A trip to "Kolokytha"
The beach "Kolokytha" (which means pumpkin) is on the Kalydon Peninsula, the same peninsula as is the infamous, last active leper colony in Europe of Spinalonga. Despite being October, the sea was quite warm and pleasant.
What do
you
think this is?
Recent Posts
Multiple devices on HA's Signal Add-On
Recently I wanted to set up 2 new Home Assistant instances, and I installed the same add-ons I am using for my "main" instance. They are tested and I have automations built with them; one being the Signal Add-on.
9th Information Security Conference - Greece
Three years after my last appearance in a conference due to COVID-19 lockdowns, I was invited to present to the 9th Information Security Conference in Greece. The conference theme was Enabling a Secure Future: Managing Risks in a Constantly Changing World. The conference was virtual / online and was held on the 17th of February, 2022.
Oracle Wallets for credential storage
If you're developing for the web (or something else) and you need to connect to an Oracle database, such as an Oracle Autonomous Database that comes for free with oracle cloud free tier, you may run to the typical problem of storing db connection credentials in configuration files and scripts. Nevertheless, Oracle has, since ages, a functionality called Oracle Wallet that can help you manage these connections more securely. Keep in mind that Oracle migrates away from Wallets, but my understanding is that this is a response to usability concerns, as the security standard is not maintained in the new set-up.
A leader uses DNS to educate
Once upon a time I spent a total of 4 hours (over three days) in meetings, stating that I will definitely not approve a security exception. At least, not until someone demonstrates that the exception requested, removes the root cause or is a valid workaround.
Asking my home to play music
Don't you love open source and the capabilities it provides? My constant tinkering of my home automation has no end! The latest improvement is asking the system to play my favorite music. And I remembered that the advanced capabilities of using Rhasspy with Home Assistant with as little code as possible is not clear to everybody. So here is an explanation of how this works, and how I leveraged these capabilities to satisfy my music needs.