Hello, Steem. Larry "Crell" Garfield here. Word is you're supposed to start with one of these introduction posts, so here I am. Feels like filling out a dating site profile...
I'm generally fairly negative on Cryptocurrency in general, to be honest. Most of it smells of pyramid scheme to me, or wishful thinking, but a few blockchain applications do seem to me to have potential value. Steem is one of them, so here I am.
You can generally blame @lukestokes for my presence here. (Whether that's to his credit or not we'll find out eventually.)
I'm a long-time software developer, particularly working with PHP on the web and the Drupal CMS. If you are even tangentially related to the PHP community you've probably seen me presenting at a conference somewhere, or heard of me as "that guy who wouldn't shut up about Drupal and migrating it to OOP code" sometime in the past ten years. These days I've largely moved on from Drupal but not from tech.
If the above paragraph is just so much mumbo jumbo to you, read it as "professional computer nerd". Although these days I do mostly tech writing and developer relations, not coding.
My personal blog for the past many years is over at https://www.garfieldtech.com/. How much I'll continue to post there vs. on Steem, I guess we'll find out together.
As far as what I'll be posting here, I don't know yet. Some tech stuff, probably. Some controversial political stuff to keep it at least slightly away from my normal professional channels, probably. (Chances are I will piss off both the left-wing and the right-wing at some point, maybe at the same time if I do it right.) Some stuff about my new hobby bladesmithing, maybe. Beyond that, we'll have to see.
I'm mostly active on Twitter, where I can be found at https://twitter.com/Crell, if for some strange reason you need a Crell fix in between posting here. (Although why you'd want that I don't know...)
Oh yes, and the obligatory Steem-Selfie:
And if you want to see my first blade creation (because I'm kinda proud of it even if you don't care):
That's hand-forged, hand-polished railroad spike steel with a walnut handle.
(Now let's see how badly I formatted all of that...)
wow ! first of all welcome to steemit . a best way of introduction .
Welcome welcome, listen soon you are going to want to buy Luke a cruise vacation. Steem has incredible potential and someone with your experience can make this place a home in mere weeks.
I wish you much success
He can buy his own cruise vacation! :-) (I think he already has...)
Welcome to steemit!
I also struggled at first to come up with something to persistently write on, as I've never seen myself as a blogger. However, seeing as I spent a lot of time finding ,reading and sharing stories on tehcnology and science mostly relevant to the space sector where I work, I figured I could just take some time to write down what I found fascinating or interesting about whatever I was reading about, and then share and explain that with people on steemit.
I think we all have some ideas we would love to share, and steemit is a great place to do so.
Anyways, happy to have you here!
Heh, the tricky part for me is channeling. I've had my own tech blog for the last decade, which is part of my professional profile. I also blog for my employer and they want me to put basically any arbitrary tech stuff there, too. So that leaves largely "off topic random stuff" (which I rarely post about in public anyway) or "things too politically touchy to associate with professionally" (which includes, well, basically anything these days). So, yeah, I figure this is where I'll piss people off. :-P
I'm super glad you're sharing the cool stuff you're involved in. :)
Have not been much of a blogger too but just reading this your contribution is given a newbee like me some direction on how to start kudos
welcome to steemit..!! followed
Welcome to the community!
Welcome to #Steemit! :)
Welcome to the best site on the interwebs!
Welcome to the club. And very nice blade. :)
What's up Playa....Glad you're here, computer coder dude...a keyboard in one hand and a hand forged blade in the other.......I'm oddly interested!
It's what I do: I code and I make knives...
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STOPhello sir, welcome to this great platform, i bet you wont regret joining here. welcome once again.
Haha.. I love the blade. Looks and feels so real. Pretty sure it would feel great being held too. Welcome player @crell
It really does. The curve in the guard is a little close to the fingers so it feels slightly cramped there, but otherwise it fits my hand quite nicely. (I sized it for me, so that makes sense.) The balance point also just happened to be right on the guard, completely by accident, so it moves really well in the hand.
Not that I'm planning to use it for combat, mind you. Railroad spikes make for easy work but lame steel, so at this point I'm basically making art projects while I learn the skills. My second blade is a WIP right now and is a curved slicer of a dagger. At some point I'll switch to higher quality steel and start making things that would actually, you know, hold an edge. :-)
That's pretty cool. I've been following the Garden of Eden folks making cool knives like this. Seems like a very interesting art.
Pretty!
I jokingly describe bladesmithing as "adult arts and crafts". I've got a bunch of ideas for blades but they take a while to make (especially at my meager skill level) so it will be some time before I get to most of them. At some point I'll do longer stuff (swords), but I'm not there yet.
I do have a collection of purchased blades, too; most are decorative, not functional, but still. One of these days I should make a proper display case for them...
Luke, you should come visit sometime and see them in person. :-P
That would be fun! In the meantime, do up a Steemit post. :)
Hey @crell welcome to steemit!
Got a tip for you, check out streemian.com, they have a syndication feature that should allow you to syndicate posts from your drupal blog automatically to steemit via your rss/atom feed. I looked at it myself a few days ago and the node worker was down, but hopefully willl be fixed soon.
Nice knife, I made a knife a while back too but mine was out of a damascus blank with yew handles.
Ooo... Streamian looks interesting. I'll have to investigate it further.
Also, sweet knife! I'm a long way from doing anything with damascus steel. For one thing, making it without having a power hammer available is an exercise in self-hatred and I don't hate myself enough to do that. :-) The bevel on it looks awesome, nicely done!
Is there a knife-making tag I should be using? I went with bladesmithing for this post for lack of anything better, but it looks like no one else is using it yet.
Nice! Welcome, Larry. So glad to see you here. I hope you enjoy the process and find some community which is valuable to you and to which you can provide value. :)
I'm going to resteem your post just so more people will come bug you.
Welcome, say maybe down the road a bit you could compete on "Forged in Fire"- great show!
I know of it, but have never seen it. I only sort of have cable. :-) YouTube is my main source of sharp-pointy-thing info-tainment. There's a number of really good historical arms-and-armor channels I've fallen down.
warm welcome in the world of steem it...as you are already a genuine blogger you would not find any difficulty in posting your blog here as well. My best wishes are with you..have funn here...its the best blogging site according to me...bang on steemit...!!!:)
Related question, actually: Is it good form or bad form to reblog your own stuff from a personal blog elsewhere to Steemit or vice versa? (All my own work so no copyright issues.) I've long been adverse to blogging on not -my-own-site, for copyright control and "survives past the blogging host going out of business" reasons. Steem seems interesting, but I still like having my own control over my written archive.
(I don't know if I'm going to double post, but at least it's helpful to know if it's kosher or not.)
That's a great question, and it's one the community is still figuring out. If you do post content that exists elsewhere, cheetah bot will probably comment about it. Ideally, we're hoping for original content which can increase the SEO value here. Otherwise, I've seen people request that the original be modified to link to the content on Steemit both to ensure the content isn't being plagarized and to draw more traffic to Steemit (I did that with my Medium post here).
There are no hard and fast rules, and I do think there is value spreading great content to people here who wouldn't otherwise come in contact with it. So, maybe use your best judgement. Make it clear the content is not original for Steemit and maybe even link to the original. One of my favorite authors / developers / witnesses here is @anyx and he covered an aspect of this recently here: The Double Spending Problem on Steemit.
I also touched on related stuff briefly here: Why You Should Care About Plagiarism and Fair Use.
Does it make a difference if the "original" is here on Steem vs elsewhere? I agree reposting my old stuff from my blog here is kinda tacky; I'm thinking more about if I do some new cool article on whatever that I want syndicated to Planet PHP, for instance, through my blog:
I'm not sure what's best from either a marketing/reach or etiquette perspective there.
Good questions that I'm not entirely sure about. Most likely it makes the most sense to link to the steemit content as the original and just have other sources link to it. From an SEO perspective, that would bring the best benefit to Steemit.
Welcome to Steemit! Nice introduction you got there! And wow, you're from the computer technology world like me :) It's so nice to see people here that are on the same field as me. I just wish I was better at the field since I did not pay much attention back in school. LOL I do hope we can be friends here and I can learn a lot of the * "professional computer nerd" * from you! Nice seeing you here on Steemit! btw, followed u and hoping to see computer savvy posts in the future from you :)
I have a Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, a Master's degree in Computer Science, and most of what I do code-wise I learned by doing. The academic background helps to structure thoughts, but getting a few hundred thousand lines of code under your belt is more important for learning how to actually produce things than any number of classes are. Just don't get stuck in how your first 100,000 lines worked and think that's how coding "should" be. It's good to have your mental model of how coding "should" work upturned every few years. It keeps the brain flexible.
Welcome to the party! Have a nice one :P
WELCOME to #STEEMIT..,I am also a beginner in steemit,I hope we can work together,I am sure you are a great writer,so you show all your works in this #STEEMIT ,if you like short story,follow me @farhanrajpoot129, Now i am in the process of writing a short story that i will post on the #STEEMIT platform..Thanks for your
haha... good introduction Crell! I know what you mean, the intro post was the scariest for me and I can chit-chat about anything :)
I think you are going to really like this a lot and be very successful given your background and personality. In fact, I'm betting you are going to be a star here by the end of 2018.
I know what you mean about competition from other social sites, but I think you will find your posting patterns will shift in due time!
Welcome to the site! And if I can help you, let me know.
Welcome @crell on Steemit! You will do well here! Lets upvote and follow each other! I blog about Life and my Hometown - Austria!
Regards,
@dieley
Welcome to steemit, I invite you to visit my profile.
Welcome to steemit, the community are fantastic so I am sure you’ll have some fun. Keep being you !!
Welcome to steemit @crell. Join #minnowsupportproject for more help. Type in the comments of a post @OriginalWorks and it will help you verify that content is original.
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Transfer SBD to @tuanis in exchange of an upvote and support this project
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @crell to be original material and upvoted it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
welcome friend of @lukestokes :)
Welcome to steemit @crell. Nice to know you (^^;)
Welcome here @crell, I strongly believe your prior experience as a software engineer will contribute to your success here.
Creativity will spill over from coding to written words on steemit.
Welcome!!!
welcome to steemit @crell. You'll do great here, you have a great mentor.
Welcome to Steemit. 🤗 The blade was most interesting! Luke is a great human, so that tells me much about you that you are friends.
I think what I like most about the conversations I get to have with Larry at PHP conferences is how much he disagrees with me and yet does so very intelligently. :)
Welcome to steemit !!:)
Welcome, I look forward to you knowledge and presence on here. As I am learning coding at the moment or just starting out! look forward to your next post!
My personal blog has a long long set of articles on technical topics if you're so inclined. If you go to some of the older ones you can basically see me learning OOP and SOLID before your eyes, and then trying to apply it to Drupal. It's an odd history. :-)
In particular:
https://www.garfieldtech.com/topics/web-development/php
https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog-topics/architecture
I hope some of those prove helpful/useful.
I will have a look :) thanks will you be posting some tips and tricks on here too?
¯_(ツ)_/¯ I'm making this up as I go.
Me too haha
Your comment about pissing off both the left and right caused me to consider upvoting you. The photo of the beautiful blade you forged clinched it. Welcome!
@crell welcome tothe junggle😉
I hope you can realize your dream in steemit, regards stemian.
Welcome!
I like your post.
Your valued upvote and follow will help to grow on steemit.
Thank you
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welcome to steemit world..its nice to have you here at the community..Upvoted..
Hello! Welcome to Steemit Community! I can't wait to see your content
Hi friend welcome to steemit! Nice intro.
Help promote my friend too in her introduction post thanks
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@wayetyet/introduce-yourself-the-first-step-to-my-steemit-journey
Welcome to Steemit ! hope you enjoy staying here and have fun Godbless ! @crell :)
Hey Brother! TWITTER IS A CESSPOOL of AUTHORITY and CONTROLLED SPEECH. F THAT place. I LOVE IT HERE. Once you get settled in come on over and we can talk about how the sickos at the top LIE to us.
EARTH IS FLAT
Well, Earth is a slightly flattened sphere, actually. And Twitter is more a cesspool of lack of coherent authority leading to a toxic playground for the worst dregs of humanity to act with impunity, because Twitter has failed at community management by refusing to admit that it needs to BE an authority.
In any case, we'll see what happens on Steem... :-)
Welcome, you have been followed!
Welcome to steemit. You got a good start. You will do well.
Nice intro. Didn't understand much of your tech jargon but, cool blade! I paid an amateur blacksmith 50 bucks to make me a hatchet and he also used a railroad spike, except the entire head was malformed, uneven, and requires an angular chopping swing. The handle was made of softwood too. Still like it but your blade attempt looks better quality.lol
Railroad spikes are fairly low-carbon, and usually unclear what carbon content they are. That makes them fairly soft, which means they won't hold an edge. For anything serious you probably want at least a 1070 carbon steel (that's 0.7% carbon), and probably even harder for the edge itself.
There's definitely a "lean" in my blade between the blade and the tang; it twisted slightly during quenching and I didn't catch it in time. Getting something perfectly aligned is a lot harder than it looks. :-) (And from my experience, if you only paid $50 for a custom hatchet then, well, you got what you paid for. I know I couldn't make something worth using for $50 worth of my time at my skill level.)
Still, I'm going to keep working on it. Hopefully blade 2 will work out better. From the sound of it plenty of people here are interested in it so I'll post pictures when it's done.
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I paid him 50 bucks because he told me what he was studying once a month through a local club and I wanted to give him an incentive besides really wanting a handmade hatchet.
This was what he produced:
Unfortunately, it wasn't uniform on both sides and with the weight:
I can't fault the guy. It was his new hobby and he's a delightful fellow. That was 6 years ago so he's more than likely improved if he has stuck with it.
I still have it though. He put a lot of time and effort into it and the spike was salvaged from a 100+ year old railroad line... a bit of aussie history in my drawer at any rate.
Honestly the history of the object in that case matters more than the function. Even if you never use it, it's a good conversation starter. :-)
That actually sounds like my setup. There's a forge in Chicago with good rates so I'm going (mostly) weekly. I'd like to do an ax at some point, just for variety's sake. It will probably not be well-aligned either. :-)
Having a "thing to model" is helpful for building up your skill as it separates the design aspect from the construction aspect and lets you work on them separately. (Kinda like Code Katas, for the techies reading the thread...) So good on you for giving your friend something to work toward.
beautiful craftsmanship on that blade!
welcome to steemit..... bring on the political rants,but make them good!*wink
Hi, friend. How are you? I hope you are in good condition. I zulhelmi Account name @jol09 I'm from #indonesia.nice to meet you at #steemit Vote @good-karma As Our Witness. Do not Forget Follow Me Also @jol09 I want to say thank you.
Welcome to Steemit! :)
welcome man. I'm digging the blade.
Welcome and feel free to express yourself like we do.
Welcome! I noticed your blog is using the default Drupal theme. Haven't you thought of upgrading to a bit more appealing theme?
Frequently. But I'm not much of a front-end dev and I've never really cared enough to bother changing it. Besides, I'm considering migrating away from Drupal for the blog. To what I'm not sure; a big question is how to handle the comments, as I have 10 years of content with comments on there that I don't want to just hand over to Disqus or something. But I also dislike WordPress. So... no idea what's happening there. :-)
Migrating 10 years of content with comments done the right way would be interesting case study to read though.
Welcome to Steemit, I'm new here myself, feels very exciting. Very impressed with that blade, I am really into blades. I'd love to make my own!