Ulfrid's Online Adventures

Surely minecraft-inspired?  No credit given that I could see.  Or maybe I'm just seeing Minecraft everywhere now...

Inspired by my success with the small-scale pumpkin harvester, I decided to go all-in on pumpkin production. The first task was to produce a redstone signal that turned on and off periodically to power the pistons.  Apparently this is called a "clock" in Minecraft.  I read about different ways to create one and decided to go with a method using a track and minecart train.  I'd like to claim that this was because it seemed best suited to the task, but mostly it was a chance to add my enjoyment of playing with train tracks to the process.  (As it happens, I think it might be among the best suited methods, but I haven't tried any others.) Here's a clock powering a piston I built to make sure I understood the process. The gold rails power the cart so that it keeps moving around the track; the piece of track with a square sends a redstone signal to the piston (similar to hitting the button on the earlier creation). The ideas are all contained in that

I've been experimenting with redstone out in the desert by Entrance 2 of Jetlag Mine. I made three automatic doors, in each case following some step-by-step instructions from the internet for the business parts. The Xor Door: Pulling the lever open and closes the door and there's another lever on the other side too.  Switching the state of that one also switches the state of the door. Sliding Doors: My first step towards building a supermarket.  These use sticky pistons (acquired from the redstone trader) and when approached from the side in the picture slide back.  They can't be opened from the other side. The Temple of Door: Automatic from both sides.  With the sliding doors each pressure pad only opens one side of the sliding door.  With this one any of the four pressure pads (two on each side) opens both doors. The next two are a long way from original but I'm getting closer.  I read about them on the internet and then built them for

I'm enjoying Minecraft. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing yet and even less sure what I should be trying to do to get a good handle on the game, but I'm learning new stuff and it's fun. Mostly I've been mining.  My original shaft hit bedrock and I've been pootling around there collecting various ores and precious stones.  I've got a good sstarting tash of most of them now (not that I know what a good stash looks like).  Cynthia's comment on my last post makes me think I should increase my altitude a little to get more diamonds.  More generally perhaps I'll start undulating a little rather than assuming deeper is better. For no particularly good reason I dug a second shaft down to the mine and started a little building there with a furnace and such: I'm quite taken with the blue stained glass.   Visitors very welcome.  The (x,z) coordinates are (421,326) and (486,513) for the original shaft and second shaft respectively.

Travel is supposed to broaden the horizons.  However, a transatlantic flight seems to have narrowed mine: Welcome to Jetlag Mine, product of a sleepy-but-not-asleep 3am digging burst. Not in the mood for learning something new (how to use torches, mostly) I decided to try open-cast mining.  I'm not sure you can tell from the pictures, but it's an 8x8 square hole with a two-wide staircase around the side.  Light is getting to the bottom OK so far. So far I've found some coal and some iron ore.  The iron was my original goal.  A little bit of internet searching for how to get water to my garden suggested a bucket would be good, and to get one of those I need some iron. I haven't tried getting it out of the ore yet, but I have the ingredients now. Is this how mining is done (approximately at least)?  Or are there better ways to get more ore? UPDATE: Down at about an altitude of 30 I've found some underground caverns.  They have torches, so presuma

Some initial thoughts on Minecraft. This is the first time I've used it, or even really been aware of it other than it sounding vaguely familiar.  It took a little bit to master the controls and work out what was going on with generating materials, but I got it.  It's clear I still have lots to master though. Two sort-of accomplishments.  First, I built a "basic" structure: Door hole, window hole and functional roof in a stylish mix of oak and spruce. One problem is that I now don't know how to find it again.  I'll keep walking around in the vague vicinity of the spawn point until I come across it.  Maybe I'll take the build-something-cool option to see how high I can make a structure on its roof, to help me find it in future. I also explored, if walking as fast as possible in various directions counts.  Saw mountains, a lake (which I got stuck on the bottom of and had to respawn), castles and much more.  Here's a picture of me with a co