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Zcoin – Setting up the wallet to sync quickly with screenshots

The cryptocurrency craze is in full swing yet again, and zcoins are one of the key new currencies to emerge after the blistering succcess of bitcoin.

The status and mainstream use of digital coins has changed dramatically, and become a new asset class of late.

I’m curious, so have jumped on board to investigate what its all about.

Below is a graphic tutorial about how to set up your zcoin wallet quickly and easily, without having to wait forever for it to sync.

Downloading and syncing a bitcoin wallet, which is gigabytes in size seemed too arduous and time consuming for an impatient guy with only a cursory interest in the subject, so I chose Zcoin.

https://zcoin.io/get-zcoin/

You can download the wallet program for your OS of choice at the address above.

The catch is that it seems to take aeons to sync the wallet, by downloading the blockchain and processing it.

Apparently the start up process for your wallet can take days to weeks, through the size of the blockchain itself is only quite small, at around 187Mb! (at time of writing)

zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain

zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_slownessInternet speed seems to have precious little to do with it; its just mind numbingly SLOW!

A couple hours after installation, less than 7% of the estimated transactions int he chain have been downloaded and processed.

 

I thought I’d be clever, avoid the pain, and download the entire blockchain file in its entirety off Znode.

http://znode.io/

The whole download took just a few minutes at 1MB/Sec.Znode_zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_very_fast_download

Next step is to extract the zip file, and put the files in their requisite places for the zcoin wallet to pick up.

The unzipping of the Zcoin block chain file from Znode is a very quick operation, taking less than a couple minutes.

Znode_zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_unzipping_time

As promised, the zip folder contained the “blocks” and “chainstate” folders, which need to be dumped into the USER\Appdata\Roaming\zcoin folder on windows operating systems

Znode_zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_zipfolder_contents_blocks_chainstate

A bit of copy pasting later, and I have imported the downloaded full blockchain files into the zcoin wallet to give it a head start.

I took the cautious approach, and just changed the names of the current folders with their 7% progress with a BAK suffix, so I can restore and go back to doing the sync the long way if the process doesn’t work.

Znode_zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_importing_blockchain_file_into_zcoin_wallet

Just for interest, at present, the zcoin blocks folder is 243MB on disk, and the chainstate folder is a teeny 11MB. Of course, as time goes on, this will blow out to huge sizes, as the coin is in its relative infancy.

Now, to see how long the processing and sync takes once this little boost has been added…

Znode_zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_imported_wallet_loadingAll looks healthy here… it just may take a little while.

Looking at the stats on the system performance, depicted below; the CPU is banging away at a modest 21% load from loading the wallet.

It may be hanging, but we will see what comes from this in a few hours.

 

Znode_zcoin_QT_wallet_sync_blockchain_imported_wallet_loading_CPU_RAM_USAGE

The situation looks fairly positive though, as the wallet.DAT file is being constantly written to during this process.

Posts on the zcoin website indicate that the reason it takes so long is verification of no double spends.

https://zcoin.io/new-zcoin-release-v0-1-8-wallet-loading-optimised-and-mac-os-compile-issues-fixed/

I’ve taken note of the time the verification began, and will update this post once I have a definitive loading time.  A progress bar certainly would have been nice on the opening screen.

UPDATE! looks like it took about 5 hours to load the saved part of the blockchain…  only thing, its now 8 hours behind, so will take quite a while to sync up again. (More hours!!)

2017-06-30 14:40:12 init message: Loading wallet..
2017-06-30 20:07:49 PROCESS BLOCK = 41049

Rowena Wallace Gofundme Campaign- Viral? She DOES NOT need your help!

Rowena Wallace has her begging bowl out again, and needs your help” (or, well, her (cough) friend, the mysterious “Steven M” has on her behalf) At the time of writing, I’m horrified to say that people have donated over $1500 to this cringworthy old bat, who should have been told squarely to go solve her own problems with a $200 plane ticket and a suitcase of clothes, like anybody else who needs to move towns quickly.

This kind of thing makes my blood boil, as she is no different to any other Australian pensioner, and certainly doesn’t deserve a 20K fighting fund so she can move to Brisbane.

gofundme_rowena_wallace_fundraising_brisbane_wonthaggi_dollars_earntMost of us have old Nannas and pops, relatives or friends doing it a lot worse, who never earned more than minimum wage in a day in their lives.

So, its a Monday public holiday, with horrible dreary weather, so I and the lass did the totally unspeakable, embarrassing.

WE WATCHED DAYTIME TV. some utter puss of a show called studio ten, filled with ageing “Celebrities” and “TV “personalities” who should have been put out to pasture long ago.

It’s pretty low budget I suppose, because they rolled out “tell all” interview with an old has-been who starred in TV shows back int he 70’s and 80’s… or sometime like that. The strange looking fat old bat’s name was Rowena Wallace. Apparently she was famous for being a hated character called “pat the rat”.

This level of D grade television charity case lands squarely in the same category that Australia’s other “favorite” desiccated old charity case, washed up old woman that nobody cares less about- Dawn Frazer.

Dawn at least is a “golden girl” of Australian swimming, and a medal winner, not a worthless logie winner.

That said, Dawn is also probably Australia’s most popular attempted thief- since she got kicked out of swimming for trying to steal a flag from the imperial palace in Japan.  Enough of my hate of the continued presencethat particular pathetic old crone on Australian television.

In my garage, there is a fat old rodent I have dubbed “raider rat”, and just like him, Rowena Wallace needs to die a horrible, slow death, but on television. Just like raider, noisily and shamelessly squeaking and scuttling out every time there is a food source, or some light (aka a few pennies from today tonight/ D grade TV shows) Rowena Wallace crawls out of the wall, straightens her whiskers, and moans about how terrible her life is, and pleading for some love and money.  It’s been happening every couple years now like clockwork, since I was a small child- which was a long, long time ago now, so its wearing thin!

In the interview, she moaned and groaned about how she was broke, “had hit “rock bottom” (for probably the fifth time this decade) and had to sell or pawn her precious, but utterly worthless gold Logie.

She also made outlandish claims that she could barely eat on her massive $400 a week, tax free disability pension, while living in a very low cost rural Victorian town.

Doing a little research on her cost of living to back up my claims, I discovered, not surprisingly, that you can buy a nice 2 bedroom unit for 209K in Wonthaggi, and rent a house for around $230 a week.

It looks like a nice beachside town too. Live must be grim there. I’m sure.

Realestate.com – buy in wonthaggi for less than 250K

Realestate in wonthagggi- rent for less than $230 a week

Considering that she is quite a large, fat lumbering beast, I don’t believe for a moment that she doesn’t get to eat regularly, and copiously either.

The already low rent, and considerable rent assistance from the government she would receive, plus the option to share the house with a flatmate does leave a lot of options for comfortable living for this apparently clueless old woman.

By my reckoning, more than a couple hundred dollars a week for bills and food, that’s for certain.

I’ve lived off $50 a week for groceries before when I did it “tough”, and needed to budget very stringently to make ends meet. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. I also remember a nice bit of steak and fish on my plate every week too.

This woman probably earned Squillions when she was a star on Australian television- where did it all go, may I ask? Most normal people manage to save up a bit for a rainy day.  Even my old nanna who was on a pension.

Below is a link to her stomach churningly un-deserving crowdfunding campaign.

rowena wallace’s shameless gofund me begging campaign for your hard earned dollar.

I’m thinking that since this earned more than $1500, if i started a crowdfunding campaign to buy a lifetime’s worth of laxatives for a dear friend who has severe gastrointestinal and chronic constipation issues, I should be able to raise twice the amount of money Rowena has already, because, clearly, Australians are willing to support Sh*t causes.

Ballarat Garage sales weekend 10 June 2017 10/06/2017

Garage sales- Local Ballarat area only. Post will go up every week.

Starting at the Ballarat train station address, 220 lydiard street, ballarat victoria, australia 3350

garage_sales_Map_ballarat_june_10_2017_victoria_map

  1. 220 lydiard street, ballarat victoria, australia 3350
  2. 5 bogong avenue invermay park victoria Australia
  3. 113 webb avenue ballarat victoria Australia
  4. cnr peel and eastwood street ballarat victoria Australia
  5. 404 clayton street canadian victoria Australia
  6. 2 vines street ballarat east, victoria Australia
  7. 5 bradshaw street golden point victoria Australia
  8. 24 heales street mount pleasant victoria Australia
  9. 1/801 skipton street redan victoria Australia
  10. 5 bonshaw drive sebastopol victoria Australia
  11. 5 Ningana street alfredton victoria, Australia
  12. 1887 sturt street alfredton, victoria, Australia
  13. 5 parbury avenue lake gardens victoria Australia
  14. 100 drummond street south, ballarat, Australia
  15. 204 doveton street south victoria australia.

 

Full list, with greater area- bunninyong, creswick, learmonth

5 Ningana street alfredton victoria, australia
1887 sturt street alfredton, victoria, australia
240 vinoca road, avoca victoria, australia
2 vines street ballarat east, victoria australia
113 webb avenue ballarat victoria australia
100 drummond street south, ballarat, australia
906 inglis street bunninyong victoria australia
404 clayton street canadian victoria australia
2144 midlands highway creswick victoria australia
5 caddy drive creswick victoria australia
cnr peel and eastwood street ballarat victoria australia
5 bradshaw street golden point victoria australia
5 rill court haddon victoria australia
5 bogong avenue invermay park victoria australia
5 parbury avenue lake gardens victoria australia
20 the willows learmonth victoria australia
14 marshall road lucas victoria australia
24 heales street mount pleasant victoria australia

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