Bob's Travel, Linux, Cybersecurity, and More

I returned to Hora on the following day, observing the varying shades of blue in the sky and the Aegean sea.

Hora or Χώρα is the usual name for the main town on an island.

Walking through Livadi, the port town on Serifos, starting with my everyday breakfast place -- apple turnover and double Greek coffee, seated under its awning looking out over the port.

Boarding a large twin-hull high-speed ferry at Piraeus, the main port of Athens.

Introduction to a series of pages describing multiple visits to the Cycladic island of Serifos -- arrival by ferry and finding my lodging, exploring the town around the port, two visits to Hora, the hilltop town with fantastic views out over the Aegean Se…

Naxos was occupied by Neanderthal people during the Midding Paleolithic era, and then the Neolithic people and the Cycladic culture appeared.

The ruins of the Temple of Apollo are on a small islet at the north end of the port, connected to the main island by a narrow causeway.

Arriving on a ferry, you see the Kastro or fortified castle on a small hill overlooking the old town and the port.

Introduction to a series of pages describing multiple visits to the Cycladic island of Naxos -- arrival by ferry, exploring the old town around the port, the Temple of Apollo with its dramatic doorway, and the Sanctuary of Dionysus.

Skarkos, a short walk from the Ios port, was a prehistoric settlement of the Cyclades culture.

The Hora starts at about 100 meters elevation above the port, and continues to a series of chapels on a peak around 150 meters.

A range of choices of lodging and meals are within a short walk from the ferry dock on Ios.

A beautiful ferry voyage from the caldera within Thira, also known as Santorini, to Ios.

Introduction to a series of pages describing multiple visits to the Cycladic island of Ios -- arrival by ferry, lodging and meals around the port, the hilltop Hora with its narrow lanes and fantastic views, and the prehistoric Cycladic settlement of Skark…

It's actually very easy to upgrade a Debian system from one major release to the next.

Mycenae, about 50 kilometers south of Korinthos in the northeastern Peloponnese, was the center of what we now call the Mycenaean Greek culture from about 1800 BCE to the Late Bronze Age Collapse around 1200-1150 BCE.

Thorikos, one of the oldest settlements on the Attiki peninsula, has the oldest theatre in Greece.

The high cliffs overlooking the sea at Cape Sounion form an obvious site for a temple.

The fortified city of Ramnous is only 38 kilometers in a straight line from the Acropolis in Athens, but it's in an isolated setting overlooking the sea.

The army of the vast Persian empire invaded northern Greece in 492 BCE.

The Attik peninsula was part of the Athens city-state and is now home to the Athens airport.

A temple to Poseidon was built at Isthmia in the 7th century BCE, although there are signs of cult activity going back to the 11th century BCE.

Fascist Italy declared war and invaded Greece in October 1940, a year and a month after Germany invaded Poland.

The Isthmus of Greece is a strip of land just six kilometers wide, connecting what otherwise would be a 180x150 kilometer island to the mainland.

A 12th century Christian basilica was built on top of a church from the late 4th century.

Since the 1980s, philosophers in the field of epistemology have distinguished "lying" from "bullshitting".

Updated page by adding a report on TETRA:Burst intentional weakness or backdoor in the TETRA radio standard used internationally for industry, public infrastructure, and public safety.

This 545-meter mountain looms over the ancient city.

The site has been occupied since the early Neolithic, and the city was a commercial center by the time history began to be recorded in the early 8th century BCE.

Avoiding the confusion caused by English speakers using French spellings of Greek names: there will be no road signs pointing you toward "Corinth".

Introduction to visiting Korinthos.

Easter is the high point of the year in Greece, and a great time to visit.

The rites of the Eleusian Mysteries came from a Neolithic agrarian cult in Anatolia.

How to use the Babel package included with LaTeX to include text in non-Latin scripts within your documents.

The Prince Hotel opened in 1927, and was converted to an SRO in the 1940s to house soldiers being processed out of the military after being brought to New York City in troopships.

An untold number of essays and even theses have been written about the purported meaning of "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Brian Muraresku's "The Immortality Key" is about ancient rituals centered on hallucinogens and other psychedelic substances infused into beer and wine.

How to find broken symbolic links, a.k.a. soft links or symlinks.

This page now contains several minor updates describing details of the latest major releases of RHEL, Oracle Linux, and FreeBSD.

Traveling north on the Intercités de Nuit overnight sleeper train from Latour-de-Carol - Enveitg, in the Pyrenees mountains, to Paris.

Traveling south on the Intercités de Nuit overnight sleeper train from Paris to Cerbère, on the Mediterranean coast at the Spanish border.

Intercités de Nuit are comfortable overnight sleeper trains operated out of Paris.

Many promoters of AI hype claim that so-called "Hypercomputation" will somehow make their impossible dreams possible.

Updated with pictures from 2025.

Pictures from my visit to Notre-Dame in 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2012, before the devastating fire in April 2019.

Google decreases AdSense service and thus author-supporting revenue to a page that criticizes Silicon Valley's baseless hype of generative AI.

A quick overview of why we need asymmetric cryptography, and quantum-safe or post-quantum versions in particular.

An introduction to visiting some interesting sites in Rome that aren't swarmed by mobs of tourists.

Pleasant days on the volcanic island of Stromboli.

Traveling by ferry from Vulcano to Stromboli, arriving in a rainstorm, and finding my lodging.