Updated Witness Post

My initial witness post was written over two years ago, so I thought it's about time I'm updating it.

Current Witness status

I'm currently ranked #74 (active 71), I broke into the Top 100 quite recently partly thanks to the exposure I got from my contributions to the Steemit Condenser and Wallet apps. At this current position, I'm witnessing in average 8 blocks per day giving me a Producer Reward of around 1.200 SP per block. However, due to the current low price of STEEM, this gives me only around USD $14.11 per week or about USD $59.98 per month, which is barely sufficient for me to rent a server to run the witness node. My expenses for all related projects (Hivemind node, @SteemSQL subscription, community bot server) are actually more than what I earn back from running my Witness, so I'm in fact paying out from my own pocket.

Additionally to my Witness operation on Steem, I'm also an active blogger and write content on various topics such as:

Outside of Steem, I'm a full time Web Developer working for SBS, an Australian national TV broadcast company. I'm an admin/moderator of a couple of Facebook groups related to worm farming and I'm the owner of https://thelittlewormfarm.com, I also love tending to my garden where I grow a lot of fruits and vegetables for the pleasure of my family, I also do photography to complement my blogs, I'm practicing Wu Xing Dao Kung Fu and I love fishing especially kayak fishing.

Current servers specs

Witness node

I recently upgraded my Witness server for the third time to the following specs:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
32 GB RAM (I'm still using ZRAM for an extra 30 GB useable memory in average)
2x 256 GB SSD in RAID0 giving 512 GB effective disk space
Bandwidth: 1 Gbit/s

Hivemind node

I also run a Hivemind node that powers my Steem REST API initially created for my now suspended @steemtelly project but it is now powering other projects too. Its specs are as followed:

Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2750 @ 2.40GHz
32 GB RAM with ZRAM enabled
250 GB SSD

I compile steemd the witness software that runs the blockchain myself and have my own scripts to help with setting up new nodes and do maintenance work, reducing time to get the server up and running.

Bots node

This node is a small VPS that runs NodeJS bots for the following projects, all of which runs inside a Docker container for portability:

Skippy Discord bot for Team Australia and Team NZ
@anzub community bot for Team Australia and Team NZ
@teamvn for Team Vietnam
@pocketjs
https://steemulant.com/ my own sandbox Condenser app

Its specs are as followed:

Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C3955 @ 2.10GHz
2 GB RAM
50 GB SSD

IPFS Pinning node

This node is backing up @dtube and @dsound video/audio files in order to help preserve content for a longer period.

Cavium Thunder X ARM
4 GB RAM
100 GB SSD

My still active community contributions

Development work on some community apps

I've in several occasions submitted pull requests for bug fixes and feature requests for the Steemit Condenser and Wallet apps, some of which have been announced by @steemitblog and got me twice the title of Most Valuable Programmer of the week:

I've added the Keychainify feature to Steem Keychain:

Steemed Phish

Steemed Phish is a Chrome browser extension to make external links more visible and alert you on Phishing/Scamming links. It was injecting several little improvements to the Steemit Condenser app before those were also implemented in the app itself.

Community bots for Team Australia, Team NZ and Team VN

I've written this Discord bot for @teamaustralia, it has three main features: a level bot (like Tatsumaki but with Australian animal images), a chatter bot and a footer banner generator for both @teamaustralia, @teamnz, @steemph and @steemusa. Refer to: Witness Update 2018-07-30 - Team Australia's Skippy Bot
I've also taken over the maintenance of Anzub community upvote bot and moved it to a modified code based on Skippy's own code.
@teamvn is also a custom built community bot for the Vietnamese community on Steem. @teamvn, a community bot to help grow the Vietnamese community

IPFS Pinning bot for @dtube and @dsound

Your previous D.Tube videos don't play anymore? How to prevent this from happening again without technical skills. This service is currently provided for free on OneLoveDtube Discord server.
Steemulant IPFS pinning bot

Pocket-JS

This is my Javascript (NodeJS) port of the POCKET confirmer by @biophil. POCKET is an experimental crypto token on top of STEEM.
POCKET-JS Confirmer

Note: 50% of the payout for this post will be burned (sent to @null) and the other 50% will go to @steem.dao to contribute funding for SPS projects.