Cool Entropy

So I ran into this problem on updating cups on my server. Whenever I tried to access the admin page, it will seem to hang with message generating ssl keys. Nothing happened. Google came to help, searching for "Generating SSL server key" got me this page. Looks like SSL needs kernel entropy to generate good random numbers which are needed to generate SSL keys. Now this entropy is produced by random events on a computer, key press, mouse movements, disk access etc. Since my server does not have a mouse or keyboard, and disk access is not very often, it did not have enough entropy! As suggested by Ross Burton, I ran find / (lots of disc access) and watch sysctl kernel.random.entropy_avail and indeed after a few minutes the entropy was high enough and cups proceeded normally. Cool!

Me: A Software Professional

Came across this random piece of information on Sarvjeet's blog.

Pisces (February 19 - March 19)

The people who are just meant to work only in groups. They are selfless and do as you require them to do. They most important thing to be put in them is the "focus" since they get out of doing something when they lose interest. All signs take advantage of Pisces for their work because they like all others to make use of their abilities. Though they are not intellectuals they are very broad minded and good thinkers. Very trustable as long as they are not abused too often by their colleagues.

Indifference

Indifference would be the more appropriate title for the last entry. Loneliness was what I started to write about, but I ended up making more of a comment on indifference rather than loneliness. Anyways, that's the random thought of today.

Loneliness

Seeing poor homeless people is no new experience. Coming from India, poverty in all its ugliness is not a novel sight. Though there is one aspect of poverty that I only noticed here in USA.

New York has its fare share of homeless people. I would not call them "poor" as the term is used in India (poor in India is starving, even a homeless in USA would have a drink of Pepsi), but nonetheless they are poor. Living on the streets, their plight, especially in cold snowy months of winter - when you see them sleep on manhole covers which are comparatively warm from all the steam rising from city's gutters and subways - is gut wrenching. When you see the light and warmth and riches beyond imagination just a few feet away, you can't but feel bewildered by this strange world.

There is a particular old homeless man who lives on the steps of a church near my home. I have seen him almost everyday for the past two years. Begging the passing mass of humanity for money or food. I must admit I paid him passing attention; he was a one-dimensional personality, sitting on those steps. Then one beautiful sunny day when I was going my way I saw him coming towards me from the distance. There was a policeman standing on the corner and when he saw the old man he said something to him. I did not hear what he said, but it seemed like a greeting, a "how do you do?" that we exchange a hundred times over the course of the day. And the old man gave a broad genuine from the bottom of his heart happy smile. A smile that transformed his face, a smile that changed him, a smile that made him a person from that non-descript one dimensional man that I was used to seeing. I had passed him by before the smile ended, but I wonder how lonely a person must be to be filled with such joy at being recognized, on hearing a friendly voice. I have had my share of days when I have felt lonely, but to feel alone day after day, with no end in sight? That is a fate I cannot imagine, a state that I would find impossible to survive.

Today on my way I saw the old man again. Sitting on the usual steps, begging for money the usual way, I passed him by in the rich and glittering city of New York, with my Ipod and Bose headphones, wondering what a strange world this is...

Stargazing

My interest in astronomy was recently rekindled, mostly because of my impending departure from the light polluted skies of New York. The first time I remember wanting a telescope of my own was when I was in class 12^th. I eagerly found out where one could get quality scopes in India, sent them a request for catalogue, received it, saw the prices, and promptly dropped the idea. Then in IIT I once had a chance to look through someone's telescope and the rings of Saturn left me speechless.

Fast forward four years, now I could afford a telescope but New York skies are a dull orange and stars are rarely seen. As I head for clearer and darker skies of California I plan to finally indulge myself. Seven years of waiting... isn't that something!

Enough of the posting, here is an amazing view from amateur telescopes.

• Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula

Smart people act smart

The other day I figured that there are three kinds of people. (a) Some who are very intelligent and smart but pretend to be just average or below average, (b) some who are fools but pretend to be better than they are, and finally, (c) some who are smart, and know they are smart, and are not afraid to hide that. It is so refreshing to meet the third kind. I feel split between who is worse, the ones who pretend to be dumb or the ones who pretend to be smart.

I also wonder why type (c) people are sometimes disliked by type (a)....

Downy Woodpecker

A Downy Woodpecker near my home. I am amazed that you can see the reflection of the sun in its eye.

Blogger and sftp

Finally I got blogger to publish this on my server. I run sftp on my home linux machine. When I tried to publish I got this error.

005 Unable to connect to SFTP server: Auth fail

If you are getting this error, try changing PasswordAuthentication to yes in sshd_config.

Well thats about it for today's random thought.