I always find the hardest part with anything like this is starting.  So anyway, here goes!  This is my introduction to the Steemit community, along with a few comments on how I got into cryptocurrencies in general and gridcoin in particular.  Hopefully some of you at least will find it interesting!

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My name is Patrick.  I’m British, for what it’s worth, and I am a postdoctoral research associate and aspiring academic working at a university in the UK.  My research involves photovoltaic materials design, and I work on both laboratory-based experimental and computer-based modelling projects.  In my field I am something of an anomaly, having an undergraduate degree in geology and a doctorate in…  Well, it says electrical engineering on the certificate, but it was closer to materials science really!  I also carry out various research projects of my own at home, which seems to be true of many academics.  As with my work, my home projects tend to be both experimental and computer-based.  Aside from science I play a lot of computer games, read profusely, cycle, practice aikido and go rock-climbing whenever I have time.

![Picture1.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPWebQm4EpyNXnUaoKMNVzWJdEAQYirRiN4bVNAJ2GduJ/Picture1.jpg)

*Where I spend my time when I'm in the lab.  You would not believe how many times I have had to mend this bloody thing!  Despite its appearance it's not a minature alien space craft - it's a type of high vacuum thin-film deposition machine called a sputter coater.*

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![Picture2.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPQ7V3Nc8raDhWnsaWrwTrpNSamL3EyAg5MZMcFyoW5d5/Picture2.jpg)

*Outside the lab having lunch with some colleagues on an unusually sunny day!*

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One of my more recent home projects involves gridcoin mining through BOINC.  I developed an interest in cryptocurrencies about 18 months ago, and started by looking to see if there was anything that could sensibly be mined using a fairly standard (if reasonably powerful) desktop computer.  My aim was not so much to make money as to find something that produced a reasonable number of coins in some sort of sensible timeframe.  The whole thing was more of an exercise in curiosity than high finance, although if I made a little money out of it too, so much the better!  It rapidly became apparent that bitcoin, along with most of the alternative “mineable” options, was a total waste of time.  The immense amount of computing power required to provide any sort of gain at all, let alone anything remotely useful, was prohibitive – both in terms of hardware costs and electricity bills.  

It was at this point that I discovered gridcoin.  As well as being easily mined using a standard desktop, gridcoin has the added benefit that the computing power is actually put to use doing something of real societal value rather than just mindlessly hashing an arbitrary cryptographic function.  The financial gain is arguably a little more limited than some other possible coins but as I mentioned above, for me that really isn’t the point.  As I suspect most people reading this will know, gridcoin piggybacks neatly onto a well-established free volunteer computing platform called BOINC, which I understand started life as a means for distributing SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) work packages and was so successful that lots of other projects decided to use it as well.  BOINC’s primary benefit, alongside its immense user-base, is that almost anyone can submit a project.  This, at least in theory, makes supercomputer-scale power available to anyone at little to no real financial cost.  I know from my own research work how expensive supercomputer time can be, and I hope eventually to persuade some of my colleagues to consider moving their longer-term projects to BOINC.  You never know, we might even end up on the gridcoin whitelist one day!

For now, I have my computers set to run World Community Grid and Rosetta@home.  Neither will make me rich, but such gains as I do make are all the more satisfying for having been earned through helping other scientists with their research.

For anyone wanting further information on gridcoin, the official website is:
http://www.gridcoin.us/

And BOINC can be found at:
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

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For everyone who has managed to make it this far, thanks for reading!  If you have any comments, please feel free to add them below.  I will respond when I can, but it may not be for a while!