I upgraded my mob farm to allow auto-harvesting of drops, as well as preventing spiders from spawning (I don't need that much string that I cannot get from normal mob whacking). I also added an AFK box for the auto-harvesting to take place, and added various fast water elevators to both the mob-farm, and to my hill-side base to increase the speed in which it took for me to get from lower levels to the operational levels that I care about. I only built the upward going ones, relying on gravity and a single water source block at the bottom to nullify fall damage. The magma-block speed version is quite annoying to use, since the end point requires remembering to crouch to exit, in addition to the damage ticks that come from standing directly on the block despite being in water.
I could only build the water elevators now due to a much needed resource that wasn't available before: kelp. Kelp needs to grow in water, running or otherwise, but once it is planted in one, will convert that water block into a water source block. This is important for the upwards water elevator because the mechanism relies heavily on having the entire water column saturated with water source blocks, and the traditional way of doing it with water buckets out of an infinite water source is just... not possible, mostly because the water column is tall vertically, which makes dumping water source blocks throughout all of the blocks it encompasses an exercise in frustration. Conversely, kelp can be easily laid down: start with a water source block at the top of the column, wait for the water to flow to the bottom, plant the first kelp into the ground, then enter the water column, holding the right-click button laying out kelp one on top of another until one reaches the top.
Clearing the kelp is even easier: just thwack the kelp at the bottom, and the entire kelp column comes free, leaving behind only water source blocks. And the kelp conveniently floats to the top. So if one had constructed the upwards water elevator correctly, one can just hop into the now working water elevator to head to the top at high speed and pick up all the kelp for use at another day.
Anyway, I needed the auto-harvesting for more gunpowder from the creepers to create TNT. I need that TNT to go find the ancient_debris deep in the Nether to smelt into netherite scraps that is part of a chain of steps to create Netherite equipment, the highest tier available in-game.
That said though, the work with redstone to get the mob-farm working and this entire production process is making me itch for either Factorio or even Kerbal Space Program, two massive time sink games that I had previously not played because they used the same brain cells as what I used at work.
Maybe if the work I do to pay the bills relaxes the use of those specific brain cells, I can finally start scratching that itch with these games. Hmmm...
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In other news, I've completed my reading of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein. It gives a good summary of the evidence for nature versus nurture, which demonstrates that any extreme position of which is more contributive to [athletic] success will run into limitations very quickly, and that it is a combination of the two that can lead to success. I doubt this is something new, but at least it tries its best to gather information and references in one place, which can assist readers to contruct their own understanding when more research turns up over time. While the book limits itself to sports as the motive for understanding how genetics/training affects the sports outcome, some of the conclusions thus drawn has their corollary from the disease front as well, even though Epstein was careful to not be speculative in that regard.
The key takeaway is that while genetic research reveals new connections for us to learn about how it can affect performance, it also reveals that the proverbial ``book of life'' from our genes is has a level of complexity that may be beyond basic understanding---the more we understand, the more we realise that we do not really understand. And that perhaps the true answer/model that can explain why we end up being whoever we are might be of orders of magnitudes higher than the simple cause and effect type reasoning that we have grown to expect from the early successes of intellectual endeavours.
Anyway, that's all for now. Till the next update.
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