About Ryan: Ryan is our fifteen year old grandson and gets his love of computers and computer challenges and programing honestly-it is in his DNA. His dad is one of the IT technicians for the Rockingham County school system and is a sought after speaker at teacher conferences on training educators on all aspects of technology and how to use it in the classroom.
Ryan asked if I would be open to a post on my blog. I am honored to do so. But to my faithful blog followers, I warn you, you may have no idea what he is talking about!!!! I can tell you I did not contribute to that gene pool!!!! This grandma is also clueless but I am proud of his accomplishments. Several years ago, Ryan joined his dad in speaking to the college students at JMU (James Madison University). Right now he is building his own super computer from scratch.
So here goes….enjoy his post!
It was just another typical day for a teen in April, during COVID quarantine. I was wasting my time once again on YouTube when a Minecraft tutorial popped up in my web browser feed.
Now for those of you who don’t know about Minecraft, it is a sandbox creative game where the player can build, farm, or explore the infinite world with a whole bunch of other mechanics that would take me forever to explain. Now the game is feasible on any device from IOS, Android, Xbox, PlayStation, and most popular, on the computer. Since the game is so flexible among all the devices, this does mean that there are two different variations of the game, Java (computers only) and Bedrock (all devices including computers).
So this tutorial caught my eye because it was a tutorial on how to make a complex sorting system in Minecraft, unlike most others that I have seen before. But this is when I realized that it was designed for Minecraft Java not Minecraft Bedrock. The differences in them overall is minor, but when it comes to creating redstone contraptions like sorters, they are completely different.
I decided to ignore this issue and went ahead and built it to see how difficult it would be to make the sorter work in Minecraft Bedrock. Now this might sound like an easy task but even with my slight experience with redstone and my long history playing the game, it took a solid week of trouble shooting to finally get it to work.
At this point, I felt pretty good about myself so I hopped back onto YouTube and wrote a comment on that video saying,”I’ve gotten it to work on Minecraft Bedrock!” Little did I know that this would be the start of my YouTube channel.
Within days of posting that comment, the creator replied asking if I had made a video on my rendition. Now this YouTube creator had over 20,000 subscribers, so if HE wanted to see my build, then I had to make a tutorial for my version of his contraption. So on April 29, 2020, I published my first YouTube video. I had no expectations, as this was supposed to be a one and done thing, but within the first month after publishing the video, I had had 322 views and had gained 24 subscribers.
It was at this point that I realized just how much I enjoyed making tutorials and since people obviously liked it, I started working on another video.
Since then, I have published 30 videos and have gained over 45,000 views and over 550 subscribers as well. While this started as a one-off thing, it has now turned into my new favorite hobby and passion. I love creating, filming, and editing Minecraft Bedrock content for my viewers on YouTube. If you want to check me out, just search, Rocket Builder in YouTube or click this link, www.youtube.com/rocketbuilder.
Ryan Hostetter
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