A year of disruption and a Christmas Gift

As the end of 2017 approaches, it is clear that 2017 has been a year of disruption. It seems to me that ‘Cloud’ has resulted in the most change from an Application Performance Engineering and Testing perspective. Cloud has been simmering for many years. I started my AWS account about 6 years ago, got certified last year, and have really enjoyed the benefits of using cloud in my performance engineering and testing work in 2017. Getting in to 'Cloud' early has been most helpful to me in 2017.

2017 was also the year that I first looked more closely at CryptoCurrencies and the BlockChain technology that supports them. It was an amazing moment for me personally, when I first transferred some crypto currency from one wallet on one (cloud) instance, to another wallet, on a different cloud sever running in a different continent. 

I would like to give as many of my first and second degree connections a kick start in the journey to understanding crypto currencies and BlockChain in the last days of 2017 by offering to send you some coins, as a Christmas gift. I have quite a few DNOTES coins, which are quite similar in nature to BitCoin, but much cheaper. They are trading for the grand sum of US$0.025 at the moment, so I will send 40 (around US$1 value) to everyone who would like them, as long as you show up as a first or second level connection or are a follower of my LinkedIn account.  The total value of such a gift is less than the cost of me sending you a Christmas card. However, if you are new to CryptoCurrency, then the value you could derive from taking me up on this would be well worth your time, and I would be happy to know that I have helped you gain a better understanding of this new technology. 

All you need to do is download the Windows ‘wallet’ from this location https://dnotescoin.com/DNotes/dnotes-1.2-win.zip   Once you download the file, unzip it and simply double click on the Application File ‘dnotes-qt’ in the unzipped folder. Click on the ‘Receive coins’ tab and then click ‘New Address’. Give the new receiving address a name and click OK. You should then see the new address, which should look something like this: DshisgF9RxQhV4hKXNKPuj3gHMSDxri4F5 This is part of the Magic of CryptoCurrency. You don’t need to go to a central authority to setup an account. Your computer can just make one up!

Copy the address, and send it to me. To help with views to this article, you can simply paste the address as a comment in this article, or if you prefer to be more discrete, then Direct Message it to me. I will then send you 40 DNOTEs coins.

Before you will see the coins, the entire BlockChain for DNOTEs will need to be downloaded to your computer. This will happen automatically when you start the application, so leave it running for a while. (From a few hours to a couple of days, depending on your computer and your internet connection) You will see a ‘Synchronizing with network… ~95454 blocks remaining” message, showing the number of blocks that are yet to be downloaded. DNOTEs has a total of 2,017,770 blocks as I write this text. Those blocks contain every single transaction that has even taken place in DNOTEs since its Genesis block. There are a total of 130 million DNOTEs in existence and you can see all of the relevant statistics for the CryptoCurrency at https://chainz.cryptoid.info/note/   In fact, you can search for any address, and see transactions that interact with that address. After you have received some coins, then have a look at your transactions. I encourage you to setup a second wallet, and send some of the coins from one wallet to the other wallet. If you mess up, and want a few more coins, then ask me, and I may send you a few more.

I recently completed the edX course on Blockchain at https://www.edx.org/course/blockchain-business-introduction-linuxfoundationx-lfs171x and have run a few load tests of block chain technology, mostly as a self-funded learning activity. I am learning as much as I can as fast as I can.  Block chain technology will, in my opinion, replace some databases in Corporate and Government applications, and the privacy/security/scalability/complexity trade-offs will result in some serious performance engineering challenges in the future, and I want to be ready to face those challenges. This is why I am offering this Christmas Gift to you all, to give you an opportunity to also become familiar with the technology, so you can decide if you too want to be ready for the future that BlockChain technology offers.