Hobbes, Linus And Pepper

Introducing the neighbourhood kittens: Hobbes, Linus and Pepper. Don't ask me which is which, I still can't tell them apart. Hobbes is named after the tiger (who is in turn named after the philosopher), Linus is named after the Peanuts character (despite the blanket, he's also a philosopher), and Pepper is named after Peppermint the kitten (shortened to Pepper).

Epic Fail: Debian Distributes Faulty OpenSSL

Debian released a security vulnerability alert concerning their version of OpenSSL where a package maintainer (accidentally?) removed the random number seeding mechanism in the cryptographic key generator. Therefore it makes the resulting keys guessable, hence useless. Every key generated on Debian since 2006 (this includes Etch) with the faulty program should be revoked and regenerated. This bug is not present in the official OpenSSL sources or in other non-Debian distributions. It only occurs in the Debian version of OpenSSL beginning with version 0.9.8c-1, but is fixed in the latest version of the package (0.9.8c-4etch3, which is safe to use).

Neighbourhood Kittens

New kittens have arrived in the neighbourhood. I do hope they can survive and grow up into big healthy cats. They come from the mother of my previous cats, so they have the same tabby pattern on their coats. Here they are with their mother.

Common Birds

I've never put up pictures of birds very commonly found in Malaysia (since they're so common, they're boring). However, they can make nice photography subjects too.

The ubiquitous common sparrow can be found everywhere. They're cute and chirpy balls of brown feathers.

This is a common myna. Like the common sparrow, it is a very successful bird in urban areas.

Small And Twitchy

I shot these birds while during a weekend office visit.

I haven't seen the fantail in a while! This is a lucky shot. However, I still haven't got a nice clear closeup yet.

A scaly-breasted munia sits on the railing.

A pair of scaly-breasted munias play in the grass. They love looking for bugs and things to eat.

Hawks With Webcams

In this previous post, I linked to the Starr Ranch Sanctuary's owl webcam. Now the owl webcam is provided as streaming video, and they've added streaming video of the red-shouldered hawk too. Check out the cute chicks on the webcam!

McKellen To Reprise Role As Gandalf

Sir Ian McKellen has confirmed that he will reprise his role as Gandalf the Grey in the upcoming movie by Guillermo del Toro. The question of who will play Bilbo is still uncertain though. Sir Ian Holm may be a little too old for the part.

Using Rsync To Remotely Copy Files

If you're on a choppy, third world internet connection with frequent disconnects, transferring large files over the internet with scp leads to frustration as a disconnect ruins your upload or download before it's done (and it usually happens just as it's past 90%, making you want to tear your hair out).

You can save yourself the anguish by using rsync instead. It transfers files either individually, or it can copy entire directories. You can resume the transfer if you're disconnected. The following will copy the entire contents of the remote directory into /local/path:

rsync -avP --rsh=ssh --bwlimit=25 username@host.com:/path/to/files/ /local/path/

When invoked this way, rsync uses ssh to transfer files, and the options are archive mode (all symlinks and permissions are intact), verbosely, and with progress meter. You can replace the /path/to/files/ subdirectory name option with a single file if you want only that particular file.

The bwlimit switch is optional, as it limits the bandwidth usage (in kb/s) to the value specified. This is to make sure your download or upload doesn't saturate your connection. The rsync program needs to be on both source and destination for this to work.

Guillermo Del Toro To Direct 'The Hobbit'

It's official. Guillermo del Toro is going to direct The Hobbit. This is good news, as he's done some critically acclaimed stuff in fantasy filmmaking (El Laberinto del fauno or Pan's Labyrinth) and he's a versatile and talented director in general.

It's going to be two movies, which means they are either breaking up The Hobbit into two parts (good idea) or they are filming the 60 years of non-events that take place between the end of The Hobbit and the beginning of The Lord of the Rings (bad idea). If it's the latter, they can call the movie The Lord of the Rings: Appendix B.

Owls With Webcams

My friend Michelle has gotten herself a job at Starr Ranch Sanctuary in California (a belated congratulations to her for that). It's a nature preserve that's 4,000 acres in size and they have an awesome bird research programme (yeah, I'm quite jealous of Michelle right now).

There's a cool webcam where you can see a barn owl nest. It's visible even at nights (using infrared vision). Right now, some owl chicks have just hatched. Also, check out their nature videos (with a nice selection of birds to watch).