From now on, as I want to reach as many as possible, you can also read sudo and syslog-ng news from me on Mastodon. You can find my account at: https://fosstodon.org/@PCzanik Mastodon is a decentralized network of servers. I chose a server called “Fosstodon” as it is focused on open source software. Some of the projects I participate in are already there: BastilleBSD and openSUSE. As usual, next to my usual syslog-ng and sudo posts, you will also sometimes hear from me about OpenPOWER and ARM with some occasional photos from my hiking trips :-)

Once upon a time I started taking photos with a Lubitel, which is an old, very basic, and completely manual camera. In 2000 I switched from film to digital and everything could be automated. This was the time when I finally realized that having a good camera is not everything. A perfect exposure with a good camera can still result in an ugly and boring photo. Lubitel 2 When I had a fully manual film camera, I quickly learned how to do perfectly exposed photos without any tools to measure light or distance.

Once upon a time I made some time-lapse videos, but I gave up quickly. Recently I have watched yet another Attenborough nature series: The Green Planet. It was full of beautiful time-lapse recordings, and suddenly I felt the urge again to give this genre another try :-) I visited my favorite recreational area in the Pest side of Budapest: Lake Naplás. It’s an artificial lake close to the border of Budapest, which quickly turned into an important bird nesting place and a protected nature area.

Last weekend, I visited a special audio event in Budapest. Two local companies demonstrated their products built into a single audio system. The music was played from TIDAL using an audio PC and DAC made by Bodor Audio and a pair of speakers by NCS Audio. If you read one of my earlier blogs, you know that I listen to a pair of Heed Enigma 5 speakers. It was a love at first sight during my university years.

Last weekend I was in Vienna for EuroBSDcon, an event where BSD users are gathering from Europe (and all around the world). And while you could follow the event online, to me, the greatest value of the conference was not in the talks themselves (not to lessen their value of course, as they were fantastic) but rather in meeting people during the hallway session. The line-up consisted of sudo and syslog-ng users, BSD users and developers, and even some people from history books :-)

I worked from home all my life, or at least that’s what I thought. Recently I learned that what do is actually called “hybrid” work. I do most of my work from home, however I also regularly visit the office. I can work a lot more efficiently at home, so, I work from there. Once a week I’m at the office where I do not progress that well with my tasks.

The first week of the COVID lockdown, back in March 2020, a journalist friend of mine started a Hungarian Facebook group to share work from home experiences. As I have worked from home all my life (except for two weeks), I wrote a long post about my experiences and thoughts. 2.5 years later, my post still receives some occasional likes, and someone even quoted from it – without naming the source :/ You can read the English version of my original Facebook post below.

“Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds” has been a turning point in my life in many ways. It was one of the first non-classical albums I listened to. It was the starting point in my ability to understand spoken English. The first steps from classical My parents only listen to classical music. Even Bartók is too modern for them. In my household growing up, I was only exposed to classical music.

Last week I became a Discogs user. Why? I have been browsing the site for years to find information on albums. Recently I also needed a solution to create an easy to access database of my CD/DVD collection. Right now I am not interested in the marketplace function of Discogs, but that might change in the long term :-) Information overload For many years when I searched for an album, the first few hits were from YouTube and Wikipedia.

“Pass the SALT” (PTS) is a small IT security conference in Lille, France. It has less participants than speakers at the RSA conference. I gave talks at both events. RSA is a lot more prestigious event, but I still prefer PTS. Why? Small Is Beautiful As you could guess from my introduction, PTS is a small event. It is run by volunteers. It is also a free event thanks to sponsors.