VTOCRSC should become the new standard, because it's:
1) As fast as the current standard
2) Toggleable, unlike the current standard
3) Less resource heavy, unlike the current standard (cooking stone can waste coal!)
And,
4) More compact , takes 1 block in width, two in height, and we can all trade out width for height in our contraptions
And now, I reveal it to you!
This simple clock is 1 in width, 2 in height, and 3 blocks in length.
The lever as an additional item you can add to toggle it.
The redstone output can be obtained from the back side, it is off for when it is toggled off, on for when it is toggled on.
How to build:
1) Build an observer block facing a piece of redstone dust. This will be the output of the clock that you can use.
2) Place a block behind the observer block, with a piece of redstone dust on it.
3) Build an observer block facing the newly placed redstone dust, with a block behind it.
4) (Optional) Place a lever on the block that has a piece of redstone dust facing towards it. This will be your toggle switch
Congratulations! You have built the new redstone clock standard ( or at least, it should be. )
If you want this clock to be slower ( like how you can adjust it with the currently-standard clock ), you can just built something like this:
You can make the redstone as long as you want and add as many repeaters as you wish for a longer clock.
If you use this design, giving credit to me is as optional as it was with this clock:
( Nevertheless, it's still nice 
)
at the bottom right of the post! 
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Hi, I'm planning to use this in a survival-island / ocean exploration modpack tentatively titled PWoT Island. Really excited to try this mod out; I'm hoping this will take Archimedes Ships' place in all my future packs!
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Then, when I turned the difficulty back up, hostile mobs refused to spawn naturally. It was all villagers, all the time.
I think what happened is they decided the caves were their home village, and started spawning new villagers to fill it up... and without any predators to thin their numbers, their subterranean society began to spread without limit.
And then I guess villagers must belong to the MONSTER spawn list? And they reached the spawn cap on their own, which prevented any more MONSTER mobs from spawning.
Would it be possible to put a configurable cap on the number of villagers in the world? I saw an option for number of kids, but not of villagers. Also, something to make villagers not treat underground areas as villages unless they're well-lit?
Thanks.
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Aspects
I agree with everyone else that a large list of aspects is ideal. Figuring out the logic of which aspects do what, working out where one might find them, then setting out to collect them is really fun.
You're right that there's some redundancy, but I think that's actually a strength of the system. There are a dozen or so common, robust aspects like Motus and Imperito that show up again and again, with well-defined properties: transmutations always involve Permutatio, for instance. Then you've got a bunch of more obscure or specialized aspects that provide the flavour of this specific enchantment. The former are conceptual, relational, sort of like verbs; the latter, concrete, elemental, nounish. It's a good setup, and the mod would suffer if you reduced the vocabulary available to enchantments.
If you really do want to reduce the number of aspects, though, you should probably restrict your cuts to the nouns, leaving the verbs intact. I'd expect that aspect nodes would cleave more to the noun side of things than the verbs (where would you look for an Instrumentum node, anyway?), so if you want a slimmer range of nodes you only really need to trim the nouns.
Also, vague idea: maybe instead of removing similar aspects entirely, you could make certain aspects subtypes of others? Like, instead of cutting Aer and Volito in favour of Aura (for example), you might rename them to Aer Aurae and Volito Aurae. They'd work just like Aura for ordinary purposes (and might be indistinguishable without a specific mid-level research), but certain advanced research and enchantments might require the Aer (or Volito) flavour of Aura. This would again allow you to have fewer types of node while retaining the full array of aspects.
Vis
Both vis and essentia, please. But by all means, rework how vis comes into the world until it's more stable. (I do like being able to create nexuses and dead zones, though.)
Spellcasting
I'm okay with spellcasting in theory, but it'd have to stick to the "A mage is defined by his tools" tone that Thaumcraft already has going on. I could see it working like, you know a set of spells, but on your own you can't channel energy fast enough to use anything more than the weakest form of each (e.g. a spark eqivalent to a flint and steel). You'd bind spells into wands, and those wands would channel larger amounts of vis much faster (or alternatively, use vis more efficiently), producing greater effects (e.g. a fireball). More advanced items—call them staffs—would increase your personal storage capacity (or rather, act as an auxiliary storage that you can tap into automatically while you're wielding them), as well as improving your channeling rate. (Perhaps only while you have the appropriate essentia stored in it?)
Or in other words—
Personal spellcasting: flexible, but very low power
Wand: contains single bound spell with a set (potentially high) power and storage
Staff: stores vis and essentia for personal spellcasting, increases power of personal spellcasting
That may have been a bit unclear... it's a bit late, and the idea isn't fully formed yet anyway. I may come back and rewrite this last bit later.