
Working computer made out of Minecraft blocks - chanux
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/28/working-computer-mad.html
======
DanielBMarkham
The good: he spent a lot of time learning about logic circuits

The bad: he spent a lot of time making a simulation of a logic circuit that
has no practical application I can imagine

It's probably a net plus overall, since learning and modeling what one knows
is a great way to reinforce it, but one is left with the impression that this
is a person who can spend a lot of time on things.

I hate to be a prude, and everybody loves a hobby, but we keep seeing these
stories of guys who spend hundreds or thousands of hours on these very unusual
and detailed configurations of virtual goods -- the maximized Sim City guy
comes to mind. Something about our praising this behavior bugs me. I guess
it's not clear to me the difference between unnaturally focusing in on small
things - -like in Aspergers -- and just having a hobby. Aside from this guy,
who seems wonderfully well-balanced, I wonder if we're not praising people who
might actually need help.

I don't know. I probably didn't say that as well as I could.

~~~
hugh3
I'd rate this a lot higher than the guy who made a big effort out of trying to
build Simcity city with the largest possible population.

SimCity guy spent years on his city. I don't know how long this guy spent, but
it can't have been nearly that long since the game is only a year or so old.
It probably took some reasonable number of hours -- probably less than the
average Minecraft player spends playing Minecraft _without_ producing anything
that anyone ever wants to look at.

Secondly, SimCity guy was trying to get the highest possible score within the
parameters of the game as defined, which is less creative than this guy who is
using the game in an unexpected and novel way.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"this guy who is using the game in an unexpected and novel way."_

MineCraft Alpha was built with logic-circuit design in mind [1]. This guy
built a pretty extreme example, but it's not any more "unexpected and novel"
than, say, making a very large castle.

[1] <http://minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Circuits>

~~~
wlievens
And the base concept is probably based on Dwarf Fortress, where logic _does_
come from an unexpected and novel aspect: hydraulics.

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DrStalker
Give people limited tools capable of building a turing-complete computer and
eventually someone will... but it's always impressive to see it done.

Personally I have a railway to my underground tree farm and lava storage
facility, but that's not exactly newsworthy :-)

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powrtoch
The ultimate end of all this is when he uses Minecraft to compile and run
Minecraft.

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peteforde
I'd be really excited to see Notch implement some sort of API or bridge to RL
within the environment.

Then it's only a matter of time before people could offer Heroku-style SaaS
deployments on MineCraft clusters for our future generations to enjoy.

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plinkplonk
The book (from which he got the ALU specs) <http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/> and a
Google Video based on it
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507>

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vault_
See also: working computer made inside of Dwarf Fortress
([http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/15/colossal-turing-
mach.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/15/colossal-turing-mach.html))

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ivank
The creator talked about it on Reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dk1au/hey_rgaming_i_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dk1au/hey_rgaming_i_just_finished_an_alu_the_math_part/c10rnwj)

~~~
guywithabike
It's also worth noting that he basically got a job offer right there on
Reddit.

~~~
swah
How much would they pay a guy that makes 200k a day?

~~~
brown9-2
The offer was to the maker of this ALU, who is not Notch (the maker of
Minecraft). These are two different people.

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mulander
Simply amazing.

I really can't imagine how he wants to implement the compiler he speaks about
:)

~~~
tomjen3
As it get it, it already exists - since the machine is a standard, it should
be able to use already existing compilers.

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dstein
I've never really had any interest in how an ALU works. I use one every day,
and I take it for granted. But after seeing what an ALU looks like, in video
game terms, the scale and complexity becomes apparent. Now I'm absolutely
fascinated.

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Deestan
Unless I misheard him, he made a working implementation of the Hack ALU, which
is magnificent all by itself.

Hack is a virtual fully working computer that students build completely from
the NAND up during a semester: [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/video-lecture-
from-nand-to-tetr...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/video-lecture-from-nand-to-
tetris-in-12-steps/)

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nphase
_Are you listening, pig?_

For a second there I thought he was talking to me.

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aero142
The pigs made me laugh. I don't know much about minecraft, but I wonder if the
pigs can foul up the circuitry. You don't get the right answer so you have to
go clear the pigs out of the pathways. It's like the original legend about how
software "bugs" are named so because a bug crawled into the circuitry and
fried it out. In Minecraft computers, the bugs are called "pigs".

~~~
Dove
The pigs can't hurt it. But there are animals called 'creepers' that could
mess it up quite badly. Only if you're close, though.

~~~
joshu
SSSSSSSssssssssssss

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dzuc
Given a complex enough sandbox game and enough time, could one build a
computer and version of the game which runs inside the game?

~~~
kurokikaze
Yes, but it will be slow as hell.

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carlos
It's amazing. LOL when I saw the pigs jumping!

~~~
pilif
while your comment is probably not appropriately worded for this community
here, I have to agree: The pigs jumping around in the machine gave the video a
new surreal dimension.

Consider all the work that went into this creation.

Finally - after everything is finished and everything works, the author takes
his time to show us around. He's showing all the little details. All the
ingenuity in the various components.

And then, in the middle of the tour, you see pigs jumping around.

I don't know. Maybe I have a simple mind, but I was highly amused - especially
knowing what a piece of art the creator of the video was showing us.

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lotusleaf1987
Also, in the video-game LittleBigPlanet someone made a functional calculator:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiRgYBHoAoU>

