Greetings Steemit Friends! I hit 1000 followers today, and decided I need to jump on the bandwagon and do an Introduce Yourself Post.
Wow what a bad photo, I hope you keep reading after that.
Here's a better image that I did of myself:
So about myself. I grew up in Connecticut and then after high school went to college down in South Carolina at The Citadel, the Military College of SC. http://www.citadel.edu
The Day Job.
I earned my BS in computer science there and after college decided that the Carolinas were an excellent place to live, so I stayed down here and moved to North Carolina to the Raleigh/Durham area. I've worked for many and various technology companies over the years, typically programming jobs but also networking and systems administration. In 2005 I ended up getting a job where my wife also works, UNC Chapel Hill. I've been here since for the day job. I'm in the networking group and am the lead developer.
The Photography.
Back in the late '90 and early 2000's I did some freelance web design on the side. For good web pages, even back then, you needed decent photography. I ended up picking up a Canon EOS D30 back then to learn the art of photography. This is not to be confused with the Canon 30D which was much later. The D30 was at the time a very forward thinking camera, it was the first DSLR that the masses could "afford", with a price tag then of ~ $3000. Kind of crazy for the money of that time, with its' 3.1 MP sensor. It was great though and I learned a tremendous amount. I ended up becoming a staff photographer for The Citadel since I had the connections there and shot a lot of sports and learned quite a bit.
Around 2009, I became aware of the Strobist concept. Up until that point I did mostly natural light or awful lighting with a speed light on top of the camera. Once I found the strobist website - http://www.strobist.com , my photography was forever changed. The strobist concept is to use small cheap speed lights, off camera, to shape the light.
This was around the peak of awesomeness of the Flickr website, and I participated there. I ended up doing a 365 project, in which I did the strobsit lighting. https://www.flickr.com/photos/floriopics/albums/72157620839594806
This project was very interesting and I learned so much from just doing it every single day. This was from July 1st, 2009 until June 30th, 2010. I didn't miss a day. I had a TON of help from people that I met along the way. I often think I would have made a lot of STEEM had I done this when Steemit was available. It was one of those things that was super fun, super rewarding and super tiring.
Another interesting photography thing that I do is the 360 circular panoramas. This is what Google Streetview is. For instance, here's my studio location that I share with the Tiger Hive in Raleigh -
https://goo.gl/maps/3NnuUPMEFjy
I'm a Google Trusted Photographer and can extend Google Streetview into your local business or can build a stand alone virtual tour that you can host on your website.
Check out my photography website - http://www.floriopics.com
You can also like my photography page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/FlorioPhotography/?pnref=about.overview
The Truth.
Around 2012, I became aware of the fact that much of our media is propaganda and manipulating us. Really, I should have seen it sooner than this but I was wrapped up with all the crap that I mentioned above. What I'm talking about goes further than the more recent concept of "Fake News" which is being targeted at the mainstream left media, but it's everywhere. After years of looking at what's going on, the conclusion that I've come up with is that the UN Agenda 21 and UN Agenda 2030 are being foisted upon us by whatever means necessary. Because of this, I've made lifestyle changes.
The Homesteading/Gardening.
In the spring of 2015, I decided that I needed to try and grow some of my own food. Any way you can make yourself independent of the government system and provide for your own needs is a fight against Agenda 2030.
So, I did a Square Foot Garden while I was living in the deep suburbs of Cary. See my post about the square foot garden that I did: https://steemit.com/garden/@florio/square-foot-gardening
I figured out, that even if I used every inch of space in my tiny courtyard, that would NOT have been enough to feed myself. We ended up moving out of Cary to outside of city limits with a 2 acre lot and a cleared area that is south facing and awesome for the garden.
2018 will be my 3rd season at this location and my garden is still in construction mode. I did quite a bit of research and decided to try the Mittleider Method of gardening. This can best be described as like hydroponics but in the dirt. I'm doing the raised bed method and have constructed 8 - 4'x30' beds as well as putting in a small harbor freight greenhouse. I'm going to have 6 of those 8 in production for this spring, which is a 50% increase from last year. I'm fairly happy with where I'm at with the garden so far.
You can see my latest gardening post here: https://steemit.com/garden/@florio/garden-update-planted-potatoes-2-25-18
At the bottom of the post I've started linking all of my other gardening posts, so you can click around and learn more.
Other things I've done would include buying a used Nissan Leaf, which diversifies my source of fuel for traveling. I also obtained my Technician and then General Ham radio license. My call sign is KM4LBW.
Spiritual Matters
I am a regular attendee of the Hillsborough Baptist Church and definitely hope you know and come to the Truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the savior of the earth.
One that that was interesting, I met and became friends with Cris Putnam and became his photographer and videographer. Cris was a very well known author of books such as Petrus Romans: The Final Pope is Here http://amzn.to/2ES9IBP and The Supernatural Worldview: http://amzn.to/2CKZoWf . I accomponied Cris to Sedona, AZ while he was researching On the Path of the Immortals: http://amzn.to/2opjdyk ... I even appear in one of the chapters, which is kind of interesting to me.
Sadly, Cris passed away a year or so ago, and I do miss him.
So, that's it in a nutshell for me. I'm into photography, I'm into gardening, I'm into the truth. I have a computer science degree and write a lot of code. I really appreciate the Steemit community. A block chain based social media platform that can't be censored is absolutely needed in this day in age. I hope you follow me and let's be on this journey together.
I'm sorry I didn't make this #introduceyorself post sooner, but I figured I'd take my 1000 follower milestone as an opportunity to do so now.