Where have i been these past weeks ....
well ...
Three weeks ago i got out of bed with some serious backpain out of nothing , some muscle locked up and now it's slowly getting better but still need to be carefull with bending my back.
In the mean time i did receive my tax returns and got my self some new toys for photography to play with, but due to my back problem i did not have time to play with them yet.
What i did have time for was setting up a new Hive account to run my new Hive seed node and Hive witness .
The old witness will keep running but since we have less then 100 active witnesses today i thought i might aswell start a new one.
The new witness and account is 
It is currently at possition 175 on the witness list , because people keep voting on inactive witnesses , or almost never check on their witness votes after being cast.
So ... **Please check your witness votes every month **
A lot of witnesses have moved on and stopped being a witness this year alone .
So what did i spend my tax return ? Well not all of it that would be insane :)
We know we have a wedding coming up in Juli so i needed to get some cloths for that but something that i could also wear on other occasions..
So i got my self a nice jacket that i can wear during the summer months it's made from linen fabric .
photo is from the retailers website https://www.schulteherenmode.nl/
Well and if i look nice i should have the wife look nice too right ? And so i purchased a dress for the wife , yes with her aproval it's a waste of money to buy something that she won't wear .
photo is from the retailers website : https://www.debijenkorf.nl/
Now about those photo equipment things ...
i love my flash units for macro photography but sometimes i like to make other things and setting up lights for that didn't always work out for me so to make things easier i had to buy tools to use the flash units of camera .
To solve that problem i've purchased 2 flashlight holders Godox S3 , they are light and solid and you can use it with almost any flashunit . more info : https://www.godox.com/product-d/S3.html
1 ) The Godox S3 with my older flash unit TT685s and an umbrella that i still had.
2 ) The other thing i purchased was a small softbox 40*60 cm looking forward to see how that light will be with macro photogaphy.
But also how it will look on portrait photography , the box is to small to do full body photography i guess , but we will try and see .
Here the softbox is mounted on the Godox V100s flash unit mounted on the Godox S3 on an old Video tripod .
3 ) Next something i always thought i wouldn't need , until my back started to hurt this bad it's a Macro rail .. making it a lot easier to focus on the smaller objects , i used to do that by hand but with this back pain i might have to rely on other things.
4 ) The flash unit controller , being able to use the flash lights of camera means something else has to trigger them , and this controller can do that just fine , it even comes with an app for your phone . It's the Godox Xpro II , i start to sound like a godox comercial here , but they just make great things good value for my Euro's . more info : https://www.godox.com/product-a/XPro-II.html
And to keep my old equipment up and runnig , i also orderd two new batteries for my Sony A6000 camera and my Sony A7II camera they both use the same barries , unlike the sony A7IV that uses a newer type .
I found these for 20 euro each they have a USB-c connector to charge them and they are +40 Euros cheaper then the original Sony batteries .. so easy choise.
both photos come from the retailers website : https://www.123accu.nl/
So did you get any tax returns this year and how did you spend it ?
I know that i put more then 50% of it in my savings account for future use.
All photos created by me unless stated otherwise , photos created today with the old Sony a6000 camera , (yes the batteries do work so far) , and the Sony 24-105mm F4.0 G OSS lens.
To check your witness votes you can go to : https://primersion.com/witnesses and just type in your name it will show you what you voted for and if any of your witness votes should be adjusted or not .
Another way to check if the witness you voted for is still active is :
https://hive.arcange.eu/witnesses/ by 
if you see a name in red like this :
it means the witness has been deactivated , but not all witnesses deactivate correctly when they stop.
you can also look at the last time they created a block :
here you see on the mouse over 16 hours ago , that was for ausbitbank , it seems one of the server hosting parties has some issues and should be resolved soon , no need to remove a witness vote yet.
you can also see that leofinance missed some blocks , that often is an indication of some server problems to , if servers have been inactive for over a month i think it's safe to assume that they won't come back and if you had a vote on them it's safe to remove it.
and at position 175 . . . it's
it has not done any blocks yet , so it won't show the version of the witness it is running until it created a block.
and that will be in +/- 20 days with the current amount of witness votes it has .
and that is because people keep voting on inactive witnesses , if they would remove their votes from inactive witnesses , new witnesses will get their first block a lot sooner.
so if you have any spare votes please vote for my new kid on the block
