Currently reading: Read through the first The Dungeoneers book by Jeffery Russel a few weeks ago. I'm taking a break to familiarize myself with the basics of piano playing using Piano for Dummies.
Current music phase: The various works of Pogo. The guy has been making music for quite some time but only stumbled upon his plunderphonic works recently (I don't want to thank the Spotify algorithm because I don't like the service itself but I'll give credit where credit is due). My favorites from him include Wings for Dreamers, Moonlake (That child choir is so ethereal, oh my God!), and Cupboard Shaker. These tracks are so down to earth and endearing. They put me in a good mood.
Also, Fox Stevenson is going to hold a concert this month near where I live, so I'm tuning into his gig with his latest track, That Choice, and Human in the Evening. Can't get enough of his energetic vocals.
At the end of January this year, I've had my final exam/thesis defense. I finally have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. Can't be happier. In addition, I have ended my internship at the company I worked at and got promoted to a Junior IT-Security Expert. This basically means that I still have a lot to learn and practice when it comes to pentesting, cyber security, certificates, and the like. Hopefully, I'll get enough experience in the field so that when I start the cyber security master's programme in September, the first few months will be pretty easy. We'll see.
Now that I managed to land an entry level job in cybersec, I basically have my hobby as a job, so I have some extra time to do whatever I want. The thing is, almost all of my hobbies include a computer and I'm already in front of a screen at least eight hours a day, so how can I find things to enjoy when all I ever did was either study in front of a computer, work in front of a computer, relax in front of a computer, and maybe exercise a few times each week?
I'm starting to learn playing the piano this month. I've been saving up for a few months to buy a Yamaha digital piano (P-45), and have read the basics of the instrument (finger placements, reading sheet music, etc.). It pained me to see my synths (Arturia Microfreak and Korg Volca Sample 2) collecting dust because I don't know any music theory, just the basics of sound design. Now, I have an alibi to bring them out of their neglect.
On another note: I also volunteered to hold a libre-software-fueled exhibit in a bootleg Comic-Con with some members of the local free-software/Linux community. You can read about my experience there on LinuxMint.hu, if you can read my language. ;) It was fun speaking about all the things you can do with libre-software. I plan to appear on more events like this. It's not a coincidence I have the words free software enthusiast displayed on the homepage of my site after all.
To close this entry off, I'm sharing the hobby project I'm working on while waiting for my piano to arrive. Batocera Linux is an awesome distro to transform your old PC or single board computer into a full-fledged retro gaming console. I'm dual-booting it along with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my old laptop that's connected to my TV functioning as a media center of sorts. Just install the distro onto your computer, load it up with some roms and you are ready to go.
Currently reading: I finished the Old Testament around two weeks ago and started to read Franz Kafka's short stories like The Metamorphosis and The Judgement before following it up with the New Testament. Reading The Metamorphosis was compulsory back in high school but I was too lazy back then. However, based on the summaries I found online at the time, I got the impression that it's probably worth my time to read it through one day, so that's what I did.
Currently playing: Deep Rock Galactic still mostly, but Picross 3D: Round 2 gets played by me too a lot on my 3DS. I rediscover how great this console is every six months or so.
Team Fortress 2 has just got its last comic issue released after seven years without a sequel. It got quite bittersweet near the end; not the story, but the fact that the comics are over and we received some closure. The game is now almost eighteen years old, I played it first when I was still in middle school, followed me all the way through high school and university, and I'm sitting here now with a completed bachelor's thesis under my belt, somewhat-but-still-not-quite ready for adulthood. I'll write a blog post about my memories with this game, even though it's far from dead (and probably will be for a long time).
Yeah, yeah, I'm finished with my thesis with the defense and final exam being at the end of January, 2025. I'll probably be working full-time in cybersecurity by then. The meeting regarding the end of my internship will be next month.
Starting from today, I'm writing a journal entry ideally every day on my computer. Journaling was a hobby I did in high school and it went strong for four years, with 800-900 pages written in total in an ODT file. Things started to speed up around me, which I considered a welcome change, but that meant I didn't have that much time for writing every day. Dedicating 4-5 hours in bulk for catching up with my journal and writing two weeks worth of happenings down felt more and more like a chore.
This year, I felt frustrated many times because I couldn't remember even what I did the week before. There could have been so many sweet moments that have gone out of my mind never to resurface again as memories, that I can't afford the luxury of not writing them down.
Now, I'm taking a plaintext-Markdown approach, so I can run a static-site generator (like the one I use on this site: Soupault) on the entries for when I want to browse them or write bash-scripts for statistics on the text I've written, just to keep writing interesting and learn more about scripting in the process. Writing plaintext files gives me so much freedom over the content, not to mention that it's compatible with almost any type of computer. I don't need to install the bloat that comes from Microsoft or any kind of office suite, I can write stuff on whatever device I have at hand.
My current music phase is rediscovering Squarepusher's Ultravisitor album now that my girlfriend got me the 20th anniversary remastered vinyl. Abacus 2 and Iambic 9 Poetry being the highlights of the 3LP for me. Apart from that, Chris Clark's Sus Dog album gets a surprising amount of plays from me, the titular track being my favorite one of the bunch.
Currently watching: Stopped watching South Park regularly at around season 16. It was getting stale, but I might pick it up later.
Currently reading: Continued reading the Bible from start-to-finish. Started around one year ago, but took a looooooong break at around January this year that lasted for six months. Right now, I'm at the Book of Isaiah. I plan on finishing the Old Testament by the end of this year (if no book catches my interest until then).
As to why I'm reading it, I've had a Catholic upbringing with a big part of my childhood pals being Catholic as well, but I've never actually read it — just like the majority of practicing Christians. It really blows my mind how not one of my Catholic acquaintances ever read it. I consider myself an atheist nowadays, but I kinda miss the spirituality that any kind of religion provides, and I'm curious, that's all. To help with understanding, I use the BibleProject YouTube channel's summaries. Highly recommended if you're going the same route I am. My favourite book so far is the Book of Job.
Currently playing: A lot of Deep Rock Galactic. This was the game that helped me relax the most while writing my bachelor's thesis. Occasionally, I play Stardew Valley co-op with my girlfriend.
Current music phase: Lauren Bousfield's discography (shoutout to the Salesforce album of hers), and this British post-punk song from Sleaford Mods.
My current life events include:
Currently watching: All South Park episodes in order (now at the end of season 14)
Currently reading: Nothing at the moment, but I finished Patrick Süskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and the other book I mentioned in my last Now page entry.
Currently playing: South Park: The Stick of Truth and Stardew Valley co-op and copious amounts of Team Fortress 2 now that the cheater bots are gone from official servers.
Current music phase: Tudósok's discography and some hidden gems from the 90's rave scene.
Now that my exam season is over (with pretty good grades), I can focus my attention fully on my bachelor's thesis. Implementing cryptographic attacks on RSA is fun (see my then page for more details).
Fishing on Orfű, a local alternative music festival tired me out to no end two weeks ago (our cabin was right in front of a stage that blasted music until 2 am), but I don't regret attending it. Almost all of my favourite Hungarian bands played and I even discovered some new artists that I've heard about, but didn't really give them a try before. Now's the best time to dive into their discography.
I started attending a psychologist to treat my (not crippling but still considered severe by me) social anxiety and anything else that comes up during the sessions. Being a young adult is stressful and I felt a need for some deeper self-knowledge compared to my high-school self to battle with the obstacles ahead of me on equal ground.
Also, I switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, a semi-rolling-release distro with the XFCE desktop environment as a daily driver on my laptop. I love how snappy and old-school looking it is (not to mention its stability thanks to automatic BTRFS snapshots by default).
I like my computing to be as simple as possible (GNOME ate too much of my resources sadly) while also allowing me to customize it to my workflow and XFCE is perfect for that. I'll need to find a way to achieve auto-tiling like what Pop! provided though. I'll still follow the developments of Pop!_OS, especially now that their COSMIC desktop is almost at public alpha stage.
Currently watching: All South Park episodes in order (now at season 13)
Currently reading: Vivek H. Murthy – Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
Currently playing: South Park: The Stick of Truth and Stardew Valley co-op
Tomorrow, I'm going to take an exam on the programming language C++ (template programming, STL containers etc.), I'm practicing for that, I hope it goes well.
Passed my Databases II. exam with a grade of 5 (best grade for students here), only two exams left before my well-deserved summer holiday.
I have a subject for my bachelor's thesis and I've already begun working on it. Its' title (not final) is going to be: Python Wrapper for Validating Cryptographic Keys and/or Solutions. Basically, I have to read into some mathematic attacks against cryptographic solutions such as RSA or elliptic-curve cryptography. One such method is using fermat's factorization to break badly generated RSA keys for example.
This weekend, I will be counting votes in my country's elections. It will mean a full day's work until late at night, but I'm looking forward to it. I did a great job on the one two years ago and I loved every second of it. I feel it's the least I can do to protect democracy here.
I am looking for opportunities to volunteer this summer. It bothers me that I rarely do good deeds explicitly. I'll try to convince some friends to join me.
I am currently doing my internship in cybersecurity. Penetration testing, cryptography basics, Python scripting etc. It's incredibly exciting and I'm really glad I chose this field as my internship subject; I definitely wouldn't have enjoyed web or software development.
Learned a bunch about attacks like Bleichenbacher's one, buffer overflows and the like. Can't wait to immerse myself in this subject more.
I'm going to get a topic for my bachelor's thesis from my current company. I'd love to do some applied cryptography or anything that needs some esoteric modular math know-how. We'll see.
Sometimes I miss my Erasmus semester in Tampere, Finland. It was nice to live there for months. My courses were easier than here and the weekdays were more colourful, although I don't miss the snow and the minus temperatures anymore.
Biking to campus is nice and gives a boost to my mood every day I need to get there. I probably ride a bike around 4-5 hours every week, getting my stamina back slowly but surely.
I'm going to pass the penultimate exam season of my bachelor's degree in a couple of weeks, and then I'm going to dive head first into the first festival of my life at the end of June, where I managed to get a cabin ticket with my girlfriend. We got lucky we don't need to sleep in a tent for days, and are stoked.
Great to see that my latest blog post on the Pinephone Pro received some nice comments. It was a good idea to submit my personal site to SearchMySite.