with.