For the past three years, I've maintained a Discourse server on a DigitalOcean Droplet. Recently, I decided to update it with some of the latest Discourse features. What I anticipated to be a straightforward update process turned into several days of frustrating setbacks. The version of Discourse I was running was already three years old, so I assumed that running the built-in "Update" feature would suffice. However, after clicking the update button, the progress bar sluggishly crawled forward over the next half hour, only to display the dreaded message: "Error – Update Failed." The logs provided little to no help, but based on my experience with other software updates via GIT, I suspected that the failure might be due to the repository head still being called "Master." In recent years, there has been a shift away from using "Master" as the repository head, with "Main" becoming the preferred term. Despite trying several methods ...

That's right, imagine buying your new cell phone and you never have to charge it, yet it never runs out of power.  That might not be so far fetched any more, not if a Chinese technology called BetaVolt delivers on it's promises - and by all accounts that looks to be the case. It can be as small as a coin and multiple batteries can be combined to output higher wattages.  This has the potential to be a game changers in the battery universe.

Just a quick little note.  Regarding the Crypto bear market, my gut tells me that we are just wrapping up the Bear market, and we are about to embark on a new Bull run.  Although it looks like we have put in our Bear Market low, the technicals I look at, and the people I listen to, follow all agree that although we are close to saying a Bull market is underway, we are just one confirming signal short of that. With that backdrop, I find the chart below very interesting.  It's a comparison of the weeks and months leading up to the Bull market in 2018 to what we are seeing right now.  Pretty impressive, right?

I'm not a conspiracy guy.  I've never written about conspiracies, and I don't believe in any.  This is not about a conspiracy.  This is speculation, based upon available facts, regarding Trump's cache of Top Secret documents.  It's the what and why of them not being where they are supposed to be. When Edward Snowden released thousands of top-secret documents into the wild in June of 2013, the Intelligence Community was alarmed and for good reason. Not only was the number of Top-Secret documents released substantial – the Australians claiming 15,000 of their documents were exposed, British officials acknowledging 58,000 of theirs, and a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report said 900,000 DOD files were exposed. In addition to this,160,000 operational NSA emails and 7,900 classified files taken from over 11,000 accounts were also revealed.  Later estimates by U.S. Officials puts the total number of NSA documents alone that were disseminated by Snowden at ...

 I think we all like the bottom of Bear cycles in the stock market.  I think that's what we are going to see with Crypto this week. Those who are still holding Crypto during this retracement, take heart, we are almost there - or at least I think we are. If you like bear bottoms, this one is for you. It should be the end of the bear market and the start of another bull run. I trade Ethereum (ETH) almost exclusively. Right now I think we are finishing wave 2 of a mini 5 wave down trend. We should finish waves 3-5 probably before next weekend, maybe even by Turnaround-Tuesday. See the attached ETH chart and you'll wee what I mean. Once we hit wave 5, I expect a fairly quick run up from about 1160 to the lower 3000's. Put in $1000 and pull out $3000 a couple of months later.  Not bad. As long as ETH stays above $1000 we should be good. If it breaks $1000, that's bad news all around. That means we are going to be setting a new low for ETH and it means the Bear market i...

Artwork by Steven Grundy What, more Crypto talk? Yes, sorry, more crypto talk, but I'll try to keep it short. Back on July 16th I said that I thought the bear market had ended that day and we were starting a new bull market. Only time will tell if I was right because we haven't had enough time to call it a bear market. But, in that time, Ethereum, the bellwether coin that we measure with, is already more than 50% from that date and 120%+ since June 16th (2022). There are a lot of coins that did better than that, but for a "safe" bet like Ethereum, that's a really nice move. But, it's not too late. Ethereum makes a change on September 26th that will dramatically improve it's capabilities. I think we are going to fairly quickly see ETH return it, and pass it's all time high of $4891.70, maybe even before the end of the year. Now there is always the chance that ETH, and all coins, will turn around and head back down for a test of the low of $876.54....

Artwork by Steven Grundy The long awaited Ethereum "Merge" is finally upon us.  I've heard people say "So what".   So what?  I think they don't understand the implications of the merge.  Either that or they really are betting against Ethereum. I think this upgrade is probably the biggest thing for Ethereum since smart contracts first came out.  This change has the possibility of upsetting the apple cart in terms of Ethereum and BTC.  That's a big claim, but I really think it's possible. The Ethereum Merge has been set for the week of September 19th, 2022.  The merge is when the Ethereum execution layer will be joined with the new proof of stake consensus layer.  What does that mean and why should I care? What it means is that Ethereum will be changing from an energy intensive Crypto coin like all others to a 99% more efficient crypto coin like only a few have done.  Right now Ethereum is mined just like BTC and a host of other Crypto cur...

  The Crypto Bull Market left the station today, and if you aren't on the train you are going to miss out. I was predicting the end of the Bear market anytime soon and I'm going to stick my neck out again and say we saw the 2nd half of a double bottom this week.  Then we ran right up to resistance,  1280 on Ethereum (ETH) and blew right through it, hitting 1430 on ETH just minutes later. This could be one of those high speed trains you see everywhere except the good ol' US of A.  Or, it could be a big, lumbering freight train.  But I think more likely it is a high speed freight train.  This market has the potential to blow the doors off of the 2017 and 2021 rallies, and those seemed impossible to beat.  Now, keep in mind we are 80% or more off of the highs, so it shouldn't be too hard to lay some significant  track in the coming months.  I do not give out market advice, and nothing in this blog is intended to serve as investment advice. But, ...

  Ain't no Raging Bull I don't think I have ever made a prediction for the end of a Crypto Bull or Bear market. But, I'm going to stick my neck out and make one now. I think the Bear Market slaughter that's been going on for the past month or so, will experience a short-term bottom, if not a long term bottom, this weekend, or shortly thereafter. I think we are seeing capitulation selling across the board now, and that Crypto very well may turn around as of June 1st. Once it turns around I wouldn't be surprised by a double bottom, but at least we will have seen there is a bottom. What am I Hodling? People always ask me, "What am I hodling these days?" The answer is: A limited amount of BTC and ETH for "stability". A lot of Stepn (GMT) and W2E because I love coins that rise in price and pay the hodler based upon actual exercise by the person hodling the coin/token. A good amount of Decentraland (MANA) and ApeCoin (APE) because I believe the ...

Sometimes you just have to say WTF.  Today is one of those days.  I decided to jump in and buy a new iPhone 13 Pro Max.  I've had one iPhone or another basically since they first came out.  I've always had the big ones because I'm a big guy and the small ones just feel like a toy in my mealy hands. I shopped online for about an hour and finally decided to get what I started out thinking I'd want, an iPhone 13 Pro Max 512Gb.  Luckily, there were plenty in stock, so I picked one from the Apple store at Old Orchard and set it up for delivery between 10:00 - 12:00 the coming Saturday, about 2 days away. It was currently late on Wednesday night and the next day was Thanksgiving, so waiting until Saturday posed no problem at all. I actually noted to myself that what I just done to purchase the phone was a pretty satisfactory experience.  It is always a nightmare dealing with phone carriers, and that's why I didn't buy it from Verizon.  But it was surprisingl...

 If you've ever coded for multiple display types, especially the web and then iPhone screens, and  just  for grins throw in some Android screens including a few "Tablets" just for fun. My experience is you can pretty much just lump the Android screens in with your PC or MAC screens.  They tend to be a fairly common size and they are fairly well behaved. But when it comes to iOS screens, all bets are off.   Is it a small phone, or a big iPad., Is it HD display or not.   What is the input method, touch, type, or Pen?  Each of these require a different level of precision.  As I am writing the post today, we already have well over 10 pixel densities.  Common ones include  ldpi mdpi hdpi xhdp xxhdpi xxxhdpi nodpi tvdpi To help with all of this, I found two great sources.  One does a  great job of explaining iOS displays. Nowadays, not just iOS displays but may Android displays as well.  The other does a great job of e...

If you are a fan of Skylum's Luminar software like  I am, you may have been disappointed, like I was, if your experience with 4.0 was like mine. One of the main reasons to get 4.0 is the great improvements they've made in that AI photo manipulation.  One of the things they do that almost works like magic is the AI-based "Automatic Sky Replacement".  It does just what it sounds like, but it does it almost perfectly well and in a matter of seconds.  What would take me a good 15 to 30 minutes to do, you can now do with 2-3 clicks of the mouse. The problem is/was, that function on version 4.0 didn't work for me and judging from the comment boards, it didn't work for a lot of people. One thing I don't get about Skylum is they allow customers to post their bugs, complaints, and questions on the public-facing BBS, but they always send the answer directly to the customer via DM.  So you might search the board for help on sn issue, find that same issue posted...

I took part in a Kickstarter project to build "The ultimate Dashcam".  One with front and back cameras that would shoot in HD, was durable and low power, and would upload video clips to the cloud with the push of a button.  We'll after waiting more than a year, they did just that.  I received my Dride Zero a couple of days ago and, other than an initial rocky "Setup" process, it has been working fantastic. This post isn't so much to talk about the Dride, you can get that information from them at https://dride.io.   This is more for those people who might run into the same issues with Setup that I had.  Hopefully this will save them some of the time I wasted trying to figure it out. Dride Zero Getting Started 1) Unpack from the shipping box.   To get started all you need at first is the Dride Camera, the powercord that has the cigarette lighter connector, and a 16Gb type 10 Micro SD card. 2) Insert the 16Gb Micro SD card in the slot...

Wow, almost exactly a year since my last post.   How some things change and other things don't. On the one hand my father has passed away almost a year ago and that has left a big hole in our lives.  On the other hand a year ago BitCoin was at it's peak and was days away from jumping off the cliff.  Well it fell from about $19,000 all the way to $6000 where it has held for many months...until yesterday when it jumped off the cliff again.  On to Twilio - I'm blown away with how easy it is to get communication components accomplished with Twilio.  We are using it for normal SMS text messages at TapCloud.  We also use it to send out our Authy based 2-Factor authentication tokens, and we are starting to use it for peer-to-peer and one-to-many video conferencing. One of the great things about Twilio is just how easy it is to use.  Here's an example of just a handful of code that will let you go from start to finish so you'll be sending out MMS me...

So a lot of people have heard of Bitcoin, but there are many more people that have not.  If you live in the crypto currency space, like I do, you sometimes forget how far away from mainstream Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are.  But, that may already be changing.  This from an article by Sean Williams shows just how far blockchain technology has come in the past few years. "Just over a week ago, financial giants American Just over a week Express ( NYSE:AXP ) and Banco Santander ( NYSE:SAN ) announced a cross-border partnership that entails utilizing the blockchain network developed by Ripple. Behind bitcoin ($137.4 billion), Ethereum ($35.2 billion), and bitcoin cash ($20.3 billion), Ripple has the fourth-largest market cap ($9.1 billion) of any virtual currency. As reported by CNBC , payments made by American Express' business customers on its FX International Payments platform will be routed through Ripple's blockchain network and allow for instant, cross-borde...

IOTA is not your typical cryptocurrency.  IOTA, which typically stands for the Internet Of Things is a completely new approach to managing a blockchain. Blockchain technology is what made coins like Bitcoin (BTC) possible.  BTC is just a coin that uses the blockchain technology.  As I've said many times before, the "real" invention here was coming up with a blockchain that works.  To show that it works they created BTC.  The success of BTC is a very good indication of how well blockchains can work. Blockchains are what provide the audit trail of each transaction.  It is what allows you to purchase a digital "product" and be assured that the product is authentic and that you are the only one who owns that particular product.  It is what allows us to use BTC as money because it protects against counterfeiting.  Blockchains do have their limitations, most notably transaction speed, and IOTA solves these limitations.  This is hugely impor...

As the November 16th Fork day for Bitcoin approaches I am getting more and more apprehensive about it. I really have a hard time seeing this fork go well. If you've been following me for the past year or so you'll know that's 100% different view from what I normally have. I have already moved most of my holdings to cash (Tether) and for my BTC brethren I encourage you to at least consider sitting this one out. I don't know who is going to be the winner here, BTC, B2X, or some other coin, but I've been hearing more and more about maybe Bitcoin Cash (BCH or BCC) being in play as the survivor. Here's a REALLY interesting article that talks about that possibility. I can't argue against any of what is in this article. https://www.yours.org/content/predicting-the-outcome-of-the-november-bitcoin-fork-89914ce0e1f5/?utm_content=bufferf3dec&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I have a serious question here that I'd appreciate any feedback on. Let me preface this by saying I've been mining, hording, and trading BTC and Alts for the last few years, and the upcoming BTC fork on November 16th, 2017, when block #494,784 is mined, is the most concerned I've ever been.  This is why: Up until now the BTC ticker has always been on the "right side" of any forks.  I know that's really just this past summer's fork with BCC because I'm ignoring Bitcoin Gold, but I also think of the ETH fork that led to ETC and how ETH stayed on the right side of that fork (IMHO).  The "big" coins have always maintained the ticker on the right side of the fork. But, I think that all changes with this next fork.  Even if you disagree with me, go with me here, we'll cover that at the end.  If I understand it correctly, and at least going by what Coinbase is going to do, the BTC ticker will stay with the non-segwit fork and the fork...

As most of you already know, there are 2 BTC forks happening in the next couple of weeks.  One is the Segwit2x fork scheduled for November 16th, 2017.  The other is the Bitcoin Gold fork, which already happened yesterday, October 23rd, 2017. What is a Fork, why are we doing these forks, and what happens to the coins I hold during a fork are the common questions regarding forks.  Let's dig into each of those a little bit. A "Fork" is just a fancy way of saying someone has made a 2nd copy of the code and decided to take it in a different direction.  For example, imagine you have a team of programmers working on some code to make a crypto coin.  Monday morning arrives and the programmers get in an argument about what features their coin should have.  Some want it to be able to be mined by the general public, others want it all to be issued at once and have no mining support.  Some want it as fast as possible even if that compromises anonymity, other...

As per my earlier posts about BitConnect.com and BitFinance.biz, I am getting mixed results and therefore sending out a big caution flag about BitFinance.biz. BitConnect has been doing exactly what they said they'd do.  They've been paying about 1.2% per day for the past 8 weeks or so. BitFinance was doing the same, paying exactly 1.0% per day for the past 4-5 weeks.  I've done several $1250 withdrawals over those weeks, but, I did a withdrawal last week and I did not get paid yet.  Normally I get paid within 24 hours.  That's a warning sign that maybe all is not good.  It still might work out, but until we know for sure I wouldn't recommend putting any money into BitFinance until we know more.