Once you unlock a boat trade with a fisherman villager, you can click that trade, and it will pull all the alike boats in your inventory to the trade slot. This stack of boats can then be brought to your own inventory! Hello 2880 boats!
It will make mobs in front of you seem closer, which will counteract them seeming slightly further away than they are.
Notch kind of mentioned this on twitter yesterday and it worked for me. I just connected to create.nerd.nu, adjusted my controls, et voila!
I can't count the number of times I've found massive cave systems behind gravel mounds while mining. If you're out of new tunnels to explore, check out gravel spots.