Automatic Cobble Mining Goodness
Here is a little advisory tidbit for anyone who needs tons of Cobble:
Using Brad's cobble generator in the Nether is a lot better than tearing up a mountainside—and I need a lot of Cobble—but it is about like watching toast boil. In a word,
boring!
Since I'm usually at work when I'm playing the Nova map, I have a lot of time when I'm stocking shelves or talking to customers, and I typically bail out of the game. However, an interesting idea struck me: Why can't I be mining while away from the computer? How is that possible, you ask? The answer was so simple it blew my mind: Get yourself a new, diamond pick, stand at the front of the cobble line and aim your target at the foremost obsidian block, rest a stapler on your left mouse button, then walk away. In a few minutes, you'll have stacks and stacks of cobble with no effort, and you can stock shelves until you're sick of it with no lost mining time.
The obsidian will resist the pick in between cobble cycles, so you need not worry about mining it up. Considering it takes about 2 seconds per cycle, you can get around 30 blocks per minute. Fast enough for a few blocks, but forever when you need hundreds (or thousands). Being able to walk away is really nice. Give it a try.
Woo and Hoo!
Happy mining.
P.S. A simple upgrade to the generator would be to put a hopper and a chest beneath the end so cobble would drop into it rather than having to chase it around. But that's just me.