Going Fourth from Ireland to the blockchain

in #introduceyourself7 years ago

Hello Steemit! After a period of looking at posts I've decided to make an avatar. Let me tell you a bit about myself and where I'm coming from.

And this is me, processed.

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I'm an Irish guy in my early 30's, living in the west of Ireland. It's pretty miserable here weather-wise most of the time, but honestly it's my favourite place in the world. If you're from a hot country you will find the green will surprise you. I do however like getting away from time to time, you can only take so much rain! I have a one year old girl, and though I'm no longer with her mother we are friends. Because of this situation I've taken a renewed interest in trying to find my way in the world.

I've been into computer programming and music from a really young age. I learned to code on the Commodore 64 because it's manual was a BASIC language coding guide.

That was such an amazing gift for it's creators to give the world, hats off. Today I'm a self taught Android app developer working professionally for one of the biggest independent mobile app companies in Ireland.

I learned piano as a child and picked up the bass guitar, then the drums as a teenager. My musical awakening started with grunge and pop punk, split into funk and hardcore punk, then morphed into metal and dubstep, eventually coalescing into the more rounded eclectic taste I have today. I played in bands and make electronic music solo and in groups in all those styles over the years. Right now I'm taking a break, concentrating on work and spending time with my daughter.

I put both music and code together to study Music Technology, which was a really good experience, though I think the field needs a lot of development. I've been a university lecturer in software development, and music teacher.

Over a year ago I decided to reduce the noise from social media, only keeping my LinkedIn account (it would be bad professionally to get rid of it). I've pretty much stayed away from it since then, but some time ago Steemit came onto my radar. I'm really interested in blockchain technology, I own some crypto, and so I decided to break my personal silence and dip my toe back in the waters, so to speak.

From what I gather Steemit is pretty unique and an experiment that I maybe wouldn't have expected to work so well. Is it blogging? Micro-blogging? Photo sharing? Video sharing? Memes? It's kind of everything it seems!

You can see my face in the photo here but not too well. I don't want to attach my real name to my account right now, I still want to see if it makes sense for me, but I do want to be a bit personal. So any photos I put up I'll just process the crap out of them. The photo is actually part of my interests, I love computer generated imagery (though I didn't create this myself).

Here's another one I made earlier, from my collection of work:

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Some other interests I have are computer games, anime, Indonesian music (gamelan), micro electronics, scifi, and some other things that don't come to mind right now. I'm trying to get more into fitness and healthy eating, it's important, as anyone who gets past their twenties knows this all to well!

I tried like 8 names that were all taken before settling on "fourth". I chose it because 4 is one of my favourite numbers and it has a special meaning to me (which I won't go into now). It's the first non special, non prime natural number. It's a very strong number in a way, as the number of sides of a square, but it's brittle. This is probably why it doesn't appear so much in ancient tales and numerology, it being sandwiched in by much more interesting 3 and 5. Don't get me wrong, I'm not superstitious, but I find it curious.

Well that's enough rambling for now. I'm hoping to talk about my interests, meet people with similar interests and see what this blockchain powered social media is all about. I read some of the guides and some posts already, and I think I'll choose to power up the post.

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Hey :) You shouldn't power up posts a 100% atm, see here why ;)
But great intro, resteemed it to spotlight you a little!

Great tip, thanks. And thanks for the resteem!

Cool intro, dude! How'd you get into Indonesian music, though? I'm just curious as to how these things develop :D

I friend of mine had the opportunity to go to Jakarta and Solo to learn about it and introduced to. It turns out there are at least 5 gamelan in Ireland, one in the West, one in the north, one in the south and two in the east. So we hooked up with those guys and learned about it. I had the privilege of playing at the Gathering of the Gamelans event in London some years back and also visited York and Oxford for training. I love it!

Pretty miserable here...
It has been a long time since I saw your miserable part of the world. It is amazing how we see our homes differently, I'm glad you went on to say it is your favourite place in the world.

If I'm thinking of the right area (it's been a while), you are talking about winding scenic ocean cliff roads, countess castles in beautiful states of unkempt, gorgeous picturesque towns...
Clare, Gallway... Am I recollecting the right part of the world? Where I am from, we were in the midst of water restricted drought when I visited. The green was definitely stunning.
Driving though that part of the world was like stepping into a post card. Absolutely beautiful.
Welcome to steemit and from steamy Australia.
PS, I was very jealous of my cousins commodore 64 growing up 😂

That's the right general area! Ok I admit, we're very exaggerate about the weather here, and talk about it to an almost obsessive level. The first months of the year can be very rough in terms of rain, wind, cold and lack of sun though, it can wear you down. But a lack of water we certainly do not have!

I was lucky to the eldest of the cousins, and the C64 was actually a gift from my uncle to all of us, even my Dad, who briefly held on to the notion of using it to do personal accounting.

It will be my first blogging topic here, especially since it's pricked a few eyes.

Thanks for the comment, I'm blown away by the votes on a first post! Seems like a great community.

the images on your post looked really nice. welcome in.

Hello, your post was nominated for an upvote by a fellow within the Sndbox incubator. Thanks for sharing and welcome to Steemit @fourth. Enjoy, explore and Steem on :)

Wow, that's amazing, thank you! This has really been a warm welcome all round.

Go Forth into the ocean called Steemit, Fourth!

First computer I had was a Vic20 with a cassette tape drive. And then a 64. And then a 128. The first 5inch floppy drive was huge and made horrid grinding noise when it ran. I had a Gorilla Banana printer that shook so badly when it printed that it would lauch itself off the computer desk. Ah...those were the days. I have a picture of that 64 set up somewhere that I am going to have to dig up and post.

I will give you a follow and a vote of welcome. Consider following coming on over to my little corner of Steemit say hi and check out my intro. Minnows have to "school" together or get lost in this great big creative ocean.

Hey that's cool, I didn't have much gear but there's a computer museum (basically just one obsessed guy!) in the local University here where I saw some of that stuff in action.

I will definitely do some blogs about my C64 experiences, I learned some ASM and machine code for it, learned about how the memory works, and that beautiful musical SID chip! I am just about old enough to have caught the end of the era from the UK, I count that as lucky.

Will definitely check out your school, looking for ways to get to know the place. Muchos gracias for your comment.

Welcome to Steemit!
I come from a hot country, but I live in London and I do prefer the cold weather.
Hope you enjoy it here.

I used to live in London, there's some lovely parks and lots to do. Dodgy sometimes though, had a couple of close calls.

Welcome to Steemit!!

Hello and Welcome to Steemit!
I followed you if you would like to then follow me back😀

welcome to the magic that is steemit!

Welcome to Steemit! If you are into hip-hop music, you should check out my page!

There is new song post every day and I cover some really cool up and coming hip-hop artists!

Anyways, I hope you enjoy your time on Steemit!

Welcome to Steemit! Nice pictures you've shared. I hope you enjoy your time here and be sure to check out DTube, Dsound, and DLive as well. These are the video and audio platforms that are based on the Steem Blockchain and are great additions to your Steemit world. As well, I hope you will look over some of my content and consider following along! Kindest regards.

😊welcome!follow me, good

Welcome to Steemit!!! I hope you have a lot of fun and I see you around!

welcome to steemit @fourth, nice intro. I miss the green of Ireland, I'm living in Spain at the moment with my family, but hopefully get back to the motherland this year. Make sure to engage with others on their blogs to help get yourself known. Have fun. resteemed

hello irish guy, good you understand how work this site, still is too much confuse for me.... Welcome and greetings from a hot country, take care and blessings

I been doing a lot of reading! And it probably helps to have been around crypto for a while. Good luck!