Another week has passed, and for me what an incredible week! My vlog started out some years back as a video diary on YouTube - a weekly reminder of what had happened in my life that would be there to look back on and maybe be even a way for future family generations to look back and find out what I was like - as long as YouTube doesn't decide to wipe my account! Now it's become a little bit more, on Steemit it's become more about what I have been doing on here all week and the amazing content creators I have been interacting with.
Starting off it's another morning vlog, setting off after dropping my boy off to school. I should now thank @maxabit for not only taking the time to comment on my posts, but also offer improvement suggestions as well. He said that my dashcam seemed to be pointing to high in the sky, I hadn't noticed it but looking back I realised he was quite right. So have moved it further forward on the dash board - it's at an offset angle because I have a speaker in the middle of the dash - and to be honest because I am short it's now quite a hard stretch to reach it on turn it on! Anyway hopefully this view is a little more of the road and less of the sky. I did point out my YouTube buddy @bobbell69 was an expert at positioning his daschcam with my favourite being his bumper mounted dashcam for a road eye view. @maxabit agreed about that - but sorry guy's no way am I sticking the sports cam to the front of my car!
I don't get far before realising I'm all out of frame with the iPhone front facing camera, that's thanks to my post last week [In time the clouds will pass but do we even notice](https://steemit.com/timelapse/@c0ff33a/in-time-the-clouds-will-pass-but-do-we-even-notice) where I tried something a but different - and admittedly ill advised and attached y iPhone mount to the glass roof of my car to take time lapse through it. Static time lapse is fine - but I threw in one of those crazy ideas that - while on this occasion it didn't work so well - it could have been amazing - taking the time lapse footage while driving. It was certainly different - although all the twists and turns could give you motion sickness! I also inadvertently came up with a tag #sublimesunday which is really just an excuse to post of any those crazy, different or innovative ideas you think might work - or indeed have worked. So if you are stuck for a post this Sunday - why not throw up a #sublimesunday and share some of your crazy or creative ideas.
Further up the road, and the chirping noise of my speed camera detector reminds me that it actually earned it's keep last Sunday, driving down hill on a wide road to my local Supermarket it produced the special warning alert chirping reserved for speed video cameras - I had already started breaking because of the alert - and then saw the cause, a Speed Camera van parked up at the bottom of this long wide downhill section of road. It's a 30mph zone, but being downhill it's easy to pick up speed without realising. I was maybe uptown 35 before the alert - enough over for a speeding fine but hopefully the alert warning - far before my being able to see the van - saved the day.
The cold and snow returned this week, so Tuesday morning I was back to cleaning the car windscreen of snow. For the speeded up dash cam on this journey to work I have some new background music - all thanks to the awesome @avesa and his band http://www.blayrmusic.com - this is one member of Steemit I instantly warmed to, with a friendly laid back way of engaging you along with plenty of good humour and an endless supply of gifs for every occasion. Don't take my word for it though, [The Alliance](https://steemit.com/thealliance/@thealliance/featured-member-follow-up-avesa) love him just as much. Thank you for letting me use your music @avesa
Wednesday morning started with a frosty windscreen again - and I had a busy day at work. In the afternoon I had green coffee to deliver to Stuart at his coffee roasting shop in Dean Clough, then a delivery of coffee and flavoured syrups to Lightcliffe Tea rooms before heading back to sunny Pontefract by the sea to finish the job I started two weeks ago. My customers espresso coffee machine finally arrived from Italy, two weeks ago I had to fit my demonstration room machine so he could open his coffee shop, and now I'm back to swap machines around. I did find a problem with my car last time though, to make moving these 70kg commercial coffee machines easier I have a trolley where the top the machine sits on will unclip and slide into the car boot. You need a flat base boot in the car to use this - I checked that when choosing my new model. I didn't check the height! This SUV has raised ground clearance and the boot is too heigh up for my trolley to reach! But where there is a problem, there is always going to be a stumpy bearded fool with an random solution.
Yes it does mean I have to fit a pallet in the car as well as the machine - but otherwise it works perfectly! Thanks to it being Market day again and I had gone at close of day so all the market stalls were being taken down and the pedestrian area was blocked up with vans being loaded up - so I ended up just strolling through the entire pedestrian area pushing my trolley loaded with a 70kg coffee machine to his shop. I was going to take some photos in the shop - but the electrician has positioned the power hook up in the most awkward of places - and had fitted screw caps on the power switch which took far too long to prise out. Trying to open a power switch and unwire the power cables in a narrow space while you can't see what you are doing is no fun - and I then had to reverse the process to hook up the one I had brought. And once that was over the water supply needs plumbing in, waste hose reconnecting and then the machine needed heating up to pressure so I could program the drink settings. So no in shot photos - I took these when I unboxed it ready for taking it to him. At least I got paid for this machine before leaving, although he did pay in cash. So I strolled back out through the pedestrian area of Pontefract pushing a trolley with a different colour 70kg espresso machine - and an envelope sticking out of my pocket with many, many pieces of paper with the Queen's head on inside. Never a dull moment in my life for sure.
Back to my vlog, and it's been a hectic week on Steemit too. Thursday morning I had not long been up getting ready for work - and Ping - Gina Bot pop's up a notification that @old-guy-photos had mentioned me in a comment. It's been quite a revelation for me to get notifications from mentions and comments on Steemit - it's given the site a feel much more like Twitter which I used for years. Now if you want my attention to just mention @c0ff33a in a post or comment - I'll be over super quick unless I'm asleep! Special thanks to @deadgrlsuppastar for letting me know about this genius discord server.
Anyway, back to the tale - so I headed on over to see why Paul was mentioning me. It seems [in this post](https://steemit.com/whysoserious/@old-guy-photos/the-inquisition-with-dswigle-part-2#@old-guy-photos/re-quillfire-re-old-guy-photos-re-quillfire-201827t193657658z-20180208t042909648z) a relatively new user to Steemit @quillfire was questioning how get more visibility, and as usual Paul was telling him all about how he brought @c0ff33a over here and guided him and made him. Ok, I'm fibbing a bit - he just pointed me out as someone has found plenty of good formulas to get my posts seen and get some modest reward values of them. Anyway I checked out @quillfire and he is definitely producing posts of incredible quality, some wonderful poetry - as you would expect because he actually has a business selling them. Aside from the bot's to pay to increase post rewards, the best thing of course if just getting out there and finding like minded people and getting together to comment on each other's work, knowing he was a poet I had a think about poet's I had come across before - and advised he try linking up with @lymepoet and @nuridin as two I follow and interact with regularly as well as looking at various poetry challenges. That's the incredible thing about Steemit, after some time on here you start to remember all the different people you follow and their specialist subjects - and you can then point new people in the right direction of accounts that suit them.
I learned something else new this week as well, this post popped up [The Alliance](https://steemit.com/thealliance/@christheaudioguy/the-alliance) on discord and I was intrigued, relatively I am new to the group and had not heard of @christheaudioguy so reading through the history of it was quite fascinating. From joining I have had lot's of support and guidance from @tattoodjay who I had encountered previously on Steemit, @edthecanadian and of course by @enginewitty who I always found approachable and patient - a genuine and friendly person. So when I found #thealliance is his group I was literally amazed - because I always thought the founders maybe just sat back out of the general group passing instructions down the chain of command. It's a credit to @enginewitty that he leads the group in a position of being equal to everyone, indeed it's the whole ethos of the group nobody is special, we just look after and support each other and everyone has the chance to voice opinions in the discord server. The charitable work of the group is impressive as well - including this [Valentines Fundraiser](https://steemit.com/thealliance/@thealliance/you-are-h-o-p-e-valentine-s-fundraiser-2) for @youarehope
It's been a busy week for competitions too, [The 7 Days of Love Challenge](https://steemit.com/sevendaysoflove/@deadgrlsuppastar/7-days-of-love-final-post-winners-and-payouts)
#thealliance) hosted by @deadgrlsuppastar caught many people's imagination - I would have liked to join in more myself but I got stuck on day 2 - poetry I enjoy reading but I can not create it. And then @amitsharma won [Qurators Photography Contest](https://steemit.com/thealliance/@amitsharma/winning-does-buildup-your-confidence-and-faith-a-special-word-of-thanks-to-all-associated) and not by a small margin - 14 upvotes clear of the second place entry, Congratulations a well deserved win and it just shows how if you take the time to network around people and comment on their own work, they will come back and support yours as well.
This week I also did another [Reflection Challenge Post](https://steemit.com/tendaysofreflection/@c0ff33a/10-days-of-reflection-day-5-snowy-reflections) it's called 10 days of reflections - I'm on day 5 and I've been doing the odd post here and there for over month now! It was a snowy reflection in tinted snowboarding goggles - I got some amazing response to the post - in fact I only just finished responding to the comments today. Thanks to all of you who take the time to a leave a comment, I'm overwhelmed by how much effort everyone puts in - so nice to see so many comments - and of course part of what takes me so long to reply is I try to make each reply fit the comment and subject - and then I also take the time to make sure I have visited the commentators blog and left at least one upvote and comment myself recently. It's time consuming but I always feel it's important to support those that take the time to support you.
And my last post of this week was [Coffees of the World - Nicaraguan Maragogype](https://steemit.com/coffee/@c0ff33a/coffee-s-of-the-world-nicaraguan-maragogype-the-elephant-bean) all I can say about this one is WOW, it really took off this one - I just checked now and it has had 506 Upvotes. I have never received that many upvotes on a post ever, and while the Bots might give you a monetary value increase in rewards - even if you sent a bid to every single bot out there - you might get 50 or 60 upvotes. That's an incredible amount of support from people all over Steemit, if I could possibly find every single one of you to upvote your own work I would. It certainly confirms my own belief that if you spend as much time as you can going around other people's blogs and commenting on them they will remember you and support your work. Maybe it's because I always drop that lovely drawing @bridget.art did for me in after a comment as an advert - comments are after all adverts for you and your blog. I'm seeing banners at the end of comments pop up more now - and no surprise it can be very effective - especially if you make the image a clickable link back to your blog.
This weeks journey has nearly reached it's end, in my last post because all the images and gifs made it hard for @huslein.slash to translate I dropped a text translation in for him at the end. This time I'm going to try something different - adding a few translations for languages I have come across throughout my Steemit travels - these will either be expandable sections embedded in the page - or hyperlinks to externally hosted text. Sorry this week's vlog is up so late - all the comments I am doing all over Steemit is soaking up so much time, plus I haven't replied to any of the comments on my last blog post on coffee's of the week! I'm doing my best, but I'm no @saffisara I can't survive on 30 minutes sleep a day even trimming it down to 4 hours I always end up doubling that the next night! I set an alarm at 3am last night, woke up - decided a few more hours would help me be more, productive, 5am alarm I though I would just have 10 more minutes - finally got up at 8am! So much for getting a hard start on today.