“Robots gave us six extra seconds of co-operation!”

Humans cannot be trusted.

Apparently, robots can’t be trusted either. At least I now know that I can trust a Aperture Science robot for 6 more seconds than I can an Aperture Science employee. Though I wouldn’t like to put it to the test against GLaDOS…

I seriously can’t wait for Portal 2 to be released. Unfortunately, it’s right before the exams, so I’m either likely to fail the exams or fail the exams playing Portal 2!

Minecraft and the towers

So, I’ve wasted a considerable amount of free time building what was at first a tower, then a few towers, then an aerial walkway, canal system, boatlift, and now is a fully fledged quadrangle.

The towers themselves are really impressive, the basic structure being a 5×5 square tower with a hollow inside, then building a double helix in the centre:

glass glass glass glass glass
glass air air air glass
glass glass glass glass glass
glass air air air glass
glass glass glass glass glass

glass glass glass glass glass
glass glass air air glass
glass air glass air glass
glass air air glass glass
glass glass glass glass glass

etc. The bottom is slightly more fancy, in that it started out like that, but I added a walkway through the middle, and sealed off the bottom. Hence:

  • Layer 1:
    glass glass glass glass glass
    glass glass glass glass glass
    air air air air air
    glass glass glass glass glass
    glass glass glass glass glass
  • Layer 2:
    glass glass glass glass glass
    glass glass glass glass glass
    air air air air air
    glass glass glass glass glass
    glass glass glass glass glass
  • Layer 3:
    glass glass glass glass glass
    glass air air air glass
    glass glass glass glass glass
    glass air air air glass
    glass glass glass glass glass

There’s nothing special about the top, you just need to stop building the glass spiral when you don’t want to go any higher, and stick a lava source in one side, and a water source in the other. If all goes to plan, you should end up with zero cobblestone, zero obsidian, and a nice tower that looks something like this:

water lava tower by day

or by night:

water lava tower by night

I ended up building a glass staircase around the outside edge of the tower to aid getting up and down. Alson if you’re fast enough, you can get down the tower before the lava has finished forming (jumping down into water helps!), and you can watch it form:

2011-03-12_17.57.55

Now, I decided to go to the top of the world. Then I decided that wasn’t enough, so I moved 100 blocks and built another. And another. And another.

Here’s three of the towers, the other one hadn’t been built yet (I’m actually stood halfway up it while building it)

2011-03-12_17.36.22

Four fancy looking towers still didn’t seem good enough, as I seemed to be able to rattle off new ones far too quickly, so I built a walkway between them right at the top, then a few blocks down a canal system:

2011-03-13_00.11.07

… which in itself was starting to look really cool from the ground:

2011-03-13_00.11.51

Add a fair amount of water…

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I ended up building an extra ledge onto the outside wall of my canal system, and flooding that too to form water curtains:

2011-03-13_15.12.27

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A 1 block deep trench directly underneath the fall path of the water ensured no unintentional flooding, except for the one time I forgot about doing that…

2011-03-13_15.45.45

I decided I ought to make a few “portals” through the curtain so others on the server could easily come and go to their respective bases, so using the 1 block trench idea, I created a very simple doorway with the trench on top:

2011-03-13_14.58.37

I also added a boat lift, which is essentially just a column of water, and a drop into a 3-block deep area of water, with a current driving you off the edge. It works really well, assuming you can get the boat to move where you want it to!

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More photos can be found here

All in all, I’m pleased with the result, though I’m not so sure about the water curtains.

If you want a look around for yourself, take the backup dated midnight on the 14th from here, and have a look around!