Those who follow my blog are already aware that I love and listen to “Made in Hungary” high-end audio gear: https://peter.czanik.hu/posts/zsolt-audio-turns-40-this-year/. This weekend I visited Zsolt Audio again. He showed us his latest creation, a pair of speakers, which he called “no-name” and “anti-marketing”. The Zsolt Audio listening room However, when I arrived at today’s event, music was still playing on another pair of loudspeakers. Last time I wrote about a pair of clas...| Random thoughts of Peter 'CzP' Czanik
The IBM POWER architecture is not just for database servers. While most people know it only for DB2 and SAP HANA, it is an ideal platform also for HPC or other high performance server applications, like syslog-ng. While all the buzz is around POWER 11 now, we have yet to see real-world testing results, as GA is still a few weeks away. You can learn more about POWER 11 at https://newsroom.| peter.czanik.hu
I’m not a POWER (or recently: Power) expert, only an enthusiastic user and advocate. Still, in the past couple of weeks a number of people from around the world asked my opinion how the POWER architecture could be kept relevant. This blog is really just an opinion, as I do not have the financial means to go ahead. It is full of compromises some people are not willing to make. However, I think this is the safest and fastest way forward.| peter.czanik.hu
Last week, I was in Nürnberg for the openSUSE conference. The project turned 20 years old this year, and I was there right from the beginning (and even before that, if we also count the S.u.S.E. years). There were many great talks, including a syslog-ng talk from me, and even a birthday party… :-) This year marks not just 20 years of openSUSE but also a major new SLES and openSUSE Leap release: version 16.| peter.czanik.hu
This week I am talking to Timothy Pearson of Raptor Engineering. He is behind the Talos II and Blackbird boards for IBM POWER9 CPUs. His major claim is creating the first fully owner controlled general purpose computer in a long while. My view of the Talos II and Blackbird systems is that these boards helped to revitalize the open source ecosystem around POWER more than any other efforts (See also: https://peter.| peter.czanik.hu
My favorite and most used service for developers is the openSUSE Build Service (OBS). This is where I build syslog-ng packages first, before anywhere else. OBS is open source, highly flexible software to build software packages, and the instance at https://build.opensuse.org/ is free to use for anyone to build open source software. Best of all, it supports multiple architectures, including POWER. Open Build Service Actually the OBS acronym stands for two things.| peter.czanik.hu
I’m happy to announce that I became an IBM Power Champion for the year 2022. This blog is long overdue, however with the conflict raging in our neighbor country, Ukraine, I just did not feel the strength to write about anything. In this blog I try to introduce myself and share my plans for this year. But before doing so, let me share my new badge with you: IBM Champion 2022 badge My background My title at work is “Open Source Evangelist” and Power does not appear anywhere in my job desc...| peter.czanik.hu
On this day in 1943 Vangelis was born. The very first CD I bought over three decades ago was composed by him: Chariots of Fire. After so many years, I still love his music. My Vangelis collection As you can see, I do not have everything by him. I do not like his earliest and latest works that much, but almost everything in between. Unfortunately I could not find everything on CD.| peter.czanik.hu
Last December, the CD shop where I bought most of my collection closed its doors for good. I had seen it coming — the owner had been gradually winding down the business in preparation for retirement — but after nearly 30 years of shopping there, it was still a tough moment. Stereo logo This logo belongs to Periferic Records - Stereo Kft.. Back in the nineties, during my university years, I used to look for this logo at concerts, always hoping to spot a bearded man selling an incredible se...| peter.czanik.hu
Last weekend, I was welcomed to a special event in an industrial area of Budapest. Zsolt Audio – one of the best known high-end audio manufacturers in Hungary – turns 40 this year, and Zsolt Huszti, the founder, started a series of events celebrating this in the showroom next to his “factory”. We listened to some fun stories from the past 40 years, and also to music on some of his latest devices.| Random thoughts of Peter 'CzP' Czanik
If you read only one long article this month, it should be The Anti-Social Century by the The Atlantic. I planned to write about tribalism for a long time, as it bothers me a lot and often puts me in trouble. Unfortunately, most people think in tribes, such as “I’m a Democrat”, “I’m a Republican”, or “You’re either with us, or against us”. Something similar also exists here in Hungary. When I agree with something that others also support, those people think that I belong to ...| Random thoughts of Peter 'CzP' Czanik
This week, I reorganized the speakers in my room and wanted to test the change by listening to a wide variety of music. The first piece that came to my mind was “Rhapsody in Blue” by Gershwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue, as I have a fantastic recording of it made by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. That said, I know that I’m not a music maniac enough, as I do not have it on vinyl, but rather as a digital download from HDTracks: https://www.| peter.czanik.hu
During CES Nvidia announced a new AI desktop supercomputer: Project DIGITS. Starting at $3000 it puts AI processing capabilities on the desktop what just recently needed multiple servers and a few more zeroes at the end of the price tag. As an IBM Champion for POWER my first thought was that Project DIGITS is nice, but I’d love to see something based on POWER. Of course it’s just a game of thoughts, as IBM left the workstation business many years ago, both for x86 and POWER.| Random thoughts of Peter 'CzP' Czanik
When I like a song and learn that it is actually a soundtrack of a movie, I usually look it up on IMDB. Often it belongs to a romantic movie, a super hero movie from Marvel or a TV show. In these cases I do not look any further. But sometimes I get curious while reading the plot or watching the trailer. I’ve found many good movies based on the soundtrack.| peter.czanik.hu
This year, I was back in Brussels. I visited two conferences: CentOS Connect and FOSDEM. As usual, both events were fantastic, with great talks and nice people. And as usual, they were also exhausting and not just for introverts like me. I stayed to Belgium to recover, but that’s another story… :-) CentOS Connect Some people still ask me why I visit Red Hat events, especially because I am a proud openSUSE desktop user, while FreeBSD feels the closest to me when it comes to software design...| peter.czanik.hu
Those who follow me on LinkedIn might have seen an automatic post about my work anniversary. Well, almost nothing of that post is true, but I still consider it to be my real starting date. However, the official date is also impressive: 11.5 years, almost three times the industry average spent at the same workplace. So, why do I say that the LinkedIn post is not true? Well, because all its major facts are wrong.| peter.czanik.hu
Yes, I know. Bad title. After so many years only a handful of people will decipher it that I am looking for an affordable and standards compliant ARM machine for Linux & FreeBSD. It refers to a machine released 8 years ago, and a blog I wrote 4 years ago: The ARM developers workstation: Why the SoftIron OverDrive 1000 is still relevant The good news is that since my previous blog there is a lot more ARM hardware available.| Random thoughts of Peter 'CzP' Czanik
Recently I was asked why the syslog-ng newsletter looks odd. At first I did not even understand what is the problem. Then I realized that I kept using the same format for the past 14 years, that was optimized for UNIX terminals :-) So, what is the problem? 14 years ago I was kindly asked by syslog-ng users to use plain text e-mails instead of HTML formatting. Of course it also means that there is no easy way to emphasize titles in the newsletter.| peter.czanik.hu
Recently I posted about two of my Power t-shirts. Many people responded. Some wanted to get one of the t-shirts from me, others asked me what else do I have. I cannot give you the t-shirts, but I can show you a few more :-) I must admit that only one of them has Power printed on it, but the other two are also Power-related. Genesi t-shirt The oldest t-shirt is from Genesi.| peter.czanik.hu
I love t-shirts, especially those that you’d call logowear. But it’s not the kind of big name fashion logos that I’m referring to. Rather, it’s logowear from my favorite IT companies. I have well over a hundred of these t-shirts, and except when I’m preparing for a special event, I pull a random t-shirt from my collection. Yesterday I happened to wear a power.org t-shirt, while today I’m wearing an OpenPOWER t-shirt, two POWER t-shirts in two days :-) Both of these brought back so...| peter.czanik.hu
This weekend I visited the first Audio Expo in Budapest. It was the first music event I truly enjoyed in years. Even if corridors and rooms were packed, there was enough fresh air. What sets this event apart from other events is the focus on listening to music on the vendors’ products rather than just the speeds and feeds on why you should buy their products. While, of course, the expected outcome is the same, with the emphasis on listening to live systems, I found the event much more comfo...| peter.czanik.hu
Recently I was at EuroBSDCon, where several participants recognized that I am a POWER guy. And they were right, I have been an IBM POWER Champion focusing on open source software on POWER for the past three years. Talos II POWER9 mainboard I got the usual question from people: is there anyone working on an affordable and open source friendly POWER machine? My answer was a definite yes, but also had to admit that I do not know the actual status for any of the projects.| peter.czanik.hu
EuroBSDCon was fantastic, as always :-) I talked to many interesting people during the four days about sudo and syslog-ng, and of course also about many other topics. I gave a sudo tutorial, and it went well, with some “students” already planning which features to implement at home. There were many good talks, including one from Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick, who was with the FreeBSD project right from the beginning, and worked on BSD even earlier.| peter.czanik.hu
A few weeks ago I was in Lille, France for Pass the SALT, a conference focused on open-source software and security, and gave a training on sudo. Ever since the conference, I’ve been approached by people asking if I could give sudo training(s) for or through their organization. Instead of writing a short answer to everyone in private, here is more detailed public response. The short answer: it depends :-)| peter.czanik.hu
I’m often asked, how can I be an IBM Champion for POWER, if I do not own an IBM POWER server or workstation. Yes, life would definitely be easier if I had one. However, I have an over 30 years history with POWER, and there are some fantastic resources available to developers for free. Both help me to stay an active member of the IBM POWER open source community. Talos II POWER9 mainboard Last time I introduced you to the openSUSE Build Service.| peter.czanik.hu
I love high performance computers, and some of my best friends work in high performance computing (HPC). Obviously, sometimes we also talk about logging. Recently we not just talked, but I also helped Gábor in his first steps with syslog-ng. He summarized his experiences in a blog: Logs are one of those indispensable things in IT when things go wrong. Having worked in technical support for software products in a past life, I’ve likely looked at hundreds (or more) logs over the years, helpi...| peter.czanik.hu
I love music. My family, friends, colleagues love music. I am in quite a few music-related Facebook groups. A returning question everywhere in the past couple of weeks in various wordings was: what are the five albums you would bring to a desert island? This list is of course changing almost each and every year. And also depends on the number of albums, and if live concert recordings, “best of”, etc.| peter.czanik.hu
This is my last blog for 2023, Budapest time. However, it might already be the first blog of the year from me, if you live in Japan or New Zealand :-) This time it’s a single song: “Happy new year” from ABBA (and from me :-) ). TIDAL: https://listen.tidal.com/album/575781/track/575787| peter.czanik.hu
If it’s Christmas, then for many people it means watching Home alone. Related memes have appeared in social media already in the summer: “100 more days before you watch Home Alone again” ;-) Well, I do not recall when I watched it for the last time, so probably not in the past decade… However, even I know that the most famous song from the movie is Carol of the Bells. I was surprised to hear how many musicians make a cover of a song from a film.| peter.czanik.hu
One of my favorite instruments is the church organ. A few weeks ago we already listened to organ and drums, but those were just covers of some popular songs. However, the church organ is also used in original music, including some really well-known songs. Next to Bach, probably the best-known appearance of a church organ is in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. As a kid, first, I copied it from vinyl to tape, after which I also bought it on CD.| peter.czanik.hu
One of my favorite albums is Vedres Csaba és a Kairosz kvartett – Áldott Idő / Blessed Time. It was made by Hungarian pianist Csaba Vedres, who worked together with a string quartet. Their music taught me that string quartets playing alone, with a piano, or with any other instrument can do some fantastic music. The band was founded by Csaba Vedres, who had a classical music education. Besides playing the piano, he also researched the topic of classical vs.| peter.czanik.hu
In the first part of my music recommendation blog series I mentioned that many people turn to me for some less mainstream music. For quite a long time I thought that listening to cellos playing metal is already something niche. Then it turned out that many people around me love this kind of music. Recently I found something really niche: church organ and drums :-) I love the sound of the church organ.| peter.czanik.hu
I love the melodies of Metallica songs. However, I strongly prefer instrumental music. That’s why I was very happy, when someone brought Apocalyptica to my attention: they played Metallica on four cellos. Over the years I discovered that metal or any other music sounds nice on cellos, as I learned about two more bands: 2cellos and Mozart Heroes. But I should not rush so far ahead. In the year 2000 someone introduced me to Metallica.| peter.czanik.hu
As you might have guessed from my previous blog posts: I love music. Colleagues, family, and friends often turn to me for suggestions if they want to listen to something new and less mainstream. This blog is about music I listen to, the first part of what will hopefully become a series. I hope you also find something interesting here! Why did I pick “Pictures at an Exhibition” when I talk about “less mainstream” music in the opening paragraph?| peter.czanik.hu
All Things Open (ATO) is one of my favorite conferences. This week I had the privilege to be in Raleigh, NC for the third time, and give a talk at the conference for the fourth time. I participated not just ATO, but the Community Leadership Summit. Both events were fantastic. I learned a lot, and also realized that many others have the very same problems as I have. I also had a slight overdose of AI :-)| peter.czanik.hu
Recently, I was looking for some new hybrid / crossover music, and someone recommended me to check out Hidden Orchestra. Listening to their album, “Creaks” was an instant love. As I learned later, it’s the music of a game. I’m not a gamer, but once seeing that it’s on sale on Humble Bundle I bought it immediately. You can listen to the whole album here: You can also find it on Bandcamp.| peter.czanik.hu
Recently I found that quite a few of my Twitter and Mastodon followers are working in high-performance computing (HPC). At first I was surprised because I’m not a HPC person, even if I love high performance computers. Then I realized that there are quite few overlaps, and one of my best friends is also deeply involved in HPC. My work, logging, is also a fundamental part of HPC environments. Let’s start with a direct connection to HPC: one of my best friends, Gabor Samu, is working in HPC.| peter.czanik.hu
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 :-)| peter.czanik.hu
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.| peter.czanik.hu
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.| peter.czanik.hu
“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.| peter.czanik.hu
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.| peter.czanik.hu