Hello my fellow Steemians. After discovering Steemit for over two weeks now, I get more convinced of its great potential. So far I wrote some original content and supported as much as I can with curation. Although I'm still a minnow, I continue to encourage talented and original posts, even when my vote is only worth a few pennies. In time, I believe the Steem platform will be huge, and hopefully my pennies will be worth dollars for everybody.
WHO AM I?
I'm a PhD scientist with a background in Biochemistry and Immunology. I always had a fascination for computers and it's been my hobby since I was a kid. I learned BASIC programming when I was just 10 years old, from the manuals that came with my first pocket computer, the Sharp PC-1500. Don't laugh at its 32kb external memory module and its fax-like screaming when saving/reading programs to a cassette tape recorder! This baby preceded any modern personal computer, and I'm proud of it.
My hobby has grown over the years, and today I consider myself very proficient in Windows/Linux, programming (Delphi/Free Pascal, VB6/.net, PHP), reversing and shell scripting. I'm curious by nature and always looking for new challenges. For example, a couple of years ago I got fed up with Gmail, GMX, Yahoo (and other free email providers) for their disrespect of privacy, so I decided to build my own server from scratch. A few months later, after pouring my energy into long hours of learning about LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), I got my server fully configured and running from scratch. You name it, firewall, fail2ban, MySQL, spam control, GPG encryption, etc. It's my baby project that I'm very proud of, and I share it with a few close friends.
So given my expertise in computers, I figured I could contribute to the Steem platform by hosting a witness and a seed. I stumbled on some excellent guides here, which gave me a greater confidence and motivation to embark on that project. I'm not a developer per se, but I know enough to manage a server.
My follower base is growing slowly and steadily, and with their support I believe I can become a successful witness, which will allow me to give them back. In fact, I'm a member and delegator of the @minnowsupport project started by @aggroed. This project aims at helping minnows, myself included. When I joined Steemit I was clueless, and I was lucky to have joined the MSP when it was just in its infancy a couple of weeks ago. It happened on Steemit.Chat where @gmuxx was talking about it.
WHY STEEMIT?
Believe it or not, I've never subscribed to any social media before. Why? Because I realize their danger when it comes to privacy. There's no such thing as a free ride. Anything free must have something behind to make servers run and pay the bills, and this often happens by violating the users privacy and selling their habits to advertizers. I do not abide by such rules and I freely chose to stay away. With Steemit, I found the privacy aspect appealing and it was the main reason why I decided to join and try it. And so far I haven't been disappointed. The community, the encouragement, the solidarity and the rewards are great. That's why I believe Steemit's success will grow big time.
MY ROADMAP
I would like to become a witness because it's an opportunity to be more involved in the Steem community, help it grow and become more solid. The more witnesses, the better. That is my main objective.
On a side note, I find that Steemit doesn't offer the ability to communicate more. A direct messaging system is not implemented. The only way to communicate with people other than commenting on posts is by chatting (Steemit.Chat or Discord). Those are practical but insufficient means; not everyone is aware of them, and when there are hundreds of users chatting in a channel at the same time, it becomes very difficult to follow and respond to all conversations.
Therefore I'm planning on offering an email service exclusive to the Steem community. Those who choose to subscribe will be able to communicate in deeper discussions between themselves. And most importantly, the service will have zero third-party partners (unless they are related directly to Steem), zero ads and total privacy as its main backbone.
I understand that I might not become a witness superstar overnight, so I will create a crowdfunding campaign to gauge the global interest and help kickstart the email project. When my witness server reaches a financial viability, I will be able to further expand the email project and hopefully hire technically skilled people to help me administer and maintain it.
Also, I will continue in helping minnows by curating and resteeming. I find the MSP is a great intiative and I intend to keep supporting it. There are other witnesses in this project, and the work they are doing has been inspirational to me.
And finally, I will pursue my writing about diverse topics in my blog, useful tips, scientific and geeky stuff. I'm a generous person, so sharing my knowledge with the community will give me great satisfaction.
WHAT IS A WITNESS AND A SEED?
A witness is not something spooky, https://steemit.com/faq.html#What_are_Steem_witnesses
The Steem blockchain requires a set of people to create blocks and uses a consensus mechanism called delegated proof of stake, or DPOS. The community elects 'witnesses' to act as the network's block producers and governance body...Witnesses are compensated with STEEM Power for each block they create.
@someguy wrote a post about the importance of witnesses.
Like with any blockchain, Steem is distributed all over the world, mainly in North America and Europe. While witness nodes generate the blocks, seed nodes distribute the blocks to the rest of the network. Increasing the witnesses and seeds improves the network reliability and throughput. As a matter of fact, the network needs more witnesses/seeds to accomodate the rising Steemit subscribers!
You can check the seed nodes status here: https://status.steemnodes.com/
HOW DO YOU VOTE FOR ME?
I invite you to discover my blog @drakos if you don't know me yet, and feel free to read my comments. I'm a respectful, serious, yet joyful person. If you appreciate my posts/resteems and my Witness Proposal, you can vote for me by visiting this page https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Only the top 50 witnesses are shown, so in order to vote for someone with a ranking below 50, like myself, scroll down to the bottom of the page, write my name in the box and VOTE, like this:
Please make sure after you vote, that my name appears below the voting box (if you voted for other witnesses, drakos would be on the list):
You can vote for a maximum of 30 witnesses.
WITNESS REPORT #1
I'm happy to announce that today I set up my secure and firewalled witness server. It's hosted in Germany with the following specifications:
The witness settings are as follows:
- Creation Fee: 0.2 STEEM
- Maximum Block Size:131072
- 0% APR since the SBD value is high
The witness server is up and running and the price feed is being published hourly.
You can find details at https://steemd.com/@drakos. Please scroll down the page and look at the left panel Witness section.
I haven't set up a seed node yet. I would like to evaluate how the witness behaves in the coming days, and if all goes well, I'll invest in setting up a seed for sure.
Your votes matter a lot and I thank you in advance if you decide to vouch for me. Your support is highly appreciated, and I hope your faith won't be misplaced. I'll be looking forward for your comments and feedback, and I'll be happy to answer any of your concerns. Thank you for your time.
P.S. Kudos to @someguy123 for his great guide on setting up a witness server and his technical help on Discord.
Join us on https://discord.gg/GpHEEhV
If you like this post, upvote and comment.
If you really like it, resteem.
If you love it, follow.
Don't be shy, click that banner and enjoy my blog (gif animation by @justcallmemyth)
thus i made though a witness @drakos
Consider yourself voted.
Interesting background, too. I was happy to learn more about you in the process! Good luck.
Thanks for sharing a bit about your background, you seem well qualified to be a witness and I like that you've put together a roadmap detailing how you will proceed from here. Man, that Sharp PC belongs in a museum, what a dinosaur! I also started programming as a kid, learning QBASIC on our first family PC, an IBM 386 with an amazingly huge 80 MB hard drive and 4 MB of RAM. Ah, those were the days. All you young 'uns nowadays are spoiled with your fancy graphics processors and APIs that do everything for you... I swear you people haven't lived until you've hand optimized a critical loop with a bit of assembly language.
Anyway, you've got my witness vote. The clincher was your pirate persona; I just saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and loved every minute of it; definitely the best one yet!
Thanks for the support. Yes I love my Sharp, I still have the full kit. Sadly, I must have bumped it one day during a moving and the LCD screen has partially leaked. It still works though. That's a vintage dinosaur indeed. We had QBASIC classes in high school, you can imagine I had the best grades lol.
I haven't seen the latest Pirates of the Caribbean but I will. I saw all the previous ones of course, I'm a big fan of pirate movies, classic stuff like Swashbuckler and The Crimson Pirate. Arrrrrrr! 🏴☠️
Nice, old pieces of tech like that make great collector's items. Pity about the screen though. My middle school also had programming classes, but by then I already knew all the course material, so my teacher let me sit in the back and spend the whole period programming my own games. Then the other kids would come and be my playtesters after finishing their own assignments.
I won't spoil the new movie for you, except to say that the new villain is great and Johnny Depp is once again in fine form. You'll love it!
Good luck dude, will add you to my votes for witness
Thank you 🤗
@drakos I like your idea about messaging. I really hate we can't do that here. I also like taking your $$ in the Steem Poker League. Followed and upvoted, will also throw you one of my witness votes.
I promise that I will lose for at least an hour
hahaha, thats great.
Nice post my friend. Dropped you a follow, you can follow me at @looking4llamas. Looking forward to your future posts!
Thanks, but please don't ask for a F4F, I wrote about things to avoid doing on Steemit.
You're right, my bad. Thanks for the link tho!
Avoid doing it too much, it may end up hurting you with downvotes and flagging!
You're right, comments should have value!
...
@drakos of course I would vote for you, done and done! I think you would a be fantastic addition! New or not, when I was first getting started you jumped at the chance to help me out and I'll never forget the kindness, patience and understanding you showed me! Best of luck to you :)
XOXO
Got my vote, buddy! Get it!!!
Voted. Thanks for the help @drakos.
You're welcome, enjoy Steemit :)
You are great @drakos, keep it up, you have my vote
lovely piece ....thanx a lot for sharing.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by drakos from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
This post has received a sweet gift of Dank Amps in the flavor of 5.39 % upvote from @lovejuice thanks to: @drakos. Vote for Aggroed!
Welcome fellow witness, you are now a knight of Steem!
I would vote for you
Late but not never... my vote hit you yesterday bud!
@drakos - Nice to read some more info about you. I went ahead and voted you for witness, and your handle is now showing under the voting section. Good luck with this endeavor. @transcript-junky
Thanks a lot, your vote is appreciated :)
Voting?! Hey, at least on Steemit, we pick the candidates, right? ;-) That was an easy vote too. I'll resteem this as well!
Edit: Or maybe I won't resteem it? The resteem button seems to be missing even after a refresh. /boggle
That's because the reward was already paid. Thanks for the vote :)
Ha! I am such a newb. :)
Legend thanks for helping me create my page :)
You're welcome.
You have my vote!
Thanks :)
Are you Greek by any chance?
Either way, if you like you can check out my #introduceyourself post here. And if you are Greek, you can read a story that's in it in the original language. 😁
No I'm not Greek, only my account name is :)
@drakos nice to meet you, my vote do you have, though my upvote is small you have it. this is the post to promote you as a witness? Greetings from a new Minnow from Belgium.
All votes are important, thanks. Yes this is my witness proposal/application.
ok its to old to resteem, may i hope your will like some of my post also, greetings
Hi Drakos, i know this is late but i only just found your post.
Im wondering if i should host my own witness server as well. I have a spare PC that i dont use, do you think its possible to host it on that?
Also i want to vote for you as a witness but cant find the box.
It's recommended that you run rent a server with a reliable and fast connection. You'll need at least 16GB of RAM. Whether or not you should become a witness, refer to this post https://steemit.com/witness-category/@drakos/running-a-witness-is-it-as-easy-as-it-sounds
For voting, check my latest posts, I have updated information how to vote. Or refer to this guide https://steemit.com/witness-category/@drakos/tips-and-guidelines-voting-for-witnesses
Thanks, so after reading that post i doubt i have the time/money/skill set to run q reliable server :(
It's not an easy enterprise.
Wow!!! From a Biochemist to a computer guru that's just spectacular. I have always know the developers of social media platforms had some gain in it as they won't just be paying for hosting and other stuff without getting something in return. Nothing in life is truly free, not even in Freetown.
voted :)
Your post has been most helful to me. thank you so much.
hello drako you have always voted my post I thank you because you have helped me good law your post and you have a plan to follow as a witness I wish you success and that you meet this goal that you projected yourself. I follow you friend
Thanks for your help!! It was great to read about your interesting background. I voted for you because you will be a great witness. You are more than qualified. And you are the first person I followed since joining. Looking forward to your posts and the growth of Steemit.
nice ideas, wish you success! just upvoted and wittnessed for you!
Same here ; the privacy concern, thank you.
You've got 1 of my witness votes.
Have no clue what voting does yet, But I voted for you :)
Voted for you
Yea's already me scurvy dog Witness. @drakos Arrrh!
@drakos, can you update the beginning of your witness thread, I was going to try to get people to resteem witness threads of those who need the help.
What needs updating?
Maybe nothing, other than at the beginning where it says that you have been here for only two weeks. You've been here over 3 years now. Maybe you can just say "I've been here since..."