This painting is created a year ago when my artistic mood was feeling wild(hahaha). Couldn’t remember how long I’ve spent on this from preparation to final product. May be a round a week with 2-3 hours every day. I’m satisfied with the end product after all. What Hero is the next?

Theme: Spiderman
Material: Acrylics on stretched canvas
Size: 14” x 12”

Backstage

All the preparation for an actual idea of how the real mask will look like. As the whole intention is to replicate a realistic Spiderman mask. Stage photos in films will be a great source. However, if you aren’t a huge Spiderman fan, or you are going into the detail like I do, chances are you won’t notice the designs those masks in actual films are evolving over the time.

The gray background on the canvas was painted as I was kind of bored of white background.

Taping technique was first used for a precise outline of the mask, a very effective trick.

With tape on I can outline the mask with less tensed nerve. And I got to say the moment you peel that tape off, that smoothness gave me goosebumps!

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I’m interested in reading everything about lifehacks. From books, magazine, to Quora and YouTube. Because it is so fun to find out something little that you never thought of, can actually bring a huge effect to any aspect of life. Work, relationship, health, finance, even baking techniques, you name it.

One of the most mentioned lifehacks is write something everyday.

Why should we write every day

• Strengthens idea muscle

In order to write something, you will have to think more. More thinking leads to more question, and you will have to actively find out answers. This is how ideas are formed. Repeats this process every day is like a daily mental practice that increases our psychological energy. It sounds normal going to the gym for physical training, may be you working out every now and then. What about start training the brain now?

• Keep a journal of our mental development

People love to take pictures and record clips because those are the best way to keep memories of precious moments. We tend to have the “missing good old days” feeling when looking back at the pictures and clips. Well, text does a great job recording down the train of thoughts. It will be fun be the witness of ourselves for our mental evolve over the times.

• Get a war chest of ideas

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas - Thomas A. Edison

Good ideas can be in everything. Better way to learn, more efficient way to cook, how to improve health, how to save more, what idea to start a new business, what topic to start a conversation. Generally, we will be more knowledgeable and well informed. This makes us able to respond to any situation. We will no longer have the same views on everything around us.

What a lifehack, I should write every day too!
But I’m a lazy person. All the time I’m aware of this great habit but other than posting some random stuff on Facebook, I didn’t write shit. Until…

I found Steemit!

As crypto-enthusiast, I never know I can become so deeply involved in a crypto project like what Steemit provides. Dan is a genius, Steemit is astonishing, this whole community is just unbelievable.

Decentralization social platform + Zero censorship + Total speech freedom + Clean environment without Ads + Huge potential + Earn money instead of useless Thumbs Up…

The + can goes on. Man, give me a reason to keep my keyboard dusted!

(Image from brainstormeveryday and Gifs from giphy)

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Yesterday I was typing my fourth post. 昨晚，我正在写我的第四篇文章

Done writing, post it up, expecting responses as usual. Nothing special, a couple of views, a handful of votes, ah, time to sleep.

Being a minnow user like me, I’m fairly new in this community as you can tell. Every minnow having a dream of building an army of followers, receiving tons of votes, and of course, making a decent income. There is only one way to get all these done, which is persistently creating value here. And I know this going to take time. And then this happens…

写好了，PO了，一如既往的期待着回应。寥寥无几的浏览数，屈指可数的点赞，没什么特别，啊，是时候睡了。
身为一只小鱼，我只是个刚加入的新人。每只小鱼都有同样的梦想：拥有自己的follower大军；得到涌涌不绝的点赞；当然，赚取可观的收入。唯有努力不懈的创造好内容一途能让你拥有这一切，而这些都是需要时间的。然后这发生了…

Got my first vote from a Whale 第一次大鲸点赞了我

What can a minnow expect if a whale passing by? Huge wave!
Same day afternoon, I checked back my latest post which was getting a few cents by 4 votes if I remember correctly.

当大鲸游过小鱼身边会发生什么？巨浪！
当天下午，我再次查看昨晚写好的文章,如果没记错的话上一次查看只有几分钱和四个赞。

13 dollars! What happened?? First thing came to my mind was ‘a whale must have said a hello to me’. This was quickly confirmed by checking the short list of voters. And soon I noticed my reputation has increased. From 36 to 41.

13块! 到底发生了什么？ 第一个想到的就是“一定有只鲸鱼刚刚向我打招呼了”。那短短的点赞名单肯定了我的想法。很快的也发现我的名声从 36 上到了 41.

Hell yeah! 太他*爽了!

That feeling when you found out the hard work paid off, nothing can describe it. I was awed the moment all this happened, dozens of excited thoughts flashed.

“God this really works!” “Making money never been this easy!” “May be full time writer career is not so infeasible?” “Man I gotta write more!”

当你发现付出得到回报时，那种感觉是无法形容的。当下发现这一切时，各种念头不断闪现而过。

“我的妈这真的能行！”“赚钱好容易啊！”“来专业作家的梦也不是那么遥不可及嘛？”“来料真的要写多点料！”

“Haha, silly” “呵呵，真傻”

I might have said that looking back from a few years from now. May be for now I was fussing for the reward. May be the reward amount was not worth mentioning. But at least, the reward was real, the motivation was solid.

Nothing feels better than the sense of achievement. I shall keep this momentum going!

可能几年以后往回头看，我会这样说。可能我现在有点小题大做了。可能那一点点的回酬微不足道。但是起码，那回酬是真实的，随之而来的动力也是实在的。

没什么比成就感更令人鼓舞了.把这动力保持下去吧！共勉之

Credit to Mr.MyFirstWhale @teamsteem do follow him for his awesome posts!

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Vulnerability of paper passport

Have you ever lost your passport? During trips? Clearing customs? What awaits you will be numerous visits to the customs office, police stations, and embassies. I can definitely imagine the doomed feeling although I have no experience on that yet(touch wood).

Passport is the last thing you want to lose in a foreign country, simply because the maddening troubles you have to go through before getting a new piece of paper to prove your identity again. Isn’t this funny in this modern world? We all relying so much on an extremely vulnerable proof of identity during traveling, we must protect it like our most previous whenever we go, endless troubles ahead if failed to do so.

Fortunately, there is Blockchain

With this amazing technology, getting rid of paper passport become realistic.

• Flexible capacity
  One of the remarkable features of blockchain is that network capacity can be easily expanded. Migration of traditional passport information to digital form can be done in large scale without pressuring the network much, as there is thousands of hundred computer help scaling the network capability and size.

• Better security
  There is no single point of failure to shut down the blockchain network. Of course, perfectly secured system is non-existent in the world, but so far nothing offer higher security other than blockchain. There will be no paper passport, thus you will have one item less to keep or to lose.

• Immutability
  All centralized databases are prone to corruption. One has no options but to trust the third party authority to keep safe our identity. While in the world of blockchain, you have to trust no one. Computer hashing power and algorithm makes it almost impossible to change the history of record in the database.

• Faster settlement
  In the case of losing a passport, you need to provide alternative documents as proof of your existence in the world. And those things take forever to be validated. Retrieving information from blockchain is almost instantaneous. As long as you can provide something(may be a private key) that can link to your identity in the network, boom! You are a legal traveler again!

Final thought

I’m so sick of double checking if my passport is still sleeping well in my bag when I was busy climbing a beautiful mountain or visiting a crowded market in foreign places. Sure, there are still plenty of technical and political details need to come to an agreement between nations to make all these happen. In fact,
Dubai airport is going to make seamless entry a reality. Let’s see how long we need to say goodbye to our passport!

Reference:
https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/31/your-next-passport-could-be-on-the-blockchain/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/renault-uses-blockchain-to-store-car-passport-details

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Steemit as miniature of the Internet

Everyone know how big the internet porn is. But you might not have a clear mind how big it actually is.

By all these studies we can tell pornography is so linked to human nature. That’s the result of freedom provided by Internet. Wipe out the whole internet search history of mankind and start everything over again, one hour later you will find the same amount of traffic to the porn sites. As much as Steemit granted so much freedom to the user that no other social medias can even come close, same thing is likely to take place here.

These are the trending top payout topics. God know will someday tags like ‘#NSFW’ ‘#porn’ ‘#sexy’ be at their pinnacle?

Will this kill Steemit?

Well, I would keep a wait-and-see attitude how thing is going to play out.
Steemit grants us the ability to “Say No to Internet Censorship”. That’s why we love it. People up-voting quality works, flagging the contrast. And flagging is the only way to censor a content by reducing its visibility in the platform, but the content isn’t going anywhere. I’d say this is the right how things should be “censored” by users instead of centralized authorities.

Finally, as Steemit is still in the infant stage considering how much we expecting it to be the next Reddit killer, I shouldn’t be over-worried by now. By the time I should, this is gonna be a happy trouble.

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Yo there, glad to greet y’all in this awesome platform!

I’m a 27 years old from Malaysia. Computer lover with IT background, as well as a new believer in the amazing blockchain technology.
I deeply believe blockchain gonna be the future and improve our live in every aspect. I started to spend a couple of hours every day on studying this technology, exploring new projects, and trying my best to take part in interesting projects. Steemit turns out to be the most easy project for anyone to dive in. Woohoo!

大家好！我是个电脑爱好者，27岁，来自马来西亚，是区块链技术的新拥护者。 我深信区块链技术将会让我们未来变得更美好，所以每天都花几个小时来学习这项技术，探索新的虚拟币计划，和不断尝试参与其中。Steemit 是目前为止最容易让人们全身投入的计划，没有之一！

I love workout.

I called this ‘hobby of life’. However as a total big fan of bodyweight workout, I do not belong to the mainstream ‘gym rat’ race, so I can happily workout anywhere anytime with the least environmental restrictions. No time is wasted going to the gym and no money is wasted on gym membership. Lesser cost yet higher intensity. Yay, train like a gymnast!

我爱锻炼，这是个终身爱好。 但我对健身院并不太感冒，徒手訓練才是王道。不需花时间赶去健身院，不需花钱在会员证。随时随地就能训练，免费的同时还能保持高强度！

I love art.

I love creating them, admiring them. As much as I used to indulge in this addictive activities, I’ve been away for quite a while. Missing those days having so much fun with the the brushes, may be I should pick them up again in the near future, and of course I shall share it with you Steemians!

我爱艺术，包括创造和赏析它们。 尽管我曾经那么的热爱这项活动，忙起来现在也许久没有动笔了。但那些挥笔如洒得日子也真够令人怀念的，希望不久的将来能够再度回归艺术的怀抱。当然了，一定要来这里分享的啦！

I love travelling.

Apparently, who doesn’t love travelling? I enjoy recording every trip as I think video talks better than picture. But well, currently I don’t spend too much time on this yet. May be once or twice in a year for a short getaway for not more than a week. Time and money is the biggest constraints for me to plan for more trips, as I prefer to put the resources more onto higher prioritized stuffs. I swear I will travel all year long when I’m a cryptomillionaire, haha!

我爱旅行，其实有谁不爱呢。 比起拍照，旅途中我更喜欢用视频记录一切，视频让日后的回味更有味道，难道不是吗？其实现今阶段我并没有花太多时间在旅行上，目前还有更多值得我把资源投入的事还没达成。但要是日后我有机会成为虚拟币百万富翁，全年旅行是绝对跑不掉的，呵呵！

And, creating more quality contents

Yes I think this is the only effective way to grow our beloved community. I’v promised myself to create at least one content every one or two days, HARD for a lazy person like me, but I should keep on trying! Peace~

最后，我相信创造有价值的内容是让Steemit日渐壮大的唯一途径。我计划每两天起码写一篇文章，但以我对自己的了解程度而言，有点难度啊。无论如何，让后我们拭目以待吧！加油！

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