Hi everyone in the steemit community!
I am very excited about the past week and thought I might share the events and wrap them up in my introduceyourself post.
Picture of me in the forrest.
Let my start by talking about my background.
As of now, I have been a chemistry student for almost 2 years in Zurich - Switzerland. There have been ups and downs during my studies and I guess they are going to continue. However, a highlight up until now was the introductory lecture into programming and its applications in chemistry. I tried to teach myself some programming before, but never quiet managed to do it. This lecture then sparked my interest and got me hooked.
That was one year ago and since then, I did not have a lot of time to get deeper into it, since the past two semesters were quiet intense. However, through my lab works, I was able to get familiar with the programming language R and did some basic data processing with it, which was quiet a lot of fun!
In the beginning of this year, I had the idea to try and build my own PC out of used parts from all over the internet using as little money as I could. I was pretty successful and soon had my first self built pc standing there. Through this project I hoped to get a little deeper into the "computer world" which failed as of then, since the PC stood around for approximately 4 months without doing much.
About one and a half weeks ago, in a desperate attempt not to study, which is what I actually should be doing, I started searching the internet for what I could do with my pc. I read up on mining crypto currencies but was a little disappointed when I found out that I would need a fairly new and powerful GPU to do it at least a little profitable. My PC as of then had a GTX 580 in it. A card that is hot, energy hungry and way too loud to be run through the entire day.
I had almost given up on crypto currencies, as I found Gridcon. There were posts telling me that I could use my old GPU and the CPU I had for doing some actual science! Suddenly, it did not matter to me anymore if it was profitable, I just was amazed by the idea. So I set up my PC to run Boinc, installed the Gridcoin wallet on my Macbook and started crunching. In all the euphoria I forgot about how loud and hot my GTX 580 was and lost two nights of sleep trying to ignore the loud humming of its fans and the hot air going through my room.
A few weeks ago, I worked at my university for a few days and got some money out of it. So I decided to upgrade my GPU to a GTX 1060 3GB and was lucky to have a friend hook me up with an i5-7600K to increase the performance of my system by a margin. The pc is now cool, quiet and actually good for some work!
As of now, I am crunching on my pc, an old laptop and sometimes my macbook pro. I plan on using the PC for some of my own work later this year since I can not spare my macbook for an entire day just because I want to do some calculations for fun. Whenever I am not using the pc, it will be crunching for Boinc and earning some Gridcoins.
Reading so much about Gridcoin, Boinc and the entire crypto universe during the past week, I feel like I want to get deeper into it. I was looking for so long for something I could get hooked by and I think with Gridcoin I found something. Honestly, I am completely unfamiliar with how all the programs involved here work since all I did until now was writing my own code for the pure sake of evaluating data. However, getting more involved in the Gridcoin community and reading up on how Gridcoin works, what the developers do, what problems are faced and how all the systems work really excites me and I hope to be able to do that in the near future.
At this point, a huge shout out to the Gridcoin community for their engagement in forums and their willingness to explain the simplest questions several times if they are asked over and over again. Even though I had little direct contact with others from the community during this time, I felt supported all the time through the numerous blog posts and forum answers given by all of you.
So if anyone has a place for me where I could sneak in and, at the beginning, just read up on and follow what is done and how it is done in Gridcoin, I would be very open to it. I hope that I will learn a lot in the upcoming months and maybe even be able to contribute something in the future!
Welcome to the community!
I compiled a handy list for just that question. Take your pick. =)
Gridcoin Github Repo - Full source code and development discussions.
Gridcoin Developer Slack - Chat with the devs, as well as general channels for troubleshooting and branding discussions.
Gridcoin IRC - Join the linked channel, then register with NickServ using the instructions at the top of the page so you can join #Gridcoin. This is required to stop someone else stealing your nickname and the associated GRC.
Gridcoin Steemit - You are here already! =)
Gridcoin Homepage - The actively maintained and developed homepage of GRC globally.
Gridcoin Subreddit - Anything GRC related. The developers read the comments posted here, and will in all likelihood directly address any questions you pose within the day.
Gridcoin Forum and Main Thread - The ongoing megathread where you are most likely to find the original GRC developer Rob weighing in.
Gridcoin Twitter - Keep up to date with GRC news.
The Gridcoin Developer Slack seems to require an invitation for my email address. Would I be automatically added if I mined solo or how can I get invited?
Thank you for your reply!
My bad, here is the sign-up link.
While I remember, you should add a few more tags for visibility. Try something like 'cryptocurrency', and then pick two more. Good tags are key to exposure (but be careful to make sure they are relevant).
Finally, slap an image on your post to increase appeal! =)
i tried to sign up but it tells me "Something went wrong and we're not quite sure what. We'll look into it as soon as possible!" maybe i am too dangerous :-(
Hehe =P
That is a problem with Slack. Check your email - the invite will be there regardless! =)
Showed me the same message, sent me an invitation E-mail anyways.
Hello @applepiie! I'm glad to welcome you on SteemIt!
Welcome, another #gridcoin user here
ciao @applepiie, i am also from Switzerland, ETH alumn and builder of computers out of used computer parts... if you need help drop me a line... and remember to keep studying ;-) gridcoin is fun but it is easy to loose the focus
Hi @dangermouse77 I just read your other blog post and it seems pretty cool what you did so far. I will obviousely do my best in my studies at ETH and as you surely know, it is time consuming. However, there must be some spare time and if you have an idea where I could get started, that would be great!
hey @applepiee, i forgot to tell you that the student time at ETH was the best time in life i had (although i did well in all life periods so far, I really can not complain ;-)
i think at best you keep studying hard and invest some 500CHF stake into gridcoin. i loaded with credit card 500$ on bitstamp.net and then transferred it to poloniex.com and then moved to my gridcoin address. Soon they will be very valuable indeed!
i hope you have a credit card, when i was student i did not!
btw if you send me your gridcoin address i send you some!
Thats really nice of you! SL6G5faJgaBKs7qfsApj3qBzke4s14Z4ym
I don't have 500.- at the moment so I just keep on mining via grcpool until I have a decent amount and can go solo.
What did you study?
ok i send you 1500 GRC at midday when i am home... maybe it is enough to go solo, i do not know. i also started mining on the pool, but i had previously done quite a lot of work on BOINC and was very disappointed when i understood my BOINC stats will not improve anymore. so i deleted the account and went solo... we are mining with two friends on the account "Deep Space Computing" now. A kind of mini pool. The idea is to start a company if GRC price goes up enough...
computer science. G.P.U. was my semester thesis in main topic and then also my diploma thesis. but at the time we had "erster Vordiplom" and "zweiter Vordiplom" first and then 2 years of "Fachstudium" with an additional 6 month "Praktikum" in the industry...
I almost don't know how to reply to that, thank you so much!
Since I am really into the computational part of chemistry, I think I will try to go in that direction. I will take another lecture next semester on programming in C++ etc.
It sounds pretty cool your G.P.U and that you were able to do this during your studies. We have a lot of lab work in chemistry but no "projects" we could follow up to now. This may change in the upcoming semesters as we have semester thesis and a master thesis to writ in the upcoming 2-3 years.
As I mentioned, I would really get deeper into the computer sciences in my leisure time. Do you have any suggestions where to start? Should I find a project and learn by doing or are there good books etc?
find a project where you have fun. maybe something in chemistry that can be parallelized. i suggest you buy the book "CUDA by example" and start right programming in C with CUDA extensions on your Nvidia card... the examples in the book are neat. get them working!
1500 ? That's so generous of you!!
he common sense says that Swiss are rich ;-)
Welcome to our community :)
Welcome to Steem @applepiie I have upvoted and sent you a tip
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STOPWelcome Applepiie:) hope you enjoy here as much as i do ! Nice post, i will follow your account, please follow me at @mekong
Welcome to Steemit! I wish you a good day and inspiration to create in our community! Please follow me :)
Welcome to steemit! :)
welcome aboard
Welcome to Steemit @applepiie. Upvoted and followed you please follow back . btw this might interest you , if you find this useful please upvote https://steemit.com/steemit/@supersnooper221/how-i-made-usd15-000-in-12-hours-on-steemit-look-what-i-found-on-youtube
Welcome to Steemit! I wish you a good day and inspiration to create in our community! Please follow me :)
Hi applepiie, welcome to steemit. If you want to join our campaign to support the new comers feel free to follow link below.
Free Steem Dollars to Support Minnow - August 3, 2017(+8GMT)
Nice read! I saw your fresh account so I wanted to personally welcome you. There is an upvote for you and keep on steeming!
I know how hard it is to receive upvotes on a new account so you could give Steemfollower a go. This exchange lets you earn up to 5x more steem than just upvoting by yourself! It's a simple and safe vote exchange that is free to use. I made this post to explain the system in more depth and it has become my most upvoted post yet.
A warm welcome to team Gridcoin! :)
Welcome to Steem Community @applepiie! As a gentle reminder, please keep your master password safe. The best practise is to use your private posting key to login to Steemit when posting; and the private active key for wallet related transactions.
In the New Steemians project, we help new members of steem by education and resteeeming their articles. Get your articles resteemed too for maximum exposure. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch
Hopefully I am not too late, but I just found your account. I am dreaming of going to ETH Zürich, the university is top notch and the language is German (okay... Siwss German). I have 3 years left till university and could you tell me more about it?
What I am interested about is how much does it cost if you live really frugally, since my parents aren't well off and the only money I can get is from gov. loans. Besides that I just followed you and hope to see more!
A new Steemian :-) hello @applepiieI hope you enjoy your time here, its a great community ! Nice post, wish you much luck! I Have upvoted and will follow your account. Don't hesitate to contact or follow me at any time :-) See you around @tradewonk
Hiiii Applepiie nice to read about you.i am Manas from india,am also a new on steemit and welcome you to steemit.i have followed you.so, can you also follow me.Best of luck.
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