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Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

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Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#61

Post by terrn »

kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

I completely agree with your statement. I too have very little interest in hooking light bulbs up to Minecraft, or anything but a socket already there. I enjoy my job and find solving programming problems challenging and rewarding.

My own feeling is that there is no better or worse, and feeling bad questioning if we're good enough is ridiculous. If one wants to hack on light bulbs that's great! If they'd rather go for a bike ride, that's great too! There's a quote from Winnie the Pooh that speaks to this equivalency.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.”

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#62

Post by munchbunny »

kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

That doesn't make you a fraud. That just means you have different interests. I personally thought this was mildly amusing. I'm not sure that the author intended much more than that either.

There's a pattern in your comment that is a little more troubling though. Did you mean to imply that you feel like you should be a "hacker"? If so, I'd question the intrinsic value of being a "hacker" as opposed to a generally curious person who has his own interests and disinterests.

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#63

Post by [deleted] »

kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

[deleted]

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#64

Post by kylnew »

phirschybar wrote: post #39
kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

I hear you. But my kids would FLIP if they could control lights in our house from a Minecraft world :)

This is a perfect response because it exemplifies the importance of relevance in what excites you.

If you don't play MC already or have no friends/family interested in the game, then a project like this would seem quite boring.

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#65

Post by fao_ »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #48
kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

Yep, I feel the same way. I don't really like tinkering, though. I don't like the mindset of tinkerers, either. Every tinkerer I've come across has never finished anything of substantial size, and every one I've met had terrible programming habits, or such strongly opinionated views, you couldn't work with them or discuss something you liked because it wasn't inline with their holy views of writing god-awful code. Wh…

> because it wasn't inline with their holy views of writing god-awful code.

Code quality is for the most part subjective. Sure there are standards or general conventions, but these differ largely between codebases and languages. Some people take this to extremes, especially if they're not used to coding with other programmers.

> When I take up small projects, I make sure they're useful for production purposes.

> ...

> I often think about the portfolios of people like this, a large number of repositories to show for, and nothing ever particularly useful.

That's fine, but some of us tinker and hack for a different reason: knowledge and curiosity's sake. For me (Although I know it also applies to a few other people I know), the sole goal is learning and experimenting -- a working project is just a bonus. Occasionally I'll code a tool to make life easier, but it's not the be-all-and-end-all.

> When I pursue a project, I work on it in terms of 10s of thousands of lines of code over a 2-4+ year span of time.

It's great that you have the energy to do that, but I (and I can't speak for anyone else here) simply don't have the energy to devote my time to a single project over a long period of time. I find it wears me out, and after a while programming turns into drudge-work. Not to mention there are always fun cool little projects popping into my head.

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#66

Post by CaptSpify »

kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

I'm curious, maybe if it was re-worded, would you agree?

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be an interesting experiment to be able to control them using Minecraft?

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#69

Post by byron_fast »

DuckyC wrote: post #13
accommodavid wrote: post #9

Now if this whole thing could be accomplished using pure redstone circuitry http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109385-Computer-Bu...

Redstone has no means of communication to the outside, so even if you created an entire computer with redstone(very unlikely) you would have no means of communication outside of minecraft.

Well, if you have Computer Craft (or presumably Open Computers) you can get redstone out of the game and send an SMS: https://boomtree.com/r2p I made that. But just this week LittleBits released a Minecraft mod called "bitCraft" that lets you use their CloudBit to simplify all these steps even further: http://discuss.littlebits.cc/t/bitcraft-our-minecraft-mod-is...

Re: Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

#70

Post by martin-adams »

kohanz wrote: post #30

> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…

Something like this I put into the category of technology art. Not something I want to invest my own time on, but like seeing. Doesn't mean it's for everyone though.

As for whether this makes you less of a hacker. I doubt it. We all hack in different ways. For me, my hacking today consisted of writing a scheduled payment simulator in JavaScript to help explain to the tech guys how it is expected to behave (fed up of writing documents).

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