Running on Empty and THETA
It’s been tough going today. I’ve felt all day as though I got barely any sleep last night (though I’m sure I did pretty well) and that has left me without the mental energy to go looking for new excitement in the land of the blockchain. I’m glad tomorrow brings the end of the working week for me, so I can look forward to a nice, long snooze on Saturday morning.
That said, I did spot a potential issue this morning with my Theta mining. If you’re not familiar with Theta, then I suggest it is something worth looking at, both as a potential project to invest in and as a means of mining some coins with minimal fuss.
Theta has been busy building a global, decentralised network to support its video streaming platform. Those people or organisations wanting to make use of this platform to deliver their content pay a fee to do so and some of this goes to those who provide the supporting infrastructure.
What’s more, anyone with spare computer processing capacity and an internet connection can take part in this arrangement and get paid in Tfuel coins. All you need to do is download and install their Theta Edge Node app, then sit back and watch the jobs being processed on the dashboard. It really is that easy to set up. You won’t get rich doing this but you will earn a few coins each month and, at least for a while, its fun watching the jobs roll in and get processed. You can also watch Theta.tv and get paid coins for doing this, though I’ve not yet done that myself.
The system with the nodes is set up so that once per month your displayed earnings are processed and paid into your wallet. Nice and simple. But this is where I may have encountered a problem. Those nice people at Microsoft do, of course, insist on pushing their operating system updates on to us whether we are ready for them or not. Personally, I don’t appreciate this approach at all. Not only does it smack of treating people like idiots, it can also cause problems. More than once I’ve arrived at my desk in the morning to find my PC has been trashed overnight by an auto update from Microsoft that I hadn’t noticed was sitting there. It always takes me around two hours to recover the mess I’m left with, but that’s another story.
I’ve now noticed one of those dreaded Microsoft update messages sitting quietly in the corner of the screen of the laptop on which I run my Edge Node. There’s a nice little pile of coins showing on the dashboard and I’m worried that if I allow the Microsoft update to be applied, when I re-open the Edge Node, I’m going to find those coins have gone. For now, I am fending off the update by re-setting the start and end times in the Windows settings for active hours each morning and evening. The trouble is, it’s pretty likely that sooner or later I’m going to forget to do this one time and then?
If I lose those coins I won’t be happy, but, more to the point, you can only schedule the Microsoft updates as far out as one month, so does this mean I will keep running into this problem? I’ve not been running my Edge Node for long but if you have then how do you overcome this problem? Or isn’t it a problem and will I find the coins still there when I re-start the Node? Help appreciated.
Non-Fungible Tokens (again)
It seems my list in yesterday’s post of potential uses an author might be able to make of NFTs was not complete because I’ve already encountered another one. A perennial issue that artists encounter is their not benefiting from the, often rapidly, appreciating value of their works after they’ve sold them. Paintings and the like can end up selling for millions, when all the artist got at initial sale was a few grand.
Well, it might be hard to do anything about this where physical items are concerned, but that’s not the case with digital ones. The solution to this problem? How about building a re-sale royalty clause into your NFT, one that automatically ensures you get a cut of any subsequent sales after the painting or, of more interest to me, the book has left your hands? And why not dream big, picturing your limited edition master-piece going for millions somewhere down the line, from which you get a tasty little (or maybe not so little) cut? Where will all this end? I’ve no idea.
Until tomorrow…
Renaissance Man
Why this Diary?
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
The Usual Disclaimer
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.