A new Steemit enthousiast is born
Look who's here
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/http://baby-images.disneyandpals.com/_/rsrc/1468736603271/cartoon-baby-clip-art-page-4/funny-cartoon-baby_26.png)
Hi fellow Steemers,
As the welcome section mentions in the “To Do List”: create your "introduceyourself" post. Who am I to contradict politeness to a new community.
First of all Jef Patat is not my real name. It’s a nickname I use ever since I set my first steps on the internet. And that has been a while. Remember those funny dial-up sounds? If you’re nostalgic you can get to hear it once more together with a short explanation of the content you can check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo Jef Patat is actually a character from a Flemish comics series (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanus_(comics) ). So, Jef Patat, I was young, liked the antagonist character and never changed it. If you'd like to know how he looks like, this is a picture of one of the older editions: The Jef Patatoes invasion.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/http://www.urbanusfan.be/urbanusstrip/albums/urbanus027150.jpg)
For all clarity. I do not resemble my nickname at all. I have no problem of sharing details with individuals I know better, but at first I like to keep an air of mystery about it all. The nickname will stay, the person behind will slowly show. Professionally I'm a software developer. A big part of my career has been writing embedded software. Some on micro controllers other on SoC. I always like to work in small teams which gives me more R&D. Besides the main embedded work I also write desktop software. Most of it is coupled tightly to the embedded work. The languages used the most are C, C++ and C#. Currently I'm working on bigger WPF application and a PIC32 side project.
In my leisure time I always have more ideas than I have time to complete them. Lately I have been 3D printing, designing and making PCBs, writing software, diy in the house and I try to spend as much time as possible with my family.
5 years or so ago I did some Bitcoin mining but decided to stop because I wasn’t making any real money. Later I heard about it now and then, mainly in dubious context of criminals, darknet and viruses. Lately the Bitcoin fork news got my attention. I started reading about it again and it got me fascinated once more. Clicking my way through the internet I ended up on GridCoin. I have been a long term (intermittent) user of Boinc. The result of it all being I’m super enthusiast about GridCoin. Getting up and running with gridcoin was not plain sailing. In fact I’m not sure if I’m yet sailing at all. Looking for information got me to steemit quite a few times. At first I didn’t really care what site I was on, but after a couple of hits Steemit itself got me interested. And I started to like the idea.
I’ve always liked to teach. I actually got to do that at my first job but then I chose another direction. I have had a site in the past about electronics but after a while I got fed up paying for the hosting and maintaining it. My dream never was to get rich with it (if my wife wins the lottery that would be very fine, but I’m not pursuing richness), I only wanted to help out others, to spread some knowledge to the world. I only thought it would have been fair to see the costs covered in return for my sharing. I like the idea of sharing on the internet with those interested and from time to time I’m thinking about a blog. But that would end up being a personal blog about too many different topics that then are again hard to find. To cover the costs I would have to start looking into advertising and I block ads myself and I would again need to maintain or depend on a third party. So I never really started doing it. After discovering Steemit I said to myself: maybe this is it, give it a try or nothing will happen at all.
So I’m planning to stick around for a while, let's hope this turns out to be a positive experience. Next story will probably be about my first steps with GridCoin and how to get started with a Boinc background. Looking forward to all your comments, feedback and following.
After reading around a bit more I stumbled on the bots concept. I wonder if any of these replies are non bots.
Any time that you post under the introduceyourself tag, you will be inundated with bot responses. As someone very active in the Gridcoin community (your second tag), I do not recognise any of these names, so it would be fair to assume the majority are automated (especially the ones asking to be followed).
That being said, one of your two huge upvotes was from a resident whale in the Gridcoin community, Vortac.
I write guides on Gridcoin and publish news updates. Let me know if you have any questions, and welcome to Steemit! =)
Thanks for the feedback. I still have a lot of learning to do. Next is about minnows and whales.
That one is easy! =)
You start off on Steemit as a plankton. You then grow through minnow --> dolphin --> orca --> whale. Some people group the plankton in with the minnows, and some people group the orcas in with the whales.
Lolz, now I looked at it it makes sense. Not much of a fish expert. What is the best place to ask for help? The #help chat channel doesn't seem to get a lot of attention. Is it possible to contact other members (for example you) directly?
I assume you mean Steemit help? There is no IM service on the platform yet, so the best thing to do is just talk to people in the comments section. I'd be happy to try and help out where I can. =)
Atm I only have one question: can someone explain how to insert a picture AND a summary in the story ad? I tried this: https://steemit.com/tutorial/@virtashare/steemit-tutorial-how-to-display-any-image-in-your-steemit-add-title-working-with-images-and-more but the result is that the image html ends up in the description. So I added a title to mask that a bit, but I see stories without doing that.
That link is over a year old, and most of the information is thoroughly outdated. As it stands, I am 99% confident that you cannot manually set the subtitle of your story ad. Steemit just takes the first piece of text it comes across, which is the subtitle of an image if that image is in your leading paragraph.
Adding a small header paragraph seems to be the best way to solve this one.
"One of your two huge upvotes". How do you see 'huge upvotes'? I can only see who voted.
The website www.steemd.com lets you see the activity of any Steemit user. For example, here is your steemd page. Think of it like the Steemit blockchain explorer.
The votes on any post are always ordered by weight, from smallest to largest. All I had to do was go to the profiles of the users at the top of your vote list, and check their vote power and vote weight in support of your post.
Welcome to the Steemit platform, what everything works out for you! Success
Welcome to steem :)
Hai @jefpatat I have read about your introduce yourself. I'm happy to hear that you don't look for richness but to help others. You will be a good asset for this community. Being a software developer can help our community to build more projects that can help our fellow stemians.
Welcome to the gridcoin community. :)
hello @Jefpatat ;) Glad to see more people like you - here joining steemit!! Becoming a steamian is a great adventure ! Here you can win money while bloging ! At the beginning it wouldn't be easy, but it isn't impossible. So just write from your heart and everything will be allright. Wish you much luck! Cheers! Greetings, @mekong !
Welcome to Steemit,
I gave you an upvote and a follow, feel free to follow back for a lager network :)
im human and not a bot :)
love the baby peeing picture :)
Welkom op Steemit Jef Patat. Vroeger ook nog veel Urbanus strips gelezen.👍 Ik ben benieuwd voor het GridCoin nieuws. Followed and upvoted.
Hiiii Jefpatat nice to read about you.i am Manas from india,am also a new on steemit and welcome you to steemit.i am a big fan of your.i have followed you.so, can you also follow me and upvote me. All the best for your future.