bitcoiner - Witness Thread

Hi there, fellow Steemians! My name is Edward, but call me bitcoiner, if you would. I am pleased to announce my intent to be a witness.

First and foremost, I am a software developer with many years of experience in various languages and disciplines. Computers and programming have been an early passion for me and I have never stopped learning and doing.

Many years ago, I got involved in cryptocurrencies, becoming a miner, trader, user, supporter, coder, etc.

Recently, about two months ago, I had found out about Steemit and since then have spent countless hours every single day exploring all aspects of it. I was simply amazed at this game-changing project/experiment. Addicted even.

As a developer, I see that Steemit and the underlying Steem blockchain provide an unparalleled platform and opportunity for great things to come.

Things I've done so far on Steemit

Probably most have first heard of me as the creator of SteemDown.com, but I've been busy with other things, mainly creating ways to enhance the experience on Steemit, including:

Created a simple way to quickly switch between Steemd and Steemit. For those that like to see the underlying details from the blockchain via Steemd, this saved some time from having to keep manually changing the domain in the address bar. Firefox option is available.
Created a way to easily monitor the elapsed times of posts. While a user is on a post page, they can leave the tab running and its title will change accordingly. This is helpful for curation purposes. Updated for Firefox as there was demand.
Letting the user see a random post from any category and/or tag. This is great for giving a post a try without first being draw in with the title, thumbnail, and opening text and deciding against it.
Posted about a Steemit idea to show a link to the parent post when you are on a direct link to a comment. @jesta had seen it and submitted the necessary code changes as a pull request. Later it was integrated and is now live on the site!
Had a Steem Power giveaway! Ended with 40 Steem Power given to 36 Steemians!
Made the Editor great again! This had solved a long-time problem I and undoubtedly all have been facing. This made the Editor toolbar float on top and the textarea scrollable, increasing productivity. Also updated for Firefox.
Made the upvote button float on a post in response to @blakemiles84's request.
Had a second giveaway! This time powered up 62 Steem Power to 62 Steemians.

I have a few additional web projects in mind, some as suggested by fellow Steemians.

What's in store for the future?

I've been doing a lot of web development in my time, as you may tell as a lot of the above list are related to the Steemit web frontend. Most are implemented via client-side customizations such as bookmarklets, user scripts, and user styles. This is okay for those that don't mind following installation details, but one of my next goals is to incorporate some of those into the Steemit codebase itself. If some features aren't production-ready, perhaps doing them as some kind of "Lab feature" settings the user can opt in on. I plan to get up to speed on the Steemit codebase and the various technologies it uses such as React/JSX so I may contribute to it. In addition, I will look at the submitted issues and see if I can help out.
In addition to the Steemit side, I will review the Steem blockchain code. As I use C++/Boost/CMake/make professionally this is another opportunity to apply relevant skills to contribute. I will also review the list of submitted issues and see if I can help out.
On the non-technical side, I plan to keep being active and helpful to all in the community. When someone makes a good suggestion, I try to incorporate and implement it. I listen to feedback. I have made it a point to stay active every day on both Steemit and Steemit Chat and help others out. I will curate thoughtfully, bring up great discussion, and share my experiences. I want to be a part of this historic moment in the making.
I will strive to be a reliable and active witness. Part of this is my commitment to post a weekly update. Following @jesta and others, this will be on Fridays. For my first one in a few days, I plan to give responses to the community witness questionaire and also go into greater detail what I am planning for my upcoming projects.

Bitcoiner as Witness

In preparation, I have read up on many relevant posts in #witness-category, such as @steemed's Essential Guide to Becoming a Steem Witness and @jesta's Building a high availability steemd node for web apis. I have received kind help from fellow Steemians and Steemian devs. Thank you! Also, as I was a Steem miner for about a month, I have had experience with the binaries and the inner workings of the witness system.

I have set up powerful infrastructure:

Witness: bitcoiner

Seed: seed.bitcoiner.me:2001

My witness node is on a dedicated server with 4 cores / 8 threads Intel Xeon E5 1620 3.60 GHz and 32 GB ram.

A running price feed has been set up.

My seed node is on a separate server with 4 cores 2.4 GHz CPU and 24 GB ram.

These nodes are hosted with a reputable company, highly available and reliable with high bandwidth and protection, at 99.99% SLA.

Yes, these specs may be overkill, but this is all in good measure for future-proofing. Such infrastructure does require quite the funds out of pocket to sustain, but this should show my long-term commitment to this role. This is me taking action, doing.

The seed node is also configured as a full web API node, with plugins enabled, available through WebSocket RPC, TLS available as well:

ws://seed.bitcoiner.me

wss://seed.bitcoiner.me

Example usage with @xeroc's piston:

piston --node wss://seed.bitcoiner.me info

These connection details are also listed on my domain bitcoiner.me

My current goal is to be a backup witness, but I will work hard to be a top 19 witness. If I ever get there, I promise to treat the role with utmost respect and responsibility.

If/when funds permit in the future, I plan to implement @gtg's Heavy duty witness node infrastructure.