04-22-2013, 02:12 PM
Hey there, I'm Thor. I've never really been social, but I've been trying to change that more recently. Even so, I don't expect to be posting too often (or chatting on the server much), though I will be trying to do so more than I would otherwise.
As for my skill set, I've been redstoning on and off for almost 2 years now. I've built all manner of devices, from counters and bi-directional bitshifters, to full ASCII keyboards, to a small piston based Kogge-Stone adder. Though that last one was just because I saw Prop's video on it and heard how he hates pistons, so I thought it would be entertaining to see how much smaller I could make it while using them. (Side note: I checked it while writing this, and it seems that it actually doesn't work properly. I thought I had replicated the wiring correctly from the wikipedia page but I guess not .)
I got my start when the official pistons first came out, building self-building walls and houses like others did. One day, I saw someone who had made a movie screen, and I thought to myself, "Well, I could probably make that." But of course I wanted to improve upon it - have it actually stop at each picture for a time, instead of constantly cycling around. So I figured that the easiest way to do that was to build a counter, and when the counter got to the right number (however long it would take to cycle from one picture to the next), it would switch between moving the image and holding still. And with this endeavor, I surprised myself - I managed to build a working counter based on piston's one-tick block-dropping principle on my first try. (I've actually gone back to that world occasionally in some of the newer versions, and found that it still worked!) So I thought to myself, "Huh, this redstone stuff isn't as hard as I thought it was." Sometime after this (I don't remember when exactly) I managed to reverse engineer a bitshifter from studying the wiring of Berick's word processor. It also inspired me later on to build my ASCII keyboard.
Fast forward about a month when Ohmganesha first shows off the concept for an instant-carry adder. So I take a look at it and figure that I could compact it, the results of which you can see in the thread (I realize the image on the first page is broken, skip to the last page, there's a working picture of the design I had posted). After that, Ohm went on to build his computer, which I followed while also checking out other computers, seeing how they worked exactly so I could go about building my own. That specific feat has been a work in progress for more than a year, due partially to MC updates, partially to the design of the ALU/RAM/etc., and partially to my own laziness.
The instant-carry adder I designed went through many revisions in this time period of course, and it's been... interesting to see the rest of the community building them as well. The basic design for it is still roughly the same though; There are alterations of course, but you could still compare it to my first version and see which part is which. Also in that time, I've considered joining the RDF, though the times I checked there always seemed to be some sort of ongoing problem with the server or the people on it or something.
Other potentially relevant info about me: I'm a quick learner, I'm a programmer (c++ ftw!), I'm very good at math and sudokus, I don't like doing a half-assed job but I don't always complete the projects I start, I have my A+ certification (computer repair certification for those who don't know), I've actually never played Minecraft multiplayer before. Well, not until I visited the server earlier today, anyway.
Also, I'm kinda OCD. I spent like 3 hours on this, reading and re-reading it, making corrections, clarifications, additions, etc. until I felt it was good enough to post. So there's that. Anyway, It's nice to meet you all and I hope to enjoy my time here.
As for my skill set, I've been redstoning on and off for almost 2 years now. I've built all manner of devices, from counters and bi-directional bitshifters, to full ASCII keyboards, to a small piston based Kogge-Stone adder. Though that last one was just because I saw Prop's video on it and heard how he hates pistons, so I thought it would be entertaining to see how much smaller I could make it while using them. (Side note: I checked it while writing this, and it seems that it actually doesn't work properly. I thought I had replicated the wiring correctly from the wikipedia page but I guess not .)
I got my start when the official pistons first came out, building self-building walls and houses like others did. One day, I saw someone who had made a movie screen, and I thought to myself, "Well, I could probably make that." But of course I wanted to improve upon it - have it actually stop at each picture for a time, instead of constantly cycling around. So I figured that the easiest way to do that was to build a counter, and when the counter got to the right number (however long it would take to cycle from one picture to the next), it would switch between moving the image and holding still. And with this endeavor, I surprised myself - I managed to build a working counter based on piston's one-tick block-dropping principle on my first try. (I've actually gone back to that world occasionally in some of the newer versions, and found that it still worked!) So I thought to myself, "Huh, this redstone stuff isn't as hard as I thought it was." Sometime after this (I don't remember when exactly) I managed to reverse engineer a bitshifter from studying the wiring of Berick's word processor. It also inspired me later on to build my ASCII keyboard.
Fast forward about a month when Ohmganesha first shows off the concept for an instant-carry adder. So I take a look at it and figure that I could compact it, the results of which you can see in the thread (I realize the image on the first page is broken, skip to the last page, there's a working picture of the design I had posted). After that, Ohm went on to build his computer, which I followed while also checking out other computers, seeing how they worked exactly so I could go about building my own. That specific feat has been a work in progress for more than a year, due partially to MC updates, partially to the design of the ALU/RAM/etc., and partially to my own laziness.
The instant-carry adder I designed went through many revisions in this time period of course, and it's been... interesting to see the rest of the community building them as well. The basic design for it is still roughly the same though; There are alterations of course, but you could still compare it to my first version and see which part is which. Also in that time, I've considered joining the RDF, though the times I checked there always seemed to be some sort of ongoing problem with the server or the people on it or something.
Other potentially relevant info about me: I'm a quick learner, I'm a programmer (c++ ftw!), I'm very good at math and sudokus, I don't like doing a half-assed job but I don't always complete the projects I start, I have my A+ certification (computer repair certification for those who don't know), I've actually never played Minecraft multiplayer before. Well, not until I visited the server earlier today, anyway.
Also, I'm kinda OCD. I spent like 3 hours on this, reading and re-reading it, making corrections, clarifications, additions, etc. until I felt it was good enough to post. So there's that. Anyway, It's nice to meet you all and I hope to enjoy my time here.