Hi and welcome

I am Maria Varmazis, I’m a professional cybersecurity journalist and podcaster, and geek of many kinds. I’ve been very online since the mid 90s.

In addition to the creative work you see on my blog here, I’m also an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator and painter. I keep my fine arts separate from this website, arbitrarily really, but if you want to see the kind of ⭐Art⭐ that I make, you can go here:

• Art by Maria Varmazis

I live in the United States in the kickass Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am a first-generation American, the child of two Greek immigrants.

A question I get a lot is how I learned all the stuff I dabble in. I can happily credit my elders for a lot of the wisdom and skills I’ve picked up – my yiayia Maria was a union seamstress when she came to the US, and like many Greek women of her generation - and prior - she sewed clothing for herself and her children, she wove blankets for her dowry, and she knitted and crocheted to make her home beautiful. My mother learned many of these skills from her and is not only very talented at them, she is an amazing teacher. I got to benefit from her experience and wisdom.

Same situation with my father, who not only was a fantastic gardener, he was a brilliant engineer who made sure I knew how to work power tools and a soldering iron.

My mother and father taught me much of the basics of these skills, encouraged me to try things, gave me the space to make mistakes, and supported me in all my zany projects when I was growing up.

As an adult, anything else I needed to learn I relied on books, and later, Youtube University. I am by no means an expert on anything and don’t claim to be, though my enthusiasm and experience at this point have earned me a few skill points here and there.