The Personal Blog of Peter Filias

Bitcoin ATM (BTM) Experience

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 16:20:49 +0000

Yesterday, I spent a decent amount of time chatting with someone on the Coinsheet Discord server about how displeased people are at the amount of time it takes from the moment they buy BTC until they actually receive it (using Coinbase as the example). Instead, there are other ways to get BTC faster, those being with someone selling BTC at LocalBitcoins.com or using a BTM.

I tried a BTM for the first time yesterday. It’s a BTM made by bitaccess with the CoinCloud ATM branding. I was excited to be a pioneer of sorts, to try and find a way to get $$$ into the crypto market faster than I could with Coinbase/GDAX.

I found a BTM locally and headed out.

The first thing I noticed with the BTM was that it looked nice. Big. White. Big screen. “New Tech”. The next thing I noticed, after I started the transaction and verified myself using an SMS multifactor authentication (MFA), was that the buy price of BTC was about $16000. The real price of BTC at that moment in time was about $14800, a difference of about 8%. I was cool with that, I understand business, I understand that the owner of that BTM needs to make something for providing the service and convenience of instant BTC (well, near-instant).

Now comes the reason I’m writing this post. Unlike a traditional ATM, the machine never showed me what the fee would be. It never showed me that for $90, I would get x BTC. It never showed me that the transaction I placed had a size of about 467 bytes at a cost of 395 sat/B. It never showed me that the cost of this transaction was $27.18. The $90 I fed the machine ended up yielding me, at the time of the transaction, $55.95…a mere 62% of what I spent (net).

A few things I’d like to see from BTMs, to align them with how ATMs work:

Show the realtime price of BTC and even the % you’re losing by using the machine. Why not be transparent?
Show the fee or estimated fee the transaction will have so the customer can make an educated decision on whether or not the convenience is worth it.
- Of course, getting your BTC in an hour or so is worth something as compared to getting it a week later. However, losing 30% right out of the gate is probably more costly than the price difference BTC would have between the time of your purchase and the time you receive it at a place like Coinbase/GDAX.
Show the customer the NET amount of BTC they’ll receive, including how much it’s worth in realtime, just like my transaction shows.

Personally, if I owned an establishment that could house a BTM, I’d be all over having one. But, I would like to be more ~~transparent~~ honest about it. I think this lack of transparency could be seen as a barrier for most people. Most people want to know what something costs. Most people want to see what the ATM charges as a fee… they show you. This transaction has a $3.00 fee. Are you sure you want to proceed?

DISCLAIMER: I am simply a cryptocurrency hobbyist. I work for no company that has any connection with cryptocurrencies, their networks, or their trading platforms. I wrote this article because I wanted people to know about BTMs and possibly be cautious about using them. If others before me have written about them and given fair-warning, I must have missed that message. Luckily, I only lost about $35 in doing this exercise. Still, $35 can feed a family all day, easy.

2017 into 2018

Sat, 06 Jan 2018 01:46:28 +0000

Lots of new things to discuss as we closed out 2017 and bring in 2018.

My kids are getting old enough now that D&D is something we are going to start playing from time to time. I had such a desire to play when I was young but it just never worked out past a few attempts with both my brother and friends at rainy day lunch recesses during 6th grade.

Cryptocurrencies
- BTC
- LTC
- ETH
- XRP
D&D
- Not only playing but DMing for my two boys - super excited about this!
- Starting out with the D&D Starter Set
Working smarter
- Less clutter on the desk
- Less clutter digitally as well
Consolidating hosting business
- Moving off of dedicated server -
- Far fewer sites to host
- Save money
Teaching online
- No more driving an hour to teach
- Not only that, but also going to be teaching 2 sections - WIN WIN!

Are Blogs Relevant Still?

Mon, 16 Jan 2017 14:48:41 +0000

Do people still use blogs for their personal writing? Is Medium the new “it” thing? Or do people use Medium to pimp their personal blogs? I’m not sure. Seems like most people post their nonsense on Facebook still. Seems like a trivial and easy thing to do… post to your blog, but I always forget to do this.

I am not sure why I haven’t done much writing. Even after switching to Ghost from Wordpress, I thought it would be easier and faster to do, but I’m still finding it challenging to even think about my blogs.

Miss the Olden Days

Tue, 24 May 2016 12:21:03 +0000

I love that I grew up in the 80s, when this was a normal spring/summer/fall night. No Terraria. No Minecraft. No Clash Royale. No Instagram. Nothing of the sort. Maybe an occasional game of Beach Head on the Commodore 64 and a good D&D Choose Your Own Adventure book… but this, bike rides, games of baseball and football and the nearby school, and catching snakes… some of the pastimes of that era. I miss those times. And here I am, telling you all about it on one of the new pastimes.

Ghost Desktop Is Out!

Wed, 04 May 2016 18:36:13 +0000

I was pretty excited some time ago when Wordpress released their software for desktops after having it available on mobile devices.

I got an email from Ghost today tooting their horn about their $600K ARR, release of their Desktop app, and a few other tidbits of information. Released their desktop app?!?! I was thrilled and jumped on it.

Here I am, using it now. Working like a dream.

Is not having an app like this a reason I haven’t been writing on my blog? Probably not. But it’s definitely an excuse to get me writing today!

Should Apple unlock a dead man's son's phone?

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 21:49:46 +0000

I was reading this article at Ars Technica about a man whose 13 year old son passed away. He’d love to be able to capture those prized moments and memories.

I think Apple should do this. I think there should be some mechanism for deceased phone owners, especially if they are minors. Why not create a system where the requestor could ship their phone somewhere, some Apple clearing house that would take are of this… perhaps post all the data on a secure location for them to download or give them the opportunity to purchase a memory stick with the data.

Here's to Hosting at Digital Ocean

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 19:22:56 +0000

So Alex as well as others I follow have been talking about Digital Ocean for quite some time. I’ve always been intrigued by these “server in a button” systems and was pretty excited to see how quick and easy it was to get a server set up at Digital Ocean, install a Ghost droplet and get cracking.

I did, however, run into a few snafus along the way, but those were mostly tied to the fact that the Ghost blog is still a wee bit immature as its importing functionality is just not that robust. It couldn’t handle my 12 years worth of blog posts that my Wordpress blog had, all 3MB of JSON export.

Luckily for me, the kind man, @davidb, at Ghost, was able to troubleshoot and eventually fix this for me by splitting up my 3MB JSON file into pieces that were about 700kb each… lo and behold, my blog is now up and running (here).

Baseball and Batman v Superman

Sat, 26 Mar 2016 21:29:58 +0000

It’s almost Little League season which got us out to buy some new equipment this afternoon. New shoes. New glove. New training ball - a ball that weighs 15 oz. that should give the kids some resistance/feedback when they hit it. Looking forward to this Spring!

Topping off this Easter Saturday, we are about to see Batman v Superman. I hope it doesn’t suck.

Stuttering Bluetooth Audio Fix Mac OS X (El Capitan)

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 12:54:19 +0000

So, I was watching a video at work as part of my training yesterday using my Jaybird Bluebuds X In-Ear Headset without any problems on a brand new MacBook Pro 13-inch.

I started work today where I left off and the audio was choppy. I disconnected these Bluebuds from my Mac and connected to my iPhone 6 - no problems. Connected back to Mac, stuttering.

So, what to do? Google it! It took a few different results and experiments (I’ll list those that didn’t work) until I found the following fix: reset the bluetooth module!

The fixes that did not work from this page:

sudo defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent ‘Apple Bitpool Min (editable)"‘53 (site shows with " but you have to change to single quotes ‘)
sudo killall coreaudiod

A-R-S Technica

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:18:51 +0000

This article from Huffington Post (I’m not an avid reader, just happened this way) came into my radar about one of my favorite websites of all time, Ars Technica. On average, I visit this site about 6 days a week. I’ve been a reader of this site since it started back in 1998. I’ve even been a paid member for a short time and still own a black t-shirt with the old logo on it.

Nice little write up… give it a quick read. They deserve the love!

Converting Wordpress to a Static Site

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 11:54:01 +0000

I’m having some strong considerations regarding converting one of my two sites to a static file website running on Ghost hosted at Digital Ocean.

I’ve always been intrigued about performance and removing the fat that comes with Wordpress. Don’t get me wrong. I love Wordpress for all that it is, but I’m thinking that for one of my own personal websites, it’s time to get this thing fast and furious!

Come back to this site for a HOWTO I’ll put together about this process and some potential snags you may run into.

Testing the New WordPress Mac App

Sat, 30 Jan 2016 00:18:10 +0000

So, I’m using the new desktop app to post to my blog… I think I might like this. Might get me writing a bit more frequently.

Brave Browser So Far and WordPress Innovations

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 17:03:24 +0000

I was just about to write a quick little blog post about how I think the Brave browser is nice and fast, but then I tired to get into Google Sheets to look something up and it didn’t work in Brave.

Neither did logging into my WordPress (self-hosted) site. I had to switch to Safari so that I could write this pots.

The thing I was going to post about Brave was this image of the ad replacement that Brave is supposed to be one of its main features.

Regardless of the grief, after all, this IS a beta, I am pretty excited about Brave. I just hope it doesn’t turn into an Opera browser… had lots of promise, but never really “took off” as far as I’m concerned. Maybe others felt differently about that, but not me.

What’s even more exciting, as I write this, is that I was able to log into WordPress.com to post to my self-hosted sites… not only that, WordPress.com now has desktop apps that I can’t wait to get my fast-fingers all over!!!

Speaking on Synthetic Mobile Performance Testing and Monitoring

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 13:01:47 +0000

I gave a presentation on Synthetic Mobile Performance Testing and Monitoring last night as part of Mobile Monday Detroit at OU Inc. I talked about:

Mobile Web Monitoring Challenges
Website Performance: What is it?
Mobile Testing
3rd party calls
Summary

I discussed some key benchmarks to look for in mobile performance testing:

End to end load time
Time to first paint
Time to interactive
Element count
Page size

It was a great turnout with great questions from the audience. I’d like to thank those that gave me the opportunity to speak.

Look here for the presentation deck when it becomes publicly available.

Been a while...

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 23:48:55 +0000

Thanks to Alex, been working on some new projects. Working with Heroku (had always been curious about their services) to install a node.js application called Telescope for some exciting things I can’t disclose yet.

Also planning to work with another node.js application, but not Telescope, in the coming days.

Doing my first speaking engagement on Monday to talk about Mobile Performance Monitoring at a Mobile Mondays event at Oakland University. The event is titled: Mobile Web/App Performance Testing and Monitoring.

I’ll be talking, at a high level, about synthetic testing/monitoring of mobile websites.

GM Heritage Collection

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 12:04:41 +0000

So maybe it’s re-post Ars Technica article day for me, but I found it interesting to see this as a featured article.

I’ve been to the Heritage Collection for a holiday party and found the place to be very well curated and manicured. If you like GM history, then this is definitely a must see in the Detroit area.

GM’s Heritage Collection - Ars Technica (Cars Technica) article

Amiga 500

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 11:41:59 +0000

Of all the computers I’ve owned in my life, none were more exhilarating and exciting as the Commodore Amiga 500. Sure, the short time with the Vic-20 and then the long tenure with the Commodore 64 were very forming of my being, but the sheer innovation and wow-factor of the Amiga were legendary!

Ars Technica has a great blast from the past with their new article on the Amiga 500.

The Amiga just turned 30 years old this week. It’s amazing how time flies. I can still remembering playing all those awesome Psygnosis games in my basement!

Give it a read, you’ll really enjoy it if you are or were an Amiga fan or even if you want a little history lesson.

Happy Pi Day! Once in a lifetime - our lifetime

Sat, 14 Mar 2015 09:26:51 +0000

So, once in a lifetime we get Pi day to 10 digits. March 14, 2015 at 09:26:53 seconds. Pretty fun number stuff if you ask me. What else is cool is that Albert Einstein’s birth date is March 14.

So take today to enjoy 3.141592653 and heck, grab yourself a piece of pie!

Getting SpeedFan to start in Windows 7/8.x

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 12:47:45 +0000

I have been a big fan of Almico’s SpeedFan for probably as many years as it’s been out. I used to be in love with the app because I overclocked the heck out of my computers and wanted to keep track of various temperatures: CPU, GPU, Chipset, Case, and others. I also wanted to keep track of the RPMs of the fans associated with those components.

As I have grown up (some say I haven’t - I say I haven’t), I’ve shifted my love of SpeedFan to be more of a sanity-app. I want to slow the speed of my various fans so it doesn’t sound like I work and play in a wind tunnel. SpeedFan does a great job with this function, really, it does!

The one that has plagued me ever since moving to Windows 7, however, has been that I could never get SpeedFan to start on its own. Whether it be via placing a shortcut in the Startup group or making a scheduled task, it just never worked. I had to manually start it every time I start up my computer. Pain in the ass if you ask me.

That all changed today when I stumbled upon this simple YouTube video that pointed out that I needed to set a delay before it started. Wallah. Lo and behold. It works.

Speed up your Android's Chrome Browser

Fri, 16 May 2014 08:02:31 +0000

I’m not normally looking to make changes like this… who am I kidding? Of course I am. I’m a speed freak. I love pushing my technology to the limit.

Thanks to reddit user erythrocytes64, you can make a simple change to a Chrome flag.

Go into Chrome and surf to chrome://flags/#max-tiles-for-interest-area. Set that to 512 instead of the default (default is usually 128). At the bottom, it will have a Relaunch Now button. Click that.

So, was my real-world performance that much better on my Nexus 5? I’m not really that sure. I don’t do a TON of browsing using my Chrome browser. I usually digest most of my news and information via Twitter, with an occasional click-through to a web page that is referenced.

Well, I clicked through to an article and scrolled down as a test. Wow, very very fast. I did a test between Chrome and Chrome Beta on my phone and found that the Chrome browser that I made the changes on scrolled much faster.